I’m heading back home to the DC Metro area tomorrow but I wanted to blog about three observations I’ve made in traveling back and forth from Manhattan to Hartsdale, NY to visit mom & sis. The first thing was an ad I saw in a subway car about a local police union that wanted to take police officers off of desk jobs and get them on the street. They want civilians at desk jobs. It makes sense when you think about it. If the public is asking for more police officers on the streets, wouldn’t you want to take them off of desk assignments (providing that they are not on a desk job for a medical reason)?

The second thing that drew my attention happened while riding in a cab in Hartsdale. I overheard someone on the radio talking about the Bowery Mission in NYC. The voice on the radio struck me as he spoke with passion and conviction about the Bowery Mission helping a homeless woman in poverty. If I recall correctly, she was sleeping on the streets until someone told her about the Bowery Mission. I went to the Bowery Mission’s website this morning and viewed a video that goes into detail about what they do. I’ve embeded it below.

As a deist while I may not like the religious tone of the Bowery Mission I applaud and salute them! In the war on poverty–a war that’s been fought for centuries–we need everyone working together. Non-profit organizations such as churches &c., have always played a major role in fighting poverty. As they say in Bowery Mission’s video “tonight thirty-six thousand men, women & children will sleep in New York City’s shelters.” “Nearly four thousand more will sleep in the subways and on the streets.” At this time I always like to interject with some thoughts from Joel Berg who has said that NGO’s alone cannot end poverty the government has to do more. Of course government spending is always a problem, but we need to evaluate what we spend on and reallocate funds to what is important.

Lastly, riding in a subway car heading from E 86th Street back to Grand Central Station yesterday I happened to read one of the MTA’s Subway Talk “Train of thought” posters. The poster displayed an interesting quote.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

This morning I did not entirely remember the quote but Googled something I paraphrased, and lo and behold, Google actually found the right quote and who it was attributed to! The author is Arthur Schopenhauer.

Did you miss out on Hurricane Katrina in 2005? Do you wish you were there for all the action? Well boys and girls turn those frowns upside down!

Looking to own a piece of history — or just want someplace to put those pesky in-laws when they show up unexpectedly? The General Services Administration has a deal for you! The government agency is selling of thousands of FEMA trailers leftover from the Hurricane Katrina period at rock-bottom prices. Of course, as with any second-hand product, these come with some caveats. In this case, it’s a warning that "the government may not have tested all of these units for formaldehyde."

Now that’s a heckuva job! I think George W. Bush should get out for his ranch actually. Maybe Brownie can even live in it.

Today I bought a copy of Street Sense here in DC and read about a rather disturbing trend. That trend is the rise in homelessness and it’s criminalization by cities around the country. In the article there was one fact that I also wanted to share.

During one eleven-month period, Los Angeles spent $3.6 million repeatedly prosecuting 24 homeless individuals. For the same amount, according to the Lewin Group, a management research consultancy, the city could have provided housing for over 350 people.

Now isn’t that amazing? That is absolutely shocking! I wonder how many homeless people does the District of Columbia have? It makes you wonder what could be done here.

Top Ten Meanest Cities:

1. Los Angeles, CA
2. St. Petersburg, FL
3. Orlando, FL
4. Atlanta, GA
5. Gainesville, FL
6. Kalamazoo, MI
7. San Francisco, CA (that liberal bastion! Say it ain’t so!)
8. Honolulu, HI
9. Bradenton, FL
10. Berkeley, CA (another liberal enclave?!! Wow it’s like Cambridge, MA!)

With the way the nation’s finances are headed. I find this information to be very important, sad and resourceful for those afflicted by eight years of a horrible economy & the housing bubble speculation along with the Internet speculation of the 90′s.

One of the ten tips:

Learn the best bathroom options, where you won’t be rushed, turned away or harassed. Find restrooms where it’s clean enough to put your stuff down, the stalls are big enough to change in and there’s hot water so you can wash up. If you’re in New York City go to Restrooms in New York.

Yes, it is getting that bad. Most of us are truly only a few paychecks away from poverty. Secondly, there really needs to be more class unity. We have to look out for each other. The huge majority of us work. Therefore we are all “workers.” There is not much difference between what you do and what someone who belongs to a union does. We all work. Therefore, workers should organize to ensure their workplace rights, work place health and economic well being (healthcare included). It’s that simple. Many of us aren’t even middle class but rather working poor (hell, I just made middle class in ’07 myself). A lot of people think they are one day going to become rich but social mobility is at an all time low in this country.We need to work together and include people who are homeless in the equation because we’re never far from where they are. Many of them were once middle class themselves.

A member of a group called Food not Bombs was arrested for feeding the homeless in Orlando, Florida. As ridiculous as this was for the police to do it raises another issue. I’m reading Joel Berg’s book and I’ve come to agree that charity cannot make up for government inaction. It is obvious that there are a lot of hungry people to feed in Orlando and throughout the country. Some of them are homeless some of them are working poor. Even people in the middle class are relying on food banks as times get tough. Yet, charity alone is not capable of ending hunger in America.

Jennifer from invisible people on Vimeo.

She panhandles to get money for transportation, visits clinics for prenatal care, gets food from churches, and does whatever she can to survive. Despite the fact that she’s pregnant and sleeping on the streets of New York, she’s hopeful about her family’s future.

Despite all the hardship she’s faced being homeless for two years in California and in New York and being pregnant. Jennifer is going to college! She wants to finish her education. She was going to school out in California and she is going to continue it in New York. I find that really inspiring. What’s also good to know is that she is going to get housing from PATH which started the day she did this interview.

Tony from invisible people on Vimeo.

As I watched this video I saw that Tony is actually a homeless veteran. He served in the United States Marine Corps. While it’s sad that a lot of veterans end up homeless and in poverty it did not surprise me to see that Tony was in this situation.

Here are some hard facts for you:

The U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) says the nation’s homeless veterans are mostly males (4 % are females). The vast majority are single, most come from poor, disadvantaged communities, 45% suffer from mental illness, and half have substance abuse problems. America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Operation Iraqi Freedom, or the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. Forty-seven percent of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam Era. More than 67% served our country for at least three years and 33% were stationed in a war zone.

The next question which the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans highlights is also important. That question is why are veterans homeless?

In addition to the complex set of factors affecting all homelessness — extreme shortage of affordable housing, livable income, and access to health care — a large number of displaced and at-risk veterans live with lingering effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and substance abuse, compounded by a lack of family and social support networks.

A good documentary on this problem is When I Came Home. I remember listening to Heorld Noel on WBAI in NYC when this documentary was being promoted in 2007.

Tony also mentions that there are a lot of homeless veterans out where he is panhandling.

In these times of The Great Recession I was really touched to read this story.

The question posed to the panel this week really struck a nerve, especially after my recent conversation with George Jones, executive director of Bread for the City, one of Washington, D.C.’s most respected nonprofit community organizations. Under George’s leadership, Bread’s managerial team recently agreed to a 12% pay cut, and the staff to a 10% reduction, so as not to eliminate their programs that serve D.C.’s poor. This was not a unilateral decision made by the executive director and board. Staff members had an opportunity to weigh in on the difficult choices before them: cut programs, lay-off some colleagues, or take pay cuts across the organization.

This is simply amazing. Yet I have to ask the question. Why are vital NGO’s making sacrifices? Why are the working poor and the middle class making sacrifices? Why are they making all the sacrifices when there are institutions receiving money from these same people, in the form of bailouts, doing wrong by us all? Why did we have to make such an uproar to get some AIG execs to return their bonus money? If no one had said anything would they have still returned it? Why are Congressional Republicans getting so upset about Wagoner but they could care less about what really matters?

This is really starting to look ugly.

Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns. At his news conference on Tuesday night, President Obama was asked directly about the tent cities and responded by saying that it was “not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”

I did notice that some non-profits are doing really creative things even in a bad situation like this.

Dozens of homeless men and women here have found more organized shelter at the Village of Hope, a collection of 8-by-10-foot storage sheds built by the nonprofit group Poverello House and overseen by Mr. Stack. Planted in a former junkyard behind a chain-link fence, each unit contains two cots, sleeping bags and a solar-powered light.

Doug Brown, a freelance electrical engineer, said he had discovered the Village of Hope while unemployed a few years back and had returned after losing his job in October. Mr. Stoops, of the homeless coalition, predicted that the population at such new Hoovervilles could grow as those without places to live slowly burned through their options and joined the ranks of the chronically homeless, many of whom are indigent as a result of illiteracy, alcoholism, mental illness and drug abuse.

Obviously people should not be living in shantytowns but at least Poverello House is trying to do something. What Poverello House is doing also reminds me of the of an inflatable temporary shelter I saw online a few years ago.

This inflatable temporary shelter is called paraSITE and was created by artist Michael Rakowitz. This gets me thinking that maybe its time we rethink housing for everyone anyway.

Invisible People is a great website for getting the word out about homelessness and poverty throughout the nation. Anytime they put up a new video I try and blog about it to help draw attention to the work the people behind the site are doing. I’ve missed the last few videos so I’m going to do a catch up post.

Eddie

Eddie is a homeless person living in Binghamton, NY. He picks up cans and bottles for spending money. The cold weather makes it hard for him to sleep and he’s been up the past two nights he says in the video. He lives outside and had his tent and sleeping bag stolen from him. He’s been sleeping with a blanket in the twenty degree Binghamton winter. As far as help goes in the city Eddie states that if you don’t have an ID Binghamton will not do anything for you. If any elected official in Binghamton is reading this you might want to take note and work to do something about changing that.

Eddie also brings up the Social Services department of Binghamton where he says it takes 45 days for the department to “think about doing anything.” Again, the Councilpersons and Mayor of this city may want to look into that. Eddie goes on to say if you don’t have an address that “they” won’t even talk to you. It would also appear that there are no cold weather shelters unless you count the Alcohol Center and that is usually full. Eddie dreams of getting back with his girlfriend and children. He also wants to open a homeless shelter in Binghamton to help people that find themselves in the situation he’s in now.

Out of curiosity I looked at the population of the city on Wikipedia and saw that the city has 45,217 people (2007 census). It’s metro area 252,320. Comparing that to DC with its population of 591,833 (in 2008) and a massive metro area population of 5.3 million, it’s obvious that Binghamton probably doesn’t have as much resources available to it as a bigger city would. Yet I think that there has to be something that can be done to help its homeless population (which can’t be as high as other cities).

Brianna

Brianna is 24 and recently became homeless. It really goes to show you how close many of us are to ending up like this. She is very bright and cheerful in the video. She’s on Twitter and also blogs about her homelessness. On her blogger.com profile she lists “survival” as one of her interests. As of March 16th she’s been homeless for twelve days. She’s living in an RV with a dog in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

From her blog:

I suppose I am a typical Orange County girl. Due to multiple factors, I have suddenly and unexpectedly found myself homeless – with a giant, goofy, hungry dog tagging along for the ride!

I am an educated woman with stable employment and residence history. I am a career executive assistant – coherent, opinionated, poised, and capable. If you saw me walking down the street, you wouldn’t assume that I live in a parking lot. In short, I am just like you – except without the convenience of a permanent address.

Like I said this is scary and it can happen to anyone. One minute you think you’re stable the next you’re not. Doesn’t her situation shed some light on the lack of a safety net for many Americans? In the video Brianna threw out an interesting statistic. She said that most people think of a homeless person as being either a drug addict, mentally ill or a “lazy bum.” However that only makes up 25% of the homeless population! That is scary. Yet even as she is in this situation Brianna is hoping the economy rights itself so that she and others can get back on their feet  and the “real people” who need help, like the addicts and the mentally ill, who can’t help themselves will get it.

John

John used to have a business and when the economy took a turn for the worse he found himself in a dire situation with no work available. Contributing to John becoming homeless was a medical issue that cost him $20,000 leaving him with nothing. He lost his apartment and left the state he was in to come to CA where it was a little warmer.

If you think “professional recycling” sounds tiring, dead-end, and downright nasty, you’re right. Although John says it’s “good honest work,” he admits he’d gladly jump to a minimum wage job if given the opportunity. See, John used to be just like you, he never thought he’d become homeless. But thanks to our economic nosedive, John went from being a small business owner to a homeless can collector.

He now makes $15 a day recycling cans and bottles. He is currently staying at a shelter. John has been homeless for a couple of months now. The really scary thing is that John is having problems even landing a minimum wage job. Is this the Great Recession? It just goes to show you no one is safe.