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.

Is there a website called Harass the Homeless? A complete instruction manual for creating extra misery in the lives of the least fortunate and least capable people in a society? There might as well be, because in many nations that consider themselves quite civilized, self-righteous housed people are brilliant at thinking up ways to screw around with people experiencing homelessness. If there were an actual “How to Harass the Homeless” guidebook, it would read something like this:

Stop volunteers from feeding them, as in Houston, Texas. A married couple who have been providing as many as 160 meals per day to people experiencing homelessness, have been forbidden to continue. The post, at From the Left, is attributed to Christopher di Spirito, who says,

Anyone serving food for public consumption, whether for the homeless or for sale, must have a permit, said Kathy Barton, a moron for the Health and Human Services Department. To get that permit, the food must be prepared in a certified kitchen with a certified food manager… The alternative for the Houston homeless — who Kathy Barton is allegedly so worried about protecting, is forcing them to eat garbage out of dumpsters.

Turn them away from an event held to benefit them, as in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. A citizen activist (and a housed person) organized a peaceful demonstration, during which he and other citizen activists (and housed people) slept outside on the grounds of a college building. Throughout the night, they collected blankets, jackets and sleeping bags for distribution to the city’s needy. However, when dozens of actual people experiencing homelessness turned up, wishing to show solidarity by joining the caring citizens, they were directed by authorities to get back to their shelter.

Involve them in dubious political hanky-panky, as in Omaha, Nebraska. The blogger known as Street Sweeper covers the “homeless-pay-for-play scandal,” a complex yet mundane story that involves a mayor, a bus, a weather-dependent election strategy, and a number of people experiencing homelessness. Critics accuse Mayor Jim Suttle of “taking advantage of people down on their luck,” and of being a cheapskate besides.

The elected official apparently put the icing on the cake by telling the homeless people from the Siena-Francis house not to talk to any reporters about whatever it was he was doing with them. This was after being refused twice by another nonprofit agency, which plainly told the mayor’s minions that their request was out of line. A tale of such abysmal pettiness, it must be read to be believed.

Forbid them to hold signs, as in Salt Lake City, Utah. Actually, this just changed. The law itself didn’t change, but the municipality agreed to stop handing out citations to people experiencing homelessness who display hand-lettered requests for work, food, or whatever. This was accomplished by an attorney and some homeless plaintiffs, who made a federal case out of it. As Roxana Orellana tells us,

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court last summer by one man and two women who were cited for panhandling by Salt Lake City police. The lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of the state law used to cite them.

For more than two years, SLC has debated the revision of its panhandling ordinance. A very tough group wants to outlaw any requests for handouts made within 10 feet of places like sidewalk cafés. No question about it, to be pestered by beggars is very disturbing for diners and espresso sippers. The article doesn’t mention whether beggars can be arrested for removing leftover food from the tables after the diners have finished.

Reactions?

Source: “Houston FAIL: Puts a Stop to Homeless Food Program,” From the Left, 01/16/11
Source: “Homeless turned away from event to benefit them,” Associated Press via KHQ, 11/29/10
Source: “Mayor Shuttle strategy,” LeavenworthStreet.com, 01/14/11
Source: “SLC agrees not to ticket homeless bearing signs,” The Salt Lake Tribune, 01/13/11
Image by The Accent (Hanlly Sam), used under its Creative Commons license.

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.1

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.
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There are many who believe that The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was killed because he advocated for peace.

There are others who believe that it was not until he became involved in the sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis, Tennessee, that he was shot.

It was from the jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, that he wrote, “There is nothing but short sightedness to prevent a living wage for every American family.”0

Of course, all kinds of predictions became available around the new year. “New Year’s Prediction (II): The US Economy in 2011” is one of them, and its author’s capsule bio is presented here:

Robert Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock. His ‘Marketplace’ commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

Like many other observers of the economy, Reich has noticed the phenomenon described by the first line of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Reich feels that the coming year will be maybe not the best of times, but pretty good for the stock market and anybody connected with Wall Street. Giant corporations will make giant profits. What he calls the Big Money economy will do just fine.

The rest of us, not so much. What Reich calls the Average Working Family economy is doomed to more of the same. American workers will continue to be lucky to be working at all, but no matter how fervently grateful they are to be employed, their pay isn’t going to go up. The working poor will stay poor, though not necessarily working. The number of people who wish they had jobs will keep growing. Americans will sink deeper into debt, if they can even get loans or credit at all.

Small businesses will flounder and fail. The housing situation won’t get any better for either owners or renters. Reich does not specifically mention the population of Americans experiencing homelessness, but it’s easy enough to extrapolate from the foregoing, and understand that “dismal” is not too strong a word. Here’s part of the problem as Reich diagnoses it:

America’s big businesses are depending less and less on U.S. sales and U.S. workers. Their big profits are coming from two sources: (1) growing sales in China, India, and other fast-growing countries, and (2) slimmed-down US payrolls….

In short, profits aren’t coming from American consumers — and profits won’t be coming from American consumers in 2011.

Reich mentions that General Motors makes more cars in China than in the United States. Gee, I hope they do a better job with cars than with audiocassette players. I just threw away an American-brand, made-in-China, personal cassette player because batteries could not be inserted into its body. To make a compartment that holds a couple of AA batteries — how complicated an engineering feat is that?

And the other General, General Electric, plans to invest $2 billion in China very soon. Wal-Mart’s customers are mainly outside America and its workers will soon be too, if not already. Reich says,

Most Republicans and too many Democrats are dependent on corporate America and Wall Street. Their version of tax reform is to cut taxes on the wealthy and on big corporations, and either raise them on everyone else (sale and property taxes are already on the rise) or cut spending on programs working families depend on.

He sees a new progressive movement forming up, composed of (not surprisingly) progressives, Independents, minorities, organized labor, and the young. He also includes the “enlightened Tea Partiers,” which is an important distinction to make. There is too much stereotyping and labeling going on, and not enough serious consideration of views.

—–

What else can help to change the dire outcomes predicted by many prognosticators? How about the Universal Living Wage? We really urge every American to get familiar with the idea, as described in Looking Up at the Bottom Line. Here is the essence:

The benefit of the ULW is that it will end homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum-wage workers, and prevent economic homelessness for all 10.1 million minimum wage workers.

Reactions?

Source: “Robert Reich,” RobertReich.org
Source: “New Year’s Prediction (II): The US Economy in 2011,” Truth-Out.org, 12/29/10
Image by freeparking, used under its Creative Commons license.

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.

We mentioned the interview that Wayne Hurlbert conducted with the House the Homeless founder Richard R. Troxell. It is worth mentioning again, because Hurlbert, the host of Blog Business Success Radio, also published a very comprehensive review of Looking Up at the Bottom Line. He writes like a person who has thought long and hard about the economic issues surrounding homelessness.

Like many other readers, Hurlbert paid particular attention to the part where Richard talks about fairness in the workplace. Think about it. When is the last time you heard anybody talk about fairness? Anybody over the age of seven, that is. Kids are learning about the world’s unfairness before they even discover the truth about Santa Claus. Fairness has become as rare as the unicorn. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

For starters, we can each take charge of making sure that fairness exists in whatever little corner of the world we hold sway over. In our daily interactions, we can be fair. Parents can do it, teachers can do it, and yes, even business people can do it. We have all known managers, supervisors, landlords, and business owners who have brought fairness into equation.

Life may be unfair, but people can choose to be fair, and every time we choose fairness, “life” gets a little bit less unfair. In fact, that’s all the more reason why we should try extra hard to be fair, to counterbalance the general tendency of life to be unfair. Seeing this, other people catch on to the fairness concept. This is how the world gets changed, and it’s as true in the struggle to end homelessness as anywhere else.

Many laws and regulations work against the potential success of people experiencing homelessness, and this must be as true in Hurlbert’s town as in Austin (and innumerable other places), because it is one of the aspects of the book he mentions in his review. He also notes, and this must also be true in a lot of places, how government agencies, while necessary and helpful, can sometimes go astray. There is such a thing as too much help, or rather, help applied in way that negates its usefulness. It can create unhealthy dependency, rather than building self-reliance, which should be the true goal. The reviewer says of Richard’s book,

The author shares stories of people without homes, attempting to change their lives through hard work, but unable to escape the homeless trap… The author shares a personal memoir, stories of real homeless people, and provides an alternative to social programs that reaffirms the dignity of people, helps the economy, and saves money for the taxpayer.

This is the aspect that a lot of people want to read it for — to find out exactly how the Universal Living Wage can help businesses, boost the economy in general, and especially, take less from the taxpayer’s pocket. And while doing all this, it will also end economic homelessness for over a million people and prevent economic homelessness for all 10.1 million minimum-wage workers. What’s not to like? Here is the message as Wayne Hurlbert rephrases it:

The Universal Living Wage adds money to the economy, increases spending and consumption, assists landlords in filling their rental units, and lowers the amount of taxpayer funds needed to sustain the formerly homeless person. The principle transforms people from needing social services to becoming taxpayers and supporters and full members of the local economy.

Just to drive the point home, this review, which highly recommends Looking Up at the Bottom Line, appears on a website called Blog Business World, and was written by a man who knows something about business, and who sees the Universal Living Wage as a win-win proposition. “The concept works for everyone,” Hurlbert says.

So please become a force for a better future by informing yourself about the Universal Living Wage by reading the book, or by listening to the excellent interview, or better yet, by doing both.

Reactions?

Source: “Looking Up At The Bottom Line by Richard R. Troxell – Book review,” Blog Business World, 12/05/10
Image by rduta, used under its Creative Commons license.

The final month of 2010 was an action-packed one for Richard R. Troxell. Of course, every December, for the past decade or so, has been devoted to the Thermal Underwear Drive. In fact, that project moves to the front burner earlier in the year, in November, around the time of the annual memorial service, recalling those who have perished on the streets of Austin, and reminding us of one real, concrete way to help prevent the loss of more lives in the future. (It went great, by the way.)

In the midst of all this, Richard was a guest of Blog Talk Radio host Wayne Hurlbert, who was kind enough to make the recording of the Richard R. Troxell interview available to anyone at any time, through the magic of the World Wide Web.

One of the ideas Richard wants to get across is that people experiencing homelessness are not one big homogenous mass. They have different abilities and needs, just like anybody else. He has taken the trouble to conduct a number of very detailed surveys in Austin, Texas, and if activists in other cities followed this practice, it would probably be a big help in educating the housed public.

Among adults experiencing homelessness, there are three major groups. Many homeless substance abusers are currently in no shape to work, and maybe never could be returned to productivity. Others could be returned to the work force with intervention and treatment, over time.

About 40% of people experiencing homelessness have serious mental health concerns, and, of course, there is some overlap with the substance abuse group. They are disabled and can’t work, although this could change too. Many people who are seriously impaired in this way could become sufficiently rehabilitated to hold jobs. Warehousing them in institutions was not an acceptable answer, but turning them loose with the expectation that they could be depended on to take their medications was not a viable answer either. If psychotropic drugs work at all, it’s within a matrix of stability, good physical health, proper diet, and medical supervision to monitor and adjust the medications. There is hope in that area too.

But right now, we’re talking about the approximately 50% of adults experiencing homelessness who could perfectly well be working if there were jobs, or who are working, but still not making enough for the basic needs of shelter, food, and clothing. So about half of the current homeless adults are not able to work at the present time, and half are. The ones who could work, what they need is not support from tax dollars, but the opportunity to support themselves.

Another thing shown by surveys is that nationally, the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population are single mothers and their children. They fall into both categories, because for a mother who is physically and mentally able to work, taking a job means finding child care, which is another back-breaking expense. (Of course, child-care workers need to make a genuine living wage, too.)

Realizing the expense to the working poor who have children, various governments at various times have subsidized child care. Which leads to questions about the paradoxical weirdness of having people work to pay taxes, so part of their taxes can be used to pay somebody else to take care of their children. A lot of people ask, wouldn’t it be simpler to just pay them to take care of their own children? But that’s another topic.

The Universal Living Wage was designed to help the working poor who are doing their best, and still can’t make rent, and the unemployed but able people experiencing homelessness, who need an opportunity. Do yourself a favor and let Richard explain how the Universal Living Wage could get half the homeless people off the streets.

Wayne Hurlbert has obviously done this interview thing before. Unlike some media personalities, he takes the time to review the material beforehand. He asks relevant questions and then lets the guest talk — basic good manners and good journalism. All authors should be so lucky as to have such a platform to express our views, and to have such an enthusiastic supporter. Hurlbert also published a review of Looking Up at the Bottom Line, at Blog Business World, which concerns itself with business, marketing, public relations, and SEO for successful entrepreneurs.

Reactions?

Source: “Richard Troxell: Looking Up At The Bottom Line,” BlogTalkRadio.com, 12/07/10
Source: “HTH Health Survey Results 2010 for Austin, Texas,” HouseTheHomeless.org, 10/12/10
Image by twicepix, used under its Creative Commons license.

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.
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