Los Angeles appears like a Third World country

Like the illegal immigration problem at America’s southern border, homelessness is rising to a crisis level in big cities across the nation.

And homelessness is up 10 percent in Tulsa after an 8 percent increase last year.

The Rev. Steve Whitaker, senior pastor and CEO of John 3:16 Mission, described the problems in an interview on Tulsa Beacon Weekend on KCFO AM970.

Whitaker recently traveled to California and was taken aback at the degree of the problem.

How bad is homelessness in Los Angeles?

“Mad Maxx, Thunderdome and worse,” said Whitaker, referring to the 1985 post-apocalyptic movie. “It’s Third World. Sixty-five thousand homeless people on Skid Row. A hundred thousand in LA County.”

One of the problems is trying to deal with the trash piling up in LA streets.

“Of course, LA’s out of money picking up the trash,” Whitaker said. “They said they spent $20 million last year on picking up trash.”

Rats are another growing problem.

“Most people have already heard that they have had a resurgence in typhus there – a Third World disease,” Whitaker said. “And some of the rats have tested positive for the Bubonic Plague. It’s just a matter of time before that makes a jump from the rats to the human beings who are living down in that squalor.”

LA policemen are getting sick just patrolling that area.

“It’s a serious issue but it is one for the entire nation,” he said. “If we continue to go down this path, with the liberal permissive approach to dealing with people who are homeless, we are certainly schizophrenic as a nation about how we are going to deal with those things.”

The problem is not as bad in Tulsa and Oklahoma.

“The four thousand homeless in the State of Oklahoma are a pittance compared to what is in LA County, but we can look down the road and see what’s going on,” Whitaker said “We can look at Denver and see what’s going on. We can look at New York City and see what’s going on. We are a little big behind them in terms of how we trend.

“Human depravity is human depravity and so the tendency and predilection to live out in the encampments and to drag up whatever they can drag up to live in a tent is very real here in Tulsa.

“Austin, Texas, has adopted a pretty permissive approach dealing with the homeless. And there have been some back-and-forth laws trying to make it illegal. Austin has decided not to prosecute or go after people that are camping in public. And that’s become more and more of a problem. They have tried to designate some areas that have just become wasteland. Not a great idea. As a culture, we’ve got to decide what we are going to do with these kinds of encampments.

“In San Diego, not that long ago, I have a friend who runs a mission there, they helped to remediate an encampment that was in a pretty upscale area in San Diego. It was a pretty neat place to go to. They came back two weeks later, and the encampment stretched for six blocks on both sides.”

In Tulsa, during the heat of summer, staff from John 3:16 Mission visit camps in and around Tulsa to offer help, including clean water. Whitaker said in the recent flooding, most Tulsans didn’t realize that there were homeless encampments inside the Arkansas River levees.

“Those encampments have been re-established and there are a lot of people living back down there again,” Whitaker said. “And they are all over the City of Tulsa. In fact, they are infiltrating down south in ways they never have before.

“Homeless people will be coming into your neighborhood sometime soon, with a tent probably. We have to decide how we are going to handle all that.

“We do care. People can reach out to us and we will go to where the campers are. We will show them not only compassion and hospitality but water. We will also try to give them any opportunity they want to come in and find a way back home.

“The numbers continue to grow, and we get busier, busier and busier. Demands for what we do continue to grow.”

John 3:16 Mission is in a major growth campaign. The mission purchased The Refuge, 575 N. 39th West Ave. It contains 160 acres John 3:16 Mission purchased from Tulsa Public Schools. It was the Chouteau Elementary School. The mission still needs funding for renovation and construction work at that site, which will eventually house live-in recovery programs for both men and women.

 “At the end of the day, I will have twice as many beds as I do now, up from 150 to 300,” Whitaker said. “Hopefully, that will fill the gaps a little bit. “We have already opened up a wing out there. I have 160 acres where they are harvesting corn – homeless people are out there harvesting corn today so we can feed ourselves.”

Donations have trickled in. Some Tulsans who are concerned about the growing problem of homelessness don’t agree with the Christian message of John 3:16 Mission.

“Our major capital campaign has been slow,” Whitaker said. “Not everybody resonates with the faith message of John 3:16 and there are other ideas about housing and other situations where people view homelessness as a mental health issue. We view it as a spiritual issue primarily. And it can be a mental health issue and it can be an addiction issue. It’s ‘grace first’ at John 3:16, housing next. Not everybody agrees with that notion.”

Whitaker said $3 million has been raised, another $4.5 million is needed for new metal buildings and renovating the old school building.

America has record employment – particularly among minorities. The state has record-breaking revenues every month.

Why is homelessness increasing?

“That’s a difficult question,” Whitaker said. “Apart of it has to do with the housing conundrum. Homelessness means you can’t get a home. Even to rent a home in Tulsa can be onerous when it comes to just paying for it.

“The wage scale in Tulsa – a $10 an hour job – while it sounds like it’s generous, that’s just not enough to service a mortgage. It’s just not. A sustainable minimum wage is higher than most people can imagine – $17 an hour – that’s what you need to pay your own insurance, pay for your own car, pay for your own house – those kinds of things that we are all doing for ourselves. It’s more than the market allows right now in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“We have our share of addictions.  We have our share of mental health issues. And we have a big problem of people who are caught in sin and need to repent. And of course, the only way to the cross is by repenting through Jesus Christ. And the only way is through repentance and that is not a popular message these days.

“People reject that. It’s my life and I will live the way that I want to live, they will say, and you can’t tell me how to live. Until they come to the end of themselves. And then we can ask them to repent and give their lives to Jesus Christ.”

There are other cultural factors, including the explosion of casino gambling in Oklahoma.

“The impact is significant,” Whitaker said. “There are people that don’t have any visible means of support or very low support that are somehow sucked into the lie that they can go to the casino and walk away with thousands of dollars or win the big jackpot.

“That continues to seduce people into gambling when they should not. Then they take the rent money or their mortgage payment and they take the grocery dollars and they go gamble that away. That adds to the crisis.

“Where we have really seen it is on the top end of things, where people are high-end professionals get caught deep in debt and estranged from their families.

“I have a school principal at John 3:16 Mission who has lost everything. He’s lost everything. You see people who are highly educated, highly accomplished but addicted to gambling and caught in a trap who have just lost everything.

“While the chances are good that they will be OK if they will put their addiction behind them, it has contributed significantly to the numbers I see at John 3:16 Mission. We see professional people truly broken. It’s tough to see somebody down that far.”

State voters approved the medicinal use of marijuana but the law is full of loopholes that foster recreational use.

“I think the law was poorly written,” Whitaker said. “I think it does allow for people who are not legitimately sick.

“We are aware of people on the bottom end of things, that we have done the casework with for a long time, and they can go in and claim they’ve got chronic headaches, get a (marijuana) license, to use medical marijuana.  And it’s contributed to the abuse of marijuana in our state. And in fact, in many cases, it becomes de facto recreational marijuana, which is harmful. There are truckloads of information and data and studies that show how harmful marijuana is.”

How bad is the marijuana problem?

“And from my standpoint, it is probably the No. 1 and worst gateway drug for people who are intent on abusing more and more drugs,” Whitaker said. “What it does, it prepares the body and the mind chemistry for the next drug. It becomes the drug. I reject the notion that a person has a genetic predisposition to be addicted. It’s a physical and spiritual issue.

“People who are caught using marijuana sometimes respond in ways that are violent. People always think that when they smoke marijuana they are going to be mellow and want a snack. That’s just not true. It’s just patently not true.

“If you are saying that marijuana is harmless, you are lying. It’s harmful. It destroys lives. And I’ve got a building full of people who were harmed by marijuana at John 3:16 Mission right now.”

The voters were sold the idea that marijuana would only be used for limited medical uses.

“It does contribute to all of our problems in society,” Whitaker said. “Medical marijuana may have its place – it’s not my choice. The state has already ruled on that. What I do know on the macro that this is a poorly written law. People in my world have been harmed by the law. They are sucked into deeper addictions. People are languishing right now. They are in a bad spot and they need help. And so, some of those people have got to get away from their marijuana addiction to be able to be OK.”

Thanks to new laws, drug stores, groceries, convenience stores and other retailers can sell chilled wine and strong beer. The result has been an expansion of alcohol availability.

“It is everywhere,” Whitaker said. “We already have people that have their addiction issues and we are putting it right in their faces. We think everything is going to be OK and then we shake our heads and say, ‘What’s wrong with the world?’ Well, what’s wrong with the world is we are too permissive.

“We have put (alcohol) in the face of every fragile alcoholic in the City of Tulsa and then and we wonder why they relapse and they relapse and they relapse.

“It’s almost like they can’t go out. Our answer to them is that you need to get into a recovery program or get into Celebrate Recovery and everything will be OK with you. Well, no, there’s a whole lot more to it than that. It has to do with proliferation.”

Whitaker said he struggles with Christians who don’t take a stand on this issue.

“I’ve seen more Christians who have decided that a little bit of wine is going to be OK,” he said. “I am going to a church meeting and be around with the guys and have a beer or wine.

“I am a teetotaler. I couldn’t do that because I wouldn’t want the people at John 3:16 who are fragile and broken because of alcohol to see me even sitting in a bar.

“Here’s my problem. I can’t even go in to a restaurant where there’s not a bar across the room.”

For more information on how to donate to John 3:16 Mission, call 918-587-1186 or go online to John316mission.org.