A paper you may not have heard about….

There’s this woman that I hear before I see in Dupont Circle almost everyday. She awaits you at the top of the escalator as you are exiting the Metro. Her familiar call can be heard from 19th Street down to the depths of the escalator tunnel. It goes “purchase a copy of Street Sense eyahh! “Help the homeless help themselves, Street Sense!”

She repeats this line throughout the morning while gaining a patron every now and then. This vendor of  a street newspaper, has got to be one of the most determined and hard working people I know—although I have to admit her routine can be monotonous. Who else would stand out there for hours on end, no matter the weather to sell a paper? After all, long gone are the days of the newspaper boys standing on street corners.

All of the vendors, most of them homeless, put in a lot of effort to sell this  street newspaper. They get to keep most of the money from its sale. It’s a way for the homeless to help themselves. Street Sense not only empowers the homeless financially by having them be vendors of the paper; it also provides them with a voice as a lot of the content in the paper is written by homeless people.

Yet all of this effort by the vendors of the paper has me thinking, why doesn’t an employer also see this determination? Just think, if any one of these vendors were able to get a basic retail job or work at a grocery store; they would be making a lot more than they do selling the paper. I know that some of the homeless who sell Street Sense are able to move on to more a more steady source of income, but there are others who stay on as vendors for a very long time. Street Sense is working to get their vendors hired by the way. I’d suggest people give them a look.

Yes that’s right I wanted to throw a wrench in your holiday celebration. Why? Well, because the world is screwed up as usual. While you might be happy celebrating the Nintendo Wii or Xbox someone got you, think about this.

If that is the case, Pfenning, an occasional day laborer, will join a growing number of homeless and unemployed people who have taken their own lives. Suicide is the seventh-leading cause of death for males (sixteenth for females), and the rate for unemployed people is two or three times the national average. The longer people are unemployed, the more likely they are to commit suicide. This phenomenon has played out across place and time, with the rate increasing by 20 percent during the Great Depression and spiking by as much as 40 percent among men in parts of Asia during the 1997 economic crisis.

This happened at an Occupy encampment in Vermont. Some people tend to forget that sometimes it’s not the mental illness or alcohol abuse that makes one homeless, it can be the other way around, where losing your job and being unemployed leads to drug abuse and mental problems.

This is a topic that has plagued this country for decades. No one really focuses on it enough especially not the US Congress. It’s sad that the GOP in the minority and the GOP in the majority always want to block these sorts of programs that help veterans. They really don’t support the troops.

The other sad issue here is that this is the BBC doing a report on this not our media.

For those who leave the military world, there will be challenges ahead as they adjust to civilian life. The least fortunate may end up becoming homeless and many will battle the mental scars of war.

Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are finding themselves living on the streets faster than those who served in previous conflicts, including Vietnam.

BBC News – South Africa: Julius Malema anger over open-air toilets

Last month, a high court ruled that the DA-run municipality should provide shelters for about 1,300 open-air toilets in an area of Khayelitsha, outside Cape Town.

Even people living in poverty deserve to be treated with human dignity and respect. This is truly unacceptable.

Yesterday evening at around eight o’clock PM I decided to go out and get some exercise. I’m trying to walk a mile at least three times a week weather permitting. It’s not much but it is a start. By essentially walking around Arlington Village—a townhouse condominium community—in Arlington, Virginia you end up doing a mile and burning about 100 calories. This comes out to around 2,500 steps on my pedometer iPhone app. I’ve been told I should be doing around 5,000 steps however so I have to put in more effort to get there.

Arlington Village is a beautiful place. I like living here. I’m not an owner of one of these townhouses mind you I am a renter. I’m also not renting an entire townhouse but I live with two other people. My rent is around $850 a month plus utilities so there you have it. I’m not rich and I made the middle class for the first time three years ago. Before that I would have essentially been working poor which is what working in retail or being a bank teller will get you. I did these jobs while going to college at night and after graduating trying to land the “good job” in the meantime.

So as I was walking around the village I ran into a woman who was at first way up ahead of me on the sidewalk. She stopped walking for a second and waited until I was closer to say “I’m sorry I had to stop and look back.” She continued “it’s late and I’m out here by myself and there’s no telling what someone might do to a homeless woman.” I told her I did not blame her for wanting to be safe. She saw that I wasn’t a threat and continued walking with me.

I then told her that people wouldn’t have even realized that she was homeless. She acknowledged that she did not bare any of the telltale signs that are often associated with someone who is homeless right or wrong. After all, some of the beliefs that people hold about the homeless and their appearances can be true but a lot of it can be stereotypical.

None the less this woman was indeed homeless. She hadn’t been in this predicament for very long it would seem, not that any length of time is tolerable. At the most maybe three to four months had been spent living on the streets without any income. She began to tell me her story one that sadly didn’t sound too unfamiliar. An abusive husband had left her and to top it off she was pregnant. She’s originally from the Bronx and was living in New York City with her husband.

After things got bad with the husband she came out to Arlington to stay with her mother who had a house here. Unfortunately, her mother passed away and she was not able to hold on to the house. So here she was stuck in Virginia, pregnant and with nowhere to go.

I asked her if she had gone to any of the shelters to get help. She told me that she had gone to two shelters in Arlington. While one emergency shelter did not have any more beds available the other shelter required identification. It was at that point that she mentioned Mt. Zion Baptist Church and a housing program they ran but that required a little money to be paid on behalf of the person wishing for a room.

I asked her how much would it cost to stay there. I was told that $40 dollars would allow her to stay there for a few days. It was at this time that I was asked for money. She pleaded with me, offered to sell me her engagement ring or the watch she was wearing. I had no intention of being so cruel as to separate someone of something in such a situation.

Now there are many reasons why I didn’t initially want to give her the money—one being who knows if the truth is being told and so on. Ultimately, I didn’t give her the full forty dollars but just twenty. She said that with the ten dollars in her pocket this would be enough for her to stay at least a day or so.

The main reason I didn’t want to give her the money was the fact that I would rather see someone who is homeless seek help through larger institutions. I am just one person and I am barely middle class as it is. The money I give any homeless person would only temporarily help them. As a liberal it is my belief that it is for situations just like this why I don’t mind paying taxes—so the government can help. I believe in the government’s ability to do good.

Yet here she was telling me that the local county government in Arlington, Virginia had failed? I really found it hard to believe that the county or any municipality would have people sleeping out on the streets. I wanted to call the local police department right there to ask them for help on how to direct this woman. She told me she had already dealt with them twice tonight when they brought her to these two different shelters.

In the end I walked with her to a Shell gas station on Columbia Pike where the attendants actually knew who she was. I gave her the twenty dollars and she thanked me and began to head for the Mt. Zion Baptist Church. I hope that she gets the help she needs soon.

I’m not sure if everything she says is true about the county homeless shelters or even if this church actually charges people money to stay in their rooms. I do know that homelessness is still a major issue, has always been and almost anyone can end up in a bad situation. That is why throughout the decades people have fought for a social safety net. It is not some abstract idea.

Homelessness and poverty continues to plague the region. That’s why starting December 18th we’ll be raising awareness by camping in the parking lot at the Giant supermarket at 255 South Spring Garden Street in Carlisle, PA.

via Hungry and Homeless For the Holidays | The Rick Smith Show.

I have to commend the Rick Smith Show on its willingness to camp out in the parking lot of a supermarket during this very, very cold month. Here in DC it is colder than normal with what feels like to be temperatures in the twenties on most days this week. I can only imagine what its like in Carlisle, PA right now. I don’t see this cold abating much so I salute the show on its effort.

The Mexican billionaire, who Forbes still lists as the world’s richest man, said in 2007 that he could do more to help fight poverty by building businesses than by “being a Santa Claus.”

via World’s Richest Man: ‘Charity Doesn’t Solve Anything’ – The Wealth Report – WSJ.

I don’t outright disagree with what you are saying. The question is how do you go about building businesses that will help eradicate poverty? I’m all about Good Jobs, Good Schools and Good Government you see. So I really want to hear about the good jobs part. How do we put all these poor people around the world to work?

I realize you’re not anti-charity and I hope you do realize that some charities have done historic things for the world and will continue to do so.  As commenters to the post on the WSJ site have said “the March of Dimes killed Polio.” Another commenter added “certain things like vaccines and education cannot make it to critical mass without charity.”

Now that we got that out of the way how do you create all these jobs? I’m all about the Green Jobs movement and I’m not the only one. What if you Mr. Slim helped start a alternative energy company that could create a couple hundred jobs in some third world country? Now of course these companies would have to be profitable, but what if they were privately held and didn’t have to make absolute profit? Mr. Yunnus proposed the same thing in a book of his.

“No one should be without a safe, stable place to call home, and today we unveil a plan that will put our nation on the path toward ending all types of homelessness,” HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, who heads the 19-agency council, said in a statement.

via Administration broadens effort to fight homelessness.

It begins with have a stable and permanent housing situation. From there one can begin to look for employment.

This Housing First philosophy has been embraced in the District and elsewhere. In D.C., it has helped place about 1,000 people in homes, said Linda Kaufman, chief operating officer of Pathways to Housing, which works with several hundred mentally ill, chronically homeless people. “If you don’t do housing, you can’t address the issues of homelessness,” she said.

I’ve actually never stopped to think that having 200 people inside of a structure as not being productive. This blog post raises a good point.

Living with more than 10 people is unnatural unless you come from a very big family. Ideally, there would be no more than five people in a shared dwelling, to simulate normal living conditions. I’ve always said that learning to live with 50 or more people is no kind of preparation for independent living beyond homelessness. Any community that size takes a lot of work to remain healthy and can cause significant stress to its members if it isn’t. In fact, there should be some kind of guidebook for living in any of the bigger homeless shelters as the experience is overwhelming, stressful, and an unrealistic representation of life off the streets.

I was reading the current issue of DC’s Street Sense newspaper and came across a good editorial on why efforts to end homelessness in DC have fallen somewhat short.

Here is a key excerpt that I wanted to highlight:

When one considers all that is being done to combat homelessness, they can’t help but wonder why it is that the problem hasn’t been solved yet. While the answer is many-faceted, the fact that DC’s 10-year plan for ending homelessness didn’t include any type of work program is a large part of it. This speaks volumes to the fact that the Williams’ administration assumed that homeless people don’t want to work and, therefore, didn’t write that into the plan. (The present administration should make an effort to fix this problem and to operate under a new paradigm.)

All of these non-government organizations are not cohesive. Each one is doing its own thing. People from these different groups and organizations often attend the same meetings. They may exchange e-mails. They might even make attempts at collaboration. But they fail to coordinate their efforts or to speak truth to power with a unified voice, as there is strength in numbers.

Just think about it the Williams’ administration didn’t think that homeless people wanted to work. He bought right into a terrible stereotype. The comment about there being better coordination among NGO’s dealing with poverty in DC is also a good point.