Heitz offers her a couple of bottles of
water, which she takes, stockpiling them beside her.
As we walk back to the van, Heitz says this sum-
mer will be brutal for her and for all of the home-
less in the city. “If you’re smart, you figure out ways
to survive, to adapt,” he says. “You find friends with
cool houses where you can crash during the day. You
learn which churches are open.”
But not everyone is so wise. Heitz tells me about a
man he found lying in the heat on the sidewalk. His
face was flushed, his eyes were dilated, and he wasn’t
moving. “I called 911, and they took himto the hos-
pital,” Heitz says. “The guy was cooking right there
on the sidewalk.”
In Phoenix, the brutality of life beyond the halo
of air conditioning was evident everywhere I went.
A few days after my visit with Heitz, I pull my rental
car over to answer some emails near the corner of In-
dian School Road and Central Avenue. It is a nothing
place, just a big intersection where 12 lanes of traf-
fic cross. There are a few palm trees and a concrete
sidewalk and some nondescript buildings that look
like microprocessors on a giant PC board. I could feel
the heat radiating off the asphalt and concrete as if
I were standing beside a blast furnace. It was as in-
human and inhospitable a spot on this planet as any-
where I’ve ever been.
It doesn’t have to be that way. You can build a city
on a human scale, and in such a way that it does not
cook people who can’t afford an iced latte at Star-
bucks. You can power the world without fossil fuels
and stop the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere. But[Cont. from 83]so far, we haven’t. The sprawl in Phoenix, as in most
cities, continues unabated. And until that changes,
so too will the heat.
As I fiddle with my phone, I notice a woman pac-
ing the sidewalk ahead of me. She is rail-thin. In her
skin, I see years of sun. I assume she is homeless, but
maybe not. She approaches the passenger-side win-
dow of my car. There is fear in her eyes.
I roll down the window.
“I’m looking for my father,” she says quickly. “Have
you seen him?” She describes him and says he is sup-
posed to meet her here every Thursday. She says he
is 56 years old and doesn’t have a place to stay and
she is worried about him.
I tell her I haven’t seen him, that I was just driv-
ing by.
“I want to find him before it gets fucking hot,” she
says. “I need to get out of this city. I’m like a bird,
you know. I migrate. But I don’t want to leave until I
find my father.”
She is jittery. She asks me again if I have seen her
father, and I tell her I have not. Then she just turns
and continues pacing along the sidewalk.
I thought of her a few days later as the tempera-
ture in Phoenix soared past 100°F. The Maricopa
County Department of Public Health reported its first
heat-related death of 2019: A homeless man had been
found dead in a vehicle near downtown. No name or
other details were released. I wondered if it might
have been that woman’s lost father, but I knew it was
unlikely. Still, the worst of the summer heat hadn’t
arrived yet, and as the temperatures rise in Phoenix
and cities around the world, superheated by the civi-
lized world’s insatiable appetite for fossil fuels, there
are so many deaths to come.EXTREME HEATHOUSING CRISISsupport grew from 61 percent to 66
percent, he says. “Support in every region of the
state, every demographic, including older white peo-
ple, including homeowners — everyone.”
Portantino says it was a “jolt” to cities that have
failed to act. “I do think now everybody’s going to
come to the table, and I’m getting optimistic about
finding the sweet spot,” he says. But it will take a
herculean effort, and perhaps more involvement
from Gov. Newsom. Despite his promise to build 3.5
million new houses, approvals for construction are
down 12 percent in 2019, and Newsom was largely
absent from the debate over SB50. (“The governor
continues to believe California can and must do more
to address the housing shortage and the high cost
of housing and rent, and he will continue working
with the Legislature to do just that,” Newsom’s press
secretary said in a statement, adding that Newsom
approved a budget with $1.75 billion to jump-start
construction and allocated “more state money than
ever” to fight homelessness.) “He said all the right
things, gave all the indications that this was his top
priority, and then he just disappeared,” Shaw says of
the governor. “He’s invisible.”S
B50 WAS NOT the only legislation that disap-
pointed advocates this year, only the most
high-profile. In May, almost all the major hous-
ing bills proposed (there were more than 200 total)
went up in flames. Two renter-protection bills were
killed, and a third, to shield against egregious rent in-
creases, passed only after it was effectively gutted. Atax credit benefiting the owners of historic or archi-
tecturally significant homes, “such as the craftsman,
the California ranch, the mission revival & art deco
building,” sailed through the chamber, however.
The best that Democrats are able to offer the
homeless is the creation of more safe parking lots.
AB891, one of a number of parking-lot bills still alive
in the Legislature, would require every California city
with a population greater than 330,000 to establish a
parking program like the one in San Jose.
“It’s not a solution,” says Jen Loving, an advocate
for the homeless who works with the city of San
Jose. “Anything that is not solving homelessness —
providing an affordable place for someone to live —
is an interim measure.... Shelters, safe parking, tem-
porary stuff is providing more safety for people than
they might have out on the streets on their own, but
we’re not ending homelessness that way — ending
homelessness in the state of California requires po-
litical courage at the state and local levels.”
Until the state’s politicians find the courage to act,
families like Adelle Amador’s will be stuck living in
their cars. “It’s a test for us,” Amador says. “We’re
going to make it through or we’re not. I think we’re
going to.... I got a lot of faith.”
For as little as it offers, she still sees the parking lot
as progress. “Believe me, five years ago they weren’t
offering all this stuff,” she says. “There was none of
this help. At times, me and my husband felt like we
were the only ones out here with our kids. My kids
been out here for so long. All they ever want is just a
home. That’s all I ever hear is them going, ‘I just want
a home.’ “I’m like, ‘I know, guys. I know it’s going to
happen.’ Believe me, I got a lot of faith in my heart,
and I know it’s going to happen for us.”[Cont. from 55]LIBERATOR.COM
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