First-Person Homeless: Kirsten Anderberg
As we recall from English class, if someone tells or writes a narrative using “I,” that story is being told in the first person. There is a quite a growing body of “first-person homeless” literature, and Kirsten Anderberg is one of its shining lights. Her first university degree was in political science. Last year, she became a Master of Arts in history and archiving.
This is from her bio:
She has published more articles in first person by a woman street performer than ever published prior in history. Her historical work regarding street performance and busking is filling a gap too long neglected.
These achievements are splendid, but consider the irony. If ever there was a writer with no need of diplomas to certify her mastery, Anderberg is that writer — brilliant, with street cred up the wazoo (a perfectly valid expression, meaning “in great abundance or plentiful supply,” and, in this case, it also means “equivalent to a Ph.D.”)
Most of her published work has stemmed from first-hand experience in the areas of natural health, political activism, civil rights, poverty, feminism, performing arts, homelessness, and institutional history. Her “Philanthropy in Child Protection Institutions,” subtitled “Community Volunteers Be Aware: Gifts Can Make Kids Targets in Institutions,” is outstandingly powerful and revelatory. We admire those who speak truth to power, but Anderberg does something even more rare and courageous: she speaks truth to the well-intentioned but clueless.
With a target in her sights, Anderberg is merciless and unrelenting. Her piece on the Section 8 voucher program for low-income housing assistance is absolutely scathing. It drips with scorn, and not in any fuzzy, generalized way. It is packed with specific examples of egregious failure spelled out in chapter and verse. She relates several nightmare scenarios — not imaginary ones — but horrible situations that have actually happened to people she knew and has worked with.
Apparently, in any given area, 90% of the rental units cost more than the Housing Authority has decided a Section 8 tenant can pay. Excesses and follies, Anderberg tells it like it is, explains it all for you, and ties it up in a ribbon with a bow. How many people do you know who would actually call 300 different Los Angeles apartment ads to determine that only three landlords would take Section 8 vouchers?
And then she explains the big Catch-22. Really, it’s amazing that anyone ever finds a place to rent. The waiting time to get into the program can be unbelievable, long enough so a single mother’s kids grow up and leave home before she can qualify, and then because there are no kids, she still can’t qualify.
Anderberg says,
It seems at every turn the government is trying to make sure only a small percentage of those who qualify for Section 8 can get it, and then those who finally do get it, cannot use it!… Many people give up every month in exhaustion, not using their Section 8, forfeiting it after waiting years for it, as they could not find any way to actually use it for rent anywhere.
Even the minor irritations are inimical to the quality of life. Like having the marked Housing Authority vehicle pull up to your door to make an inspection, letting all the neighbors know your loved ones are Section 8 riff-raff.
Furthermore,
The Section 8 ‘inspections’ seem more to check on the participants’ behaviors and lifestyles than to actually inspect for housing code and standards violations.
Then there is the ridiculous rule against shared housing:
If two welfare moms with Section 8 wanted to team up and try to find an affordable house together, costing the state less in funds for rent, Section 8 will not pay for that: the two women must rent separate rental units, probably apartments instead, at higher prices, which actually pleases the landlords.
A comment to Anderberg’s (republished elsewhere) article noted that things were somewhat better on the East coast, and added,
Section 8 housing is actually to the advantage of the owner because that means he has to keep places open as section 8 housing and gets a check regardless of if someone is living in it… Any landlord who doesn’t have section 8 housing is an idiot. Most will instantly take it because if there is an empty house in your unit you can pimp the system… A lot of the funds for repairs on the units come from the section 8 money. They are instant money in the bank.
Getting back to Anderberg: She has more to say about landlords, too. And the government:
In all reality, the only reason the Section 8 program is funded and allowed to continue is that it is designed to benefit land owners, much more than the renters. Section 8 does not help renters become home owners. Section 8 will not allow Section 8 renters to pay their rent towards home ownership, as in a mortgage, they may only use Section 8 for temporary rentals, turning it in essence, into a benefits program for land owners…
There is a serious housing crisis and the chasm between the have and have-nots has never been more obvious. This band-aid program of Section 8 vouchers barely functions in reality… Section 8 vouchers are often not worth the paper they are written on… In essence, the government has made the Section 8 voucher program nearly impossible to use, while feigning the illusion of concern and remedy.
“Minimum wage is not equal to minimum rents,” Anderberg says, and, of course, that is what the Universal Living Wage is all about. All Americans who work 40 hours a week should be able to afford basic housing wherever they live. We can end economic homelessness for over a million people and prevent economic homelessness for all of 10.1 million minimum-wage workers. Learn more about the Universal Living Wage.
Reactions?
Source: “Kirsten Anderberg,” Amazon.com
Source: ““Section 8″: The Myths of Low Income Housing in the U.S.,” Mostly Water, 09/19/08
Image by Sir_Iwan (Pawel), used under its Creative Commons license.
Why the Protected Homeless Class Resolution is Needed
Some societal malcontents will talk all day about what is wrong, a useful skill which has its place. But if someone asks how to fix the mess, they fall strangely silent. Not so with Richard R. Troxell. The one thing a person would never need to ask him is, “Yeah, but what are we supposed to do about it?” The complete plan for fixing this mess is already there between the covers of Looking Up at the Bottom Line. Troxell, the founder of House the Homeless, knows what to do about it, and lays it out in transparent, step-by-step simplicity.
One of the most important documents is the Protected Homeless Class Resolution (PHCR). Because many states and cities are passing and enforcing laws targeting poor and homeless people, House The Homeless feels the need for the adoption of this resolution by City, State and the United States governments. We have talked before about various aspects of the PHCR and the reasons for its creation — the shortage of affordable housing, the insufficient minimum wage, and the huge number of Americans who are involuntarily without permanent addresses. We have also talked about how the PHCR contains the foundations of Richard’s arguments for the urgency of adopting the Universal Living Wage, the solution that will help all Americans either directly or indirectly.
The United States has signed on to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We as a nation have agreed that all people are entitled to a minimum standard of living and dignity. This minimum standard’s components include something to eat, something to wear, someplace to live, and some care when sick. It doesn’t say the country has to give everybody these things, because the political systems of some countries are not built that way. But signing the Declaration is supposed to mean that the specific country agrees to recognize, serve, and protect the efforts of its citizens to obtain these things, under its political system, because it agrees with the concept that people should have them.
And then there’s another United Nations Document the U.S. signed, the Habitat Agenda, which has to do with various human rights including equality for women and the poor, and protection from illegal forced evictions, and not penalizing people experiencing homelessness because of their status.
Sometimes you wouldn’t know it from the way we act. Not long ago, Willy Staley, a Rockefeller Foundation Urban Leaders Fellow, and expert on federal urban policy, reported on the harassment situation in one of America’s most beautiful cities. There used to be a popular song that included the line, “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” The reason being, because “you’re gonna meet some gentle people there.” No longer. Staley’s piece is titled “If You’re Going to San Francisco, Be Sure to Never Sit on the Sidewalk.”
Staley reported on how the city’s no sit/no lie ordinance came into being. It seems that the Mayor, Gavin Newsom, took a walk on Haight Street and saw a gutter punk smoking crack. That incident was the impetus behind the wave of public support for an oppressive law. Because a politician happened to witness an offensive bit of bad behavior, all of San Francisco’s other various assorted subgroups of people experiencing homelessness paid the price. To make sitting a police matter was an example of civic overkill. Staley wrote,
Furthermore, SFPD doesn’t need a sit/lie ordinance to harass gutter punks on Haight Street; they’ll go ahead and do it anyway. They probably ought to. But a city-wide law that makes it illegal to sit or lie on the street anywhere in San Francisco strikes me as a real threat to any sort of city life other than that which makes the wheels of commerce turn smoother.
In April, an Associated Press story related how official efforts to sweep the homeless from the beaches and sidewalks of Honolulu only succeeded in making life more difficult and dangerous for the young. When an encampment of some 200 people, including 70 children, was broken up, advocates for the homeless voiced their distress. The article says,
Their concern is greatest for homeless children… going along with their families to areas that are increasingly further away from running water, electricity and transportation lines… The cleanup of a homeless encampment last month at Keaau Beach Park spurred many of the residents to move into shelters but led others to more secluded, undeveloped areas of the Waianae Coast farther away from the highway.
As we have often heard, children are the last resort of scoundrels. Any ridiculous restrictive law that the most retrogressive mind can think of, the ultimate argument they always resort to is, “Think of the children!” Now here we have a problem where “Think of the children!” is a legitimate and very real concern. But… these are only homeless children. So the civic leaders no longer cry, “Think of the children!” It’s just the lonely few advocates for the homeless who are thinking of the children this time.
And there is more to it than the difficulty of getting to stores and schools and free clinics, for these scattered people. Living together in a large encampment, no doubt some parents formed friendships that enabled shared child care and other benefits that come along with neighborliness and trust. When such a settlement is destroyed, even those tenuous bonds are torn, yet another loss for families that have lost everything already.
The Protected Homeless Class Resolution is meant to address the needs of people who have no alternative to living on the streets and who have no choice but to live, breathe, eat, sleep, sit, or stand in public places. One of the things it wants to protect them from is being persecuted and prosecuted as criminals for the crime of merely existing. If people experiencing homelessness are a vulnerable group that needs and deserves protection, children experiencing homelessness are many times more deserving.
Reactions?
Source: “If You’re Going to San Francisco, Be Sure to Never Sit on the Sidewalk,” AmericanCity.org, 03/09/10
Source: “Advocates say sweeps pushing Honolulu homeless to streets, remote areas,” Greenfield Reporter, 04/03/11
Image by Mcaretaker (Matthew Hunt), used under its Creative Commons license.
The Crime of Breathing While Homeless
In the United States over the past three decades, we have seen the invention of many new crimes (Driving While Hispanic, Voting While Black, Flying While Muslim, etc.) that are not officially on the books. But they are all too real for the people caught up in them. One of the new crimes is, apparently, Breathing While Homeless.
Check out this Executive Summary from the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH). Its full title is “A Dream Denied: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities.” The numbers it utilized are a few years old, but if anyone imagines that things have improved since then, we have a nice bridge to sell them. (The bridge comes ready-equipped with a used tarpaulin, several sheets of prime cardboard, and… well, that’s all, actually.)
Depending on location, the statistics on people experiencing homelessness, and on available shelter space, may fluctuate. But the tendency to make homelessness a law enforcement problem continues to change for the worse. The authors of this report studied laws and practices in 224 cities and concluded,
This trend includes measures that target homeless persons by making it illegal to perform life-sustaining activities in public.
It mentions activities we have discussed on this blog, such as sitting, sleeping, camping, cooking, eating, or begging in public places. Of course, most cities figure out quickly that a two-pronged approach works best. Go after the people experiencing homelessness, AND go after the people who try to help, such as organizations that provide food. Here are some of the measures that have been taken by municipalities in the Orwellian name of “Quality of Life,” according to the NCH report:
* Legislation that makes it illegal to sleep, sit, or store personal belongings in public spaces in cities where people are forced to live in public spaces;
* Selective enforcement of more neutral laws, such as loitering or open container laws, against homeless persons;
* Sweeps of city areas where homeless persons are living to drive them out of the area, frequently resulting in the destruction of those persons’ personal property, including important personal documents and medication; and
* Laws that punish people for begging or panhandling to move poor or homeless persons out of a city or downtown area.
There are of course numerous civil rights issues. Laws against vagrancy and loitering have always been constitutionally shaky, especially when the exact same behavior is accepted if the miscreant has a home where the police can tell them to go. (At Venice Beach, California, there used to be a street guy with a great line. If some tourist or local resident offended him, he would yell like a scolding parent, “Go to your room!”)
When a homeless person’s belongings are searched, or seized and arbitrarily destroyed, that’s Fourth Amendment territory. Begging for spare change just might be protected under the First Amendment. Then you’ve got the Eight Amendment, the one concerning cruel and unusual punishment, which applies when a person is accused of the heinous crime of sleeping.
So, what is accomplished by anti-homeless laws? They move people away from the centers, usually located in the inner city, where services such as food and job counseling are available. They make getting to these places even more difficult for people who must depend on buses (if they are lucky) or their own power of walking, to get around. Restrictive ordinances award thousands of homeless people with criminal records, as if they needed any more strikes against them in their efforts to emerge from the bottom layer of society. And the price of incarceration — don’t get us started. Jail is two or three times as expensive as supportive housing.
And then, there’s the little matter of international law. Our nation has signed on to global human rights agreements, prescribing humane treatment of people experiencing homelessness, which is fine for other countries but which we ourselves apparently don’t feel compelled to honor.
The report also offers some rays of light in a section called “Constructive Alternatives to Criminalization,” which is full of good ideas that have been either tried or contemplated by various localities. It offers helpful recommendations for the benefit of city governments, business groups, and the legal system, in dealing with these issues. Answers are proposed for both the chronic homeless, and the working poor or “economic homeless,” those who are unable to afford basic housing even though they have jobs.
However, House the Homeless has one big idea that would pretty much cover everything, and take away the need for each city to figure it out for themselves. It’s called the Universal Living Wage, and it will end homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum-wage workers, and prevent economic homelessness for all 10.1 million minimum wage workers. You can also find out all about it in Richard R. Troxell’s book, Looking Up at the Bottom Line.
Reactions?
Source: “A Dream Denied: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities,” NationalHomeless.org
Image by quinn.anya (Quinn Dombrowski), used under its Creative Commons license.
Austin Fire Creates Homelessness
In Austin, Texas, Michael Weathers has been charged with arson (another report says felony reckless endangerment) for a fire that burned up 100 acres, causing severe damage to 10 houses and minor damage to six more. Dwellings have been destroyed, and people have been rendered… homeless.
This is a tragedy. Fire is one of the cruelest things that can happen in a person’s life, and its repercussions can last for years, forever. Weathers turned himself in, which is more than a lot of white-collar criminals have ever had the guts to do. How many homeless families are created by one corrupt mortgage company? How many bankers go to prison?
Weathers left the hot coals of a dying campfire unattended and went to buy beer. In a story already causing a great outcry, that’s the perfect detail to tip public sentiment over into virulence. Now it seems as if the reaction to one man’s dreadful mistake threatens to develop into something like a pogrom. That’s a strong word, but it does imply the organized persecution of a group of people, and in that sense it fits. As Andrea Ball, a philanthropy blogger for the Austin American-Statesman, expresses it,
The debate about Austin’s homeless is about to get very ugly.
Yes, the fire was intentionally set, and that is an element of the crime of arson, despite the fact that there was no intention to destroy anything. Yes, the man who did it should be held accountable. But when you’ve got local citizens who think it’s appropriate to talk about using the homeless “for target practice,” as one online commentator recommended, you’ve got a problem. The reporter says,
Austin’s homeless population already causes plenty of outrage amongst neighbors frustrated with the noise, garbage and disruptive behavior stemming from homeless camps in the greenbelt and other wooded areas. Advocates say the problem stems from a lack of affordable housing and other services to help the homeless.
Well, duh! Homelessness results from a lack of housing, that seems pretty obvious. Also, from expecting people who don’t even have facilities to wash themselves or their clothes, to get out there and function like high-powered yuppies. And from about a hundred other factors, none of which are helped by generating an atmosphere of fear and rejection. But even so, the issue has more sides than a pomegranate has seeds. This point was brought up by Statesman reader Mary Ellen King:
Even if affordable housing is an option as suggested in the article, many of them suffer from mental illness and will rarely sleep in shelters when afforded the opportunity.
So housing isn’t the only answer. To go along with walls and roofs, what we need is a society that cares for its members. For the mentally ill, there has to be some happy medium between the old way (incarceration in grim state institutions) and the new way (life on the streets.) Isn’t there a country somewhere on earth where this situation is handled? And if so, why aren’t we learning from that country and following its example?
Ball passed along one report of a large bonfire being irresponsibly built in the recent past, and she has learned that hundreds of people camp in the county’s wooded areas. Maybe a small percentage prefer the al fresco life. Probably, most would prefer not to be there. But what else can they to do? The Salvation Army shelter has space for 259 bodies. At the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, there are only 100 beds. These have to be won by nightly lottery. The rest of the “beds” are 3 inch thick mats that one has to vie for in a second lottery.
ARCH is said to turn away as many as 50 people on a bad night. Lottery losers are turned out into the cold where they face “Quality of Life” ordinances such as no sitting, no sleeping and no camping. And now, because of the drought, the authorities have understandably announced a zero-tolerance policy toward open flames. Violation of the burn ban carries a $500 fine, and good luck on collecting it from a homeless person.
Police officers have begun visiting local homeless camps, urging them not to have campfires or open flames of any kind. In the department’s south district, officers were talking to people in the 35 to 40 known homeless camps and those panhandling at busy intersections.
As President of House the Homeless, Richard R. Troxell sent an email to colleagues that said,
Perhaps it was carelessness or perhaps it was a gust of wind that blew up from a dead still as it did in my presence just 5 minutes ago. The state of Texas is in a high fire condition. One and one half million acres have burned this year already… We all need to help one another and everyone is innocent until proven guilty either of arson or even carelessness.
Debbie Russell contributed this to the discussion:
So far I’ve not seen our community leaders lash out; but plenty of haters are doing so on online forums. I hope our leaders resist catering to the call for homeless-blood. One person is accused here; not a whole community. This is an isolated accident, not indicative of a practice of a group… To embark on a large-scale “sweep” campaign (as we have done already, in different areas of town like Waller Creek and on the camps) in an attempt to “solve” the “problem” would be wholly irresponsible of us… I’m REALLY hoping we can contain the knee-jerk urge to vilify all homeless people because of the act of one careless individual… Attacking the homeless is not the way to solve public safety issues. EVER.
Mellower Austinites suggest that this is a good opportunity to increase general awareness of homelessness, because it would be helpful to understand how people get in this position. Well, one of the ways they become homeless is when their house burns down because a fire was started in a nearby homeless camp. In other words, homelessness is a societal force that tends to grow exponentially. It’s like a snowball rollin’ down the side of a snow-covered hill.
One person’s story is that she let a homeless relative move in, which was against the terms of her government-sponsored housing lease, so she got evicted, and now she too is homeless. A young person’s story is that his homeless uncle moved into the family’s garage, and kept cornering him with sinister intent when nobody else was around. So he hit the road, and now there’s one more teenage runaway with an alley for a rec room. Homelessness begets homelessness.
So, yeah, understanding is good. Doing something is better. Now more than ever, Richard R. Troxell and House the Homeless urge the adoption of the Universal Living Wage. Richard says,
If we work together and house the homeless, then we dissolve the scenario. If local businesses paid fair living wages then 1/2 of the folks experiencing homelessness can work themselves off our streets and out of our woods. It’s not just up to the taxpayers to solve homelessness. We all share in the outcome. We’re all members of this community.
Reactions?
Source: “Oak Hill fire, arson and the homeless,” Charity Chat (Austin American-Statesman), 04/18/11
Source: “Police spread word of outdoor fire ban to homeless,” Austin American-Statesman, 04/18/11
Image by Jelle S. (Jelle), used under its Creative Commons license.
Everybody’s Gotta Be Someplace
It’s hard to tell when this National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) page was last updated. But it’s safe to assume that the overall situation has not improved, since whenever. The NCH page, entitled “The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities,” says,
An unfortunate trend in cities around the country over the past 25 years has been to turn to the criminal justice system to respond to people living in public spaces. This trend includes measures that target homeless persons by making it illegal to perform life-sustaining activities in public. These measures prohibit activities such as sleeping/camping, eating, sitting, and begging in public spaces, usually including criminal penalties for violation of these laws.
Last week in Boulder, Colorado, a homeless man who was ticketed last April for sleeping in a parking garage, attempted to use an Eighth Amendment defense against the charge. That’s the one about cruel and unusual punishment. Once convicted, Michael Fitzgerald was supposed to either pay a $100 fine or do 12 hours of community service. Instead… well, let Heath Urie, staff writer for the Boulder Daily Camera, tell the story:
Fitzgerald appealed the case to the Boulder County District Court on the grounds that the city’s law against camping in public places essentially punished him for being homeless and having an involuntary need for warmth and shelter as he sleeps at night.
Yes, it looks like the rule he broke is not only cruel and unusual, but discriminatory. However, unfair as it is from the viewpoint of a person experiencing homelessness, so-called respectable society disagrees. Urie reports how Judge Lael Montgomery expressed a strangely familiar sentiment, saying,
The camping without consent ordinance applies to all persons who wish to camp in Boulder, regardless of whether they are homeless, shoestring travelers trying to avoid the cost of accommodations, or persons who merely enjoy the great outdoors.
Nobel Prize-winning author Anatole France said it decades ago:
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge.
Attorney David Harrison, no doubt familiar with the classical allusion, echoed it in his argument about the city’s ordinance:
It’s certainly saying people with homes and people without homes can’t sleep under bridges… While certainly as a conceptual matter that’s true, as a practical matter (the law) targets the homeless population.
The journalist tell us that Fitzgerald is one of several local people experiencing homelessness who have challenged the tickets they’re received, on constitutional grounds. Boulder is like that. He also provides a helpful sidebar on the page, detailing the No Camping Ordinance, which has been in effect since 1980.
Recently, we talked about how in Austin, Texas, House the Homeless kept track of how many people were busted for sitting or lying down on public sidewalks in the downtown business area during 2009. Over the whole year, there were 708 convictions and 70 dismissals. The highest month was September, when 518 citations were issued. (The month-by-month count for the entire year adds up to way more than 778, so presumably, some legal processes were still going on when this survey was made.)
Anyhow, out of those mere 70 dismissals, only a paltry 52 were dismissed for mental health or medical disabilities. Statistically, what that means is, a lot of people were unfairly treated. Here’s why: In the health survey, 501 people were asked whether they needed to sit and rest now and then. The large majority answered yes. Even people who aren’t officially disabled need to sit down, occasionally. Think about it. Homes are filled with chairs. If people didn’t need them, they wouldn’t be there. People experiencing homelessness don’t have chairs. But they too need a place to sit.
(To be continued…)
Reactions?
Source: “A Dream Denied,” National Coalition for the Homeless
Source: “Boulder judge rejects homeless man’s appeal, upholds city’s anti-camping law,” Daily Camera, 04/08/11
Source: “Richard Troxell’s Health Survey Testimony,” House the Homeless, 07/20/10
Image by tobyotter (Toby Alter), used under its Creative Commons license.
I Am My Brothers’ Keeper… but for Everyone?
Again this year, 3.5 million people will experience homelessness in America. In the land of milk and honey, this is unconscionable.
Let’s examine the word homelessness for a moment. Who are the homeless? Well, clearly they come from all walks of life: homeless veterans, single women, women with children, people with mental health disorders, people with substance abuse problems, and the list goes on.
In January 2009, House the Homeless conducted a Health Survey of 501 people experiencing homelessness in Austin, Texas. Our survey showed that 48% of the people experiencing homelessness were so disabled that they could not work at a full-time job.
And in December 2007, another House the Homeless survey of 526 people experiencing homelessness showed that 37% of those surveyed were working at some point during the week, with 97% expressing a desire to work. In fact, we have come to understand that homelessness, for all its components, can be viewed in two major categories: those who can work and those who cannot work.
Reports from the last several U.S. Conferences of Mayors show that a person working full time, in a forty-hour-a-week, minimum-wage job, is unable to afford a basic, one-bedroom apartment, and remains homeless.
Who Are the Working Homeless?
They are the someone in our schools serving green beans and corn to our children in the cafeteria lines. They are the people in local dry cleaner operations pressing our suits and dresses. They are our janitorial staff cleaning our office buildings and urinals after we’ve gone to bed. They are the motel/hotel workers who change the sheets and clean up the trashed out rooms that we have left. They are the cashiers who cheerfully ask how they can help us.
They are our restaurant workers who work at below minimum wage ($2.13) and rely on us to (hopefully) boost their base pay with tips. They are poultry processors who work in our nation’s processing plants nationwide. They are farm workers who, even today, stoop behind the field machinery and continue to pick thorny cotton by hand.
They take our tickets in movie theaters, so we can see the next exciting 3-D movie. They are the healthcare aides in nursing homes who constantly turn over our loved ones to prevent bed sores. They do all the “dirty jobs” that you see on TV, and they flip our burgers at all the fast-food restaurants, and fold and refold the linen at every Wal-Mart.
And yet, the federal government continues to tell businesses nationwide that they only need to pay a minimum wage — not a living wage. A living wage would afford them basic food, clothing, and shelter. But as it is, nowhere in this country can receptionists, daycare aides, garage attendants, car washers, manicurists, grocery baggers, landscape workers, data entry workers, and elderly care aides afford the basics without a second job or relying on some outside support. That’s just wrong.
Who Should Pay?
Who should pay a wage sufficient to afford life’s most minimal necessities? Who profits from their labor if not business? Clearly it is businesses who benefit from their labor. So why are taxpayers footing the bill for food stamps when someone is working? Why do able-bodied individuals qualify for general assistance or the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is just another tax-sponsored program that would be unnecessary if businesses acted as responsible/ethical community partners?
If half these people who are homeless can work, why should you or I as taxpayers have to support them? I don’t want to. In fact, as a society, I’m not at all convinced that we could afford to support these millions of people indefinitely anyway. If a person is not disabled, then their homeless situation is really just an unmet economic need. This should be dealt with at the source: “A fair wage for a fair day’s work.”
When I was growing up, the saying was, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” I still believe in that postulate; however, that begs the question, if you work 40 hours in a week, shouldn’t you be able to afford the basics? If you work a full 40 hour week, shouldn’t you be able to afford a roof over your head (other than a bridge)?
I work in a homeless shelter. Every day I arrive to see hundreds and hundreds of people, half of whom are able-bodied. What they lack is opportunity.
There needs to be a spot on that shelter floor that I can point to and encourage people to get up off their chairs and go to that spot. It should be a spot that provides the big “O”: Opportunity. A spot where if they tuck their head down, lean into the wheel with their shoulder, apply themselves, they’ll know that, ultimately, they will be able to work themselves off the streets of America.
In other words, we simply need living-wage jobs. Then, as a compassionate taxpayer, I can get down to the work of helping people with disabilities. Perhaps in time, many of them will also be able to stand on that spot.
Take Action!
Tell President Obama that as he provides incentives for businesses to help in our economic recovery, he also needs to balance the equation by instituting the Universal Living Wage. Call the White House: 202-224-3121/1-800-459-1887, or email the President using the form at the White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.
Richard R. Troxell
House the Homeless, Inc.
National Chairman, Universal Living Wage Campaign
Source: “Mayors National Housing Forum Fact Sheet” (PDF), U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Image by schmuela (Karen Green), used under its Creative Commons license.
Austin City Council Discriminates Against the Disabled
On Thursday, January 27, the Austin City Council is preparing to change the No Sit/No Lie Ordinance. This ordinance allows for fines up to $500 for people who (even momentarily) sit or lie down in public places.
On January 1, 2011, House the Homeless, Inc., a grassroots organization fighting for the civil rights of all persons, conducted a health survey. The survey showed that 48% of people experiencing homelessness in Austin suffer disabling conditions that are so severe they are unable to work. Nonetheless, the No Sit/No Lie ordinance makes no exceptions for this group of people and continues to fine and jail them for the act of momentarily sitting and resting.
The City of Austin, at the encouragement of House the Homeless, recognizing that it is presently in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), has set out to bring the ordinance in compliance with the federal law. To gain compliance, the City Council Health and Human Services Committee was preparing to present the full Council language that would exclude anyone with a disability from fines under the ordinance. Great! However, at the last minute, the committee has mistakenly inserted the work “physical” into the statement. Now, the language would basically read, “Anyone with a physical disability would be excluded from fines under the ordinance.” The effect of this one-word change is both dramatic and devastating.
It would mean that anyone with a mental health disability would be subject to fines and forced to enter the criminal justice system to defend themselves. Imagine the least capable among us, people with mental health disabilities, being steered into our court system and clogging it up just because they had a momentary respite. It is well documented in the journals of American Medical Association that people suffering with mental health disorders are routinely treated with very powerful drugs that often cause them to become woozy and dizzy. They often have sunlight and heat sensitivity that depletes them of their energy and causes them to need to temporarily sit and rest.
The promoters of this one-word change attempt to justify their targeting people with mental disabilities by saying that they would be protected under the language “physical disabilities” because they would be having a “physical” reaction to taking medication that causes them to need to temporarily sit down. Really? This sounds more like slippery lawyer talk and a thinly-disguised rationale created to persecute and prosecute people with mental health problems.
Hey — it’s not the Americans with “Physical” Disabilities Act. It’s the Americans with Disabilities Act, period. The basis of which is not physical problems or mental problems but rather medical problems.
In essence, the Austin City Council is also contending that it is absolutely, 100% impossible for a uniformed City of Austin police officer to identify someone who has a mental health concern. Really? Is it really so hard to read the label on a medication vial that says Haldol, Thorazine, Risperadol, or Zyprexa, and also see that someone needs to sit momentarily? Or to look at an individual presenting a letter from a local mental health facility and make a good judgment as to the legitimacy of the situation?
Furthermore, adding insult to injury, as proposed, the police officer will have no latitude whatsoever but to ticket this mentally ill person and send him or her on to the courts. What are the odds of that person showing up? And if that person stands before a judge (unrepresented or at taxpayer expense) showing that judge the same medical vial or document from MHMR, what then? The way the law will be written, the judge will also have no latitude and be forced to fine the individual hundreds of dollars that he or she will have no chance of paying.
What then? A warrant for their arrest for failure to pay the fine? Once arrested, will we then clog our jail system with people experiencing mental illness needing special medication treatment?
What then? Well, House the Homeless and others will have no choice but sue the city for repeated, flagrant violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act — all at taxpayer expense!
What’s the alternative? Well, we could simply use the original agreed-upon language that excludes all people with medical disabilities from fines and allow police officers to use their good sense and street smarts to determine who can sit and rest momentarily. And Austin can move to become the “world class” city that it purports to be simply by providing enough benches citywide so that anyone, such as moms toting kids and packages, can just sit for a moment and rest briefly before they move on.
Don’t give Austin a Black Eye. The whole world is watching… on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the House the Homeless website with well over 1,000,000 followers.
Photo by Daniel Lobo (Daquella manera), used under its Creative Commons license.
Rubber Tramps — Houseless, Not Homeless
Historically Venice, California, has been the place where new societal mutations showed up early, and the place uniquely prepared and equipped to deal with them. Whether this is still true remains to be seen.
Last month, Peggy Lee Kennedy wrote in the Free Venice Beachhead of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in November, in which the City of Los Angeles is charged with violating the Americans With Disabilities Act, as well as several Constitutional amendments. Kennedy says,
The plaintiffs in this civil rights lawsuit are part of the Venice community. Most are people who have lived in Venice for many years and used to be housed here. They get all their services here, they have been involved in the St. Joseph surveys, they are on housing lists, and they have given their personal information for getting in the ‘Streets to Homes’ program — if it ever happens.
They are vehicle dwellers, and many consider themselves fully entitled stakeholders in Venice. Some of them say things like, “I’m houseless, not homeless.” But many of the residents definitely consider these gypsies as undesirable riff-raff, who take up valuable parking space and cause unhealthful conditions for everybody.
Because of its attractive beach location and freewheeling culture, Venice has always contained a large number of people experiencing homelessness. For decades, a subset of that population has been a particular burr under the saddle of the housed residents. The irritants are the people who live in vehicles, mostly RVs, but also cars, vans, and campers. “Rubber Tramps of Venice” describes some of the colorful vehicles that were around in the early 80s, and a film that was made 10 years ago featuring the long-term Venice vehicle dwellers considered homeless by the housed residents.
In 2005, public outrage was inflamed by the actions of William Sadowski, who lived in his car in Venice. As described by two staff writers for the LA Times, Hector Becerra and Jennifer Oldham, Sadowski hijacked a patrol car belonging to a member of the airport police force. Trying to regain control of his vehicle, the officer was dragged and battered, and ended up dead. This did not enhance the reputation of the locals who lived in wheeled homes.
The Rose Avenue Neighborhood Watch added the phrase Vigilante Strike Force to its name, and residents took an angry and active part in tagging vehicles for towing. One resident claimed to have identified 250 RVs being lived in illegally. There was an uproar when one local organization accused another of distributing flyers all over Greater Los Angeles, supposedly inviting other rubber tramps to relocate to the streets of Venice. This turned out to be untrue, but it further eroded whatever little tolerance the homeowners and renters might have retained.
One resident got so upset she couldn’t even make logical sense, and wrote to a newsletter that A.) A lot of the vehicles people lived in were not even roadworthy, but were incapable of being driven away, and B.) If the police wanted to serve a warrant, vehicle dwellers could just escape by driving away. Various schemes for parking permits were the subject of many meetings and millions of words of debate, and indeed, many local residents defended the right of people to live in vehicles, noting that many such unfortunates are women, children, and veterans.
The Los Angeles police formed what Kennedy calls the Homeless Removal Task Force, especially to run the rubber tramps out of town. Apparently, they wear black SWAT outfits (a bold fashion statement at any beach) and dedicate themselves to making life miserable for RV owners in every way, from petty verbal harassment to towing.
But many of the vehicle dwellers are officially disabled, and thus exempt from the parking restrictions that were purposely created to banish homes on wheels. The police should know this, but they go ahead and do it anyway. Kennedy says that a jeering, cheering crowd has actually shown up in the past to applaud when some disabled person was arrested and his vehicle was towed away.
In another issue of the Free Venice Beachhead, Rune Girschfeld, self-described as a “mobile-homed Venice resident,” recounted her experience with a sweep, one of the aggressive enforcement tactics adopted by the police and practiced in the middle of the night on people they perceive as needing to be hassled, handcuffed, and cleaned from the streets like garbage. She said,
Sleeping citizens are ordered out of their vehicles. They are put off-balance with rapid-fire questions. They are lied to and told they must answer questions; that the police ‘know’ they are hiding something; that they can forcefully open doors if not opened voluntarily and that they can take away their children…
Girschfeld goes on to say,
Personally, I work full-time and still cannot afford to decriminalize myself. I do not understand where the idea came from that someone who is living in a vehicle is ‘taking advantage,’ as though they had chosen to live in third-world America…
America is full of people experiencing economic homelessness. We’re talking about working full-time, and still being unable to rent the cheapest housing. And this is just tenancy that they can’t afford. It’s not even anywhere near the crazy dream of owning a place. The more you think about it, the more obvious it becomes: When an American working a 40-hour week cannot afford basic housing, something is really broken in the entire system. Suggestion: Consider the Universal Living Wage, which is designed to end homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum-wage workers, and prevent economic homelessness for all minimum-wage workers in America.
Reactions?
Source: “Lawsuit filed to protect civil rights of RV Residents,” FreeVeniceBeachhead, 12/10
Source: “LAX Police Officer Killed as Stolen Patrol Car Drags Him,” LA Times, 04/30/05
Source: “Rosendahl’s ‘Carrot and Stick’ means a knock on the door at 5 am,” Free Venice BeachHead, 10/10
Image by Colin Bowern, used under its Creative Commons license.
People Experiencing Homelessness Exploited by So-Called Entrepreneurs
Bumfights — A Video Too Far, produced and directed by Bruce Hepton, chronicles the regrettable history of a disgusting phenomenon. The film that started it all was Bumfights: A Cause for Concern (don’t you love the pretense of a social conscience?). Basically, a bunch of affluent teenagers paid some down-and-outers to assault each other and degrade themselves for their prurient camera.
Hepton’s documentary features an interview with Ryan McPherson, who claims the dubious honor of inventing the genre. The former skateboard dude got together with several accomplices and bribed homeless men to perform dangerous stunts, fight each other, and, in the case of Vietnam veteran Donnie Brennan, to have the Bumfights logo tattooed across his forehead. When Brennan’s leg was broken and he ended up in the hospital,
who do you suppose paid the bill, “producer” McPherson, or the taxpayers?
Publicity supplied by Fox News spread the notoriety of Bumfights around the world and spawned a whole subculture, with an endless stream of imitators. Teams of inspired copycats went into the business of inciting and orchestrating violence between and against people experiencing homelessness. In an Australian town with only one homeless person available to persecute, a gang of teenagers tried to get him to participate in their videotaping fun, and burned him to death for refusing.
McPherson and his band of toxic youths made money off their revolting enterprise, then got screwed by some other thug entrepreneur. (Ha ha.) “It’s a disgusting video,” he says, “but you can’t keep it from selling.” What? Yeah, you can, or at some point could have, by not making it in the first place. He says, “It may not be the right thing, but… whatever.” Now, there is some insightful commentary.
The documentary also interviews social workers, journalists and cops who have to deal with the results of the fad started by McPherson. Then it’s back to him again, saying, “There’s no exploitation, it’s just good friendly filming…” With a philosophy that’s way beyond libertarian, he believes that no crime was committed, and these homeless men had opted in. A person might also choose to sell one of their own kidneys, too, but does that mean a civilized society ought to allow it?
McPherson defends his opus as “very truthful.” What’s truthful about inciting alcoholics to do revolting things like pull out their own teeth with pliers? In the old days, when sleazy carnivals traveled from town to town, the show might include a geek, a burnout case who would bite off the head of a live chicken or snake, or do some other gross thing, for a payment of moonshine and a quiet place to drink it. You may have seen a 1947 film called Nightmare Alley, where Tyrone Power portrayed an overly ambitious man who ended up being a sideshow geek. In the years since then, society has apparently made very little progress.
One of the seminal works that sparked the civil rights era was Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, a novel which won a National Book Award in 1953. The protagonist, a Southern black youth, is class valedictorian, but before he can claim the scholarship offered by the rich white folks, he is forced to get in the boxing ring and fight another black youth. At least he gets an education out of it, not just a bottle of beer.
Truthful of not, Bumfights upset a lot of people. In Looking Up at the Bottom Line, Richard R. Troxell relates how the National Coalition for the Homeless mobilized protests against many retail outlets that sold the film. A partial victory was achieved, but Bumfights and its numerous imitations are of course available online.
Of the two Bumfights “stars,” Donnie Brennan is still on the streets (and still bearing the forehead tattoo). But the life of Rufus Hannah, formerly known as “the stunt bum,” took a radically different turn, and he went on to publish a book called A Bum Deal. This autobiography is reviewed by Cali Zimmerman, social media guru and Communications Coordinator for PATH Partners, a group of agencies concerned with helping people experiencing homelessness, and others in need, in Southern California. Zimmerman writes,
Co-written with Barry Soper, the man who helped Hannah escape the exploitation of Bumfights and turn his life around, A Bum Deal is a story of confronting personal demons and journeying to recovery.
Zimmerman recounts the story of how Hannah and Soper have met, before the Bumfights film was made, and how when they came into contact again, Soper helped both Hannah and Brennan get legal representation, to try and win some compensation for the permanent injuries they have suffered through cooperating with McPherson’s reprehensible manipulation of their vulnerable state.
Zimmerman says,
With Soper’s help, Hannah has since taken legal action against the creators of Bumfights and has been sober for eight years. He is employed full-time, remarried, has worked to heal his relationship with his children and get his life is back on track.
The review finishes up with some words from Rufus Hannah:
I just hope that somebody can read this and see that it doesn’t matter how low it gets, you can always get up again.
Reactions?
Source: “Bumfights – A Video Too Far,” YouTube.com
Source: “Nightmare Alley,” Dusted Off, 05/04/10
Source: “A Bum Deal: One Formerly Homeless Man’s Journey,” Poverty Insights, 10/21/10
Image by PinkMoose (Anthony Easton), used under its Creative Commons license.
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