Today, we’re looking at an announcement from England and the comments it has attracted. Taken together, they pretty much capsulize the larger debate about society’s obligations to people experiencing homelessness.

In the United Kingdom, the fourth largest supermarket chain called Morrisons plans to open several new stores in which it will employ the homeless. The projected number of employees it will be needing is 10,000, and the plan is to fill 10% of those openings (1,000 jobs) with homeless people.

Rowena Mason writes about energy and financial matters for the Telegraph. In her brief article, we learn that Morrisons’ plan came about through cooperation with a nonprofit organization called Create, and with the Salvation Army.

The food chain promises to provide not just low-level jobs like cleaning, but to train people for more skilled positions, under an apprenticeship program. Apparently, the pilot program is already underway, and the first five people who went through the pre-employment academy have just started work at a store in the West Yorkshire city of Leeds. A spokesperson said the corporation believes in “a hand-up rather than a hand-out,” and even bigger long-range plans are underway.

Mason writes,

Morrisons claims to operate the biggest supermarket apprenticeship scheme in the UK, and it aims to train 100,000 employees with basic qualifications by 2011 — from shop floor staff to cleaners. Last month, the company also said it would fund 20 undergraduates through a salaried three-year degree course in food manufacturing at Bradford University.

At Inside Housing, Emily Twinch adds some technical details about exactly how this plan to help the homeless will be carried out:

The food retailer will give new employees three months training in the classroom and on the job, leading to a Qualifications and Credit Framework Level 1. They will then become fully employed by Morrisons and given the opportunity to work for a QCF Level 2 in retail skills or take up an apprenticeship to learn a craft, such as fishmongering.

The Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) is the United Kingdom’s system for recognizing the qualifications of workers and granting accreditation in various commercial areas. It was developed with the help of the government and the organizations and companies that provide job training, with plenty of input from employers.

Training people to be employable is, of course, not a new concept. What’s new is the structure of the program to recognize smaller steps in the learning process, and allow people to build up qualifications bit by bit. Another purpose is to allow the various skill levels of the participants to be honored nationally, so that a worker who earns certain credentials in Wales, for instance, will be recognized as eligible for a job requiring those credentials in London.

Of course, once the Morrisons plan was publicized, it drew both praise and criticism from the public, as exemplified by the “Comments” sections of the two news stories cited here. One person wants to know what, exactly, is this organization called Create? Another wonders why there is no mention of how much taxpayers’ money is involved. One commentator notes that not having an address has always been a major barrier for job-seekers, and this is a good step forward.

Someone mentions that he doesn’t not want the food he is about to buy and take home to be handled by employees whose health and hygiene are questionable. Will they be tested for communicable diseases? Someone else replies tartly that some of the dirtiest people he knows are people with jobs and homes, homes with washing facilities that they don’t choose to use. He mentions office workers who don’t cover their mouths when they cough, or wash their hands after using the restroom.

And, of course, someone writes in to slam Morrisons: “They remain, by a long margin, the worst employer I have ever had.” The most troubling comments concern the same problem we have in the United States: Even when employed, most of these new members of the workforce will still be homeless, because of the high cost of renting a place to live.

Richard R. Troxell writes in Looking Up at the Bottom Line,

With 42% of the visibly homeless working every week, then why are they still homeless? They are still homeless because it takes twice the minimum wage to get a one bedroom apartment in Austin. A person could work a full time job at McDonald’s and a full time job at Wendy’s and still not make enough to rent a one bedroom apartment.

Not in Austin, not in Leeds, and not much of anywhere else, is a full-time, minimum-wage worker able to afford housing for herself or himself, and that’s not even considering the dependents. So while Morrisons and other companies are trying to better the situation, and are to be greatly congratulated for their civic-minded spirit, the dismal truth is that it’s a very small drop in a very large bucket.

Reactions?

Source: “Morrisons to hire 1,000 homeless people,” Telegraph, 11/01/10
Source: “Supermarket takes on homeless workers,” Inside Housing, 11/02/10
Source: “Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Amazon.com
Image by reverses (meenakshi madhavan), used under its Creative Commons license.
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Canada has always had its own way of doing things. Check out this radical plan for not only getting people experiencing homelessness off the streets, but turning their lives around:

At Home runs with a housing first philosophy, so residents aren’t required to abstain from using drugs or to comply with their medications to keep their housing… The building, which is staffed by nurses, mental health and social workers, will be served by a psychiatrist, and offers three meals a day, art classes… yoga and acupuncture.

Acupuncture? Drugs? Yes, and journalist Cheryl Rossi quotes the site coordinator, Catharine Hume, who says,

It’s meeting people where they’re at, providing them with a space where they can actually breathe a little bit and actually consider options that maybe they haven’t considered for years.

One resident interviewed by Rossi, for instance, reported that his cocaine habit has decreased drastically since he has moved into the Bosman Hotel Community in Vancouver. Located in the province of British Columbia, this facility was created through the joint efforts of the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) and the PHS Community Services Society that have renovated the old hotel. It opened in the summer of 2010.

The Bosman Hotel Community includes residents whose ages range from 25 to 74, and about a quarter of them are women. The residents, some of whom have been on the street for as long as 20 years, have not only private rooms, but their own bathrooms. Most importantly, they receive help under a philosophy called “housing first.” In other words, the goal is to get them under a roof first, and then address their other problems, whatever those problems may be. All the residents suffer from some kind of mental illness.

Could people in the United States benefit from a similar program? Absolutely. In Looking Up at the Bottom Line, Richard R. Troxell says of the miserable failure of de-institutionalization in the States:

In 2010 it has been conservatively estimated that a third of our nation’s homeless are suffering serious mental health problems. They now live under bridges.

In Vancouver, the Bosman Hotel is one of several single-room occupancy (SRO) facilities either already open or in the process of renovation. The program under which these are administered is called “At Home/Chez Soi.” (In bilingual Canada, the dual name is standard.) Old hotels are bought by the provincial government, get fixed up, and are run by nonprofit agencies. “At Home/Chez Soi” is a research and demonstration project that involves five cities and is funded through March 2013.

The “At Home/Chez Soi” philosophy is spelled out in an Open Letter written by Janet Yale,
chairperson of the Leadership Table on Homelessness (PDF) in Ottawa, a participating city in another Canadian province, Ontario. She outlines the goals and beliefs of Destination Home, a massive 10-year plan that involves numerous government agencies and community organizations. Yale points out the pragmatic side of the solution: Studies have shown that the taxpayers can house the homeless for about one-fifth the cost of maintaining the status quo.

Ottawa’s homeless shelters generally help people through difficult transitional periods, but it was noticed that a small percentage of the most vulnerable population are unable to escape the condition of chronic homelessness. Yale explains how somebody did the math:

[… I]t costs us about $100,000 per person per year to keep them exactly as they are versus the $18,000 per person per year it would cost to find them real homes and provide them with the supports they need to help them stay housed. Beyond costly shelter per diems, allowing this revolving door to remain open means we are also paying for unchecked visits to hospital emergency rooms, mental health stays, incarcerations and police and emergency responses.

When mentally ill, chronically homeless people are transformed into housed people with a support system, everyone benefits. The city is safer, the business owners are not inconvenienced by raggedy folks sleeping in their doorways, the tourists are not turned off by the sight of them, and the entire community feels better about itself for knowing that it is doing the right thing.

Source: “New social housing project to study mental illness and homelessness,” The Vancouver Courier, 08/23/10
Source: “Destination Home/Chez Soi” (PDF), DestinationHome.ca, 10/07/10
Source: “Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Amazon.com
Image by quinet (Thomas Quine), used under its Creative Commons license.

In mid-November, on the California coastline, Mount Carmel Lutheran Church continued its 15-year-long tradition of hosting the San Luis Obispo County Band at an event to raise money for the needs of people experiencing homelessness. As reported by Danielle Lerner, they support the particular requirements of the Maxine Lewis Homeless Shelter, which this year is concentrating on supplying socks, underwear, and bedding.

In Lincoln Park, Illinois, around Thanksgiving time, St. Clement’s church takes up an annual collection of hats, underwear, gloves, and socks. You will have noticed that the first letters of those words conveniently spell the friendly acronym H.U.G.S., so you wind up with the name H.U.G.S. for the Homeless.

In fact, plenty of faith-based groups and community organizations across the country have concentrated their efforts on hats, underwear, gloves, and socks. We have mentioned before the importance of wearing hats in cold weather. The human body throws off a lot of heat from the skull. A hat goes a long way toward keeping a person warm.

The extremities at the other end need warmth too. In Surviving on the Streets, homeless
cartoonist/memoirist/activist/musician Ace Backwords reveals that socks and underwear are the only articles of clothing that he buys. For anything else, used is okay. But even a street person has to draw the line somewhere. (Especially if he’s a cartoonist. You can laugh now.) Actually, Backwords has quite a lot to say about footwear in general. For instance:

If you’ve got a hole in your shoe and your socks get wet, you are very likely going to be walking around in cold, wet socks for the next few days. You might have all the other warm gear you need, but with wet socks you are going to be cold and shivering and miserable and very possibly sick… Keep in mind, you are not a normal person; you will very likely be living with your boots on, sometimes up to 24 hours a day… No point in dying with them on, too, at least not just yet.

Then Backwords goes on to tell some stories that would make your lunch try to get away from you. There is nothing glamorous about street life. There is certainly nothing glamorous about frostbite or even a runny nose. Which brings us back to Texas, which people think of as hot, but parts of it can get pretty cold on occasion.

In Austin, the annual Thermal Underwear Drive is underway. It will culminate in a January 1 blowout when all the collected clothing items will find their new owners. Plans are afoot, and funds need to be raised. Richard R. Troxell says,

This will be the 10th Annual House the Homeless Thermal Underwear Party. I’ve gotten the Rockin’ South Austin Gospel Band to again participate. Joanne will help us gather hams, turkeys, pies etc. Sylvia will run the kitchen.

Richard speaks for sponsoring organization House the Homeless, and many others support the event, including KXAN, Channel 36. News 8 posted a clip featuring reportage by Jenna Hiller and introducing Homey-too, the Thermal Underwear Drive‘s mascot, who wears a set of long johns to set a good example.

Going from underwear to outerwear, there is exciting news from Detroit, Michigan, where a 21-year-old industrial design major named Veronika Scott has invented a coat that converts into a sleeping bag. Free Press staffer Bill Laitner wrote about it, and his story was picked up by the Chicago Tribune.

Depending on who you ask, there are between 18,000 and 32,000 people experiencing homelessness in Detroit, and Scott hopes her idea will keep some of them alive and relatively comfortable throughout the winter. She went broke creating prototype coats, bringing each version closer to the vision. (Industrial trivia: James Dyson has engineered 5,127 vacuum cleaners, each one slightly different, before settling on the production model.)

The “Element S(urvival) coat” is made from Tyvek HomeWrap insulation, lined with synthetic fleece donated by the Carhartt company. Imre Molnar, dean of the College for Creative Studies, endorsed Scott’s project. Journalist Laitner captured a quotation from this patron, who used to work for the outdoor gear company Patagonia. Molnar said,

This is extraordinary. If this garment is successful in Detroit, it’s going to work across the country and around the world for homeless people, to say nothing of the relief industry.

Another ally is Rev. Faith Fowler of Cass Community Social Services, which has the people and the space to start putting coats together. A local company is providing sewing machines. Clients of the Neighborhood Service Organization shelter, who over the past months have gotten to know the “coat lady,” will do the, so to speak, road testing.

Reactions?

Source: “SLO County Band uses music to help the homeless,” KSBY-TV, 11/14/10
Source: “H.U.G.S. for the Homeless,” St. Clement Church, 11/20/10
Source: “Surviving on the Streets,” Amazon.com
Source: “Thermal Underwear Drive,” HouseTheHomeless.com
Source: “College student hopes her coat will save homeless people’s lives,” Freep.com, 11/18/10
Image by mricon, used under its Creative Commons license.

As if there weren’t enough problems and obstacles already for programs that are trying to house the homeless, or at least trying not to let things get any worse, things are still getting worse. Really, it’s one of those news stories where you think, “Hey, is this from The Onion?” We’re all in favor of parody and satire, and The Onion is a great publication, but when an Onion-like story is slipped in amongst the “real” news, as if we’re supposed to believe it, well, that takes a joke a little bit too far.

Except… the Associated Press is not generally known for its sense of humor, and Ken Kusmer is their man in Indianapolis for coverage of social services and diversity issues. Somehow, we don’t think he’s kidding. This is actual reportage from the great state of Indiana.

“Ind. parents told drop disabled kids at shelters,” the story is titled. Kusmer says social workers are telling parents to drop off their disabled children at homeless shelters. This is not a one-shot deal. He mentions several instances.

First, it’s important to understand what a Medicaid waiver is, and a four-minute video from an organization called Arc explains it. The program allows Medicaid to fund home-based and community-based services for children and adults with disabilities, in their own homes or neighborhoods.

This is a wonderfully humane alternative to sending people to facilities. Which don’t exist anyway. The program was developed so the state could close all state-funded institutions for people with developmental disabilities, and although we’re just looking at Indiana here, we’re betting the overall situation is pretty much the same throughout America.

Medicaid waivers are concerned with two types of need: primarily medical need, and need motivated by the developmental disabilities, including autism. Ideally, when this program is up and running, and has funding, the services available would include 24-hour residential support, employment services, adult day services, respite care, support to participate in the community, family and caregiver training, behavior supports, transportation, and various modalities of therapy.

So, forget everything you’ve just learned, because the darn thing is broken anyhow. With very few exceptions, the waiting lists have always been long, sometimes reportedly as long as 10 years, which would take us just about back to when the program was initiated. Now, the waiting lists stretch into infinity.

What happens when aging parents can no longer care for a disabled adult child, because the parents need care themselves? Institutionalization? Not an option. Independent living? If the person could live independently, she or he probably would be doing so already. What happens when both parents work, and even with both parents working, there’s no way they can afford to hire help because they just barely make a living wage? What happens when there is only one parent? When there is only one parent and more than one disabled child? When there is only one parent and more than one disabled child, and the parent has to go into the hospital for surgery? What happens is, in most cases, nothing.

Except that a state social worker, overburdened with unfillable requests, burned out from having to say “no” over and over again, might suggest dropping off the disabled family member at a homeless shelter. Of course, giving this kind of advice is not official policy, and a bureaucrat interviewed by the journalist said any employee who made such a suggestion would be disciplined. And nobody has actually done it… yet. Kusmer says,

There have been no confirmed cases of families dumping severely disabled people at homeless shelters because Indiana wouldn’t provide the care needed. But some families have been on waiting lists for waivers for 10 years. The lists contained more than 20,000 names last month…

Kusmer also spoke with Kim Dodson of The Arc of Indiana, the group responsible for making the YouTube video mentioned above. She says,

It is something we are hearing from all over the state, that families are being told this is an alternative for them. A homeless shelter would never be able to serve these people.

Truer words were never spoken. “Emergency housing shelters are consistently full,” says Richard R. Troxell, whose familiarity with homeless shelters is matched by few people in the entire nation. For instance, assessing the situation at the time when Austin, Texas, decided to ban outdoor living, which is pretty much the only kind of living available to people experiencing homelessness, Troxell wrote,

The number of homeless in Austin was estimated to be several thousand, which far out-numbered the few hundred beds at the Salvation Army, the only shelter in town at that time.

And now there is even more need, everywhere, and fewer resources. Shelters are just hanging on by the thread, trying desperately to help people who possess the ability to make it through the door on their own, and wait in a line. Even when made in jest — and not a very funny jest, at that — the idea that homeless shelters could take on another whole population is the least humorous idea of the decade.

Source: “Ind. parents told drop disabled kids at shelters,” Yahoo News, 10/27/10
Source: “Indiana’s Medicaid Waiver Program,” YouTube
Source: “Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Amazon.com
Image by Alan Stanton, used under its Creative Commons license.

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.

San Diego, California, is seeing an unusual Halloween celebration this year, as millionaire Jim Lawlor hosts a party to aid the people experiencing homelessness. Lawlor, now the star of a TV reality show, was once in the situation of not having a roof over his head. This was nearly 20 years ago, and since then he became wealthy by inventing specialized goggles for use in spray-painting jobs. The uncredited press release says,

He now devotes much of his energy giving back to the community. ‘How can we call ourselves ‘America’s Finest City’ when we have one of the worst homeless problems in the nation?’, Lawlor asks.

The reality show in which Lawlor is the featured character is, naturally, about him — a guy who throws a lot of parties at the Pacific Beach Castle, produces a bikini calendar, and also donates time, money and energy to philanthropy. Leading up to Halloween, he recruits “angels” and sends them out with bags filled not with candy, but with healthful munchies. This process of delivering holiday swag to street people is called “Reverse-Trick-Or-Treat.”

The genial host draws donors to his parties by having plenty of gorgeous women on hand. He gets the gorgeous women there by offering hefty prizes for the most alluring costumes. The gender politics may be questionable, but there is no doubt that the results are worthwhile. When the partier-goers arrive, they leave their contributions in a donation box. After the total is tallied up, Lawlor himself matches the amount before passing it on to his chosen charitable organization. This year, the group that benefits is Photocharity, which funds the San Diego Youth Services’ Storefront emergency shelter.

In Cleveland, Ohio, the Girl Scouts are doing their part for the Halloween fun of kids in shelters. Cheryl Bohr, who leads a troop of six- and seven-year-olds, told a reporter that she and her daughter got the idea from an article in American Girl magazine. After collecting “gently used” Halloween costumes, the young Scouts plan to deliver them to Project Hope for the Homeless, where they will tour the shelter.

Via Associated Content, Rebecca Rosenburg offers ideas to the personnel of shelters everywhere, on the subject of creating Halloween fun for the children who find themselves spending the holiday on their premises. Of course, families who don’t even make a living wage can’t be expected to buy these frivolities. So first involve the public, and collect gently used costumes and components, as well as Halloween decorations, paper plates, napkins, pumpkins, carving kits, and anything else you can think of to add to the festivities.

Depending on how the institution usually operates, the staff can prepare a Halloween-themed meal, or, if families do their own cooking, ingredients for Halloween-themed goodies can be provided. And, of course, encourage the residents to decorate their own quarters and the common areas, and even outdoors, if that’s appropriate, and if there are donated items to decorate with.

Of course, when the holiday is over, and if there’s room for storage, it’s a good idea to hold onto the costumes and salvageable decorations. Throughout the year, an effort can be made to save old sheets and blankets and odd bits of clothing that can be used to construct costumes next year.

Rosenburg recommends checking area churches and other institutions that invite children for Halloween fun. In my city, for instance, where there is still a pedestrian shopping area called Old Town, the merchants give out candy during the day. The sidewalks are full of costumed kiddies accompanied by their parents or day-care providers. Many churches host “Trunk or Treat,” or similar events. Put up fliers or write it on a chalkboard, just let the customers know that these events are planned.

The news we had all been breathlessly waiting for was announced on the 15th of this month, when Sophie Forbes reported on the Halloween activities of Paris Hilton and her main squeeze, Cy Waits. The celebrity couple first shopped for a carload of pumpkins, then delivered them, along with many other treats, to the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles (a.k.a. Skid Row).

It’s one of the biggest family shelters in the country, and certainly the largest in Los Angeles, with not only transitional housing, but clothes, recovery programs, medical and dental programs, job training, and counseling. The tour that Paris and her boyfriend took of the facility offered, of course, lavish photo opportunities, and it looks like a good time was had by all.

Now, here is a question that apparently is on a lot of people’s minds, going by the evidence of online forums and discussion groups, anyway. At Halloween, is it cool for a housed person to wear a hobo costume, or some other outfit implying homelessness? Is it a consciousness-raiser, or a thoughtless, hurtful deed? Is it offensive, or merely in bad taste? Reactions?

Source: “A Halloween Party To Help Solve The Homeless Problem In San Diego?,” Free Press Release, 10/24/10
Source: “Scouts look to bring Halloween to homeless kids,” The News-Herald, 10/08/10
Source: “Homeless on Halloween: Celebrating Halloween at the Homeless Shelter,” Associated Content.com, 10/07/10
Source: “Good deed of the day: Paris Hilton delivers Halloween goodies to a homeless shelter,” Daily Mail, 10/15/10
Image by Beau B, used under its Creative Commons license.

“America’s Poor: Where Poverty Is Rising In America” comes with a handy map that answers the question, “Where in America is poverty getting worse?” The answer is, just about everywhere. As a whole, we are in the worst shape we have been in since the Census Bureau started publishing these numbers 51 years ago. Economic homelessness, the plight of people who can’t afford housing even though they are working, is a growing condition.

From The Huffington Post via Yahoo! News:

Income inequality hit an all-time high before the recession, according University of California, Berkeley, economist Emmanuel Saez. States, faced with an estimated budget shortfall of $380 billion for 2011, have started to cut crucial services and have laid off thousands of workers.

The interactive map that accompanies the article was created by the personal-finance website Mint, and if you happen to feel like getting really depressed, spend a few minutes rolling your cursor over the various states so the numbers will appear. What’s the percentage of people in your state living in poverty? Here in Colorado, it’s about 12%, which is not bad, not bad at all. And that reaction is indicative of the depth of the problem. When the fact that only 12 out of every hundred people are destitute (or heading that way fast) sounds like good news, something is seriously wrong.

Because hey, it could be worse! This could be Mississippi, where more than 20% of the people are officially defined as poor. Although Mississippi is the worst, the Southern states in general are pretty much one big poverty pocket. People in rural areas are poor. And so are people in the big Northern and Western cities like New York and Los Angeles. And just so nobody feels left out, people in the suburbs are poor too. In fact, one-third of the poor people in America live in the suburbs, the neat, snug Ozzie-and Harriet-land where life was always supposed to be perfect.

To put it another way, one in seven Americans now lives in poverty. To put it yet another way, 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty. The jobs are gone, and with them went the health insurance. The minimum wage is a joke, the working poor can’t afford even the cheapest housing, and the mental health status of people is perilous as a result of dealing with all this. Even those who are working to house the homeless are looking over their shoulders, fearing that their turn will come next.

The article mentioned above provides plenty of links to related articles, like the one from The Huffington Post titled, “The Poorest States in the U.S.,” by Nathaniel Cahners Hindman, from which we learn that the statistics can be sliced another way. Hindman reports,

The percentage of Americans living on incomes that were less than half of their state’s poverty threshold — or had an income-to-poverty ratio below 50 percent — grew to 6.3 percent from 5.6 percent in 2009, and was highest in Washington, D.C.

We’re talking about people whose income levels don’t even make it halfway to “poor.” They are truly “looking up at the bottom line.” And the place where this is happening most is in the District of Columbia, in the city of Washington. People, this is our nation’s capitol. The proud monuments of our history cast their shadows over some of the most down-and-out residents of the entire country, who live in the same geographical region as some of the wealthiest beneficiaries of the screwed-up mess this country has become. Because, oh yes, there is even more news on this front.

A thing called “income inequality” is worse than it has ever been, too. That means the gap, the difference between being really poor and really rich, has stretched to its furthest extreme. The wealthy are not just five times better off than the poor, or even a hundred times better off. The disparity factor is 1,500%, as we learn from a preview of Arianna Huffington’s book, Third World America.

Is there hope? Yes, if we do the right thing. Richard R. Troxell of House the Homeless says,

America can change this entire paradigm. We need to stop guiding and directing people to get on the dole. We are about to break the back of the average taxpayer. We need to make work pay. We need to encourage people to work, and we can do that by ensuring that anyone working 40 hours in a week can afford the basics: food, clothing, and shelter (including utilities), no matter where that work is done throughout the entire United States. That my friend, is the Universal Living Wage.

Reactions?

Source: “America’s Poor: Where Poverty Is Rising In America,” Yahoo! News, 10/19/10
Source: “The Poorest States in the U.S.,” The Huffington Post, 09/29/10
Source: “8 Surprising Facts About the Shrinking Middle Class,” The Huffington Post, 08/09/10
Image by Ken Lund, used under its Creative Commons license.

Eugene, Oregon, is a city with the reputation of doing something to house the homeless, and of doing its best to extend other kinds of help in the meantime. Eugene’s innovative Homeless Camping Program was instituted in 1998, so it has been operating long enough that other municipalities look to this city as an example. The program is under faith-based management by St. Vincent de Paul, the Catholic charity organization with a long history of helping those in need.

Vehicle camping is allowed in designated places, under strict rules. The aim is to give a person or family a certain amount of stability for three months, in a safe place, and without being penalized, while they try to figure out how to stop being homeless.

Keith Heath is in charge of screening the candidates, who are generally underemployed or unemployed, and often disabled, and matching them up with available spaces. When interviewed by Joanne Zuhl for Street Roots, Heath said the program is generally considered successful. On his wish list right now is an intern, someone to personally approach more businesses and organizations about creating more legal spaces.

Of course, the ordinance bans on-street camping, but supposedly the police are not zealous about enforcement. Apparently, personnel from St. Vincent de Paul have agreed to be the first responders when there is an on-street camping complaint. Supposedly, the police only show up in extreme situations. Often, housed residents don’t object to one vehicle camper on the street, but when two or several start to congregate, they raise the alarm. Heath says,

Some in the community argue that the police should be more aggressive at enforcing the camping laws. This is an approach that has been tried and the result was increased police time spent on this issue (at the expense of other enforcement needs), greater anger and stress on the streets among homeless people and no greater success at reducing homelessness.

A homeless activist at one point lobbied the City Council for a more liberal street-camping ordinance, allowing those who passed a police background check to stay parked in a street location for up to four nights, but that proposition didn’t pick up any support.

One of Heath’s “happy ending” stories concerns Sue Scott, who ran an auto salvage yard with her father, and was left alone to protect the place from vandals and parts thieves when her father died. She donated camping space to two couples with motor homes and a single person with a trailer. They gained sanctuary, and the presence of all those extra eyes and ears put an end to the break-ins.

Early in 2010, Associated Press reported that Edward Russo did a story about Scott. After two years of sharing her property with campers, she felt pretty good about how the arrangement was working out. In the beginning, she laid down some basic ground rules, such as not letting trash lie around or accumulate because “We don’t want the place looking like a junk yard,” which is unintentionally funny, considering that’s exactly what it is. Or maybe Scott was making a little joke on purpose, which wouldn’t be surprising, because we all need a sense of humor to get through these difficult times.

At the time of Russo’s story, Scott was one of 12 Eugene business owners participating in the Overnight Camping Program. (That is its official name, despite the fact that the campers stay longer.) The city pays for portable toilets and garbage collection at these sites. On non-residential property, which pretty much covers city land, churches and businesses, there can only be three vehicles per location. The participating churches tend to favor families. In the spaces designated for single campers, the person has to be 18 or older.

Of course, the program doesn’t solve everything — there are only 20 spaces available, and far more than 20 people need space. Sometimes, three times as many are on the waiting list. As for the fellow in the picture on this page, although he is in Eugene, his shopping cart wouldn’t exactly qualify as a vehicle.

According to St. Vincent de Paul figures, in the past year, the Overnight Parking Program has aided a total of 81 individuals, and 27 families that included 41 children. But the numbers of the needy continue to increase, and Keith Heath points out a worrisome trend:

The number of people who are chronically homeless has grown from 16 percent of the local homeless population four years ago, to over 50 percent today.

In other words, fewer are in a transitional situation, the kind of awkward hiatus where they just need a couple of months to save up for a security deposit, or just need a place to stay until some relative can refinish a basement for them to live in, or whatever. More and more of the people experiencing homelessness are falling, through no fault of their own, into the hard-core, permanently homeless zone.

Even though services can never keep up with need, Keith Heath and other Oregonians like him are not prepared to quit. There is an old story, often told by the socially conscious, about a beach where thousands of starfish are washed up on the sand. When a little boy picks one up and flings it back in the water, his father says, “It’s pointless, you can’t save them all.” With relentless logic, his son replies, “Maybe not, but I saved that one.”

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Source: “Happy (legal) campers — Eugene, Oregon,” StreetRoots, 03/12/10
Source: “Eugene looking for more places for homeless to camp,” Ashland Daily Tidings, 02/27/10
Source: “Overnight Parking Program,” St. Vincent de Paul
Image by Don Hankins, used under its Creative Commons license.

In Looking Up at the Bottom Line, Richard R. Troxell asks us to envision America’s socioeconomic structure as a yardstick, where approximately one foot of its length is taken up by students, who are not expected to make a significant financial contribution to society because their full-time job is learning. Another foot of its length represents those who have finished their years of toil, and who are no longer expected to make a significant financial contribution to society.

The middle “foot” represents the workers, and this section of society supports not only itself but the other two sections as well. These days, it can’t even sustain itself, and it’s only going to get worse. As the rather rudimentary graphic on this page illustrates, some members of the student group will be moving into the working group, but a great many more members of the working group will be moving into the retired group.

Already, the situation of the middle group is grim. As Troxell points out in chapter six, this middle section includes about 20 million people who are working at, or slightly above, an hourly wage of $7.25 per hour, which is not enough for basic rental housing as individuals. He says,

The work ethic is there; however, the wage is not.

The Universal Living Wage would fix this. The idea is based on three premises: a 40-hour work week; the expenditure of no more than 30% of one’s income on housing; and a minimum wage indexed to the local cost of housing. The Universal Living Wage, Troxell states, will stimulate the overall demand for goods and services, which is beneficial to the economy. He writes,

Families become dramatically more credit-worthy and can avail themselves of more goods and more services. The overall demand for goods and services will increase demand for low-wage workers as industry responds to this demand and stimulation.

However, until the Universal Living Wage becomes reality, at least we have excellent visual tools to help us understand the precipitating factors. The Living Wage Calculator is an online tool created by Dr. Amy K. Glasmeier, which shows exactly how poor (almost) everybody is. The University of Pennsylvania gets part of the credit too, for being the institution at which Glasmeier does her work. (Don’t miss the “About” page.)

Packed with information, yet simple to understand, the Living Wage Calculator’s informational tables reveal what it takes to make a living wage in your community. Pick your state, and then pick your county. Read it and weep.

This calculator uses a different definition of a living wage than the one mentioned above. In this context, a living wage is defined as what it takes to support a family if the sole provider works full-time. We’re not talking about a middle-class lifestyle. This is the least amount you can get by on, to maintain the standard of the working poor. In a family with two adults and two kids, somebody’s got to bring in $28.84 per hour, or $59,000 a year before taxes, and still they will be hanging on by their fingernails. Glasmeier says,

Our tool is designed to provide a minimum estimate of the cost of living for low wage families… The original calculator was modeled after the Economic Policy Institutes’s metropolitan living wage tool. Users should know there are many researchers contributing tools and resources to the movement to achieve living wages. Diana Pearce at the University of Washington, Seattle is an important contributor to the living wage movement.

No researcher in this field, or any other, can or should claim to have the final word on exactly what is going on. Even sociology and economics are vulnerable to the Uncertainty Principle — where something is and how fast it’s going cannot be known at the same time. These fields and many others are also at risk of being influenced by the Schrodinger’s Cat phenomenon: The very act of studying something changes it.

So it’s kind of cool when a scientist will fess up to not being the ultimate authority, and admit that many other intelligent and well-meaning people are working on a problem, and, while they are not all getting the same answers at the moment, they are all intelligent and well-meaning nonetheless. Such a refreshing attitude is worth remarking on.

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Source: “Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Amazon.com
Source: “Introduction to the Living Wage Calculator,” LivingWage.com
Background image by Charlyn W (Charlyn Wee), used under its Creative Commons license. (Thanks to Julie Thomas Brown.)0

On any given night in Portland, Oregon, there are at least 1,500 homeless youth, and an estimated 1,000 in Seattle, Washington. These cities and also San Francisco, California, are particularly hard-hit, because they are all places that attract the young for cultural reasons.

The West Coast situation is, believe it or not, relatively good, because there is more of an effort to provide separate shelters for young people experiencing homelessness, rather than throwing them in with the adults, as is the custom in most American urban areas.

These are some of the conclusions drawn by Carol Smith, who writes for InvestigateWest, a nonprofit investigative journalism center. Anyone who holds a mental stereotype of people experiencing homelessness as a bunch of grizzled old bums is in for a surprise, because an awful lot of them are between the ages of 18 and 24.

How many? Around two million this year nationwide. It’s hard to be exact because by the time any kind of a count is performed and tallied up, and the results publicized, the national economy becomes even worse and the numbers are even larger.

Smith describes the day of a homeless youth as one of constant motion, always being encouraged to move along. At a 27-bed shelter called ROOTS in Seattle, executive director Kristine Cunningham told Smith how disheartening it is to keep turning away more and more young adults. You know how a military person will tell you that the very worst duty of all is notifying family members about a death? Shelter volunteers must have nightmares about having to say “No… Sorry… No room… Sorry…” as many times as they are forced to say it. Such horror is one of the founts of the social-worker burnout.

Sadly, too many young women see pregnancy as the answer. The very compassion that urges society to take care of mothers with young children turns out to contribute to the problem, when young women are so desperate they can’t even think straight, and are deluded enough to see this as a solution. Cunningham also spoke with Smith about that particular Catch-22:

For some of these young people, getting pregnant is perceived as a way out of homelessness. There’s a perception among young people on the street that if you’re about to give birth, you can get housing. ‘We’ve incentivized becoming pregnant,’ Cunningham said.

The thing is, being young and relatively healthy and relatively abled, youth are at the bottom of the list when need is assessed. Because, of course, the sick, the elderly, the disabled, and mothers with children are seen as having the most urgent need.

An able-bodied youth with no visible disabilities is the easiest person to dismiss with the time-honored instruction to “Get a job!” And a lot of them are thinking, “Whoa, what a brilliant idea! Get a job — why didn’t I think of that?” Sarcastically, of course. Because, where are the jobs? What jobs? As Richard R. Troxell reminds us, wage insufficiency knows no boundaries. The simple inability to make enough money to live on is destroying families at every level, and preventing families from being started, too, because the young can’t get enough economic traction to even think about establishing a home and being responsible for babies. Here is a statistic that Smith looked up:

In 2009, 80 percent of college graduates moved home after finishing school, according to job listing website Collegegrad.com…

Four out of five college graduates can’t find work, and wind up back in their parents’ refinished basement. And even if they can find a job, it probably doesn’t pay a living wage, just enough to throw Mom and Dad a couple of bucks for rent. (That’s “economic homelessness” — when you’re working and still can’t afford to rent an apartment.) If kids with an education have it that bad, what kind of hell are those other kids enduring, the ones with neither an education nor a family to fall back on?

Here is a very important insight that Smith obtained from Mark Putnam, a Washington State consultant on homeless issues. It’s a bizarre and sinister new twist to the famous “trickle-down theory.” In the homeless community, the only thing that trickles down is unemployment. Putnam says,

The 30-year-olds are taking jobs from 20-year-olds, because the 40-year-olds are taking the 30-year-olds’ jobs. These guys are truly employment victims of the recession.

Aside from college, where else are all these unemployed youth coming from? The System. Every year, about 20,000 kids “age out” of foster care. How and why they got put into foster care is another question that demands some pretty intensive investigation. But that is for another day. Here is today’s atrocity story:

The largest driver of the young adult homeless population is the foster-care system…
The majority of young people using the shelter system come from foster care.

This brings up one of the major tenets of Richard R. Troxell’s creed in his work to end homelessness: the conviction that no institution, no hospital, no military branch, no social service agency should ever turn a person loose to the streets. The avowed goal of every such institution must be, “Discharge no one into homelessness!”

Source: “Generation Homeless: The New Faces of an Old Problem,” AOL News, 10/19/10
Image by Franco Folini, used under its Creative Commons license.