Musicians and the Homeless
Everyone likes celebrity news, especially when it’s good, and House the Homeless has previously taken note of wonderful generosity from stars like Bruce Springsteen. We also mentioned Eminem’s patronage and mentorship of a homeless rapper called Yelawolf. The musician and activist known as Reverend Billy Wirtz supports the organization Picture the Homeless, whose motto is “Don’t talk about us, talk with us.”
Last May, it was announced that Lady Gaga would donate $1 million to homeless youth. Cyndi Lauper began the True Colors Fund in 2008, and the result is a shelter with 30 studio apartments specifically for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth who are experiencing homelessness. Some of them anyway, for as the singer is quoted as saying:
In New York City, a very disproportionate number (up to 40 percent) of homeless youth identify as L.G.B.T. Even more disturbing are reports that these young people often face discrimination and at times physical assault in some of the very places they have to for help. This is shocking and inexcusable!
Back in 2006, Jon Bon Jovi started up the JBJ Soul Foundation, which feeds people and puts families into houses, and does a whole bunch of other stuff in several cities. Now the foundation has teamed up with the Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies to create Project REACH.
It stands for “Real-time Electronic Access for Caregivers and the Homeless,” and it’s a contest with a financial reward for whoever in the “developer community” can figure out how to make a national platform that can be accessed by the Internet and smartphones. The assignment is to supply complete and current information on shelters, housing services, crisis hotlines, legal assistance, VA services, health clinics, food kitchens, and any other resources, anywhere, anytime.
House the Homeless has often mentioned Austin in relation to its music scene, which has a long and impressive history, and the South by Southwest festival, and a whole lot more going for it. Among other things, the Austin Music Commission was supposedly represented on the Waller Creek Citizen Advisory Committee, but then whatever work that group did was apparently set aside to await the results of an international design competition. The ongoing project will greatly affect what is locally called the Red River music scene, and it will also have a huge impact on the area’s people experiencing homelessness.
Like many other cities, Austin has heard objections to the presence of homeless people downtown because of the trash problem, which in the public mind is inevitably associated with vagrants. But… If Austin is anything like other college towns, a big part of the trash on the streets is contributed by students with an overweening sense of entitlement and not much genuine connection to the city they temporarily inhabit.
Where there are bars and clubs, there is litter, vomit, and urine on the sidewalks and in the neighbors’ azalea bushes. What pulls customers to those clubs is the music. So the blame for urban squalor can’t be solely assigned to the homeless.
In many citizens’ minds, both show business and the homeless are responsible for urban crime. Live music = night life = booze = drunk-rolling = fights = prostitution = stolen cars = hard drugs = police sirens = litter = homeless people. In a downtown area, especially on weekends, they’re all mixed up together. And musicians write songs about the homeless, like “Only a Hobo,” “Tramp and the Young Girl,” and hundreds more. Often, musicians are the homeless, especially in old age — if they make it that far.
Sure, at a certain stage, with the world at your feet, being technically homelessness might be the best career move. If you plan to tour for 10 months, why pay rent for an apartment? The road can also make someone unwittingly callous. A 21-year-old guitarist who sleeps in a band’s tour bus might not understand how the rolling-stone life is not so much fun for a 45-year-old woman veteran with diabetes and PTSD. In many significant ways, musicians are just like everybody else — sometimes uninformed or thoughtless.
The music scene has always been an environment where thinking was a little more enlightened than in the general population. When musicians meet, age, race, creed, economic status, and all those other tiresome barriers are totally irrelevant. Sure, the music subculture has always had its problems, but discrimination generally hasn’t been one of them. That’s how much power the music universe holds, and one of the ways to use power responsibly is by looking after the interests of society’s least fortunate. An outstanding example of this is New Orleans, where in the wake of multiple disasters, the musicians took care of each other and a whole lot of civilians, too.
In Los Angeles, a band called Avenue 52 has a music video project called “Homeless,” whose profits will partly go to local helping organizations. In Berkeley, Ace Backwords, who is himself a homeless musician, organized and produced several compilations showcasing the work of numerous street musicians.
In Denver, David Adebonojo, performing at the 16th Street pedestrian mall, attracted the attention of musician/producer Tyler Ward, who got his career going. In one way, as the son of the Ivy League-educated parents (a doctor and a minister), Adebonojo doesn’t match the homeless stereotype. In another way, he does, with his history of being an auto mechanic, a Deadhead, and an ex-con. After writing a quantity of music in prison, he was released to the streets, where he spent enough years to have half a dozen guitars stolen.
Let’s hope for perfect weather in Springfield, Missouri, on May 12, for the second attempt at raising $10,000 for homeless causes with a concert called “Stomp the Blues Out of the Homeless.” The promoter, Jim Payne, whose day job has something to do with escrow and land titles, tried to launch this idea last year, but the weather was impossibly foul and he ended up losing all the money he had put up to get the thing going. Better luck this time!
Homeless Media Bonus Link
The late comedian Greg Giraldo — “Underwear Goes Inside the Pants” — featuring many of Venice Beach, California’s homeless residents.
Reactions?
Source: “Cyndi Lauper Opens Homeless LGBT Youth Center In NYC,” The New Civil Rights Movement, 08/25/11
Source: “VA Launches “Project REACH” Contest,” VA.gov, 03/19/12
Source: “Los Angeles Based Pop Rock Band Avenue 52 Raises Homeless Awareness,” SFGate.com, 04/12/11
Source: “Denver musician David Adebonojo (Dred Scott) strikes a chord,” DenverPost.com, 08/03/11
Source: “Fresh start desired for blues festival,” News-Leader.com, 05/05/12
Image by bartlec (Chris Bartle), used under its Creative Commons license.
Austin Music Scene Is a Vital Cultural Force
Austin, Texas, gets a lot of coverage here at House the Homeless. The fact that the House the Homeless organization is located there and devotes a great deal of energy to the city is only a secondary reason. The main thing is, Austin is a city that will be legendary in the future, like Athens and Alexandria are now.
People keep an eye on Austin, just like they pay attention to what goes on in New York or San Francisco, where they don’t even live, and never will. Even though in some ways Austin is in a class by itself, it faces the same issues as any metropolis. The difference between cities is not in their problems, but in their responses. Austin is a beautiful microcosm of everything that’s great about America. It’s almost an ideal melting pot, where cultures do not compete, but embrace and mingle.
One example of true hipness is the music scene, which has been wildly eclectic since the 60s, and probably before. (If anyone would like to say how much farther back the musical precocity really started, please comment!) A mind-boggling number of musicians either came from Austin or migrated to Austin. Michael Martin Murphey’s “Alleys of Austin” is one of the most beautiful songs ever sung. It’s a unique, amazing music town, and the South by Southwest music festival has contributed enormously to that reputation.
During the most recent iteration of the festival, an entrepreneurial venture was launched which involved people experiencing homelessness, and it made international news. Another interesting business idea put into motion more than three years back, we learn from Mark Horvath, in a 3:42 video clip viewable at his Hardly Normal website, and every link on that page is worth following.
Here is Horvath’s brief description of the project he characterizes as “a brilliant idea,” launched by Alan Graham:
I have been telling everyone about his catering trucks and how he rapid houses homeless people in RVs. Well Alan is at it again, this time trying to create ways for our homeless friends to generate income… Mobile Loaves and Fishes new Street Treats program… Basically, Alan empowers a homeless person to make some money, with the intent to save up and restore housing, by selling ice cream around downtown Austin.
But, let’s get back to the music scene, which has a dark side. One of the long, hard struggles taken on by House the Homeless was to defend people against a harsh “No Sit/No Lie” ordinance. The embarrassing connection to the world of music is that the original ordinance, passed in 2005, included an exception for those who rest while in line waiting to pay for concert tickets. Someone hoping to buy a thing not necessary for life was allowed to sit on a sidewalk. Someone in poor health, and homeless, waiting for a medical appointment or a meal, was not allowed to sit on a sidewalk. That was a pretty inhumane situation.
The outcome of the struggle is described by Richard R. Troxell:
After a year, we forced a compromise giving people with disabilities up to 30 minute respites in deference to their medical needs. As a result, in 2011, Austin became the first city in the nation to bring our No Sit/No Lie ordinance in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Perhaps now we can simply install enough benches for folks to sit down in a civilized fashion and thereby inch closer to becoming the world class city that we aspire to be.
There is another unhealthy relationship between the music scene and the homeless scene. Music venues usually feature alcohol, and, by coincidence, alcohol is the downfall of a certain percentage of people who slide into homelessness. Nationally, Richard reminds us, the health care costs resulting from alcoholism run into the trillions. His article also includes many very interesting ideas we won’t attempt to summarize here. To explain them adequately and persuasively is, after all, why he wrote the article in the first place. But one more quote:
In overview, we can see that with clear vision, new perspective and collectively involving the city, the citizens of Austin, federal and state governments and the business community in a fair, equitable, balanced and profitable fashion, we can end homelessness as it exists today.
In Austin, this especially applies to the involvement of citizens and business in the Waller Creek project, which is inextricably related to the area’s thriving music “ecosystem.” The design plan for this massive project has been narrowed down to the suggestions of four semi-finalists. A year ago, Shonda Novak and Marty Toohey wrote for the Austin Statesman that the creek “has become a trash-strewn stream and a hangout for vagrants.” They quoted a property owner who said:
You can have all the dreams in the world of what Waller Creek is to be like, but it’s not going to happen if we don’t deal with the transient population. The City Council needs to step up to the plate and pass stronger laws and insist that the police enforce them and the judges back them up.
Since then, how much has been done to assure that people experiencing homelessness will get some jobs out of this costly project? How much has been said about them in any other context than of a nuisance to be gotten rid of? The answer is, not much. This is the time for musicians and venue owners to make some noise about alleviating homelessness.
Musicians are some of the world’s nicest people, who can be astonishingly effective when they get motivated. When a musician reaches a level of fame, the results can be awesome. When Willie Nelson signed on to sue the Monsanto corporation, that was big news, and there are many other examples of this beneficent wielding of personal power.
Recently, we talked about how author Richard Florida cited Austin as an example of the Creative City, defining the music scene as one of its big three forces. The music universe has so much energy and influence. Look what the New Orleans musicians have accomplished, not only for fellow musicians, but for their city as a whole.
Austin is another such city, the kind of place where magic can happen. This is a blatant request for comments from the Austin music community about its unsung heroes. Please brag here, about the ways in which you have helped the homeless.
Source: “Street Treats: The Other SXSW Homeless Campaign in Downtown,” Hardly Normal, 03/31/12
Source: “How to end homelessness in Austin: A plan,” CultureMap Austin, 02/08/12
Source: “Private conservancy outlines plan to rescue, revive Waller Creek,” Statesman.com, 04/27/11
Image by pixajen, used under its Creative Commons license.
What Kind of Help Really Helps?
People experiencing homelessness do not always remain adrift. Sometimes they land on a friendly shore. Is it all a matter of luck? Or do their stories contain factors that could be applied more generally? What kind of help was extended to them by nonprofit groups, local businesses, individual benefactors, faith-based organizations, the media, or the government? What kind of help really helps?
Last time, we found that, for veteran Bill Jenkins, the things that made a difference were Alcoholics Anonymous and the nonprofit Veterans First. What helps even more, he told the reporter, is the respect given him by fellow citizens who recognize the contributions he has made to the community.
In the realm of show business, a person’s housing status is less important than whether they make it to the recording studio on time. Of course, it always helps to have a stable residence as a center of operations.
In January, Eminem signed a rapper called Yelawolf, who had been on the streets for about a year, to his record label. Since then, the young musician has been homeless in a whole different way, touring the U.S. and Europe.
Everybody heard about Ted Williams, the widely publicized “Homeless Man with a Golden Voice.” After being “discovered” by a journalist, he was introduced to many opportunities, but was psychologically unable to cope with the sudden changes in his life. This seems to be the theory held by Cord Jefferson, who describes the arc of Williams’s career and reflects,
In the future, it would probably be wise for Americans and the media to remember that people emerging from the depths to which Williams sank need time to recover before they’re thrown in front of cameras and lights and millions of people. Nobody’s saying that it can’t be done, of course, but it shouldn’t be done over night. And when people crash and burn because they weren’t ready for the spotlight, it seems wholly wrong to immediately forget about them.
Vicki Lawrence followed up with a video piece in which she plays a character called “Homeless Mama,” which is seen as either a humorous parody or a mean-spirited attack on the homeless, depending on who you ask.
Country singer Miranda Lambert’s parents were private investigators, a profession which apparently doesn’t pay very well or support a stable domesticity. Journalist Carina Adly MacKenzie titles her article, “Miranda Lambert spent part of childhood homeless bankrupt,” and says,
In fact, her family occasionally sheltered abused women and children at their home. These women inspired one of Lambert’s biggest hits, ‘Gunpowder & Lead.’
In The New Yorker, Dana Goodyear recounted the story of Nathaniel Ayers. This amazingly talented musician suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, and went from the Skid Row streets of Los Angeles to being the subject of a book titled The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music. And then his story was made into a movie that starred Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr.
In fact, it appears that what turned things around for Ayers was the interest taken in him by Steve Lopez, who first publicized the story of the homeless musical genius in a series of columns, then published the book. Like the golden-voiced homeless man Ted Williams, Ayers and his story captured the imagination of someone with the skill and the platform to make it public.
The other deciding factor was his membership in the Lamp Community, the Los Angeles nonprofit organization that follows the “housing first” principle. For helping people one at a time, there are not enough reporters to go around. Or enough facilities like Lamp.
The good news is that we don’t need to be newspaper journalists or shelter administrators in order to help this situation. There are plenty of different ways to help, and one of them is to learn about, and spread the word about, the Universal Living Wage.
Reactions?
Source: “Eminem signs homeless rapper,” Musicrooms.net, 01/18/11
Source: “A Month Later, ‘Homeless Man with a Golden Voice’ Is Abandoned by His Corporate Friends,” Good, 02/25/11
Source: “Vicki Lawrence as Homeless Mama,” Youtube.com
Source: “Miranda Lambert spent part of childhood homeless, bankrupt,” Zap2it, 11/04/10
Source: “Dana Goodyear, Letter from Los Angeles,” The New Yorker, 05/05/08
Image by Vincent van der Pas, used under its Creative Commons license.
Homelessness, Foster Kids, and Michele Bachmann
According to the Child Welfare Information Gateway, in September of 2009 (the last date for which statistics have been compiled), 423,773 American children were in foster care. That’s nearly half a million: Not such a large number these days when applied to dollars, but a very large number indeed when it’s children we’re talking about.
Kids in foster care are in an ambiguous situation, not actually homeless (PDF), but not in their own permanent homes, either. For about half of all the foster kids, the stated “case goal” is reunification with their families, a goal much more easily met if their families are lucky enough to have homes.
Although some are placed with relatives, about half of the children in foster care at any given time are with non-relatives. It seems that about half the total number of children remain in foster care for less than a year. Presumably, the family situation improves, and they are able to return.
Of course, a small percentage of kids “age out” of foster care each year, and their circumstances are often dire. Of the system’s graduates, only about half also graduate from high school. Only one in 50 goes on to earn a college degree.
It is estimated that a quarter of the teenagers too old for foster care are now homeless, and a third receive public assistance. Half are unemployed, and more than 4/5ths become parents at an age when they are not equipped for it, and without the means to prevent their children from joining a cycle of poverty, neglect, and even abuse.
Recently, all the members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, all the state governors, and the president received copies of Looking Up at the Bottom Line. An enthusiastic reply came from Michele Bachmann, who represents the 6th congressional district of Minnesota, and hopes to be the next Republican president.
Bachmann’s political activism is said to have originated with her experience as a 23-time foster parent. Sheryl Gay Stolberg explained in The New York Times, saying,
… [I]t was her role as a mother, both to her biological children and to her adolescent foster daughters, that spurred her to seek public office.
The state allowed a family to take care of up to three foster children at a time, and the Bachmanns specialized in teenage girls with eating disorders. The Bachmann biological children were home-schooled or went to private Christian schools, but foster children must attend public schools, and Michele Bachmann became politically active through wanting to influence how the schools are run.
Stolberg says,
By the late 1990s… Mrs. Bachmann was upset by the education her foster children were getting in public school. Teachers gave them ‘little special attention,’ and many were ‘placed in lower-level classes, as if they were not expected to succeed,’ she told a House subcommittee in 2007.
Benjy Sarlin takes the story a bit further, noting that Bachmann, at the same time,
… [P]itched her own legislation that would allow states to use vouchers to move foster children into private or home schools, injecting a hot-button partisan issue into the mix of what had been a mostly apolitical process.
Kathleen Strottman, executive director of the bi-partisan, nonprofit Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, is extremely appreciative of Bachmann’s advocacy for the organization, saying,
She’s been very helpful in speaking about what drew her to become a foster parent and using that for state and local recruiting efforts.
Although many of Bachmann’s ideas are frightening to those who fear the total disintegration of the social safety net, her sincerity and charisma cannot be doubted.
Reactions?
Source: “Foster Care Statistics 2009” (PDF), ChildWelfare.gov, 05/11
Source: “Roots of Bachmann’s Ambition Began at Home,” The New York Times, 06/21/11
Source: “Michele Bachmann’s Foster Care Contradiction,” TPMDC, 07/06/11
Image by Gage Skidmore, used under its Creative Commons license.
HomeAid Live – a Social Media Event
HomeAid is scheduled for November 11 and 12, during the National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. It is a virtual happening, very Earth-friendly. (And besides, everybody is too broke to travel. If any spare change is lurking between the couch cushions, better to donate it to the cause than spend it on gas.) David Mathison, CEO and co-host of Be The Media, says:
This will be a truly green event. Since everything is online, there is no place to fly or drive, no trees to cut down for posters or tickets, and minimal waste: there’s almost no damage to the environment.
Parts of it will come, courtesy of YouTube live streaming video, from the Apollo Theater in New York and also from Nashville, Tennessee, and many other places. The event’s publicity literature says,
Celebrities, artists, and performers from across the country are contributing exclusive video content that will be streamed on the HomeAid.net website… Many artists plan to hold live ‘house parties’ right from their homes, streamed via webcam… Fans will have many ways to participate, from uploading their own videos to spreading the word on social media sites, and even downloading mobile applications for the iPhone or Android.
And house parties! The whole point here is to share the experience with friends. Participation guarantees a global audience for the performers and the video artists. Regular people can participate just as much by helping spread the word and encourage others to join in. And have a party! In terms of sheer unprecedented numbers, HomeAid will probably become known as the Woodstock of the Internet.
HomeAid is also a national nonprofit organization that has, over the last 20 years, helped 100,000 people get back on their feet. What they do is, build and maintain shelters where homeless families and individuals can regain their dignity and reconstruct their lives. Currently, there are 20 chapters in 14 states.
The most recent addition to the crew is Ken Kragen, who put together the immensely successful We Are the World, as well as Net Aid and Hands Across America. The CEO of HomeAid is Jeffrey Slavin, who is understandably jazzed about the prospect of this event, which is still in the planning stages, and still looking for sponsors and for suggestions on more ways to be even more spectacular. Slavin says,
Because the event takes place online, anyone can watch it from anywhere in the world, and anyone can donate to the cause.
Never has an event been so easy to get involved with, for either an organization or an individual. That’s why the graphic on this page is the first image from their Sponsor Deck, which is pretty much what you’d see if you were in a conference room for a presentation. If you would like a Sponsor Deck of your very own, please go to the Sponsor Page and fill out the form. After receiving the Sponsor Deck, you will be equipped with an immense amount of detail about every aspect of the project and exactly how to become involved.
Here are four more online ways to connect with HomeAid:
The Website
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
—————————————-
Richard R. Troxell of House the Homeless has been (again) a guest on BlogTalkRadio, interviewed by Zane Safrit. He is the host of a long-running show on small-business success, business innovation, and the economy. Richard and Zane first met in February to discuss Richard’s new book, Looking Up at the Bottom Line: The Struggle for the Living Wage. Zane was so surprised at finding common ground with someone advocating a major increase in the entry-level wages that he has invited Richard back to further discuss the economics of the living wage.
After a brief update on House the Homeless‘ campaign against Austin’s “No Sit/No Lie” ordinance, Richard and Zane talk about the working homeless in the United States: those who hold minimum-wage jobs but can’t afford minimum housing. What would happen if these millions of workers got a raise? A massive economic boom, as the least among us are able to buy the products generated by a consumer society.
For information on how to prevent homelessness before it even happens, please learn more about the Universal Living Wage, the plan that can end homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum-wage workers and prevent economic homelessness for all of 10.1 million minimum-wage workers.
Reactions?
Source: “HomeAid: A Virtual Event to Benefit America’s Homeless,” HomeAid.net, 01/11/11
Source: “Richard Troxell: Author Looking Up at the Bottomline, Part 2,” BlogTalkRadio.com, 05/04/11
Image from HomeAid, used under Fair Use: Reporting.
The Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative
Prevention is always better than the cure, and homelessness is no exception to that rule. The Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative (NSI) takes a multi-pronged approach to homelessness prevention. It’s all about eliminating barriers that keep people from fully participating in our society, whether politically, economically, or in any other way.
The people behind this initiative see a lot of racial bias underneath the subprime mortgage crisis, and aim to do something about it. They want to see more sustainable credit options for low-income borrowers, especially ethnic minorities. The NSI’s website says,
[…O]pportunities for homeownership are closely linked to wealth creation and financial security, particularly for African American and Latino households. The current subprime and foreclosure crisis threatens to reverse the substantial gains in minority homeownership that the country has witnessed in recent decades.
Rather than just dealing with the tattered victims of the system, the NSI intends to reform the system. Right now, change is needed in order to create sustainable home ownership. Change is needed to prevent repetition of the circumstances that have brought America to such a sorry condition. Plenty of damage control needs to be done now, and a whole lot has to be accomplished in a short time to keep even more damage from needing to be controlled later.
Another page on the NSI website explains one of the big difficulties with the subprime lending and foreclosure crisis: in most jurisdictions, nobody has the resources to handle such a huge and complex catastrophe. Cases are flooding the courts, neighborhoods are abandoned to blight, and people who are just trying to get along and keep their homes often don’t have a clue what to do.
They need legal services programs and foreclosure diversion and mediation programs, plus improvement of the entire foreclosure and bankruptcy processes. And it’s not only homeowners who suffer. Renters are in even worse shape. The most conscientious, on-time-paying tenant in the world doesn’t have a chance when the landlord’s mortgage is foreclosed.
Tenants need protection from having their already precarious existences upset by stuff that isn’t even their fault. They need eviction defense and help in relocating. Tenants are seen as lowly pawns on their chessboard, by landlords and bureaucrats alike, but to a renter family, moving screws up everything. It’s costly and time-consuming; it affects the kids’ education and friendships, the parents’ ability to travel to their jobs, the ties of mutual help among neighbors. Being forced to move is bad enough when a new place is easy to find and is affordable. But many families are denied even that much. Their new place is a shelter or the streets.
And it’s not even a good deal for the lenders. They wind up with “distressed” properties in urban ghost towns that are headed straight down the tubes. What is the point? If property is going to be lost by one party, at the very least let’s find a way to utilize it rather than let it rot. The NSI wants to see foreclosed properties put to use as housing. Either get new owners into them, or let nonprofit organizations take them over and get some affordable rental housing onto the market for people who need it, meanwhile employing people who need work to do the rehabilitation and management of these properties. The organization has even more ambitious goals:
The Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative supports innovative efforts to overcome the servicer bottleneck in loan modifications, including research into the legal and economic structure of the servicing industry, advocacy to encourage greater transparency and accountability in the mortgage industry, and the implementation of timely and effective loss mitigation policies.
The NSI is headed by Solomon Greene, a product of Stanford, Berkeley, and Yale, who holds the title of Senior Program Officer, and is also a professor in the field of urban planning. Before that, he was a New York University Law Fellow. Just a few more highlights from Greene’s CV:
He has published on such diverse topics as comparative welfare reform, the history of juvenile courts, and forced evictions in squatter communities… he served as Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal… and a human rights fellow at the World Bank Institute, where he developed a set a best practices for legal titling of informal housing in developing countries… Greene held leadership positions within several community development and affordable housing organizations…
The Neighborhood Stabilization initiative is part of the Open Society Institute (OSI), financed by the Institute’s Equality and Opportunity Fund, which in turn is supported by George Soros. The U.S. is only one of more than 60 countries where his foundations work to better the lives of marginalized people such as the Roma (gypsies) of Europe. The OSI makes grants for the study of such efforts as identifying “effective models for helping low-income, low-skilled people become economically self-sufficient.”
In the United States, certain cities have come in for heavy attention from the NSI. In Baltimore, the organization is concerned with drug addiction, criminal and juvenile justice, youth, education, and community development. It was at work in New Orleans even before Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing disasters.
Another offshoot, the Urban Institute, is very active in Chicago, Illinois and Portland, Oregon. There is a Special Fund for Poverty Alleviation, which is interested in, among other things, reforming the system of criminal background checks in employment and recognizing that just because a person made a mistake and paid a debt to society that doesn’t mean he or she should never be allowed to work again. This alone should go a long way toward alleviating homelessness.
Reactions?
Source: “Neighborhood Stabilization,” Soros.org
Source: “About,” Soros.org
Source: “Solomon Greene,” wagner.nyu.edu
Image by Aldon (Aldon Hynes), used under its Creative Commons license.
Shozna: One Homeless Person Redeemed, Several Million to Go
In Britain, the recent marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton was attended by a formerly homeless young woman who has one of the trademarks of celebrity: a single name, and it is Shozna.
Last fall, an organization called Centrepoint held a fundraiser where Shozna told her story and related how Centrepoint helped her to escape homelessness. Prince William calmed her nervousness before the speech, and blew everyone’s mind by hugging her after it. In the course of planning for the royal wedding, a hundred “Golden Ticket” invitations were extended, with William inviting representatives from all his favorite charities, while Kate invited folks from her parents’ village. Keri Sutherland of the Sunday Mirror reports,
Shozna’s struggle began when, while training in childcare, she had a stroke and needed a heart operation. Shortly afterwards she left home, staying with relatives and friends until her council referred her to homeless charity Centrepoint. Shozna, who asked us to withhold her last name, said: “I moved into Centrepoint housing in July. It was difficult, but luckily I’ve pulled through.”
Shozna was raised in East London, and Fay Schlesinger tells us how the enthusiastic student with career plans suffered a stroke at age 18 and became half-paralyzed. Months of medical treatment, surgery, and rehab followed. The reasons for Shozna’s subsequent break with her family are not told, but we do know she lived in a hostel and then a homeless shelter. Eventually, she moved to a council flat, which is what they call government-subsidized housing in Britain. (For an exercise in broadening the mental horizons, check out the comments of various British subjects at the blog London Muslim.) As far as Shozna’s future, the lingering effects of her heart problem and the stroke have eliminated some possibilities, but she now hopes to get into retail and work her way up to store manager.
For the great event, Shozna was accoutered by Warren Holmes (hair), Armand Beasley (makeup), Irresistible Headdresses (fascinator), Kyles Collection (jewelry), Jimmy Choo (shoes), and of course Raishma of London (dress.) Couturier Raishma describes the excitement from her perspective
I decided to go for a 50s style prom dress in a block colour scheme of papaya orange and red to give the look a modern take for 2011. I designed an embroidered border with delicate silk roses and hand beading to be positioned on her neckline… I then started worrying about the complete look… I styled Shozna from head to toe for the Big Day…
For the ceremony, the young woman’s escort was Centrepoint chief Seyi Obakin. The London Tonight crew filmed not just Shozna at the wedding, but the entire preparation procedure, one of the world’s most thorough and glittering makeovers. Question: At what point did the ITV network enter the picture? Because, surely, the royal couple did not expect Shozna to show up wearing something from the Oxfam charity shop.
On the one hand, thanks to this sequence of events, the word “homeless” has reached the ears of more people, and that’s a beautiful thing. On the other hand, it’s so easy to cheer for a lovely young woman, and to want to turn her into a fairy-tale princess. But one Cinderella is not enough. How nice it would be if we could see that all homeless women need the resources to take care of themselves and present their best faces to the world.
This includes the girls who become sloppy fat from soup-kitchen diets, which tend to be heavy on the starch; and the mothers whose hair has fallen out from anxiety as they experience homelessness with a passel of kids to worry about. It includes the women who have lost teeth through violence, poor nutrition, or lack of the most elementary facilities for self-care. Also, the abused, the tattooed, and yes, even the alcoholic and addicted.
In our own land of America, the Universal Living Wage can end homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum-wage workers, and prevent economic homelessness for ten million minimum wage workers. Including a heck of a lot of women.
Reactions?
Source: “Royal wedding: Woman who was once homeless tells of joy at personal invite,” Sunday Mirror, 04/17/11
Source: “From homeless shelters to a front row seat,” Daily Mail, 04/17/11
Source: “Shozna the homeless Muslim Royal Wedding girl,” London Muslim, 04/18/11
Source: “Dressing Shozna from Centre Point Charity for the Royal Wedding,” Raishma.co, 05/03/11
Image of Shozna in gown by Raishma used under Fair Use: Reporting.
Celebrities and Homeless Activism
Looking back over several months, we find quite a few instances where the famous and prominent in many fields have used their positions, and the fact that people pay attention to them, in order to raise both awareness and money for the homeless. Janet Jackson, for instance, recently told a TV interviewer that she and her brother used to buy food at a certain Los Angeles restaurant and drive around distributing it to homeless people, Michael at the wheel and Janet handing out the dinners through the window.
This winter, the popular British band Coldplay did two benefits for a homeless charity called Crisis, and both shows were opened by the Choir With No Name, which is made up of homeless and fringe people. Sean Michaels reported that Coldplay, which has sold more than 50 million albums, held these events at surprise venues, which their spokesperson said was intended to give the audience…
… a small taste of the uncertainty faced by the thousands of homeless people who do not know where they will spend the night.
In early December, the nonprofit StandUp For Kids benefited from a Santa Monica concert headlined by the Oscar-winning musician Ryan Bingham, who was joined by The Americans and Timmy Curran. StandUp For Kids has taken on the task of helping at-risk street kids throughout America. Being on the road with his band has opened Bingham’s eyes to the conditions that many young people endure. He told reporter Alex Cohen,
You’re constantly encountering people from all different walks of life at all hours of the day — so you’re not always looking at the glossy side of everything — but also seeing the less fortunate side of our cities and communities and towns. I feel a lot of people still often overlook that these days…
At Christmas time, Pope Benedict hosted a Vatican luncheon for 250 homeless Romans, a glimpse of which can be seen on YouTube.
Musician and actor Tom Waits, who will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month, has published Seeds on Hard Ground, a book of poems inspired by photographer Michael O’Brien’s portraits of people experiencing homelessness. A special chapbook edition raised $90,000 for the food bank, homeless referral services, and family support center in Sonoma County, California.
Also in California, in Nevada County, a new musical ensemble has been born. It was organized by Chad Conner Crow, who has been a Hospitality House staff member for years, and made up of people who spend part of their time at the homeless center and part of their time in the woods. Crow was originally inspired in his career many years ago by Utah Phillips, the musician known for his songs about and concern for people experiencing homelessness. The band is called Home Free. Reporter Tom Kellar says,
Current band members include Crow and Woody on vocals; Vadi, a classically trained guitarist from the Ukraine; Gene on keyboards, Dennis on drums and Chris on congas.
Crow’s newest ambition is to establish a nonprofit record label for underprivileged musicians. And don’t forget, Home Free is looking for donated instruments and equipment, so if you have any of those, please get in touch with Crow at chadconnercrow@gmail.com.
In Britain, Ross Lydall reports on the release of a three-song EP album, the music by Tres B (Tresor Kiambu), who was brought to England as an orphaned child from the Congo, and has since spent many years as a street person. Prince William heard one of his songs while working at the Centrepoint homeless hostel, and encouraged the youth. Lydall says Kiambu admires Bob Marley and Michael Jackson, and describes his sound as a “swirling mix of central African folk, hip-hop and soul.”
Reactions?
Source: “Coldplay plan Christmas charity shows,” Guardian.co.uk, 11/10/10
Source: “Oscar-winner Ryan Bingham to perform benefit concert for homeless youth,” SPCR.org, 12/02/10
Source: “Home Free: Homeless shelter guests create house band,” The Union, 01/09/11
Source: “Homeless singer releases first EP after meeting Prince William at hostel,” London Evening Standard, 02/22/11
Image by gingerbydesign, used under its Creative Commons license.
Economic Homelessness, Rent, and Deadened Memories
Economic homelessness is an important concept in the overall picture examined in Looking Up At the Bottom Line. The economic homeless are the working poor who have some kind of a job, but nothing close to a living wage that would provide, for instance, rent. They inhabit cars, shelters, squats, friends’ couches, and other temporary and very marginal quarters. Or no quarters at all.
An interesting thing happened when New York State was electing itself a new governor last fall. Jimmy McMillan, representing a political party called The Rent Is Too Damn High, participated in the televised debate, and his remarks are worth listening to. This video clip gives the gist, in under two minutes. The candidate did not succeed in the gubernatorial election, but that’s okay, because it frees him up to concentrate on his 2012 presidential campaign.
Suzanne Rozdeba conducted an interview with McMillan for the East Village local edition of The New York Times. At one point, the candidate underwent a spell of homelessness himself. The entire interview is highly recommended, and Rozdeba must be profusely thanked for capturing a number of excellent quotations from Jimmy McMillan. Here are just a few:
*Market value is a bunch of crap. It’s a plan to run out the poor.
*You’ve got to stop paying people in the government a football player salary.
*I would have no problem getting any bill passed before the House and the Senate.
*I guarantee you, if I’m sworn in in January, jobs will pop up in February.
*Whatever party I run under, I want them to know I’m not satisfied with anything coming from any elected official.
*We have bird-brained economic leaders. People need money to spend. And it boils down to one thing: the rent is too damn high.
Is McMillan just a freakshow? Maybe not. He was written up in the Wall Street Journal. For a very different establishment, the Center for a Stateless Society, Kevin Carson considered the ideas held by the very entertaining politician, and compared them with the ideas of Franz Oppenheimer. Here, roughly, is the argument, and it has a lot to do with homelessness. Economic exploitation, of course, goes way back. Carson says,
In sparsely populated areas of the New World, the state preempted ownership of vacant land, barred access to ordinary homesteaders, and then granted title to favored land barons and speculators. The result is that we see enormous tracts of vacant and unimproved land held out of use by state-privileged landlords, so that land is made artificially scarce and expensive for those who desire an opportunity to support themselves.
This artificial scarcity exists because the state wrongfully enforces artificial property rights. Of course, the first thing you want to ask is, what’s the difference between an artificial property right and a genuine property right? Capitalism creates artificial private property rights by coercion, backing up the right of a privileged few who control access to natural opportunities. Genuine, legitimate private property, by contrast, is about the right to possess the fruits of one’s own labor, for instance by growing a crop on land that nobody is using. Carson says,
[… T]he privileged classes of landlords, usurers and other extortionists seek to close off opportunities for self-employment because such opportunities make it too hard to get people to work for them on profitable terms. [… T]he artificial dearth of natural opportunities to produce creates a buyer’s market for labor in which workers compete for jobs instead of jobs competing for workers.
When everything is owned by the government plus a lucky few people at the top, the vast majority of the people can’t be self-sufficient, because they have no resources to work with. Which makes them sitting ducks, ripe for economic exploitation. For instance, they wind up paying a grotesque percentage of their income just on rent — or are totally unable to afford even the lowest available rent.
Which brings us back to Jimmy McMillan, a voice of sanity crying out in the wilderness. It puts him in the same realm as Richard R. Troxell of House the Homeless. We very much recommend the excellent radio interview (with host Wayne Hurlbert), during which Richard talks how the Universal Living Wage is good for business, and how it can get a million minimum-wage workers off the streets, while preventing economic homelessness for 10 million minimum-wage Americans.
In many cases, those with mental illness or substance abuse problems, or both, fall into the chronically homeless category. A lot of the “chronically homeless” are just plain unfit for the work force. But mental illness can be treated with conscientious medication, followup, and luck. Substance abuse can be treated with 12-step programs and other modalities. People experiencing either condition, or both, can find their way back to being productive members of the work force if there are jobs for them. They can escape the homeless condition, if there are places for them to live within the means provided by those jobs.
Those are two very big “ifs,” as Richard discovered in the late 1990s. He was working with people experiencing homelessness who had two major things going on — mental illness and substance abuse. With great struggle, he secured funding to put 20 people through a “continuum of care” program including detox, substance abuse counseling, housing, job training, and job placement. Despite the reported 100% trainee placement rate, they all ended up homeless within two years, unable to make rent with their minimum-wage paychecks.
“Substance abuse” is an interesting shorthand term. Richard expresses the same idea in different words, as “self-medicating with some memory deadening substance.” There is a valuable clue here, to the whole skid-row, lowest-common-denominator drug culture. There is a question that needs to be asked: What is it about life in contemporary America that makes so many people want to deaden their memories? When we confront that question, we will be ready to make some progress.
Reactions?
Source: “Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Amazon.com
Source: “The Rent Is Too Damn High Party’s Jimmy McMillan at the NY Governor Debate,” YouTube.com
Source: “Interview | Jimmy McMillan,” The Local East Village NYT, 01/18/11
Source: “Yes — The Rent Really Is Too Damn High!,” c4ss.org,10/26/10
Screen capture of Jimmy McMillan is used under Fair Use: Reporting.
Brad Pitt and the Homeless of New Orleans
Celebrities get involved in good causes, that’s nothing new, but when Brad Pitt gets involved, things happen in a big, big way. The actor was making a movie in Canada when Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding hit New Orleans. Watching the TV news coverage, he thought about all the residents who had been made homeless. He also recalled his first impressions from making a film there in 1994, when he became convinced it was the most interesting city in America, a world-class urban environment with everything going for it. Pitt said,
It’s like Venice or Rome; an essential world city.
These words were spoken on the fifth anniversary of the flood, when Pitt sat down with historian and old friend Douglas Brinkley for a long interview that was published in the New Orleans daily Times-Picayune. He talked about visiting again a couple of years after the disaster, when the city was still a zone of devastation. He said,
It was obliterationville… You know, these weren’t just houses. These were people’s lives shattered. Families in pain, memories washed away, just obliterated… I met Katrina victims who had been given FEMA trailers and had nothing to hook them up to… We were telling people to come home and yet when they got back to New Orleans they were treated in a substandard way. I just thought it was atrocious.
Pitt also voiced some unkind thoughts about the cause of the destruction, namely, shoddy work on the levees by the Army Corps of Engineers, coupled with negligence when it came to maintenance of the flood protection. He felt that if the work had been done right in the first place, fixing it would not have cost billions. There would have been fewer casualties from the storm, fewer homeless, displaced people afterwards, and a grave injustice would have been avoided.
In the Lower Ninth Ward, more than 4,000 homes had been destroyed. Pitt adopted the neighborhood as his project, and took decisive action to bring the scattered residents back. After buying a place in the French Quarter to have a base of operations, he consulted with architects, established the nonprofit Make It Right Foundation, and began making plans for the reconstruction.
The first step was taken with style and flair, in December of 2007, when the ravaged Lower Ninth was brightened up with a Christo-like art installation. The vacant, bulldozer-scraped lots suddenly sprouted a crop of glowing pink rectangular tents with fabric skins, stand-ins for the eventual real homes that would be built there.
A self-described architecture junkie, Pitt knew the right people to approach, starting with William McDonough + Partners, whose website says,
WM+P developed criteria to frame Make It Right’s environmental mission, using Cradle to Cradle thinking to outline design and systems performance requirements for each home, achieving the goal of LEED Platinum certification for all of the houses.
Translated from architect-speak, that means “state of the art.” A dozen other firms were brought into the project too. As Pitt says, “The holy grail of architecture is finding ways to design sustainable urban communities,” and these were the experts to do it. Now the local New Orleans contractors and builders are up to speed on green building principles and techniques. The goal is to wind up with 150 new homes in the Lower Ninth, and then perhaps to expand the project into St. Bernard Parish.
This wouldn’t apply to “green” homes everywhere, but for the particular area, the structures are elevated enough to endure flooding. Solar panels provide energy for homes that are so high-performance, they produce more energy than they consume, without polluting. According to the Green Building Council, the Lower Ninth Ward is now the most high-performing clean neighborhood that exists anywhere. The next step, Pitt says, is to bring the price down, which will do a lot toward encouraging other communities to follow the template.
Make It Right‘s own website goes into more detail about how the organization is committed to making a difference. Along with houses surrounded by native landscaping, the foundation is creating new streets, rain gardens, and micro-farms, and working with schools and community centers, adding up to…
[…] a unique laboratory for testing and implementing new construction techniques, technologies and materials that will make green, storm resistant homes affordable and broadly available to working families in communities across America.
Through the generosity of architects from around the world, and the donations of many individuals, the homeless residents are able to return, and the neighborhood is becoming a model of innovative and sustainable design.
The website includes an amazing map, where a little circle pops up on the page to mark every house that has been rebuilt. If you’re into architecture, design, urban planning, or green living in general, the slide shows of each home in its various stages of construction are fascinating.
There is a book about the progress that has been made so far, sharing information about the practical building designs, how to maximize value in the economic, ecological, and social realms all at once, and technological solutions that can be adapted in different parts of the world where sustainable housing is sorely needed. Like the formerly homeless New Orleans residents, others can take hope from the advances that have been made here.
Reactions?
Source: “Brad Pitt talks about Hurricane Katrina, his Make it Right work and his love for New Orleans,” NOLA.com, 08/25/10
Source: “Make It Right,” McDououghPartners.com
Source: “Our Work and Progress,” MakeItRightNOLA.org
Source: “Architecture in Times of Need – Make It Right Rebuilding New Orleans‚ Lower Ninth Ward,” MakeItRightNOLA.org
Image by Howie Luvzus, used under its Creative Commons license.
Austin, TX “Quality of Life” ordinances
Free: 2012 HtH Pet Calendar
2011 HtH HEALTH SURVEY
BUY THE BOOK
CONNECT WITH US
