These reports, both current and further back in time, are about the efforts made to collect and redistribute clothing, which is, after all, one of the top three essential human needs. For those who have no choice but to survive in public, constantly witnessed and judged, the ability to replace clothing is vitally important. They are always at risk of having their belongings stolen, either by people even more desperate, or by representatives of the law.

For a whole separate set of reasons, socks are very much needed. Know who could use a bunch of socks, right about now? House the Homeless. In Austin, on January 1 (New Year’s Day), the annual HUGSS (hats, underwear, gloves,  scarves, and socks) for the Homeless event will take place once again. It is not too late to sign up and do something to help 500 fellow Texans.

Also in Austin, the Clothes Closet for Homeless Men was established in 1999, with the rule, “If we wouldn’t wear it we don’t hand it out.” The facility didn’t even have a permanent space. On designated days, tables and racks would be moved from a storage area to the conference room of the Central Presbyterian Church.

The location offered not only clothes, but shoes, belts, hygiene items and Bibles. In April of 2015, there was a party with cake and other refreshments as the Closet served customer #20,000. Best of all, it’s still going today, open on Mondays for eligible folks who first sign up at the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH).

Think something, do something

Stanley Tomchin made a pile of money in the gaming industry, and over the years his philanthropic attention has turned to several areas of human need. In 2014 he asked friends on the California coast, where he had one home, to donate their gently used clothing to people in Las Vegas, where he another of his residences was located. In explaining the need, he said,

Friends tell me they’ve never seen so many needy families in stressful situations in more than twenty years. Whole families “work” the parking lots at malls asking for $1 to feed their children.

In Iowa, a businessman decided to collect used coats, snow pants, gloves, hats, scarves and blankets, and then to dry-clean all the items (fortunately, dry-cleaning was his business) and donate them to the Dubuque Rescue Mission to either distribute, or offer in its thrift shop. (A dry-cleaner would have a head start on donating items, because inevitably in that line of work, some things are never picked up, no matter how hard the business owner tries to make contact. After a legally established period of abandonment, they are up for grabs.)

Mike Hagar did more than just receive, collect, or transport the donated cold weather gear. Adding an extra dollop of class to the operation, he also cleaned and pressed used business outfits, of which shelter residents got first pick, for job interviews. (This may sound unfair, but it illustrates one of the many nuances involved in serving these populations, where membership, however temporary, may not include a place to keep a good shirt. A shelter resident is likely to have at least a nail on the wall to hang things from.)

D.I.Y. activism

What is a rent-free, premises-free, pop-up clothing store? Just what it sounds like, otherwise known as the Street Store. Anyone can make this happen, and people have been doing so all over the world. Mark DeNicola muses on the mental blocks that stand between us and the extraordinary altruistic achievements of which we dream:

The most common hiccup holding us back from doing it, is an uncertainty towards how exactly we can do this — we often feel as though we lack the tools or skills necessary to be a part of what we are passionate about.

What’s great about The Street Store is that it has created the tools for you. Tools that are so easy to follow and use that over 40 groups have already put them into practice in major cities such as: Manchester, Vancouver, Oslo, New Jersey and Las Vegas.

Watch the video!

Reactions?

Source: “The Clothes Closet for Homeless Men Serves 20000,” RioTexas.org, 05/04/15
Source: “Stanley Tomchin Helps to Dress Homeless and Needy in Las Vegas,” MarketWired.com, 03/25/14
Source: “Dubuque dry cleaner collects and donates hundreds of items for homeless shelter,” TheGazette.com, 02/27/15
Source: “A Brilliant Idea That Is Making It Easy For Us To Help The Homeless,” Collective-Evolution.com, 01/21/15
Photo credit: Ewan Munro on Foter.com/CC BY-SA

Sure, we love to fill Christmas stockings with candy canes and trinkets. This year, try something different — FILL SOCKS WITH FEET!

Thanksgiving in Denver, CO, looked a bit different this year thanks to the nonprofit organization Impact Locally. Usually, it is a store that sells nothing, but gives away clothing to people who need it.

This November, CEO Travis Smith had the clothing racks moved elsewhere for the day and turned the premises into a free restaurant with fancy accoutrements like tables and menus, allowing the guests to do something they don’t often have a chance to do — sit down and choose what they wanted to eat, and eat it while listening to music. (The page referenced here even includes a nice video from photojournalist Josh Whitston.)

Bellingham, WA (90 miles from Seattle), has the reputation of an elite enclave often named one of the best places to live in the United States. It has also been named one of the worst places, in terms of affordability, with a house costing typically $300,000.

Bellingham has splendid outdoor recreation opportunities, a great bookstore, and a lot of bars. Almost 20% of its residents admit to binge drinking, which may include the tech ninjas and successful writers, and/or the 21% of Bellingham’s population who live in poverty (which is well above the national average).

The county’s homeless population has increased by 10% in just the last year, and the housed people of Bellingham, to their credit, currently see homelessness as the city’s top challenge. The Lighthouse Mission has a daytime drop-in center, but sometimes it reaches capacity. This winter, a meeting room in the basement of the Public Library will be used in extreme weather as a daytime refuge. If things really get rough, City Hall also has emergency daytime shelter space.

The Lighthouse Mission also vets female candidates for nighttime space at Fountain Community Church. Over the three harshest winter months, the church hosts between 45 and 50 women each night, but they must vacate the premises by 7 a.m., a not particularly hospitable time to emerge into icy wind and snow.

Last year, the church’s sleeping quarters were administered by a total of 130 volunteers. Journalist Kie Relyea reported,

The shelter is a partnership among several churches… It will cost about $35,000 to operate, with money coming from church congregations, the city and private donors, [Pastor Rick] Qualls said. About $5,000 is set aside so that single moms and their children can stay in a hotel room, which also gives them a place to stay during the daylight hours…

The reverse Advent calendar is an idea for any year, anywhere. Joshua Barrie wrote about this charming custom, recommended by a group from across the ocean, called the UK Money Bloggers. Traditionally, an Advent calendar dispenses a little treat or gift to a child, each day of the weeks leading up to Christmas. With the reverse Advent calendar, a household sets aside a box or a bag and puts something it each day, to eventually be donated to the local food bank.

Actually, this concept works better by not strictly following the calendar. Mid-November to mid-December is a good time to do it. The local food bank will tell people the best time to make donations so families can access them before Christmas.

Food banks and community pantries are familiar with an increase in requests in holiday seasons, when people who never have much have even less. They find themselves asking questions like, “Do we heat, or do we eat?” By the way, please consult this excellent article about things that food banks need and don’t get enough of. One of them is socks!

Sock it to me…

There are excellent reasons why people experiencing homelessness need a lot of socks. Wearing two pairs at once can improve badly fitting shoes, or provide extra insulation against cold. They tend to be worn 24 hours a day, and to wear out fast. Regrettably, they pretty much need to be treated as disposable, for good reason.

Laundry opportunities are rare, and if a backpack is your only home, there is a certain reluctance to give houseroom to a bunch of dirty socks. Fast-food restaurant customers and library patrons are displeased when someone washes their socks in the establishment’s restroom. Even if socks can be washed, there is nowhere to dry them, especially in cold weather. So, new socks are highly prized.

Veteran Robert Graves wrote about England in the aftermath of World War I in Goodbye to All That, which was published in 1929:

Ex-service men were continually coming to the door selling boot-laces and asking for cast-off shirts and socks.

Boston’s Dr. Ernesto Gonzalez spoke to an interviewer about issues stemming from exposure to wetness, and the lack of hygiene opportunities:

Athlete’s foot is a very common disease among people who are unable to change their socks or their shoes, or who cannot take showers frequently. So it’s very frequent for them to have fungal diseases.

An anonymous former homeless person wrote,

Socks mean the world to you. They keep you warm, make you feel like you have something new, and just comfort you.

People experiencing homelessness need more socks, and they need to not have their socks and other belongings stolen and destroyed by cops and city or transit workers. They need places to keep their stuff. They need places to keep themselves. But let’s start with the socks.

In and around Austin, TX — or anywhere!

Please learn more about how to donate cold-weather necessities, through House the Homeless.

Reactions?

Source: “From free clothing store for the homeless, to free Thanksgiving restaurant for the homeless,” TheDenverChannel.com, 11/22/18
Source: “It’s cold outside, so Bellingham church makes a difference by sheltering these women,” BellinghamHerald.com, 12/08/18
Source: “Why the ‘reverse advent calendar’ is the best thing you can do this December,” Mirror.co.uk, 11/02/17
Source: “10 Things Food Banks Need But Won’t Ask For,” 1027KORD.com, 12/23/13
Source: “Boston Doctor Who Quietly Treats The Homeless Is Honored,” WBUR.org, 04/25/11
Photo credit (middle; top and bottom): Fair Use; Ryan Tyler Smithright (inov8d) on Foter.com/CC BY

Astonishingly, there is still more to say about how Seattle has fared under the auspices of Amazon, in a situation that is rife with object lessons for other American cities tempted to court the favor of giant corporations.

For instance, journalist April Glaser wrote about a particularly awkward situation in which the people and institutions of Seattle might appear to be ungrateful for the largesse from on high. Amazon owned a former motel, which in 2016 it allowed to be used as a temporary shelter. When construction started there, the shelter was moved to another former motel, where it currently has temporary quarters. (A new 200-bed facility is supposed to be available in a new Amazon building starting in 2020, which is of course still two years away.)

In both the temporary shelters so far, there have been reports of residents, including families, being locked out “sometimes overnight and for extended periods of time.” It was not intentional, but apparently a problem with the doors, and there was confusion over who is supposed to fix the doors. As the old saying goes, the Devil is in the details. Not to put too fine a point on it, it does seem reasonable to expect that the gift of a place to stay ought to be paired with a capability to enter the premises.

The temporary shelter is run by Mary’s Place, to which Amazon also donates a large amount of free food that is left over every day from its downtown store. The people served by the charity have of course benefited greatly, but Mary’s Place has also “tolerated major logistical nuisances to the detriment of its staff and clients.” With inadequate resources and incomplete information, they are expected to manage the redistribution of extra food to other area shelters.

Food comes with an expiration date, and the staff has to sort through it all and dispose of what was already outdated — a task that requires considerable time, space, and human labor. Then, the food that has been deemed safe has to be stored appropriately. And the garbage has to go — which means it needs dumpsters to be stored in until pickup, and a paid service to take it away.

Looking back

In June, things transpired that to some eyes looked very much like skulduggery. Seattle wanted to do the right thing and make some moves toward reducing the level of homelessness and building more affordable housing. The solution was to impose a tax for each employee of businesses making more than $20 million per year, which would impact Amazon too heavily (in Amazon’s eyes, anyway.)

In response, the mega-corp threatened to cancel a major office construction project, and mounted a “vicious” campaign that sought to not only repeal the tax but, in the words of journalist Alana Semuels, “to flush progressives from office.” So a couple of weeks later, the City Council saved Amazon the trouble by repealing the tax on its own.

In a complicated, drawn-out standoff filled with quid-pro-quo offers made and rejected, Amazon and the other biggest companies are described as “holding the city hostage” over the housing issue. No doubt plenty of discussions have been held in the fabled “smoke-filled room” atmosphere, even if the actual smoking has been relinquished. It gives the impression that other businesses are fed up with paying for the brunt of the damage that Amazon’s presence has done to the city. They seem to be saying, “It’s not us, it’s THEM.”

On the contrary, other huge local businesses (and smaller ones too) have shown goodwill. In August the members of the legendary group Pearl Jam stepped up to perform two home shows, with millions in profits going to organizations that deal with housing and homelessness.

Joanna Prisco wrote,

The band, along with other members of the community, committed to matching donations (up to $960,000) to a new fundraising campaign called the Home Fund. Meanwhile, it also lured local companies, including Starbucks, Nordstrom, and the Seattle Mariners, to contribute to the effort…

Perhaps in effort to redeem himself, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos announced that he would donate $2 billion (tax-deductible, for him) to alleviate hunger and homelessness on the West Coast. But some people are not impressed by all the words. Some say that the richest man on earth should put his money where his mouth is, and just simply pay all his employees enough to live on without their having to apply for government aid.

Some critics accuse him of “crimes against humanity” — and they do not forgive easily. A Guardian columnist Marina Hyde points out that Bezos already had a chance to show off his world-building skills, with Seattle, and unequivocally blew it. She calls him a sociopath in her opinion piece in The Guardian and goes on to say of him and his all-too-numerous ilk,

The rule you learn on Day One of being a billionaire philanthropist is that you don’t give money via pay packets to the poor people who literally already work for you. They’d only spend it poorly. However, if they want to humbly queue up and apply for it via some thinly disguised hardship grant that you take the applause for, that’s a different matter. Dignity is something you hand out, not something that others get to earn.

Journalist Paul Blumenthal wrote:

Seattle, meet your feudal lord.

Reactions?

Source: “We’d Spend Hours Each Week Unpacking and Throwing the Food Away,” Slate.com, 05/22/18
Source: “How Amazon Helped Kill a Seattle Tax on Business,” TheAtlantic.com, 06/13/18
Source: “Pearl Jam Raises Millions for Seattle’s Homeless With Two Shows,” GlobalCitizen.org, 08/13/18
Source: “Can Jeff Bezos help the homeless? 4 essential reads,” TheConversation.com, 09/14/18
Source: “If Jeff Bezos wants to help low-income people why not just pay them better?,” TheGuardian.com, 09/14/18
Photo credit: Wonderlane on Visualhunt/CC BY

Innumerable factors go into causing homelessness, and when people get to the stage of actually experiencing homelessness, the same factors bedevil their lives even more. What happens when a city is taken over by a giant corporation whose activities touch every single aspect of life for its residents, whether housed or not?

We have been thinking about Seattle, where Amazon has been a significant presence for a decade. Why this, and why now? Because two new sub-headquarters are about to be established in New York City and the outskirts of Washington, D.C. They need to know what to watch out for.

There is something else. In the course of deciding where to build next, the giant corporation was handed a treasure trove of priceless information about conditions and plans in more than 200 other cities.

More saliently, the corporate overlords now know to the penny how much, in the form of incentives (aka bribes), each municipality would hand over in return for an Amazon facility of its own. Undoubtedly, other business giants are also quite interested in knowing these facts about cities.

Will Amazon sell them the massive collection of precious data that Amazon was handed for free? Undoubtedly! So it is probably a good idea for cities to keep a close eye on what actually happens when the 800-pound gorilla moves in… and compare the reality to the promises.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other

In Seattle, the reviews are mixed. Amazon has done some things that are applauded by some people, and is perfectly capable of publicizing its own good deeds. Meanwhile, the city came up with a phone app through which housed people, annoyed by the presence of unhoused people, could register complaints, more than 12,000 of them per year. The city also tried to pass a tax on the giant businesses to help out with affordable housing and services for people experiencing homelessness, but it was quickly squelched.

Then, in the Belltown area, the city carried out what is euphemistically called a sweep “in the shadow of the Space Needle” which is of course a local landmark. The people were given a week’s warning. A non-profit agency bought plane tickets (one-way, naturally) for a few, and a couple of people were relocated to a “tiny house” village. One person who was interviewed had been on a housing list for nine months.

Over the previous year, the number of vehicle dwellers in King County had increased by 46% or. In colloquial terms, it became half again as large. That’s a misdemeanor, and if a person is unable to pay the fines, the car is impounded, causing the person, as the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty phrased it, “to lose their shelter, transportation, and personal belongings in one fell swoop.” Who is supposed to be helped by these policies remains a mystery.

Eight miles from the city center, a cemetery suffered its second year of distress from the number of vans and RVs parked around it, generating an expensive and unacceptable trash problem. It’s bad for trees, too, which property owners tend to chop down when such places are encroached on by people with nowhere to live. As a solution, the city announced in August that the homeless camp removal squad or Navigation Team would be enlarged, bringing it to 30 members.

In theory, this would mean doing a better job. But resistance has stiffened. Vianna Davila reported for the Seattle Times,

Last year, on average, it took the team four interactions with residents before they accepted an offer to go inside; this year, St. Louis said, that’s increased to six interactions.

Enforcement was stepped up, with 46 camps obliterated in June and almost twice as many in July. Increasingly, the required 72-hour notice was being omitted, and about 40% of people were given no notice at all. Imagine going out (perhaps to look for work) and coming back to find your shelter and all your belongings had vanished.

In early August, the Seattle City Hall invited the Salvation Army to bring sleeping mats, earplugs and eye masks, so 80 people could sleep in the lobby. The basement has served as a shelter since 2006, and the need grows yearly. People can check in at 9:30 p.m. and sleep until 5:30 a.m., which is a brutal time to be turned out into the street, but still better than nothing.

Journalist Hallie Golden sought out some figures:

The largest portion of this year’s homeless response budget — 44 percent, or $34 million — is reserved for emergency services, including shelters, permitted villages, and transitional housing. Twenty-nine percent of the budget is for more permanent housing, and only 8 percent is dedicated to helping prevent homelessness.

Golden also spoke with the director of Seattle University’s Homeless Rights Advocacy Project, Sara Rankin, who said,

As long as we’re in emergency mode, it’s smoke and mirrors. It’s moving bodies around. It’s trying to deflect. It’s trying to create the impression that we’re addressing the underlying problems of homelessness, when emergency shelters simply don’t do it… Wanting to solve homelessness and researching, analyzing, and coming up with a coherent, effective plan to do so are two totally different things.

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless camp in shadow of Space Needle now cleared,” KOMONews.com, 07/03/18
Source: “America’s big cities are increasingly home to people living in their cars,” BoingBoing.net, 08/05/18
Source: “Seattle increasing removals of homeless encampments,” SeattleTimes.com, 08/21/18
Source: “Promising start for homeless shelter in lobby of Seattle City Hall,” KOMONews.com, 08/02/18
Source: “In a Growing Crisis, Seattle Uses City Hall as a Homeless Shelter,” CityLab.com, 08/23/18
Photo credit: Wonderlane on Visualhunt/CC BY

Everything affects homelessness. Job loss, divorce, well-paid people moving in from out of town, gas prices, food prices, overzealous law enforcement, disrupted family connections, public transport, church activities… All these factors, and many more, exert influence on people’s ability to find a job, keep a job, feed their kids, and pay rent, meanwhile hanging by their fingernails to the edge of a cliff. And then, when they lose their grip and become homeless, all the same factors rule their lives all over again, only worse this time.

We have been looking at what the presence of Amazon’s main headquarters for a decade has done for, and especially to, Seattle. The city volunteered to be a petri dish for the accelerated breeding of societal problems, and perhaps even as a canary in a coalmine. Whatever happens there, should be watched out for in the additional locations that Amazon colonizes.

After mulling it over for a year, the giant corporation finally chose two cities to split the honor and become HQ2A and HQ2B. The process by which this choice was made has been described by various experts as a scripted drama, a heist, a cynical game, a robbery, a fleecing, an absurd spectacle, a con job, and giving the house keys to a burglar.

Shhhhhh!

The least offensive description that has been used is “auction.” American municipalities offered Amazon everything they could. Negotiations and agreements were all supposed to be secret. Apparently, if the corporation announces details, that’s okay, but the cities must disclose nothing.

Investigative reporter David Dayen notes Amazon’s contractual right to “seek a protective order if any entity seeks more information about the deal.” Not only will they not tell you anything; you’re busted for even asking. However, there are always leaks. Word on the street is that Boston’s bribe included $75 million to build affordable housing — for Amazon employees.

Dayen’s estimate of the total Amazon take for locating one of its HQ2s in New York is around $1.5 billion. The state has something called the Excelsior Program that gives them $48,000 for each job they say they will create, and $1 billion from the REAP program (how apposite) and more from the ICAP program and the PILOT program.

Also, get this, “a $325 million cash grant from Empire State Development for occupying office space.” What??? (Maybe it’s to guarantee that the lights inside skyscrapers are left on all night to look pretty in photographs?)

However, a couple of New York politicians put the total of Amazon loot at closer to $3 billion. As journalist Margaret Kimberly points out, even a conservative figure of $1.7 billion implies rewards for Amazon equivalent to $65,000 for each New York resident.

Why not, instead, just give each New Yorker $65,000? Which would probably do a lot more for the economy… some people say. Dayen writes:

The Virginia site could yield Amazon another $573 million in subsidies, and an additional $200 million if they expand… This money comes in a cash grant of $22,000 per job, and a portion of the growth from hotel taxes in the city of Arlington. Under the contract, Amazon got a commitment from the state for “regulatory flexibility” that will lighten regulations on the company.

“Regulatory flexibility” is a dangerous phrase that can be interpreted in any way that seems expedient at the moment. Actually, according to some estimates, the entire bundle of boodle for both planned locations could total as much as $4.6 billion. As Everett Dirksen reportedly quipped, “A billion here, a billion there; pretty soon, you’re talking real money.”

Talking real money

The picture gets worse. Dayen and others who have studied up on it conclude that the real money for Amazon will lie in the “treasure trove” of information that more than 200 cities gave up — non-public information that the respective governments supposedly divulge to no one else.

That giveaway makes all of them “the biggest suckers,” says Dayen, because:

Those bids didn’t just include the size of the bribe; they included a wealth of important data about plans for transportation, housing, education and workforce development… Amazon can set up operations with the foreknowledge of what cities have divulged to them. It can build its convenience stores or bookseller outlets where cities have planned rapid development and population growth. It can locate its warehouses where a new highway expansion is imminent.

Lousy poker players all, every one of those cities showed its hand. Amazon now knows exactly how much each one would be willing to fork over if the prospect of HQ3 or HQ4 were to be dangled before its eyes. This translates into what those in the financial coercion game call “significant leverage.”

As Dayen puts it, “Monetizing of this new data trove will yield untold billions of dollars in value.” For Amazon. Not for any person experiencing homelessness in Seattle, New York, Washington, D.C., or any other American city whose flirtatious free-money charms might catch the wandering Amazonian eye.

Reactions?

Source: “The HQ2 Scam: How Amazon Used a Bidding War to Scrape Cities’ Data,” InTheseTimes.com, 11/09/18
Source: “The Amazon Robbery,” BlackAgendaReport.com, 11/21/18
Photo credit: Cameron Nordholm on Visualhunt/CC BY

Amazon finally relieved everyone’s stress by announcing the location of its much-vaunted second headquarters. Surprise! It’s not one new site, but two — New York City (specifically, Long Island City, which is in the borough of Queens) and Crystal City, in Arlington County, Virginia, adjacent to Washington, D.C.

Remember when Amazon published its shortlist of 20 cities who were the top contenders for HQ2? The cities whose administrators most obsequiously bowed and scraped, offering every conceivable enticement if only the humungous corporation would consent to enter their gates and honor their constituents by looting, plundering, and pillaging to the utmost? (More about that later.)

The point here is, out of the top 20 municipalities that remained in the running, five of those places are also on the list of the country’s largest homeless populations. One of the ultimate winners, New York, also happens to be the American city with the most people surviving in public. Needless to say, this is not a prize anyone should want to win.

But in a way, New York has nothing to lose. It already is the urban area with the largest number of people who have been failed by the American promise. Hundreds of thousands of additional people could be displaced from their homes, and New York would still be the city with the most people whose very existence is a crime.

The Northern Virginia area, including Crystal City, currently ranks as the place with the fifth largest total of people experiencing homelessness. What happens after Amazon takes over is anybody’s guess.

What we do know is that both the newly-revealed choices already have lots of residents who make way more than the national median income, who can afford the already-inflated housing prices. And as more upper-pay-grade employees migrate to those two areas, it will remove even more people from the possibility of finding places to live, and exacerbate the homeless situation.

The contenders and the prize

Looking back to the previous stage, Amazon’s 20-item shortlist had also included Los Angeles (second in homelessness), Boston (ninth), and Philadelphia (10th). Another city with the most homeless people, ranking in third place, is Seattle (which was not in the running for HQ2, because HQ1 is already there). Seattle has been living with the effects of Amazon for almost a decade, so it’s a pretty good indicator of what the two new not-quite-headquarters may look forward to.

Word on the street about Seattle, garnered from social media comments, is not encouraging. We hear that some lower-echelon workers, like custodians and cafeteria workers, are forced to live in vans. Even mid-level employees like teachers, college secretarial help, and nurses have to live so far out of town that they face commutes of two hours each way. With 80% of the buildable land in the city allotted to single-family houses and only 17% permitted to have “density,” i.e. apartments, there is very little hope that more affordable housing will magically appear.

The process by which Seattle was convinced to welcome Amazon is described as a “policy failure” and an “outright scam” that takes money away from public infrastructure and small businesses, while the process of searching for the HQ2 location is said to be nothing but a “publicity stunt.” Citizens protest that the paltry taxes paid by Amazon and its employees are negligible compared to the enormous amounts of tax those entities have been relieved of.

Another complaint is that only bottom-rung Amazon jobs are filled by locals, so the native van-dwellers miss out on the chance to have actual walls around them again. Meanwhile, people from elsewhere are recruited for high-paying positions, and the scarce housing is taken up by newcomers. One person warned the HQ2 prospects in these words:

Amazon isn’t bringing you 50,000 high paying jobs. They’re bringing 50,000 people with high paying jobs to where you currently live. This won’t help your community, but will replace it.

Twitter user @tokyo_todd joked:

At least those highly paid people will need to shop locally, at least until somebody figures out a way to have every single household item you need shipped straight to your… oh wait…

An anonymous commentator confirmed,

It reminds me of when I worked at Google Los Angeles and the office moved to Venice Beach. Local restaurants and gyms put up ads saying “Welcome Google!” But we had free food and gym on campus and barely got out.

Let’s end on a relatively positive note from HtH reader and Seattle resident Phil Polizatto:

Seattle is special, though it has its faults. We have a terrific mayor, a very socialist city council, women pretty much run this city! And Mayor Gurken’s primary goal is to get rid of homelessness. Surprisingly, she is making headway. The appearance of “tiny homes” seems to be the answer. Communities of tiny homes. Affordable and quick to build. Cost about 40K fully equipped. Finding neighborhoods willing to accept such communities are rare, but there are some progressive neighborhoods willing to give it a try.

Reactions?

Source: “10 US Cities With The Largest Homeless Populations,” WorldAtlas.com, 02/19/18
Photo credit: Nicolas Boullosa via CC BY

Last week we pointed out some of the mistaken ideas that housed people hold regarding people experiencing homelessness. Another of those widespread misconceptions is that “the homeless don’t want to work.” Let’s take as examples the same four subgroups we focused on in the discussion of mental illness, in the context of these particular demographics having very little mental illness or addiction issues.

First, mothers of children, who are homeless with their kids because of abandonment, domestic violence, or just plain not being able to afford housing. It’s easy to say, “Make them get jobs.” But what are their children supposed to do? Sure, school-age kids are supposed to be going to school. But that takes up very little time, compared to a work week. School days are typically much shorter than work shifts.

Who watches over and protects the child on the way to and from school? The kids have to get back and forth somehow, and their mother probably does not own a car, and, anyway, school escort duty might conflict with her work schedule. What if there is more than one child, and they go to different schools? What if the child is too young for school? Even if a working homeless mother could find day care, it probably costs more per hour than her own hourly wage.

More obstacles for homeless mothers

Often, night shift jobs are easier to snag, for obvious reasons. But even if she wants to, can a homeless mother work nights? Shelters have curfew rules. People have to be in by a certain time, they can’t just come and go as they please, or even as they need.

And how does the prospect of leaving the kids all night in a shelter full of strangers sound? Is there any homeless living situation that even allows children to be left overnight without parental supervision? Can their mother tuck them in to sleep in a van while she works? That sounds like a swell opportunity for child protective services to intervene and take away her parental rights.

Even in a best-case scenario, with a steady job, a homeless mother is likely to find work only on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, in the type of job where after eight hours, she just might hear the manager say, “So-and-so didn’t show up, I need you to stay on for another shift.” What is she supposed to do, refuse and be fired? Quit? And be unemployed, and have a black mark on her record for being the kind of feckless creature who gets fired or quits?

And what about school holidays, and summertime, and kids being sick, and kids getting in trouble at school (sorry, it happens) with no parent available to come pick them up? And as far as those children themselves seeking employment, we still have child labor laws. Mothers and young kids are two very hard-pressed groups, who are unlikely to “Just get a job!”

Unaccompanied youth

We also talked about unaccompanied youth with nowhere to live except a relative’s couch or a friend’s unheated garage without running water or toilet. With any luck at all, a young person in this situation somehow manages to stay in middle school or high school, which in itself is a stunning accomplishment, and one that many are unable to sustain.

Not surprisingly, a lot of those kids drop out of school at or before the legal age. How employable are they? The answer to that question is so obvious we will not even insult the reader’s intelligence by bringing it up. Oh, and by the way, they are still teenagers, a category of people not famous for their stability or judgment, even when they are securely housed and regularly fed.

A special subgroup

In 2017, the United States of America, the richest country in the world, contained at least 32,000 homeless college students. Those are only the ones who allowed themselves to be counted, and many go to considerable trouble to prevent their situation from being generally known.

Even college students who are financially secure, with the full backing of their families and other advantages, have to put in a lot of hours of hard work for their grades. Sure, plenty of undergraduates also work, but with such split priorities they can’t get the full value from their education, so let’s not hold them up as models.

For a homeless youth, doing well in school means everything, because there is a genuine and exigent need to recoup the investment. All that struggle can’t end up being for naught. Getting enough education to secure employment and not be a public charge is this person’s job at this point in time. To expect him or her to also make enough money to set up a household is quite unreasonable.

Apparently, a lot of citizens don’t know that homeless college students even exist, so here is a short reading list that an advocate can offer to an unbeliever:

• “Behind the Problem of Student Homelessness“
• “This Is What It’s Like to Be Homeless in College“
• “1 In 10 College Students In Mass. Are Homeless. More Are Hungry. It’s Past Time We Recognize Their Reality“
• “The hidden problem of homelessness on college campuses“
• “Hunger And Homelessness Are Widespread Among College Students, Study Finds“

We also recommend…

Remember the survey of people experiencing homelessness in Austin, and how it showed that 47% of the respondents were too disabled to work? House the Homeless co-founder Richard R. Troxell reminds us, “This leaves about 52% who are capable of working. Another statistic that we unearthed is that these folks want to work… for Living Wages.”

Three Things to Know About Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week

We are in the midst of Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, and it’s not too late to find a local activity that will welcome your participation. Whether your area of expertise is education, service, fundraising, or advocacy, you can make a difference.

The National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness offer a useful resource, a downloadable PDF file called “Resolve to Fight Poverty.”

Now, this is the most important thing to know. Austin’s Annual Homeless Memorial Service
takes place on November 18, 2018 at sunrise (6:57 a.m.). The location is by the river at Auditorium Shores, South First and Riverside Drive (on the south side of Lady Bird Lake). As always, the event is created by House the Homeless.

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Photo credit: Ed Yourdon on Visualhunt/CC BY-NC-SA

Referencing myths about homelessness is a reliable way to create an easily-understandable title for a piece of journalism, yet the word itself is a bit too glamorous for comfort. “Myth” is a rather positive word, one that elevates and ennobles, associated with grand old tales of conquest and heroism, pertaining to such figures as Odysseus, the Centaur, King Arthur, Robin Hood, Aphrodite, Sisyphus, unicorns, and even Santa Claus.

Maybe a better word is “trope,” which means something closer to “stereotype,” and implies a theme that is familiar, often repeated, and even overused.

Reporter Chris Nichols consulted several policy experts about homelessness and the people caught up in it. He speaks of the misconceptions that sometimes tend to make homeless people seem “one-dimensional.” But California alone contains about 134,000 of them, making it highly unlikely that they could be all the same. California’s count, incidentally went up 14% between 2016 and 2017.

What they say

One frequent allegation, especially in warm-weather states like California and Florida, is that people come flooding in from elsewhere, and therefore are not entitled to receive help from the administrative district they land in. But a study conducted earlier this year by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority revealed that 75% of L.A. County’s street people used to live in the county previously, when they were housed.

Indeed, many individuals live outdoors close to where they used to dwell indoors. Further,

It also showed that 65 percent of the unsheltered homeless had lived in that county for at least 20 years. Only 13 percent were from out of state.

Psychology Professor Paul A. Toro has for years worked with people experiencing homelessness, and in the 1980s noticed the correlation between the government’s deinstitutionalization policy and the growing number of homeless Americans. The sad results of that policy are still with us today. This connects with another popular misconception, the idea that people become homeless because they are mentally ill or addicted to alcohol or hard drugs. Very often, it’s the other way around.

Walk a mile in their shoes

Newly homeless people are stressed and traumatized in certain ways, and anyone who has been out from under a roof for a long time is traumatized and stressed in the same ways, except that now, the emotional pain has piled up and multiplied. Losing all of one’s belongings is a severe shock. Losing all respect from law enforcement, government bureaucrats, retail employees, and the general public means a continuing and ever-worsening series of shocks.

People with nowhere to live face uncertainty, physical risk, hunger, dangerously inadequate sleep, foul weather and, if they seek help, masses of paperwork to fill out and documents to procure. They are pitched headlong into a totally different world with a completely different set of rules. It is a lot to cope with, and if people seem a little strange, maybe it behooves us to give them the benefit of the doubt.

How would we react to lives turned upside down and eviscerated? And it doesn’t cause just mental and emotional wear and tear, but physical stress as well, impairing the immune system while at the same time, chances of obtaining medical help dwindle away.

So if 15% of the people in Los Angeles County have substance abuse disorder, maybe they were already like that, or maybe being homeless pushed them over the edge. If 27% suffer from serious mental illness, maybe they managed to function adequately when housed, and only because problematic to themselves and others when forced into the streets. Professor Toro says,

Studies done by our group and others over the last 30 years have found that only one-quarter to one-third of homeless adults show a documented serious mental disorder, like schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder… Sixty to 75 percent of homeless people struggle with substance abuse at some point in their lifetime, versus 16 percent among the general population.

Everyone who looks into these matters brings up a point very needful of recognition. To employ yet another trope, we, as a society, must not “throw out the baby with the bathwater.” When draconian laws are passed, and when policies are difficult or impossible to adhere to, sure, maybe that prevents the waste of taxpayers’ money on people who have no interest in either becoming healed or in living up to society’s expectations.

But ruthless gatekeeping is very harmful to at least four cohorts who report very little mental illness or substance abuse amongst them: homeless mothers; their children; unaccompanied youth; and college students. Every time we make it harder for a chronically homeless person with a habit and a bad attitude to receive help, whether it’s dinner at a park or a spot in a transitional facility, we make it harder for the harried mothers and their confused kids.

We make it harder for the young people coping with not only the routine problems of adolescence, but homelessness in addition. Most cruelly of all, we deprive the brave, determined, and deserving youth who somehow manage to climb the first steps of the higher education ladder, and at the same time deprive ourselves and the rest of America of the contributions these amazing people could make.

Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, Nov. 10-18

Consult this page for information on National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. The related events have raised millions for local service providers. Find out who is doing what in your area, and what you can do in the areas of education, service, fundraising, or advocacy.

And, if you are in the vicinity of Austin, Texas, please plan to attend the Annual Homeless Memorial Service on November 18. This sunrise ceremony will take place as always on the south side of Lady Bird Lake, at South First and Riverside Drive.

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Source: “Dispelling myths about California’s homeless,” PolitiFact.com, 06/28/18
Source: “Busting 3 common myths about homelessness,” TheConversation.com, 07/05/18
Photo credit: Shutterbug Fotos on Visualhunt/CC BY-ND

Quite a few recent posts have been about the statues and the many groups of Americans represented by the figures — including children, women, minorities, senior citizens, veterans, the elderly, and the sick, also including returning service members with Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Today, we mention some of the ugly details that surround the broad strokes that paint the picture of homelessness in the U.S.A.

The way things are for a lot of folks, homelessness is only one of their problems, and not necessarily even the worst. Whether housed or not, a 90-year-old with one leg will still be a nonagenarian amputee. In that quandary, as in many others, homelessness is the unhealthy condition that is perfectly capable of being upgraded; a factor and perhaps the only factor that is amenable to change.

This leads to the philosophical position that zero homelessness is not an end point, but a bare and basic starter level from which we can launch humanity into a universe where existence beneath a roof is the bare minimum achievement, surmounted and left behind in an effort to assure that everyone is not only housed, but healthy. Imagine that world!

Why bring this up?

A recent attention-commanding headline from GlobeSt.com reads, “Housing Isn’t the Key to the Homeless Crisis,” which, if true, is startling news. “Maybe merely housing the homeless isn’t the right approach,” say those who prefer to recognize and address the complicated, multi-faceted nature that societal problems tend to possess.

Kelsi Maree Borland reported on the Re-Habit concept, which aims to help people become self-sustaining. This happens through support centers that provide aid, treatment, counseling, and training programs that last for a year or maybe even two. She quotes David Senden of KTGY Architecture + Planning, who says,

If we keep thinking about homelessness as a housing problem, I think we are missing the point. A big reason for homelessness is not because people can’t find housing but because of other issues that have led them into homelessness.

As in many other programs, seniority leads to leadership. People who have overcome problems become counselors, and only need to learn the skills, because they already know the street-level sociology.

But with no implied disrespect, this concept is also reminiscent of the rough outline followed by many agencies and not-for-profit organizations, who have taken advantage of the system to rip off taxpayers and unlawfully hold desperate people as virtual prisoners, while profiting from their labor. Among the public there is a certain amount of interest in reform, like the idea of diverting low-level offenders away from the penal system and toward alternatives. Seeing this, some unscrupulous, overly-entrepreneurial opportunists have taken advantage of the need for various kinds of rehab facilities.

Watching over the weak

All programs, everywhere, that deal with vulnerable people, need oversight not only by responsible authorities, but by caring members of the public. Speaking of which, we live in a country where, to a large degree, skin color is still destiny. By and large, people of color tend to wind up on the wrong side of legal charges, at a disproportionate rate, and not because they are inherently more prone to crime.

Not surprisingly, people who have served time are less likely to be able to find work, and more likely to find themselves on the street. Here is the gist of a report by Jeff Stein for The Washington Post. (The rest of it may be behind a paywall.):

About 6 percent of baby boomers and 17 percent of African American baby boomers have been homeless at some point in their lives, according to the first national study in decades to look at lifetime homeless rates. The study, released last month, suggests older black Americans are about three times more likely to experience homelessness than white Americans.

By the way — and this should really not need to be said — but please do not celebrate the upcoming Halloween festival by creating for yourself, or anyone, a costume meant to represent a homeless person. Thank you.

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Source: “Housing Isn’t the Key to the Homeless Crisis,” Globest.com, 08/24/18
Source: “1 in 6 older black people have been homeless at some point in their life, study finds,” WashingtonPost.com, 10/09/18
Photo credit: Beau B on Visualhunt/CC BY