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.

Reactions?

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.

You might find Fatimah Ali on a sidewalk or in a store, talking to people about the need to house the homeless, offering them copies of a publication called One Step Away. Or you might find her putting the paper together along with her co-workers, the shelter residents, of whom she says,

I’ve found two common threads — compassion for each other and for those who may have hurt them, and determination to recover from whatever burdens they’ve encountered. Often it’s a long and arduous road finding the road back to stability, but it can be done.

Along with being a regular contributor to the Philadelphia Daily News, Fatimah Ali writes for One Step Away, and also serves as the homeless newspaper’s development manager. One Step Away, sponsored by the nonprofit Resources for Human Development, is designed to emulate similar street newspapers established in other cities. Known for its vision and creativity, the paper was recently honored with a Community Service Award by the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania chapter of the NAACP.

Readers of Looking Up at the Bottom Line will recall the significance of Philadelphia, where Richard R. Troxell, a veteran experiencing homelessness, learned the art of community organizing from consumer rights activist Max Weiner. He later formulated the Philadelphia Stabilization Plan and was invited to submit it to the search for best practices initiatives sponsored by the United Nations International Year of Shelter for the Homeless (1987).

Getting back to One Step Away, the name refers to the very small margin of error that exists between being housed and being homeless. Ali says,

My mission is to encourage everyone to care about homelessness because so many people are just a paycheck or two away from having the bottom fall out… Not every homeless person is strung out, uneducated or lazy. Plenty of folks just got a bad break, or had banks that took advantage of them.

How many examples of bad breaks can we think of? Well, first, there are the literal breaks. If, tomorrow, one of your legs was fractured in three or four places, how do you see the future scenario playing out? For many Americans, homelessness is quite literally only one “bad break” away: The building your apartment happens to be located in burns down, or maybe there’s a foreclosure in your future.

Job loss is another vicious jolt on the path of life, obviously. Some unemployment situations do not arise from quitting, or being fired or laid off. If you’re a private-duty nurse, for instance, your patient might expire. In better times, you would take another case. In hard times, another patient might not be available, for reasons having to do with the economy in general. Whether or not it appears in the statistics, it’s a job loss.

One Step Away debuted in December 2009 and is published monthly in tabloid format. The distributors are people experiencing homelessness and joblessness. Most of the content originates with residents of the Woodstock Family Shelter and the Ridge Shelter. Affordable housing is only one of the issues discussed and worked for. It included, for instance, the World Homeless Awareness Day, which was October 10. Fatimah Ali was disappointed that very few other news sources even mentioned it.

True, it doesn’t seem to be widely recognized based on a search on Google either. But then, we have an entire week coming up in November, the National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. The important thing to remember is the second meaning of the paper’s title, One Step Away. The folks who work on it are also busy keeping the faith, believing that they are one step away from getting off the street. As Ali reminds us,

For every hard-luck story that ends in failure, there are also those who successfully turn their lives around and work miracles for their own self-empowerment.

Source: “Philadelphia’s homeless citizens are still under the radar,” Philadelphia Daily News, 10/12/10
Source: “One Step Away, Philadelphia’s first street newspaper, gives voice of advocacy to city’s homeless,” Resources for Human Development, 12/15/09
Image by Tony the Misfit, used under its Creative Commons license.

It was just over a year ago when B. N. Duncan died at age 65, and he is still missed daily in his old haunts, the streets of Berkeley, California. Duncan’s death and the memorial held for him were covered by a number of publications. He even made the CBS Evening News, where, in a story titled “Documenting the Homeless with Dignity,” John Blackstone told the world how Duncan was remembered by the street people he has found endlessly fascinating.

A fixture of the Berkeley scene, Duncan was always going around photographing the floating population, and many of his photos have ended up in the Telegraph Street Calendar, a unique cultural artifact that was produced for 15 years throughout the ’90s and in the early 2000s. His subjects thanked him for it. As one friend explained, street people don’t even look in mirrors, so it can be a touching and empowering experience for them to be represented and commemorated in this way. The story quotes Elaine Duncan, the photographer’s sister, who said,

He was a voice where there was no voice, and this meant a great deal to him.

Though Duncan could be something of a crusty character, his interest and compassion were endless, and he derived more enjoyment from getting to know the human flotsam of Berkeley than most solid citizens find in their own family circles. He took everybody with equal seriousness and equal light-heartedness. His publisher called him a genius.

In poor health toward the end of his life, Duncan himself was protected from the elements by his small apartment, but he spent his days among the ever-shifting yet never-changing denizens of this university town.

In Looking Up at the Bottom Line, Richard R. Troxell makes an excellent point:

We find that, while the majority of people experiencing homelessness may continue to reside in the same place, they are referred as ‘transients’… When you label someone as ‘transient,’ it paints a picture that he or she is just passing through. It implies that such persons have no relationship to our community and, therefore, we have no relationship to, and no responsibility for them.

Nowhere is this permanence of “transients” more evident than in Berkeley. There are people who have been on the scene for 10 or 20 years, or even since the 60s, when Berkeley was one of the centers of the world. They include people suffering from mental illness, drug dependency, alcoholism, and just general inability to handle modern life — folks who are so disconnected that even joining the “working poor” is far above anything they could aspire to. Even the dream of qualifying for any kind of subsidized housing is beyond what many of these lost souls could ever hope to achieve.

A lucky few get by on Social Security payments, while many depend on panhandling and various ingenious ways of scraping together a few bucks. But, despite their ongoing problems and the rigors of addiction recovery and the temptation to give up all hope, the homeless population of Berkeley contains the highest concentration of feisty community activists anywhere. They’re always out there demonstrating for something or protesting against something, and social justice is on their minds 24/7. The ongoing struggle for People’s Park was a recurring theme in the calendars, and the world-famous Naked Guy of Berkeley appeared in its pages more than once.

B. N. Duncan was not the only force behind the Telegraph Street Calendar, which became a tradition for the local people experiencing homelessness who have appeared in its pages. Duncan’s partner in creativity during those years was cartoonist/street chronicler Ace Backwords, who admits to letting the very first printing of the work hit the streets with a typo on its front cover — “calender” instead of “calendar.”

Back in 2002, Gina Comparini interviewed Backwords for the Berkeley Daily Planet about the yearly social document which included not only photos of the street people, but samples of their artwork, cartoons, and statements to the world. Depending on the circumstances, 700 to 2,000 copies of each edition of the calendar were published, with the profits distributed to the participants. Comparini quotes Backwords:

It’s gratifying that what started as a personal thing now means so much to so many people… [W]e try to show them as people first, without the stereotypes… We’re showing them as creative people trying to live productive lives.

Like Duncan, Backwords has always felt compelled to bring these stories to light. Sadly, many of the biographies of street people have ended up being memorial pieces that he had written after their suicides. But he has also certainly celebrated the living, putting many hundreds of hours of labor and many donated dollars into a CD compilation of the work of the various street musicians indigenous to the area.

In yet another tribute to Duncan, community activist Dan McMullan wrote,

The calendar he co-produced had the wonderful effect of showing people that we walk by and ignore every day, as something special and worthy of note… I was always amazed how many students bought his calendars to send back home to show the family and friends what a wild and original place they were calling home for the next four years or so.

Source: “Documenting the Homeless with Dignity,” CBSNews.com, 08/09/09
Source: “Telegraph calendar records street’s spirit and mood,” The Berkeley Daily Planet, 01/12/02
Source: “B.N. Duncan: A Telegraph Avenue Fixture,” The Berkeley Daily Planet, 07/30/09
Images of the Telegraph Street Calendars courtesy of Ace Backwords, used with permission.

Down in Florida, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has been involved for 10 years in an active struggle against the tomato growers over, among others issues, a living wage. The pickers are the very definition of the working poor, a combination of migrant workers and American citizens who are experiencing homelessness. A lot of those tomato farms have not raised the pay rates in 30 years, and some say this industry is the closest thing we have to slavery in America today.

The tomato harvesters need better pay and better working conditions. There have been boycotts and federal investigations, and finally the workers hit on the effective combination of right target and right tactic. The Campaign for Fair Food began by focusing its efforts on the fast-food industry, then went after the food-service sector, announcing in August:

The foodservice industry — the companies that, operating largely behind the scenes, manage cafeterias in the nation’s grade schools and universities, hospitals and hotels, government agencies and institutions, and more — is comprised, almost in its entirety, of its three largest members, Compass, Aramark, and Sodexo. With today’s announcement, all three of those companies have now signed Fair Food agreements.

The CIW is into education, investigation, and agitation. Its members and supporters are vocal, articulate, persistent, and sincere organizers and activists who are great at demonstrating, and are very adept at winning the support and help of the general public. They go into stores and talk to the customers, and deliver letters to the managers, stating,

It is imperative that your company seize the opportunity to be part of the solution to Florida’s longstanding shame of farmworker exploitation.

They believe that those who hold great power in the world also have a great responsibility, a notion that used to be called noblesse oblige. The giant supermarket chains are their next target. To make sure that corporations meet their responsibilities, the CIW has a couple of major actions planned for this coming spring, one in Florida and one in Quincy, Massachusetts, at a corporate HQ.

If you are cheered and heartened by stories of how public shaming can affect a corporation, you will enjoy Richard R. Troxell’s tale of the actions aimed at Best Buy, in chapter two of his book, Looking Up at the Bottom Line.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Perez has covered real estate, home builders, cruise lines, and airlines, and now his beat is the Justice Department. Lately, he has been writing about the struggle in Florida, and brings us up to date on part of the movement’s history:

Taco Bell was the first target. After four years of protests and boycotts, Taco Bell corporate parent Yum! Brands Inc. in 2005 agreed to pay the surcharge to suppliers that would be passed along to workers. Next, the farm workers group went after McDonald’s, which signed a similar agreement in 2007, and then Burger King Holdings Inc. a year later.

Perez quotes Reggie Brown, who is executive VP of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange. The indignant Brown has warned his fellow tycoons:

This type of tactic could be used against any company in corporate America. They’d be well advised to take note.

Exactly! That’s the whole idea! That’s what made the Pacific Tomato Growers, for example, agree to pass along the extra-penny-a-pound surcharge that McDonald’s is paying them.

Why, you may ask, should paying these workers even require a special surcharge, which will be passed on to the consumers who, after all, are also trying to stay solvent? Isn’t paying the employees a basic built-in cost of doing business? Why don’t McDonald’s and the other corporations take it out of their own profits, which are surely abundant? That is one of the mysteries of the Universe.

A raise of one cent per pound of tomatoes would result in something much closer to a living wage for the workers, but, although the CIW has put a lot of energy into trying to convince the growers, it was no use. They even got some of the huge corporate customers to pay the extra penny per pound, but the growers were forbidden by their trade association from passing it on to the tomato pickers. Outfits like Taco Bell have been keeping it in escrow.

Labor Notes reporter Mischa Gaus, formerly a writer for In These Times, knows all about workers — in communications, the postal system, the steel industry, the health care field, and the tomato fields. He quotes CIW leader Lucas Benitez, who says,

We are not today claiming that we have achieved the changes sought by the Campaign for Fair Food. Rather, we are announcing that we have forged a plan of action that gives us a realistic chance to bring about those changes.

In other words, there is still plenty to do. But things are looking better. Along with better pay, the workers want some other kinds of social justice too. They have convinced some companies to agree to the CIW’s code of conduct, which includes third-party monitors to make sure that the wage increase actually makes it to the workers’ pockets. There is also a health and safety program, a complaint-resolution system, and a guarantee that CIW representatives are allowed to talk with workers in the fields.

Source: “Ready to take action now?,” Coalition of Immokalee Workers, 10/11/10
Source: “Major Grower to Join Wage Plan,” The Wall Street Journal, 10/13/10
Source: “Tomato Pickers Secure Path-Breaking Deal with Florida Grower,” SouthernStudies.org, 10/13/10
Image by Dion Hinchcliffe, used under its Creative Commons license.

The recession that has so far wiped out 15 million American jobs is still going on. It has given birth to a whole new huge category of citizens, the economic homeless. The concept of the working poor has been around a long time, but now we’ve got the working poor who, despite the fact that they are employed at least part of the time, still can’t afford living quarters — they are the economic homeless.

New York City is in pretty bad shape, with something like 50,000 people experiencing homelessness. Samm Gustin, Senior Writer at DailyFinance, chronicled the life of one of those people. Gustin, who has written for Wired, the Village Voice, and numerous other publications, met nearly a year ago with one of the working poor, Candido Gonzalez, and wrote a piece about him. Only last week, it was followed up by a look at how the subject of the story is doing now.

Gonzalez had worked for the city for nearly 20 years, and was Community Coordinator for the recycling bureau at the Department of Sanitation. That all ended in October of 2007, when he was laid off, a fate shared by tens of thousands of municipal workers nationwide. Despite 19 years of a fine work history, his classification as a provisional employee denied him the greater degree of job security enjoyed by titled civil service workers.

Unable to keep up with the rent, Gonzalez had to give up his Bronx studio apartment, and went through the inevitable period of couch-surfing, but was unwilling to add to the burdens of relatives for very long. Eventually, with his savings gone and still no job, Gonzalez wound up at the Bowery Mission, which swapped a living space for a job as intake coordinator. This institution, one of the oldest of its kind in the country, dishes out 1,000 meals a day and serves the homeless by providing 82 beds.

Gustin wrote of Gonzalez at the time,

Bright, articulate and hard-working, Gonzalez was given a job at the front desk (hence the bluetooth headset glued to his head during his shift). Since arriving at the Mission in September, he has been cheerfully greeting the homeless men who come there each day.

And that was how things remained for a while. Then, although it took three years, Candido Gonzalez landed a new job. It’s only part-time, but it does hold out the possibility of going full-time and paying something that approximates a living wage. Meanwhile, he is at least housed, sharing an apartment with his sister.

Gonzalez is now employed by the Davidson Community Center (DCC), located in the South Bronx, which could fairly be described as an impoverished area with a population that is 4/5 Hispanic and 1/5 African American. DCC is a nonprofit community outreach organization providing training, education, and advocacy for its clients. His job title is merchant liaison, and it involves technical support for new business development, in the push to revive the Burnside Avenue commercial district.

Looking back, Gonzalez says,

Living and working at the Bowery Mission really opened up my eyes to what life in the community is really like. It showed me how much we take for granted. I thought I had it bad, but every day, people come into the shelter just looking for food. It really changed my way of thinking.

If you’re visiting this site for the first time, Richard R. Troxell and House the Homeless invite you to learn more about the Let’s Get to Work Initiative.

Source: “The New Homeless: Candido Gonzalez at New York’s Bowery Mission,” DailyFinance, 12/16/09
Source: “A ‘New Homeless’ Revisited: A New Job and New Hope for Candido Gonzalez,” Daily Finance, 10/14/10
Image by jebb, used under its Creative Commons license.

Like many others, Richard R. Troxell prefers the term, “people experiencing homelessness” — and for a very good reason. Just “homeless” sounds too hardcore, a permanent condition, like an amputated limb. Sadly, in many cases, that is all too accurate. Far too many Americans have been experiencing homelessness for a very long time. Sometimes, “people experiencing homelessness” makes for an awkward sentence, so perhaps occasionally shortening it can be forgiven.

People experiencing homelessness are often the very same people who have experienced being housed, for most of their lives. It’s a good thing to keep in mind. They never wanted or expected to experience homelessness. No young person, reflecting on his or her future, thinks, “My plan is to be a wanderer with no address, destitute and hungry, hounded from the park to the street corner to jail by the solid citizens, and, maybe someday, set on fire while I’m asleep. There’s a career path with real promise!”

The phrase “people experiencing homelessness” is also a good reminder that you or I might someday share that experience, if we haven’t already. In fact, as the economic situation worsens, the odds that any given person will eventually experience homelessness increase dramatically.

For the individuals and organizations that care, keeping track of the numbers is important. Every 10 years, of course, the government takes a census. We looked back at an article written in the spring by Newly Paul, about how the census was conducted in Los Angeles. In many cities, only one day was devoted to an all-out effort, but because LA is so gigantic, it had allotted three days to the task, beginning March 29. Paul interviewed Herb Smith, president of the Los Angeles Mission, who tried his best to encourage all his clients to stand up and be taken notice of. Smith’s plea was,

If you are homeless and want a meal, get counted. If you’re homeless and you need a bed tonight, get counted. If you are homeless and you need a bus token, get counted. If you need showers or shelter, get counted. Because by getting counted it will provide all of us the resources to serve the community of L.A. and particularly the homeless.

In the Mission lobby, a census official had a table set up where people could fill out forms, and the television played a constantly repeating message about why that paperwork should be filled out. Other census workers visited soup kitchens and food vans, as well as areas where the more fortunate at least had vehicles to sleep in. They visited transitional and emergency shelters, as well as unregistered labor camps and settlements in remote and undeveloped areas.

These expeditions can be scary, and the safety of the census workers had to be considered, so the enumerators didn’t go alone. They were prepared by some training in how to ask questions in a non-threatening, non-confrontational way. When personal contact seemed too dangerous, or if the enumerators met with outright refusal, they were authorized to fill out the forms themselves, designating the counted as “Person 1,” “Person 2,” and so on.

There was, as always, resistance. Sometimes, folks who have had everything taken away from them were reluctant to part with the last thing they owned, personal information about their private lives. Some were cynical or hopeless, reluctant to take part in an exercise that they were pretty sure wouldn’t have done them any personal good, and possibly would not be of benefit to anyone.

This is a shame, because numbers do matter. Huge federal funds are at stake, as well as state and local money. A lot of it earmarked for housing programs and other aid for those experiencing homelessness, and every city wants to get as much of the pie as it is entitled to.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has decreed that the homeless should be counted not just every 10 years, but every two years, in order to keep on top of the problem, and to make sure that the funds go where they are supposed to. In fact, many communities go further than that, doing a homeless census every year, on the last Wednesday in January.

Fred Berman, a Census Coordinator with the Department of Human Services Programs in Cambridge, MA, describes how seven teams of city employees and volunteers fanned out before dawn on that day, trying to get an accurate count. The weather makes a big difference — it’s January, after all. A person who might be accessible in milder weather has a tendency to find the warmest possible place to wait out the cold, a place where census workers might not think to look.

These efforts always depend heavily on the information provided by grassroots organizations and service providers. In Cambridge, the teams are guided to the right locations by members of the First Step program, among others. They do a shelter count, a street count, and a hospital count, and are particularly interested in knowing how many families with children are experiencing homelessness at any given time.

It’s great that municipalities and organizations take such trouble to figure out efficient ways of enumerating the people living in the street. Even better will be the day when there is no need for the homeless census, because everybody is under a roof.

Source: “Census 2010 aims to get an accurate count of homeless,” SCPR.org, 03/24/10
Source: “2010 Cambridge Homeless Census,” Cambridgema.gov, 2010
Image by Spotreporting, used under its Creative Commons license.

Out of all Americans currently experiencing homelessness, some say that one in four is a veteran. Richard R. Troxell says it’s more like one in three, going by the figures gleaned by the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, namely, 28-33%. And, out of that number, more than half are black or Hispanic. So, on top of being a general societal problem, it’s also a race issue.

Despite the best efforts of those who want to help house the homeless, these statistics are rather difficult to keep track of. Many homeless people have learned from hard experience that it’s a good idea to steer clear of any official types, no matter how benign they appear. Some of these folks probably don’t even know themselves who or where they are.

This week, some homeless veterans are getting help, as journalist Melissa Murphy reports from the ninth annual Veterans Stand Down in Dixon, California. The three-day North Bay Stand Down is a yearly event that does its best to provide vets with medical and legal help, along with jackets, underwear, sleeping bags, hygiene kits, boots, and other tangible goods.

The clothing and equipment are either government surplus or bought with grant money. Personnel from Health and Social Services are present, as well as the representatives from Employment Development. Substance-abuse counselors and legal aid people are also available to provide help. A valid ID is always a handy thing to have, and the Department of Motor Vehicles is on hand to facilitate that.

Volunteers from Travis Air Force base set up tents to house the visitors and the various activities. Even live entertainment by the Timebandits is part of the package, along with showers and hot meals.

The organizers expect attendance from the 250 individuals who have registered, with probably another hundred arriving unannounced. Most participants are bused in from the five surrounding counties, and most are in their late forties or early fifties. Murphy interviewed Patrick Stasio, executive director of the Stand Down board, who said,

They come home and there is no wind down time for them. They’re physically here, but their mind is still in the combat area. It’s hard for them to adjust. They’re not the same person when they come home.

Back in August, Aaron Glantz of the New American Media wrote about another California Stand Down, this one in Pleasanton, on the grounds of the Alameda County Fair. Glantz has published two books on the Iraq war, and has collaborated with veterans on the book titled Winter soldier, Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations. The Pleasanton event drew more than 400 Americans who needed help to turn their lives around, including a break from the legal system. Glantz wrote,

A group of veterans stayed in camouflage canvas tents, met with employment counselors and even made their case to superior court judges, who prescribed modest penalties in exchange for dropping charges related to failed appearances on old warrants. Such warrants often started as unpaid traffic tickets, but the charges escalated as they were ignored.

The reporter talked with a former burn-unit medic who had worked extensively with Vietnam veterans. After a prison term, he hooked up with the Homeless Veteran Rehabilitation Program, which he credits with saving his life. This man had just had his resumé typed, which was stored on a flash drive and tied around his neck on a string for safekeeping.

There are about 400 “transitional housing beds” available in California, which has an estimated 12,000 homeless veterans. That’s about 30 in need, for every one existing accommodation.

Earlier this month, Eric K. Shinseki, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, announced nearly $42 million in government grant money, which is supposed to supply additional space. According to the press release,

The $41.9 million is broken into two categories. About $26.9 million will help renovate, rehabilitate or acquire space for 1,352 transitional housing beds. A second group of awards, valued at $15 million, will immediately fund 1,216 beds at existing transitional housing for homeless Veterans this year.

About half of all veterans on the streets had served during the Vietnam era, a particularly damaging war in terms of long-term psychological effects on its participants. When idealistic young people enlist, hoping to serve their country, they’re thinking a three- or four-year hitch. Some end up staying in for a full 20, but very, very few of our youth sign up expecting that the consequences of their stretch in the military will be lifelong, consigning them to wandering, hunger, and neglect.

And maybe it doesn’t have to be forever. It’s wonderful that caring people put together the Veterans Stand Down, but no matter how wonderful, it’s only a bandaid on a gaping societal wound. Richard R. Troxell believes the Universal Living Wage could fix that. Here’s looking forward to the day when there is no longer any need for the Veterans Stand Down.

Source: “Dixon ‘Stand Down’ draws homeless veterans in need,” Daily Democrat Online, 10/13/10
Source: “Standing Up for Homeless Vets at ‘Stand Downs’,” New American Media, 08/18/10
Source: “Secretary Shinseki Announces $41.9 Million to Help the Homeless,” Dept. of Government Affairs, 10/01/10
Image by yummyporky (Vera Yu and David Li), used under its Creative Commons license.

CONFIDENTIAL HEALTH SURVEY RESULTS

Once again, House the Homeless has conducted a survey of people experiencing Homelessness.  This brief survey focuses on core health issues.  The survey was conducted at the 9th Annual House the Homeless, Thermal Underwear Give Away Party conducted January 1st 2010 in Austin Texas.

1) Demographic Information

Males: 408
Females: 85    
Transgender: 8            
Average Age: 45.08    
Average Yrs in Austin: 14.30         
TOTAL: 501

2) Do you get a Disability Check? 

Yes: 9, with 10 pending.
Type: 
SSI 64    
SSDI 33   
VA 8   
VA and SSDI 3
= 108 Total Benefit Recipients

How much do you get each month total? 
$685.55 – Average monthly benefit total

3)  Do you have a Mobility Impaired Bus card? 
Yes – 116 total, plus 10 pending

4) Check ALL that apply.  Do you have?…

High blood pressure 204   
Mental Illness 175
What Type?  
Schizophrenia 16
Bi-Polar 86

Diabetes 84                                   
Shots 16                     
Panic Attacks 70

Arthritis 123                     
HIV/AIDS 10             
Seizures 45

Regular illegal drug user? Yes – 59

Do you believe you are an alcoholic? Yes – 92

5) Have you ever had a brain injury? Yes – 83

6)  Do you have cancer? Yes – 83

What type?          
Prostrate 6
Throat 3
Liver 3

                              Testicular        2

                              Cervical          2

                              Bone                2

                              Skin                 2

                              Kidney                       2

                              Colon              1

                              Lymphoma      1

                              Fibroid                        1

                              Pancreatic       1

                              Hodgkin          1

7) What other serious disease or condition do you have?

            Debilitating Chronic Back Pain                                             21

Debilitating Chronic Knee Pain                                             14

COPD                                                                                      11

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)                                 9

Asthma                                                                                    8

            ADHD                                                                                     6

            Generalized Pain                                                                    4

            Anxiety                                                                                   4

            Fibromyalgia                                                                          4

            Metal Plates/Ankle                                                                 3

            Hypoglycemic                                                                                    3

            Stroke                                                                                      3

            Sciatica                                                                                   3

            Emphysema                                                                            3

            Hip Problems                                                                          3

Heart Disease                                                                          2

High Cholesterol                                                                    2

ADD                                                                                        2

Intestinal Hernia – Massive                                                    2

GERD                                                                                     2

Metallic Ankle                                                                        2

Neuropathy                                                                             2

Paranoid Schizophrenic                                                          2

Hyper Active Deficit Disorder                                               2

Pancreatic                                                                               2

Eye Injury                                                                               2

Severe Hearing Loss                                                               2

Chronic Viral Bronchitis                                                        2

Degenerative Joint Disease                                                    2

Carpal Tunnel                                                                         2

High Cholesterol                                                                    2

Glaucoma                                                                               2

Degenerative Bone Disease                           `                       2

Neurological Disorder                                                                        2

Tinnitus                                                                                   2

Shoulder Plate                                                                        2

Scoliosis                                                                                  2

Circulatory Problems                                                             2

7) CONTINUED:  What other serious disease or condition do you have?

            Sleep Apnea                                                                            1

            Hyperthyroid                                                                          1

            Graves Disease                                                                       1

Pregnant                                                                                  1

            OC Disorders                                                                          1

            Walking Pneumonia                                                               1

            Delusions                                                                                1

            Cirrhosis                                                                                 1

            Dizziness                                                                                1

            Bad Feet Due to Circulation                                                  1

Arterial Sclerosis                                                                    1

Irritable Bowel Syndrome                                                      1

Muscle Control Loss                                                               1

Kidney Disease                                                                       1

Degenerative Rheumatoid Arthritis                                       1

Degenerative Disc Disease                                                     1

Phlebitis                                                                                  1

Standing and Mobility Issues                                                 1

Missing Digits                                                                        1

Tendonitis                                                                               1

Brain Bleeds                                                                           1

Hip Replacement                                                                    1

Cirrhosis of the Liver                                                             1

Broken Pelvis                                                                         1

Hepatitis B                                                                              1

Anti-Social Behavior                                                              1

Heart Pacemaker (Endocarditic)                                            1

Heart Murmur                                                                         1

Faucet Disease                                                                        1

Totally Blind in One Eye                                                       1

Thyroid                                                                                   1

Gunshot wound (GSW) to Head                                             1

Degenerative Nerve Disease                                                  1

Parkinson’s Disease                                                                1

Gall Stones                                                                             1

Chronic Gastritis                                                                    1

Plate in Elbow                                                                                    1

Chronic Ulcers                                                                        1

Osteoporosis                                                                           1

Degenerative Heart Disease                                                   1                                              Acid Reflux                                                                            1

Hallucinations                                                                        1

Arm Amputated                                                                      1

8) Are any of these conditions keeping you from working?  Yes – 241

9) Do you smoke cigarettes?  Yes – 381

            Less than 10 per day               130

            About ½ pack per day             78

            About 1 pack per day             129

            About 1 and ½ packs per day   23

            About 2 packs per day                          15

            More than 2 packs per day         1

10) Do you have severe shortness of breath?  Yes – 145

      Do you ever need to stop and rest when you are walking before you can continue?

      Yes – 330

11) Have you ever needed to sit down and been unable to locate a bench? Yes – 472        

END

METHODOLOGIES

On January 1st, 2010 at the 9th Annual House the Homeless Thermal Underwear Party, members of House the Homeless surveyed all  event participants by providing each person with

a confidential questionnaire while they waited in line for the event to begin.  501 surveys were successfully completed while 12 were rejected  as unintelligible.

IN THE FUTURE ADD:

1)         How long have you been  homeless?

2)         Need to box together the questions:  Do you have seizures?   and  Do you ever lose

            control?  Otherwise, people are marking that they loose control while not alleging          

that they are having seizures.

3)         Need to flesh out the alcohol question.

ADD:

      When was your last drink?

      How many beers/wine, hard drinks did you have?

      Did you drink most every day?

      Out of the last seven days, how many days did you have drinks (beer/wine or hard

      liquor?  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

      If you had more money, would you have drunk more?  Yes/No

ADD:

4)         Do you have a criminal background that is keeping you from working?

OBSERVATIONS:

n    To obtain the greatest percent response to each question it is recommended that all       surveys are administered by an interviewer on a one-to-one basis.

n    Men taking the survey out numbered the women by almost 5-1.

n    The average age of “single” homeless survey resulted in an average age

of 45, which equates to the general conception of the general population.

n    The average number of years in Austin (14.30) indicates that the term “transient” is a misnomer, as these individuals are clearly long-term members of our community.

n    Given the number of persons experiencing various types of cancer (26) and number of people with other disabling conditions (186) as when compared to those receiving disability benefits (108) indicates that this is again a seriously under served faction of our community.

n    Of those surveyed, 241 said that a health condition keeps them for working (48.10%).

n    381 surveyed said they smoked a significant amount of cigarettes per day ranging from “less than 10” (130) and “about 2 packs per day” (15) with the heaviest concentration smoking “about 1 pack per day” (129).  With 381 of the 501 persons surveyed yielding 76.04% overall one can see a possible relationship between this and the perspective that cigarette smoking is the number one cause of death among people experiencing homelessness.

n    Not surprisingly, 145 folks said that they experienced shortness of breath, with 330 people finding that they “needed to stop and rest when walking before they were able to continue.”

n    Finally, 472 or 94.21% of all surveyed said that when they needed to sit down, they were “unable to locate a bench.”