The Minimum Wage and the Big Ideas
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) points out the unsurprising fact that the minimum wage is worth much less than it previously was worth. Its graph illustrated the value of the minimum wage since 1960, adjusted for inflation and translated into 2009 dollars:
When adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage was worth $8.54 per hour in 1968, compared to the current minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Based on a typical, 2,000-hour work year, the 1968 inflation-adjusted minimum wage would equate to an annual salary of $17,080 per year, versus $14,500 for today’s minimum wage.
In other words, the minimum wage decreasingly resembles a living wage. Historically, the peak of minimum wage value was in the 1960s, a long-gone era many people who are working today don’t even remember, because a lot of them weren’t born yet. The EPI also points out that raising the minimum wage stimulates the economy by giving workers more spending power. You’d think this would be obvious, but apparently many politicians overlook this basic fact.
We previously mentioned the very comprehensive interview that Richard R. Troxell of House the Homeless did not long ago. It’s worth mentioning again, because when Wayne Hurlbert of Blog Talk Radio conducts an interview, he skillfully leads his subject to lay out the most important principles, as well as explain things in detail.
Painting first with a broad brush, let’s review some of the big ideas. Changing people from tax-takers to taxpayers is one of them. If the working poor were making a fair, adequate living wage, it would reduce the tax burden, because there would be less need for food stamps and other sorts of government assistance. Even if it can’t happen right this minute, people need to know that there is hope, they need to see that pathway stretching out before them. They need to know opportunity exists, and to be inspired to take advantage of opportunity, rather than subside into hopelessness.
Another basic principle of Richard’s is, solutions that come from the grassroots are faster and more effective than those involving the government. Of course, for something big like the Universal Living Wage, the government has to be behind it. But if homeless veterans in your community need socks, an appeal to the local goodhearted people will get them a lot quicker than a request to an official bureaucracy. And we have to show the way, because the old saying is true — “When the people lead, the leaders will follow.”
The biggest idea of all is that homelessness does not have to exist. This situation we have today does not have to be the situation we have tomorrow. We’re in a mess, but it can be undone and fixed. Richard’s proposal for fixing it is implementing the Universal Living Wage. In the interview, Hurlbert asks how the ULW is different from the minimum wage already in effect, and the answer is, it’s not really that different. What we have now needs to be tweaked and perfected, and if it is done over a 10-year period, the shock for anyone need not be too unbearable.
As a background, Richard talks about when the federal minimum wage was instituted in 1938, to make sure every working American could afford basic shelter, food, and clothing. It was a humane, fair, and much needed measure, but it was based on an assumption that it costs pretty much the same to live anyplace in America, so it was not indexed to anything. Still, it worked acceptably until the mid-1980s, when extreme booms and busts in the economy had really messed things up.
Another thing happened too, that would impact the nation very adversely by increasing not only the number of people experiencing homelessness, but the number of such people who were truly incapable of taking care of themselves. By the ’80s, the whole structure of mental health institutions had become so abusive, it seemed better to integrate the mentally ill into society.
The first part of the plan worked fine, dumping thousands of seriously ill and disoriented people on the streets. The second phase didn’t work so well, and rather than getting “mainstreamed,” the people ended up drowning instead, denizens of the streets, free but so impaired that freedom became “just another word for nothing left to lose,” as Kris Kristofferson phrased it.
In the interview, Richard talks about how the minimum wage always falls behind the poverty line, and how it didn’t increase for a whole decade between 1997 and 2007. We ended up with a situation where one of the largest labor organizations, Service Employees International Union, was training people in how to apply for food stamps. At one point, the University of Texas had 200 staff members on food stamps. And because of the unrealistic minimum wage, the federal government had become a creator of homelessness.
Reactions?
Source: “State of Working America preview: The declining value of minimum wage,” EPI.org, 11/17/10
Source: “Richard Troxell: Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Blog Talk Radio, 12/08/10
Image by EPI, used under its Creative Commons license.
The Homeless, the Government, and the Genuine Free Enterprise
Wayne Hurlbert of Blog Business World is interested in such concepts as how cooperation is the most effective technique for everyone in a society or a world. In his capacity as radio host, Hurlbert had the author of Looking Up at the Bottom Line on his show recently. Yes, of course we mentioned this in a previous House the Homeless post, but the dialogue is so rich with material, it’s worth expounding and expanding. The whole interview is available as a free podcast download from Blog Business Success Radio.
The federal government has been the biggest cause of homelessness, Richard R. Troxell says, particularly under the Reagan administration, when large areas of inner cities were demolished without any substitute housing taking their place. But the destruction goes back as far as the Marshall Plan after World War II, when the U.S. provided so much aid to other countries to rebuild their industries, that American industry wasn’t able to be competitive and ended up closing factories and laying off workers. And then, more recently, the overseas outsourcing of jobs caught on. That’s a big factor in the current mess, but by no means the only factor.
Another very large and harmful factor is that having a job is not enough, these days, to keep a person out of the “economic homeless” class, which is where you are when you work full-time and still can’t make rent. Richard recounts how, when the mayors of American cities get together for their annual conference, they consistently agree that an average person working a 40-hour week cannot afford basic rental housing in their cities.
Richard’s solution is the Universal Living Wage, which is not so different from the minimum wage we have now, except it would be indexed to the single most expensive item in the budget of every American:housing …on a local basis. This concept is similar in spirit to the bio-regionalism that environmentalists talk about, which is also based on the concept that America is just too big and diverse for one-size-fits-all rules that are handed down from the federal level.
Different places have different conditions, and the people in them have different needs. A full-time worker in a small Midwestern city might be able survive on the current minimum wage. In New York or Los Angeles, not a chance. Looking Up at the Bottom Line tells how to fix this.
A mellow person might say, “You can’t expect the government to do everything.” But the mood of many Americans today is far from mellow, and they are more likely to say, “You can’t expect the government to do anything except screw up.” Kevin Carson is against corporatism, and feels that the free market concept is blamed for current evils that are not its fault at all. Almost nobody in America really understands what free enterprise is, because for so long we have been presented with an imposter going by that name. Carson says,
But we haven’t had anything even remotely resembling a free market for over 150 years… Since the mid-19th century, what we’ve had is massive collusion between big government and big business… What we have is not a free enterprise system, but an interlocking directorate of giant, centralized government and corporate bureaucracies… We’re not talking about socialism for the rich and a Dickensian work house for everyone else. When we say we believe in free enterprise, we mean it.
That is what the “free market left” is all about. In another piece, Carson explains further the disastrous effects wrought by the federal government, to which the crisis of homelessness can be traced.
Wouldn’t it be great if every household with children could have one parent at home, instead of both of them out scrambling for the bucks? Wouldn’t it be great if people could retire at an age young enough to still get some enjoyment from life, rather than having to stay in the labor market, wearing a silly hat and serving tacos at age 60? Wouldn’t it be great if people could make enough when employed, to have some slack, so they could survive comfortably until a job suitable to their training and education turned up? And wouldn’t it be great if the property-owning class could be prevented from soaking up every available dollar? Carson has ideas about how to make all these dreams come true.
For instance, there are far too many zoning laws, health and safety codes, and other laws that prevent an ordinary person from running a small business from home. He would like to see neighborhoods bursting with thriving “microenterprises” — bakers, brewers, daycare providers, hairdressers, clothing makers, and one-person taxicab services, to name just a few. A lot more people could be self-supporting if the government would just get out of their way.
And the same goes for the creation of housing. Too many “safety codes” are created for the purpose of cutting anyone but high-priced contractors out of the market. When only massively capitalized companies with high overhead are allowed to remodel bathrooms or install porch railings, an artificial monopoly is created that harms the ordinary citizen. Big businesses are protected from the possibility that anyone can be self-sufficient, because of the laws that require their services to be retained. Carson says,
I frequently argue that, far from the result of the ‘free market,’ the recent speculative bubble was the result of over a century’s worth of government intervention. The bubble resulted from vast disparities of wealth — disparities created by the state and its enforcement of privilege — with a growing share of income going to classes looking to use it for investment rather than consumption.
Carson would like to see a big increase in the “share of total consumption needs that could be met through low-overhead production in the home, or by trading with others engaged in such production, and to reduce the total amount of wage labor required to meet one’s needs.” In other words, people become more prosperous not only by making more money, but by spending less money.
Reactions?
Source: “Richard Troxell Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” BlogTalkRadio.com, 12/07/10
Source: “Back in the USSA,” C4SS.org, 12/22/10
Source: “The Rent’s Still Too Damn High — Here’s How to Lower It,” C4SS.org, 01/13/11
Image by Infrogmation of New Orleans, used under its Creative Commons license.
Minimum Wage and the Universal Living Wage
Full Disclosure: Richard R. Troxell is President of House the Homeless, in whose online presence you are at this very moment. Richard is the guy in the picture, holding up Homey Too, the official thermal underwear model of the Thermal Underwear Drive in Austin, Texas, which is in progress even as we speak. In my capacity as newsblogger, I feel moved to read with interest, then capsulize and remark upon, his essay, “Reasons for raising the minimum wage,” the same as any other piece of journalism. So here goes.
The Universal Living Wage idea has three basic tenets. One of them is,
Spend no more than 30% of one’s income on housing.
See? I knew this would be interesting, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. Troxell explains that the 30% figure was established by the banks, as the cutoff beyond which a person presumably could not afford to make mortgage payments. The assumption is, a person needs 70% of his or her income for other things, such as food, transportation, medicine, etc. And if the mortgage bill is more than 30%, this person will continue to spend the 70% on those other things anyway, and the bank will get the short end of the stick.
Also, 30% is the standard guideline used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, aka HUD. If a family is paying more than 30% of its income for housing, it needs help. So, the business community and the government agree that, theoretically, shelter should not eat up more than 30%, or approximately one-third of what a person or family has coming in.
This is the part that blows me away. When I was growing up and taking classes like Home Economics in school, we learned that the magic number was 25%. The received wisdom was that a person or family oughtn’t pay more than one-fourth of its income for housing. See, someone has sneakily raised the bar. In the old days, it was, “If you pay more than one dollar out of four, you are a bad household manager and a fiscal profligate.” Then, somehow, our expectations were re-engineered. Now, it’s, “If you pay more than one dollar out of three, you are a careless and irresponsible.”
We were once taught that one-fourth of what we had was the reasonable amount to spend for housing. We’ve been re-programmed to accept the idea that instead, now a larger proportion, one-third of what we have, is the reasonable amount to spend for housing.
And, of course, the whole thing is a crazy dream anyway. People are willing to pay half of their income just to get under a roof and avoid being homeless. They are willing to scrimp and do without other things to make their budget viable. But even if tenants are willing to get along without much else in order to be housed, landlords have their rules, too. They go by the same standards that the banks do. When you fill out a rental application, those numbers had better look good to them.
Another of the Universal Living Wage’s three prongs is the proposition that the minimum wage would vary by region, being indexed to the cost of housing locally. This would mean changing the way the federal government determines poverty guidelines. Rather than being based on food costs, it would be based on the cost of housing, which is less volatile. Troxell explains how the HUD voucher rental program currently works and how it determines Fair Market Rent.
The formula that would be used to determine the ULW is explained in great detail on the Universal Living Wage website. (Choose “ULW formula” from the menu on the left.) Also available there is the opportunity to endorse the ULW:
In just the first three years of our five year campaign, we have the following international, national, business, celebrity, enlightened markets, regional, religious and union endorsements for the Universal Living Wage Campaign. Would your group like to stand up and be counted on the subject of a Universal Living Wage? Sign our Resolution and send it to us! We’ll add you to our roster.
We also recommend the “Facts and Myths” section of the site, which contains an exhaustive list of facts and information about why the myths are wrong. The ULW idea is based on the assumption that a person is putting in a 40-hour workweek, either at one job or perhaps a combination of two part-time jobs. The idea is simple: Anybody who works a 40-hour week ought to be able to afford basic rental housing. And if they can’t, something is wrong with the system.
Reactions?
Source: “Reasons for raising the minimum wage,” Helium.com
Source: “Endorsements,” UniversalLivingWage.org
Image by quapan, used under its Creative Commons license.
Austin, Texas, Debates Best Approach to Homelessness
Recently, the Editorial Board of the Austin American Statesman has made a wise observation:
It is very difficult for a man or woman to gain stability, get and keep a job, recover from substance abuse or stay out of jail if they are living on the street or in a temporary shelter.
Somebody in that group comprehends a basic concept that many housed people fail to grasp. If you’re homeless, how do you get a job?
Where do you keep your social security card and birth certificate and a tattered copy of your most recent resume, saved from back when you had access to a typewriter or a word processor? How do you wash and iron your shirt? Where do you shave or style your hair? Where do you leave the rest of your stuff when you go to apply for this job? Will the guard in the office building lobby watch your duffel bag for you?
The Editorial Board marked the end of National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week by publishing a piece called “Better approach needed for housing the homeless.” It recaps how the City Council plans to create 350 units of permanent housing, and some of the difficulties the project will face. It goes on to say that the same problems apply to a proposed RV park. The City Council likes the blending and integrating approach better, the proposed Marshall Arms Apartments in particular. The Editorial Board says,
Ideally, permanent housing for homeless people would be matched with a host of services to address their medical, mental, employment and social needs, giving them their best shot of overcoming factors that keep them down and out.
So we’re looking at how one city is attempting to cope with a situation faced by many cities. Below is the reaction of a local Austin citizen, intimately familiar with the workings of the municipality, Richard R. Troxell, founder of House The Homeless:
The lead editorial stated that a ‘Better approach (is) needed for housing the homeless.’Our organization, House The Homeless, could not agree more. The paper praised the City Council for creating 350 units of permanent supportive housing, as do we. But in searching for a better approach, let’s consider that it took our community almost 10 years to create a Housing Trust Fund and pass a bond that produced the millions of dollars needed for the 350 units. It is also estimated that the units will be built over four years with the push past NIMBYism taking an additional two years, if then. (In other words, one of the forces to be dealt with is the tendency of residents to react by saying, ‘Not In My Back Yard.’)
And that’s only 350 units. With 4,000 folks experiencing homelessness, to get everybody housed would bring the total to 11 times that amount, at a cost of half a million dollars per person, and a response time of a couple years. We can hardly wait that long, not with 159 names of men, women, and baby girl Vasquez having been read this year alone at the Homeless Memorial.
Now, add into this equation that the Federal Government (according to the last several US Conference of Mayor’s Reports) has set a minimum wage so low that even a full-time worker cannot afford basic housing anywhere in this country! Instead, 40-hour-a-week workers are unable to afford the basics of food, clothing, and shelter. They end up living under bridges, in our woods, and panhandling for survival on our streets.
House The Homeless views those experiencing homelessness in two categories: those who can work and those who cannot work. As a taxpayer, am I expected to take care of all 3.5 million people experiencing homelessness nationwide? I gag at the thought. HTH completed a survey in January, of 501 people experiencing homelessness in Austin. The results exposed that 52% of the homeless can work but are lacking one thing… opportunity. If the only roof the full-time worker can expect is a bridge… then why bother? The alternative of selling drugs or the girl down the street is a lot easier and much more rewarding financially.
So, here’s how to cut the need for subsidized housing in half — by employing that 52% who just need an opportunity and a job that pays enough to live on. Then they can make their own housing arrangements. Then taxpayers only need to be concerned with the other half, the people experiencing homelessness who are unable to function as full-fledged participants in the economy. With the entire population need reduced by half, and the remaining folks being so vulnerable and needing focused support, then collective site programs such as the Mobile Loaves and Fishes mobile home park, just might be the thing.
Again, for those who can work, let’s consider the idea where the Federal Minimum Wage ensures a Living Wage: enough to afford the very basics; food, clothing, shelter (including utilities), as both halves of Congress had originally intended following the last depression. Wouldn’t the result be better all around? See House the Homeless for complete information on the Universal Living Wage.
Reactions?
Source: “Better approach needed for housing the homeless,” Austin American Statesman, 11/20/10
Image by Krikit, used under its Creative Commons license.
Austin Chronicle’s Wells Dunbar Keeps an Eye on the Homeless
Austin, Texas, has been the scene of many of Richard R. Troxell‘s liveliest campaigns for social justice, especially when it comes to housing the homeless. But if you’re not from Austin, don’t turn the page. We are at a point in history where every city needs to listen to every other city, to find out who is doing something right, and how they can be imitated. And to learn from each other’s mistakes. We can’t afford an extended learning curve. Hundreds of thousands of desperate people need help now.
So, how has the Austin Chronicle been covering the latest events in this area of civic responsibility? Earlier this month, Wells Dunbar, one of the publication’s regular columnists, described a City Council meeting where a very thorough presentation was given by Dianna Lewis, the director of the Texas chapter of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, a nonprofit organization.
When those who are wrestling with the homeless problem meet, “housing first” is always a topic of discussion. Seems like there wouldn’t be any reason for debate about such a basic notion. Homelessness is solved by getting people housed. The complications arise when individuals need so much more than a mere set of walls and a roof.
Many of the people experiencing homelessness have other issues too, such as addiction or mental illness. They don’t only need a place to sleep, but a way to deal with the problems that may have put them on the street in the first place. Some people will never be able to make it entirely on their own. They need permanent supportive housing, or PSH, which was the topic Lewis addressed. The ideal would be to provide leased rental units complete with treatment for medical health and mental health, along with the substance-abuse treatment if needed, and job training, if feasible.
Austin estimates that it needs nearly 2,000 such housing units, and the city passed a resolution last spring to get started on 350 of them. It’s going to cost a lot, not only to build these units, but to maintain them. This is where the expertise of Dianna Lewis comes in, when it’s time to explain how a lot of money will be saved in the long run. For instance, there will be many fewer calls for emergency medical services. Court costs and jail costs will be reduced.
Somebody has figured out that the 112 homeless people who most frequently use the emergency room run up more than $3 million worth of bills a year. Surely it would be a lot more economical to make more of an effort to keep them healthy in the first place. Like, for instance, to keep them out of the elements.
There is a lot more to it, of course, but this is the type of thing that cities need to be thinking about — the relative intelligence of spending an X number of dollars now, no matter how difficult those dollars are to come by, versus spending a Y number of dollars later, when the funding might be even more difficult to find. And, of course, no decisions should be made without input from the Austin Neighborhoods Council, because no plan for any project can work well without the support of the area residents.
In the course of discussing these matters in his column, Dunbar focused his attention on the work of Richard R. Troxell, House the Homeless, and the book that tells the whole story, Looking Up At The Bottom Line. The subtitle sums it up: “The struggle for the living wage.” It just may be that the answer lies between these covers — the Universal Living Wage.
So, a few days later, the “City Hall Hustle” column fondly recalled some of Troxell’s attention-getting episodes of street theater and guerilla political-education seminars. Dunbar related how House the Homeless worked for years to modify Austin’s anti-loitering ordinance, which just doesn’t work for people who are experiencing disabilities as well as homelessness. Finally, the group exerted enough influence to get a medical exception written into the “no sit/no lie” rule.
The columnist also gave Richard the opportunity to explain how the Universal Living Wage is different from — and better than — the federal government’s minimum wage:
‘The book is a vehicle for us to talk about the real impact of not addressing the economic situation that’s leading so many people into homelessness,’ Troxell says. With its ‘one-size-fits-all approach,’ vis-à-vis the minimum wage, he says, ‘the federal government is the greatest creator of homelessness in this nation.’
Reactions?
Source: “City Hall Hustle: Home Away From Home,” The Austin Chronicle, 10/08/10
Source: “City Hall Hustle: Across The Universe,” The Austin Chronicle, 10/15/10
Image by ret0dd, used under its Creative Commons license.
Counting the People Experiencing Homelessness
Like many others, Richard R. Troxell prefers the term, “people experiencing homelessness” — and for a very good reason. Just “homeless” sounds too hardcore, a permanent condition, like an amputated limb. Sadly, in many cases, that is all too accurate. Far too many Americans have been experiencing homelessness for a very long time. Sometimes, “people experiencing homelessness” makes for an awkward sentence, so perhaps occasionally shortening it can be forgiven.
People experiencing homelessness are often the very same people who have experienced being housed, for most of their lives. It’s a good thing to keep in mind. They never wanted or expected to experience homelessness. No young person, reflecting on his or her future, thinks, “My plan is to be a wanderer with no address, destitute and hungry, hounded from the park to the street corner to jail by the solid citizens, and, maybe someday, set on fire while I’m asleep. There’s a career path with real promise!”
The phrase “people experiencing homelessness” is also a good reminder that you or I might someday share that experience, if we haven’t already. In fact, as the economic situation worsens, the odds that any given person will eventually experience homelessness increase dramatically.
For the individuals and organizations that care, keeping track of the numbers is important. Every 10 years, of course, the government takes a census. We looked back at an article written in the spring by Newly Paul, about how the census was conducted in Los Angeles. In many cities, only one day was devoted to an all-out effort, but because LA is so gigantic, it had allotted three days to the task, beginning March 29. Paul interviewed Herb Smith, president of the Los Angeles Mission, who tried his best to encourage all his clients to stand up and be taken notice of. Smith’s plea was,
If you are homeless and want a meal, get counted. If you’re homeless and you need a bed tonight, get counted. If you are homeless and you need a bus token, get counted. If you need showers or shelter, get counted. Because by getting counted it will provide all of us the resources to serve the community of L.A. and particularly the homeless.
In the Mission lobby, a census official had a table set up where people could fill out forms, and the television played a constantly repeating message about why that paperwork should be filled out. Other census workers visited soup kitchens and food vans, as well as areas where the more fortunate at least had vehicles to sleep in. They visited transitional and emergency shelters, as well as unregistered labor camps and settlements in remote and undeveloped areas.
These expeditions can be scary, and the safety of the census workers had to be considered, so the enumerators didn’t go alone. They were prepared by some training in how to ask questions in a non-threatening, non-confrontational way. When personal contact seemed too dangerous, or if the enumerators met with outright refusal, they were authorized to fill out the forms themselves, designating the counted as “Person 1,” “Person 2,” and so on.
There was, as always, resistance. Sometimes, folks who have had everything taken away from them were reluctant to part with the last thing they owned, personal information about their private lives. Some were cynical or hopeless, reluctant to take part in an exercise that they were pretty sure wouldn’t have done them any personal good, and possibly would not be of benefit to anyone.
This is a shame, because numbers do matter. Huge federal funds are at stake, as well as state and local money. A lot of it earmarked for housing programs and other aid for those experiencing homelessness, and every city wants to get as much of the pie as it is entitled to.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has decreed that the homeless should be counted not just every 10 years, but every two years, in order to keep on top of the problem, and to make sure that the funds go where they are supposed to. In fact, many communities go further than that, doing a homeless census every year, on the last Wednesday in January.
Fred Berman, a Census Coordinator with the Department of Human Services Programs in Cambridge, MA, describes how seven teams of city employees and volunteers fanned out before dawn on that day, trying to get an accurate count. The weather makes a big difference — it’s January, after all. A person who might be accessible in milder weather has a tendency to find the warmest possible place to wait out the cold, a place where census workers might not think to look.
These efforts always depend heavily on the information provided by grassroots organizations and service providers. In Cambridge, the teams are guided to the right locations by members of the First Step program, among others. They do a shelter count, a street count, and a hospital count, and are particularly interested in knowing how many families with children are experiencing homelessness at any given time.
It’s great that municipalities and organizations take such trouble to figure out efficient ways of enumerating the people living in the street. Even better will be the day when there is no need for the homeless census, because everybody is under a roof.
Source: “Census 2010 aims to get an accurate count of homeless,” SCPR.org, 03/24/10
Source: “2010 Cambridge Homeless Census,” Cambridgema.gov, 2010
Image by Spotreporting, used under its Creative Commons license.
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