Work

Richard R. Troxell, President of House the Homeless, Inc., is one of those people who almost has too much common sense. While everybody is frantic about jobs being outsourced, Richard asks us to think about what kinds of jobs can’t be outsourced. People who cut our hair and paint our nails. People who care for our aged relatives — and soon, for us.

Some things are destined to come back into style. As the world grows more conscious of waste and pollution, objects that last will be back in demand, and so will people who know how to repair them. The point is, jobs that people do with their bodies cannot be sent overseas, and Richard calls these workers “the backbone of American business.”

They can and will be treated better. If they ever realize their collective strength, things could get ugly for the folks who mainly love money. This is why unions are so widely discouraged, and why deceptive Orwellian phrases like “right to work” are formulated.

Another point Richard makes is that businesses need to stop treating workers like disposable plastic forks. For people who are so attuned to the nuances of the dollar, the things they don’t grasp are astonishing. Richard has studied the thoughts of Henry Ford, who may not have been the perfect man, but he knew a thing or two about running a factory.

Financially stable workers are good for business, and here’s why:

1) Significant reduction in employee turnover;
2) Significant reduction in retraining costs;
3) Significant reduction in unscheduled absenteeism;
4) Almost complete stoppage of internal theft;
5) Finally, Ford’s new approach created a true economic stimulus because his workers put discretionary funds right back into his company as purchasing consumers. They then bought the very cars they were making by using their newfound wages.

Housing

A fiscally responsible person does not budget more than a quarter of their income for housing — that’s what they used to teach in home economics classes. Then somebody sneakily raised the bar. Now, we are told, it’s wise not to spend more than one-third of the income on housing. And we’re supposed to feel all prudent and sensible, like before. But one-third is more than one-fourth.

In her article for House the Homeless, Katie McCaskey speaks of massive players and their extractive agendas, and specifically points to Wal-Mart as the archetypal corporate vampire, with “no incentive to care for local workers, their environment, or the economic resiliency of the local market to which they and other local business owners contribute.” And here she is on housing:

There was a time when the Federal Minimum Wage stabilized incomes enough that working people could afford housing. That time has passed, so definitively that workers are not only unable to become homeowners, they are not even able to pay rent. Apparently, the landlord class is untroubled by this. Their lawyers can figure out how to make the government reward them for sitting on empty properties.

Some HtH posts have introduced interesting individuals like Kirsten Anderberg, who called 300 apartment-for-rent ads in Los Angeles, and found that only three of those landlords accepted tenants who received assistance. For the mathematically challenged, that is one out a hundred, or one percent. Anderberg wrote,

[…] In essence, the government has made the Section 8 voucher program nearly impossible to use, while feigning the illusion of concern and remedy.

 

Don’t miss the interview that Wayne Hurlbert, host of Blog Business Success Radio, conducted with the House the Homeless co-founder Richard R. Troxell. On that day, Richard was wearing his writer hat, as author of Looking Up at the Bottom Line: The Struggle for the Living Wage.

We also recommend:

Consider the Universal Living Wage
Minimum Wage and the Universal Living Wage
Business, Fairness, and the Universal Living Wage
Perspective: Living Wages

The Home Coming statue unveiling

The Home Coming statue to be unveiled at Austin’s Community First! Village on Saturday, May 18. This unique statue project has been in development for several years, the result of a collaboration between House the Homeless and sculptor Timothy P. Schmalz. The much-anticipated life-sized bronze statue will be introduced to the public at the Village’s community garden, details below.

When: Saturday, May 18, 2019, 9 a.m.
Where: Community First! Village, 9301 Hog Eye Rd., Austin, TX 78724
Getting there: The bus from downtown Austin leaves at 6:58 and 7:58 a.m. (Take the route 6, East 12th, from 7th & Colorado).
Accommodations: Out-of-town visitors are welcome to stay at the Community Inn on premises. Call 512-551-5453 or contact the Inn at communityinn@mlf.org for more information.

There will be live music, and coffee and breakfast tacos will be served.

Reactions?

Austin, Texas, is an exceptional city for many reasons, one of them being the existence of Community First! Village (CF!V). It is the creation of Mobile Loaves and Fishes (MLF), the social outreach ministry that has been making a difference locally since 1998. Since then, among other accomplishments, the organization has served more than 5.5 million meals via its food trucks.

But treating the symptoms has never been enough. What is the underlying societal malfunction? MLF has found that the single most prevalent cause of homelessness is “a profound, catastrophic loss of family.” This paragraph is from the Village’s Facebook page, which we strongly recommend, along with the Village’s inspiring YouTube channel.

Community First! Village was built on the basic philosophy that housing alone will never solve homelessness, but community will. Most often, we find people on the streets who have a regular, albeit dysfunctional, community, even though they have no houses or shelter to live in. The truth is, the fundamental component that human beings need is human interaction; and human interaction occurs within community.

The organization’s website says,

It’s from this understanding that MLF’s vision emerged to build Community First! Village to welcome home our friends who had been pushed to the fringe of society… Community First! Village is a 51-acre master planned development that provides affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness.

House the Homeless co-founder Richard R. Troxell calls it “a national best practices community, truly affordable for people experiencing homelessness who are disabled.” For more than a decade, Richard has been helping people apply for the SSI payments to which they are entitled, and referring them to the Village.

Richard also introduced Village founder Alan Graham to Dr. Mark Gordon, and plans are underway to join with House the Homeless, Millennium Health Centers, the Warrior Angels Foundation, and local medics to create a Traumatic Brain Injury treatment program for 10 homeless veterans. Consult this publication to learn more.

How it goes

The idea here is for people to rediscover their talents and abilities, and translate them into making a living. The Community Works program includes car care, screen printing, catering, blacksmith work, art, gardens, a cinema, and an Inn. Animal husbandry is one of the areas in which participants can develop expertise.

Other features include a store, a hair salon, a health clinic and mental health facility, open-air barbecue facility, community kitchens, meeting spaces for worship, study and fellowship, and of restroom, shower, and laundry facilities. The Village also enjoys hiking trails and a conveniently located bus stop. The residents live in tiny houses, tepees, canvas tents, and trailers with extended slide-outs.

All that is about to change, because Phase II is underway. Additions include a woodworking shop, outdoor event center, memorial garden and prayer labyrinth, a community market, and a guest parking lot. The housing component will eventually comprise 100 RV homes and 200 micro-homes, and more laundry/restroom facilities will be added, along with more outdoor kitchens.

House the Homeless has also gotten traction for the idea to create an Adopt-A-Tree program at CF!V. It is designed to enable local, on-site arborists to “love on all the trees” already on the property’s 51 acres, and offer an adoption program for a community-based/designed new tree program to soften and warm the Village with new trees.

Ultimately, around 500 people are expected to be at home in Community First! Village. The opportunity to be a part of this is wide open for both local supporters and distant ones. Learn more about that from the Ways to Give page.

The Home Coming statue unveiling

The Home Coming statue to be unveiled in the Village’s community garden on Saturday, May 18. This unique statue project has been in development for several years, the result of a collaboration between House the Homeless and sculptor Timothy P. Schmalz. The much-anticipated life-sized bronze statue will be introduced to the public at Austin’s Community First! Village, details below.

When: Saturday, May 18, 2019, 9 a.m.
Where: Community First! Village, 9301 Hog Eye Rd., Austin, TX 78724
Getting there: The bus from downtown Austin leaves at 6:58 and 7:58 a.m. (Take the route 6, East 12th, from 7th & Colorado). 
Accommodations: Out-of-town visitors awe welcome to stay at the Community Inn on premises. Call 512-551-5453 or contact the Inn at communityinn@mlf.org for more information.

There will be live music, and coffee and breakfast tacos will be served. 

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless Veterans in Action Traumatic Brain InjuryA Protocol to Help Disabled Homeless Veterans within a Secure, Nurturing Community,” MFL.org
Source: “About Us,” MFL.org
Image by MFL.org

In Emeryville (in California’s Bay Area) the City Council decided to incrementally raise its minimum wage for workplaces with 55 or fewer employees. It went to $13 per hour in 2016, then $14 the next year, and $15 in 2018, and this coming July it goes up to $16.

Yes, some lucky locals can now get away with working only 48 to 60 hours per week, instead of 80. Journalist Matthew Desmond lists some of the effects of a reasonable minimum wage. For instance, the Georgia Institute of Technology found that raising the minimum by even $1 per hour cuts down reports of child neglect by almost 10 percent. This is because it helps parents pay the utility bills and keep food in the cupboard.

The public health benefits are undeniable. As Desmond says,

The chronic stress that accompanies poverty can be seen at the cellular level. It has been linked to a wide array of adverse conditions, from maternal health problems to tumor growth…

Low wages are an affront to basic dignity. They make people feel small, insignificant and powerless. Subjectively experiencing these feelings can have real health consequences beyond the material hardships of poverty.

With a higher minimum wage, a community sees declines in smoking, teen alcohol use, teen pregnancies, low-birthweight babies, and domestic violence — all things that we definitely need less of. People sleep better, suffer less depression, and are less likely to overeat from stress. Businesses make money because people have money to spend. When there is less incentive for crime, the cost of policing goes down.

And of course, when people have a living wage in their pocket we can stimulate the economy both locally and nationally because folks all need the same thing…housing. So, now that people have that money, the housing industry will create that housing in a heart beat.

Even better than minimum wage — Universal Living Wage – ULW (National Locality Wage – NLW)

Minimum wage laws seem to have finally become an accepted principle, although there is disagreement about what the minimum should be. In France it is set at 60 percent of median income; in England at 46 percent. In the United States the formula is complicated, but hovers around 40 percent. The thing about the Universal Living Wage – ULW (National Locality Wage – NLW) is that it has a different way of calculating its math, one that takes into consideration the local conditions, because after all, this is a nation of a thousand economies.

We recommend “Economic Recovery — Fixing the Economy,” the very full explanation authored by House the Homeless co-founder and President Richard R. Troxell. Another way to absorb these ideas is via Richard’s discussion with Wayne Hurlbert of Blog Talk Radio. Meanwhile, here is the elevator pitch:

The Universal Living Wage – ULW (National Locality Wage – NLW) formula ensures that anyone working 40 hours in a week can afford the bare necessities of civilized life: food, clothing, shelter, including utilities, and transportation to and from work. That is not a lot to ask, and the employers who benefit from the workers’ labor ought to pay them enough to live on without resorting to public assistance.

One size does not fit all: $7.25 an hour in Austin is not the same as in a small town. As a responsible Community Partner, a business needs to pay a fair living wage for the area. Crazy plan, right? So crazy, the U.S. military uses it. When personnel live off base, their housing allowance is indexed to the local conditions. Minimum wage just needs to be tweaked a bit, into the Universal Living Wage – ULW (National Locality Wage – NLW), which could both cure and prevent homelessness for an awful lot of Americans.

Universal Living Wage – ULW (National Locality Wage – NLW) and UBI — why not both?

The Universal Living Wage – ULW (National Locality Wage – NLW) is different from the Universal Basic Income (UBI), which we discussed in two recent posts. They could potentially both exist at the same time, and why not? Why shouldn’t people be fairly compensated for working, if they can, and if there are jobs? Don’t they deserve a little extra help at the same time?

Universal Basic Income is mischaracterized, and some weird ideas are circulating about what so-called “free money” does to people. But we need to think about what it does for people, to be lifted above bare subsistence. UBI would apply to everyone equally — rich or poor; disabled or fully functional; employed or unemployed. It would provide enough to prevent starvation, and hopefully, for rudimentary shelter, especially if Richard’s dream of reviving institutions like the YMCA and YWCA could be realized.

Some complain, “But then everyone would just sit around.” Realistically, it is silly to worry that people will not want to work, when jobs keep drying up. Every day, more jobs are automated, shipped overseas, or both. Soon, even more people will have no jobs. It would be better for everyone if they had a way to survive.

What if everybody didn’t have to work so much?

Third-world residents take out micro-loans to buy goats or chickens, and are able to repay within a year. Surely, a percentage of Americans would figure out how to turn a dependable pittance (like a UBI payment) into a livable income. Millions have already used their entrepreneurial genius to achieve success. We haven’t forgotten how. UBI could embolden a person to ditch a crummy job for an independent venture, and that crummy job would then be available for someone else — a win/win!

For a person who could technically scrape by on UBI, but also held down a job, that extra could make the difference between having health insurance or not. It could let them hire an exam coach for their nephew. In other words, having a modest cushion could allow for self-betterment, in the honored American tradition.

Maybe people who work less will volunteer more, to the immeasurable benefit of their communities. Just imagine if parents didn’t have to put in so many work hours, and could spend more time with their kids.

The proposition that nobody works unless they have to is ridiculous on its face, and here is the proof: Lots of people in America have millions of dollars, and yet they keep on grinding. There is no evidence that hating work is a catastrophically widespread trait. The really ineradicable human characteristic is always wanting more, more, more.

The Home Coming statues have arrived in Austin!

Please join us on Saturday, May 18, at 9 a.m., for the unveiling of The Home Coming statues at Mobile Loaves & Fishes Community First! Village, 9301 Hog Eye Road, Austin, TX 78724 (map). You can register here (required).

Parking will be limited, so please carpool if at all possible. There will be coffee, breakfast tacos, and live music! If you’re traveling from downtown take the route 6 bus (East 12th) from 7th & Colorado. The bus leaves at 6:58 and 7:58 a.m.

Reactions?

Source: “Dollars on the margins,” NYTimes.com, 02/21/19
Image: House the Homeless

What would be the advantage of distributing the same amount to everyone, with no strings attached? It seems counterintuitive, but associate professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego Matt Zwolinski explains how the universality would be an economic benefit:

When transfer systems provide benefits to some but not to others, people will inevitably spend a great deal of time and resources trying to get politicians to put them in the “some” category and not the “other” one. One of the virtues of a universal grant […] is that it severely reduces the incentive for this wasteful competition between interest groups.

Also, making it universal and unconditional would cut down on slothful and expensive bureaucracy. Administration does not have to gobble up a huge portion of every program. The idea of allocating a set amount, for basic needs, to everyone with no strings attached, sounds insane to some.

The basic philosophy is based on ideals different from, but equally as strong as, “everyone must work.” A quotation from Miranda Perry Fleischer and Daniel Hemel in Zwolinski’s piece capsulizes three of those foundational concepts:

Delivering benefits in cash, rather than in-kind, furthers autonomy by recognizing that all citizens — even poor ones — are the best judges of their needs. Decoupling such transfers from a work requirement acknowledges that the state lacks the ability to distinguish between work-capable and work-incapable individuals. Providing payments periodically, rather than through a once-in-a-lifetime lump sum grant, ensures that all individuals can receive a minimum level of support over lifespans of variable lengths…

In some circles, denying the government any chance to invade privacy is seen as a very desirable end, and so is minimizing the government’s opportunities to make mistakes. Zwolinski goes farther into why it is not good for officials to play God. He writes,

Distinguishing between the deserving and undeserving is difficult business and requires a variety of invasive, demoralizing, and degrading inspections into the intimate details of applicants’ lives.

We should guarantee a basic income for everybody not because everybody deserves a check but because some people deserve it as a matter of justice, and sorting out the deserving from the undeserving is an impossible and dangerous task.

Fleischer and Hemel add that demoralization, in and of itself, is a social cost, and that even the most flawlessly objective officials make mistakes. When that mistake involves allocating or denying the means to live, it’s kind of like handing out a death penalty, or not. You don’t want to mess up. But even if they genuinely care,

A separate concern is that officials charged with making these distinctions will inevitably bring their own biases and value judgments to the process.

They don’t have enough

In explaining “Why we should give free money to everyone,” the Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman points out that social welfare programs whose requirements are contingent on the labor market are bound to fail because the labor market does not create enough jobs, and more are being eliminated by automation every day — especially the kind that can be done by minimally educated and perhaps disabled people.

“Workfare” schemes ignore the fact that people crushed by circumstances, especially if they are disabled, have enough problems already. Transportation is a nightmare; employers don’t want to be giving low-level employees time off to go to medical appointments; their medication might cause side effects that cause even more complications. Bregman writes,

The trend from “welfare” to “workfare” is international, with obligatory job applications, reintegration trajectories, mandatory participation in “voluntary” work. The underlying message: Free money makes people lazy.

Except that it doesn’t.

He cites studies from many countries showing that free money correlates with decreases in infant mortality, malnutrition, teen pregnancy, truancy, and crime. Universal basic income also coincides with more equality between groups, better school completion numbers, and higher economic growth. And the long-term benefits in terms of health, income, and tax collection are said to be excellent. What’s not to like?

House the Homeless News

APRIL 15
If you want some inspiration to warm you up for protesting, check out “Tax Day: Make Them Pay,” a video that makes a number of good points in less than 10 minutes.

COME TO THE UNVEILING!
To welcome The Home Coming statues, please join us Saturday, May 18, at 9 a.m. at Community First! Village. The address is:

Community First! Village
9301 Hog Eye Road
Austin, TX 78724

Coffee and breakfast will be served. The bus from downtown Austin leaves at 6:58 and 7:58 a.m. Take the route 6 (East 12th) from 7th & Colorado.

Reactions?

Source: “Property Rights, Coercion, and the Welfare State,” Independent.org, Spring 2015
Source: “Why we should give free money to everyone,” TheCorrespondent.com, May 2009
Photo credit: laura0509 via Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

A hundred years ago, it was called shell shock because artillery shells were what landed in the trenches and exploded around the British troops. It was also called battle fatigue, and it could strike at any time, in the first firefight or after years of combat experience. The shell-shocked were said to have “lost their nerves.” Usually, the term wasn’t even pejorative, simply descriptive. And even back then, they called it cracking up.

The person might never stop shaking or, conversely, might turn into a living statue, staring blankly and unable to move. There might be memory loss. Or he might lose the ability to speak. If touched, or for no discernible reason at all, he might turn very violent. Or he might weep helplessly and cry out for his mother.

Given a choice, active duty troops said they would rather lose a finger or even a leg, than get shell shock. Determined to continue fighting for their country, or simply not wanting to be seen as cowards, some men worked very hard to hide the evidence of their deterioration.

But thousands of soldiers who lived through World War I, even the physically unwounded, came away with crippling disabilities. If they were officers, they likely had family homes to return to, or upper-class friends they could stay with or borrow a cottage from. Some isolated themselves, some killed themselves by quick or slow means. The lower-class veterans were not so lucky. Then as now, a lot of them ended up on the streets or worse.

Then and now

Many experts see shell shock and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as the same thing, though apparently in WWI the symptoms were more likely to be physical, whereas nowadays the psychological aspects have come to the fore. For the Smithsonian, Caroline Alexander wrote,

Early medical opinion took the common-sense view that the damage was “commotional,” or related to the severe concussive motion of the shaken brain in the soldier’s skull. Shell shock, then, was initially deemed to be a physical injury…

As the war dragged on, medical opinion increasingly came to reflect recent advances in psychiatry, and the majority of shell shock cases were perceived as emotional collapse… There was a convenient practical outcome to this assessment; if the disorder was nervous and not physical, the shellshocked soldier did not warrant a wound stripe, and if unwounded, could be returned to the front.

The medical establishment got over its first impression. Too many struggling veterans had not even been that close to being blown up, so their malfunctions could just be psychosomatic, which in many people’s minds is right next door to cowardice and even malingering. Both then and now, opinions have differed on whether these conditions exist because of physical damage to the brain, or not, and it might be that energy is wasted on that question that could be better used helping the victims.

Vietnam Veteran John Ketwig charges the Pentagon and the Veterans Administration with refusal to acknowledge “the existence of moral damage from war” or that “PTSD is an outpouring of the soldier’s intrinsic humanity.” He wrote:

Post-Traumatic Stress Damage is a normal and predictable reaction to the horrors of war, the heart and soul’s reaction to the unthinkable destruction of brick and mortar and life and limb… When they see modern combat, the horrible effects of modern weapons, and the brutality encouraged by today’s American way of waging war, far too many are mentally and emotionally scarred for life.

On the ground in Vietnam we said the fallen were “wasted.”

And there it is. Every combat death is a waste of life, a waste of all the love and care that the soldier’s parents put into raising a child, a waste of the taxpayers’ money that went into training the soldier, a waste of all the potential and the aspirations that once belonged to that person and that could have resulted in a full and happy life and unguessable contributions to humanity, had the war not intervened.

But it doesn’t take death to waste a life. When a person comes back mentally shattered, that life is on track to end up wasted, just as surely as if the death certificate had already been issued. Here are words from someone who veered close to the edge, Richard R. Troxell, President and co-founder of House the Homeless. His book, Looking Up at the Bottom Line, describes post-war confusion. Richard wrote,

We have veterans who have served our country well in Vietnam, Desert Storm, the Gulf War, Iraq and in Afghanistan killing in the name of God and Country, returning to their home only to find they have none. Others were so traumatized, like myself, that they vomited it all up and wandered the country aimlessly for years confused, in pain, and abandoned.

A major increase of homelessness began with the end of the Vietnam War due to a glut of returning soldiers. Most of these young men and women were too emotionally destabilized to work even if they could find it. Many were suffering PTSD.

Many vets and many other people experiencing homelessness have PTSD in addition to Traumatic Brain Injury, either diagnosed or undiagnosed. This is Brain Injury Awareness Month, and we will have more to say about it next time.

The Home Coming

Thanks to our supporters, the much-anticipated life-sized bronze statues will be introduced to the public at Austin’s Community First! Village in May 2019. We invite you to the unveiling ceremony, details below:

When: Saturday, May 18, 2019, 9 a.m.
Where: Community First! Village, 9301 Hog Eye Rd., Austin, TX 78724

Reactions?

Source: “Voices of the First World War: Shell Shock,” IWM.org, 06/06/18
Source: “Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Amazon.com
Source: “World War I: 100 Years Later,” SmithsonianMag.com, September 2010
Source: “Ketwig: More veterans commit suicide than were killed in Vietnam,” Roanoke.com, 11/10/17
Image by BIAUsa.org

At the intersection of homelessness and the criminal justice system, one of the most important legal documents the last two decades has been negated by a federal judge in Florida.

When some kind of pattern or practice of wrongdoing has been identified, a consent decree is a way of trying to keep officials honest. It is an agreement to allow oversight by the Department of Justice, and has been found useful in encouraging reform. In 1988, the ACLU tried to get one in Miami, FL, filing a class-action suit on behalf of 5,000 plaintiffs.

It took 10 years for the Pottinger Agreement to come into existence and bring partial relief to the city’s unhoused population. Now, the city intends to regress to its old practice of arresting people who have nowhere to go — which, to all intents and purposes, criminalizes homelessness, causes needless misery and expense, and swims against the tide of the larger national movement to defeat homelessness with housing, not handcuffs.

Miami, just to put things in context, is one of the top 10 most mercilessly expensive cities for renters, and has been for a long time. Nor is this the first attempt to terminate the agreement. It was tried back in 2013, when we quoted law professor Stephen Schnably:

Eviscerating the Pottinger protections — what the City is effectively seeking — would do nothing to make downtown more vibrant. All it would do is strip homeless people of the basic human and constitutional right not to be arrested or have their property destroyed just for being homeless.

One of the major purposes of the agreement was to keep people from being arrested for loitering. Even with the agreement in effect, life has not been smooth for the unhoused. Journalist Joey Flechas wrote,

Dozens of homeless people testified in court during multiple days of hearings that the city had discarded or destroyed their personal belongings during “cleanups” of sidewalks where they were living. Many said they lost identification, clothing and other personal papers.

Last year, the ACLU told the federal court that the city has been violating the agreement, and asked for it to be enforced. The motion demonstrated that police and city workers had been seizing and destroying the property of people experiencing homelessness in the city and banishing them from certain areas. It also showed that police had arrested individuals for engaging in “life sustaining misdemeanor conduct” without offering shelter or assistance, as required by the Pottinger Agreement.

Instead, Federal District Judge Federico Moreno decided to get rid of it. The affected personnel are city employees, especially police, firefighters, and Human Services workers. The city wants them freed from the constraints of decency, and enabled to go back to arresting people and destroying their property, just for being homeless.

City Manager Emilio Gonzalez claims that the city has “created a model for effective homeless services countywide.” (Dade County has almost 2.75 millio Miami more than 460,000 people; Dada County has almost 2.75 million.)

We are asked to believe that Miami’s continuum of care is unparalleled in the United States, and that the homeless count has decreased by 90 percent since the agreement was instituted. If things have been going so well, and the agreement has been accomplishing its mission, doesn’t that seem more like a reason to keep it going, than to end it?

Yet, with a stunningly byzantine collection of bizarre arguments, opponents of the Pottinger Agreement are trying to convince everyone that the end of that agreement is a victory for the homeless. And also for national security. Somehow, according to the city’s legal experts, there is a connection to 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing.

One person who wanted termination is Ron Book, chair of the Homeless Trust (don’t be fooled by the job title), who is of the opinion that, by making it easier for “shelter resistant” individuals to stay on the street, Pottinger was actually harmful.

Not long ago, House the Homeless mentioned Ron Book in another post, when he refused to spend any of what he characterized as the Homeless Trust’s “scarce resources” ($55 million) on public toilets. Not surprisingly, Book is also against making showers available to people experiencing homelessness, nor does he have any tolerance for people or groups who want to serve food to the hungry in public places.

According to Judge Moreno, his killing of the Pottinger Agreement is a victory for the ACLU and the Florida Justice Institute, even though both organizations protested it vigorously. Their side of the story, related by journalist Daniel Rivero, is that Miami authorities and power mongers want to…

[…] loosen the reins on policing to push homeless residents from a rapidly gentrifying downtown area. Last year, the City started clearing homeless encampments in the city, and the ACLU asked the court to find Miami in contempt of court.

 

In theory, according to the judge, both advocates and authorities agree that arresting the homeless is not a solution. Nevertheless, during protests against changing the status quo, two activists were arrested. One of them, Tabitha Bass, “spent three days in jail with limited access to medical care, which advocates alleged contributed to her death a few weeks later,” says the news report.

The Home Coming Sculpture News

The Home Coming will be unveiled on May 18 at 9 a.m. at Community First! Village. The address is 9301 Hog Eye Road, Austin, TX 78734. Check back with us for more details on the history of the statue’s conception and creation, and impressive information about Community First! Village.

Reactions?

Source: “ACLU of Florida Defends Historic Agreement,” ACLUFL.org, 10/23/13
Source: “Federal judge dissolves homeless protections from police harassment in Miami,” ChicagoTribune.com, 02/16/19
Source: “ACLU of Florida Statement,” ACLUFL.org, 02/19/19
Source: “Judge Terminates Miami’s Landmark Agreement On How To Police The Homeless,” WLRN.org, 02/15/19
Photo credit: Phillip Pessar on Visualhunt/CC BY

How about a quick update on events in Seattle and around Amazon since the most recent chapter of the cautionary tale.

In September, The Seattle Times looked into some of the ways in which people “exit to permanent housing,” or leave the condition of homelessness. If they are in an emergency shelter in King County, it will take about $14,200 to accomplish the exit. If they are in transitional housing, defined as “temporary stays in a subsidized project,” the tab will be around $12,000.

A third option, rapid rehousing, pays subsidies for renting on the private market, which puts money in the pockets of local landlords, so it’s not such a bad thing. The cost to remove a person from homelessness via that route is around $7,300.

In the same month, several businesses made the news by complaining that people had been trespassing on exterior water sources and using their hoses for impromptu showers. They filled their drinking water bottles! Some had the nerve to shave or brush their teeth! A store manager said that the homeless people broke his spigot. (Why would they? They are the ones who are so desperate for water.)

Toward the end of the month, a long-established encampment “that included many wood frame structures” — in other words, a town — disappeared as heavy machinery cleared 25 acres. Journalist Matt Markovich said the inhabitants had plenty of warning, and “By city policy, no clean up can begin until there is shelter space for all residents, even if they don’t accept.”

Apparently, the city had been picking up garbage from the camp, which inspired the solid citizens of Seattle to bring their garbage, construction trash, and abandoned vehicles to the site, resulting in a rotten deal all the way round. The land may be repurposed as a dog park, the irony of which has not escaped the former residents.

Sara Rankin of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project has compared these activities with flushing money down the toilet. People are not helped in any substantial way; the underlying causes of homelessness are not addressed; and what Seattle needs is a whole lot more affordable housing. Of the passion for camp-clearing, Rankin says,

It’s moving people around to create the illusion that homelessness has been fixed when it hasn’t.

At the same time, there was some kind of trouble with the agencies assigned by the city to deal with homeless matters. Also, a group called Safe Seattle, which touts its mission as “public safety,” would like to see part of the public live unsafely in tents and dumpsters, rather than in miniature structures with heating, and access to showers and bathrooms. The group sued the city in an effort to get rid of the tiny house villages.

Meanwhile, over the past five years Seattle rents rose by close to 40 percent. With 54 people experiencing homelessness per each 10,000 residents, the city’s rate of homelessness is greater than that of New York or Los Angeles. On the other hand, Amazon did start a training program for low-income people to work in its food facilities, and allowed the nonprofit Mary’s Place temporary occupancy of an unused building.

Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, told the press,

There is not a straight line between Amazon coming and homelessness. But what I want to be clear about is that Amazon certainly contributed to the affordable housing crisis in Seattle, and the affordable housing shortage in turn absolutely contributed to the homelessness crisis in our community.

In an article for BoingBoing.net, Editor Cory Doctorow explains why some Seattle residents are now saying, “See? We told you. Never give in to bullying, it leads to nowhere good.” He writes,

Seattle’s immensely popular business tax was designed to do something about the city’s epidemic of desperate homelessness, but then Amazon threw its muscle around to get the tax canceled, mostly by threatening not to occupy its new offices in Ranier Square, a 30-story building currently under construction that Amazon was to be sole tenant of… Now, Ranier Square is advertising for new tenants to fill its 722,000 square feet, because Amazon has canceled its plans.

Amazon had been busy for a year, thinking about where to establish two new headquarters, and inviting bribes. They picked Long Island City (Queens, NY) and Virginia. Immediately, both places were drastically affected. Housing prices went up and inventory went down. Experts reported that…

[…] overall, the number of homes on the market in January in Arlington County was down 38 percent from a year ago, and the median price of what closed in Arlington last month was up 10 percent from a year ago, at $607,500… a reflection of properties that were purchased due to the Amazon effect in December.

 

In Long Island City, reporter Corey Kilgannon learned that the price had already been raised by at least $30,000 each, on apartments that did not yet have walls or bathtubs:

Asking prices jumped. Buyers rushed to make deals. Inactive listings turned into bidding wars. Brokers are taking bids via text message. And the rush has fueled concerns that a gentrifying neighborhood will become even less affordable, as “tech bros” push out the working class.

For three months, the real estate business boomed, until… It’s not clear who broke up with whom, but the New York engagement is off. Amazon backed out, or maybe the city rejected Amazon; some speculators got stuck with pricey properties; and nobody knows what will happen next.

The Home Coming Updates

Watch this space for news of The Home Coming, the sculpture whose figures represent several kinds of people experiencing homelessness — a veteran, a child, and an elderly woman of color. The fulfillment of years of dedicated work, The Home Coming is coming home to Austin soon!

Reactions?

Source: “What would it cost to house and provide treatment for Seattle’s homeless?,” SeattleTimes.com, 09/17/18
Source: “Seattle business claims homeless people trespassing on property to steal water,” KOMONews.com, 09/05/18
Source: “Seattle begins clean-up of one of city’s longest running homeless encampments,” KOMONews.com, 09/24/18
Source: “Seattle increasing removals of homeless encampments,” SeattleTimes.com, 08/21/18
Source: “Lawsuit aims to shut down city’s tiny home villages,” MyNorthwest.com, 12/07/18
Source: “Amazon HQ2 could push 800 people into homelessness, economist says,” MarketWatch.com, 11/19/18
Source: “Amazon killed Seattle’s homelessness-relief tax…,” BoingBoing.net, 02/28/19
Source: “Amazon speculators gobbled up Arlington housing market,” WTop.com, 02/25/19
Source: “An ‘Amazon Effect’ on Queens Real Estate? Here’s Why Brokers Say It’s Real,” NYTimes.com, 12/27/18
Photo credit: Wonderlane on Visualhunt/CC BY