Everything affects homelessness. Job loss, divorce, well-paid people moving in from out of town, gas prices, food prices, overzealous law enforcement, disrupted family connections, public transport, church activities… All these factors, and many more, exert influence on people’s ability to find a job, keep a job, feed their kids, and pay rent, meanwhile hanging by their fingernails to the edge of a cliff. And then, when they lose their grip and become homeless, all the same factors rule their lives all over again, only worse this time.

We have been looking at what the presence of Amazon’s main headquarters for a decade has done for, and especially to, Seattle. The city volunteered to be a petri dish for the accelerated breeding of societal problems, and perhaps even as a canary in a coalmine. Whatever happens there, should be watched out for in the additional locations that Amazon colonizes.

After mulling it over for a year, the giant corporation finally chose two cities to split the honor and become HQ2A and HQ2B. The process by which this choice was made has been described by various experts as a scripted drama, a heist, a cynical game, a robbery, a fleecing, an absurd spectacle, a con job, and giving the house keys to a burglar.

Shhhhhh!

The least offensive description that has been used is “auction.” American municipalities offered Amazon everything they could. Negotiations and agreements were all supposed to be secret. Apparently, if the corporation announces details, that’s okay, but the cities must disclose nothing.

Investigative reporter David Dayen notes Amazon’s contractual right to “seek a protective order if any entity seeks more information about the deal.” Not only will they not tell you anything; you’re busted for even asking. However, there are always leaks. Word on the street is that Boston’s bribe included $75 million to build affordable housing — for Amazon employees.

Dayen’s estimate of the total Amazon take for locating one of its HQ2s in New York is around $1.5 billion. The state has something called the Excelsior Program that gives them $48,000 for each job they say they will create, and $1 billion from the REAP program (how apposite) and more from the ICAP program and the PILOT program.

Also, get this, “a $325 million cash grant from Empire State Development for occupying office space.” What??? (Maybe it’s to guarantee that the lights inside skyscrapers are left on all night to look pretty in photographs?)

However, a couple of New York politicians put the total of Amazon loot at closer to $3 billion. As journalist Margaret Kimberly points out, even a conservative figure of $1.7 billion implies rewards for Amazon equivalent to $65,000 for each New York resident.

Why not, instead, just give each New Yorker $65,000? Which would probably do a lot more for the economy… some people say. Dayen writes:

The Virginia site could yield Amazon another $573 million in subsidies, and an additional $200 million if they expand… This money comes in a cash grant of $22,000 per job, and a portion of the growth from hotel taxes in the city of Arlington. Under the contract, Amazon got a commitment from the state for “regulatory flexibility” that will lighten regulations on the company.

“Regulatory flexibility” is a dangerous phrase that can be interpreted in any way that seems expedient at the moment. Actually, according to some estimates, the entire bundle of boodle for both planned locations could total as much as $4.6 billion. As Everett Dirksen reportedly quipped, “A billion here, a billion there; pretty soon, you’re talking real money.”

Talking real money

The picture gets worse. Dayen and others who have studied up on it conclude that the real money for Amazon will lie in the “treasure trove” of information that more than 200 cities gave up — non-public information that the respective governments supposedly divulge to no one else.

That giveaway makes all of them “the biggest suckers,” says Dayen, because:

Those bids didn’t just include the size of the bribe; they included a wealth of important data about plans for transportation, housing, education and workforce development… Amazon can set up operations with the foreknowledge of what cities have divulged to them. It can build its convenience stores or bookseller outlets where cities have planned rapid development and population growth. It can locate its warehouses where a new highway expansion is imminent.

Lousy poker players all, every one of those cities showed its hand. Amazon now knows exactly how much each one would be willing to fork over if the prospect of HQ3 or HQ4 were to be dangled before its eyes. This translates into what those in the financial coercion game call “significant leverage.”

As Dayen puts it, “Monetizing of this new data trove will yield untold billions of dollars in value.” For Amazon. Not for any person experiencing homelessness in Seattle, New York, Washington, D.C., or any other American city whose flirtatious free-money charms might catch the wandering Amazonian eye.

Reactions?

Source: “The HQ2 Scam: How Amazon Used a Bidding War to Scrape Cities’ Data,” InTheseTimes.com, 11/09/18
Source: “The Amazon Robbery,” BlackAgendaReport.com, 11/21/18
Photo credit: Cameron Nordholm on Visualhunt/CC BY

Amazon finally relieved everyone’s stress by announcing the location of its much-vaunted second headquarters. Surprise! It’s not one new site, but two — New York City (specifically, Long Island City, which is in the borough of Queens) and Crystal City, in Arlington County, Virginia, adjacent to Washington, D.C.

Remember when Amazon published its shortlist of 20 cities who were the top contenders for HQ2? The cities whose administrators most obsequiously bowed and scraped, offering every conceivable enticement if only the humungous corporation would consent to enter their gates and honor their constituents by looting, plundering, and pillaging to the utmost? (More about that later.)

The point here is, out of the top 20 municipalities that remained in the running, five of those places are also on the list of the country’s largest homeless populations. One of the ultimate winners, New York, also happens to be the American city with the most people surviving in public. Needless to say, this is not a prize anyone should want to win.

But in a way, New York has nothing to lose. It already is the urban area with the largest number of people who have been failed by the American promise. Hundreds of thousands of additional people could be displaced from their homes, and New York would still be the city with the most people whose very existence is a crime.

The Northern Virginia area, including Crystal City, currently ranks as the place with the fifth largest total of people experiencing homelessness. What happens after Amazon takes over is anybody’s guess.

What we do know is that both the newly-revealed choices already have lots of residents who make way more than the national median income, who can afford the already-inflated housing prices. And as more upper-pay-grade employees migrate to those two areas, it will remove even more people from the possibility of finding places to live, and exacerbate the homeless situation.

The contenders and the prize

Looking back to the previous stage, Amazon’s 20-item shortlist had also included Los Angeles (second in homelessness), Boston (ninth), and Philadelphia (10th). Another city with the most homeless people, ranking in third place, is Seattle (which was not in the running for HQ2, because HQ1 is already there). Seattle has been living with the effects of Amazon for almost a decade, so it’s a pretty good indicator of what the two new not-quite-headquarters may look forward to.

Word on the street about Seattle, garnered from social media comments, is not encouraging. We hear that some lower-echelon workers, like custodians and cafeteria workers, are forced to live in vans. Even mid-level employees like teachers, college secretarial help, and nurses have to live so far out of town that they face commutes of two hours each way. With 80% of the buildable land in the city allotted to single-family houses and only 17% permitted to have “density,” i.e. apartments, there is very little hope that more affordable housing will magically appear.

The process by which Seattle was convinced to welcome Amazon is described as a “policy failure” and an “outright scam” that takes money away from public infrastructure and small businesses, while the process of searching for the HQ2 location is said to be nothing but a “publicity stunt.” Citizens protest that the paltry taxes paid by Amazon and its employees are negligible compared to the enormous amounts of tax those entities have been relieved of.

Another complaint is that only bottom-rung Amazon jobs are filled by locals, so the native van-dwellers miss out on the chance to have actual walls around them again. Meanwhile, people from elsewhere are recruited for high-paying positions, and the scarce housing is taken up by newcomers. One person warned the HQ2 prospects in these words:

Amazon isn’t bringing you 50,000 high paying jobs. They’re bringing 50,000 people with high paying jobs to where you currently live. This won’t help your community, but will replace it.

Twitter user @tokyo_todd joked:

At least those highly paid people will need to shop locally, at least until somebody figures out a way to have every single household item you need shipped straight to your… oh wait…

An anonymous commentator confirmed,

It reminds me of when I worked at Google Los Angeles and the office moved to Venice Beach. Local restaurants and gyms put up ads saying “Welcome Google!” But we had free food and gym on campus and barely got out.

Let’s end on a relatively positive note from HtH reader and Seattle resident Phil Polizatto:

Seattle is special, though it has its faults. We have a terrific mayor, a very socialist city council, women pretty much run this city! And Mayor Gurken’s primary goal is to get rid of homelessness. Surprisingly, she is making headway. The appearance of “tiny homes” seems to be the answer. Communities of tiny homes. Affordable and quick to build. Cost about 40K fully equipped. Finding neighborhoods willing to accept such communities are rare, but there are some progressive neighborhoods willing to give it a try.

Reactions?

Source: “10 US Cities With The Largest Homeless Populations,” WorldAtlas.com, 02/19/18
Photo credit: Nicolas Boullosa via CC BY

Last week we pointed out some of the mistaken ideas that housed people hold regarding people experiencing homelessness. Another of those widespread misconceptions is that “the homeless don’t want to work.” Let’s take as examples the same four subgroups we focused on in the discussion of mental illness, in the context of these particular demographics having very little mental illness or addiction issues.

First, mothers of children, who are homeless with their kids because of abandonment, domestic violence, or just plain not being able to afford housing. It’s easy to say, “Make them get jobs.” But what are their children supposed to do? Sure, school-age kids are supposed to be going to school. But that takes up very little time, compared to a work week. School days are typically much shorter than work shifts.

Who watches over and protects the child on the way to and from school? The kids have to get back and forth somehow, and their mother probably does not own a car, and, anyway, school escort duty might conflict with her work schedule. What if there is more than one child, and they go to different schools? What if the child is too young for school? Even if a working homeless mother could find day care, it probably costs more per hour than her own hourly wage.

More obstacles for homeless mothers

Often, night shift jobs are easier to snag, for obvious reasons. But even if she wants to, can a homeless mother work nights? Shelters have curfew rules. People have to be in by a certain time, they can’t just come and go as they please, or even as they need.

And how does the prospect of leaving the kids all night in a shelter full of strangers sound? Is there any homeless living situation that even allows children to be left overnight without parental supervision? Can their mother tuck them in to sleep in a van while she works? That sounds like a swell opportunity for child protective services to intervene and take away her parental rights.

Even in a best-case scenario, with a steady job, a homeless mother is likely to find work only on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, in the type of job where after eight hours, she just might hear the manager say, “So-and-so didn’t show up, I need you to stay on for another shift.” What is she supposed to do, refuse and be fired? Quit? And be unemployed, and have a black mark on her record for being the kind of feckless creature who gets fired or quits?

And what about school holidays, and summertime, and kids being sick, and kids getting in trouble at school (sorry, it happens) with no parent available to come pick them up? And as far as those children themselves seeking employment, we still have child labor laws. Mothers and young kids are two very hard-pressed groups, who are unlikely to “Just get a job!”

Unaccompanied youth

We also talked about unaccompanied youth with nowhere to live except a relative’s couch or a friend’s unheated garage without running water or toilet. With any luck at all, a young person in this situation somehow manages to stay in middle school or high school, which in itself is a stunning accomplishment, and one that many are unable to sustain.

Not surprisingly, a lot of those kids drop out of school at or before the legal age. How employable are they? The answer to that question is so obvious we will not even insult the reader’s intelligence by bringing it up. Oh, and by the way, they are still teenagers, a category of people not famous for their stability or judgment, even when they are securely housed and regularly fed.

A special subgroup

In 2017, the United States of America, the richest country in the world, contained at least 32,000 homeless college students. Those are only the ones who allowed themselves to be counted, and many go to considerable trouble to prevent their situation from being generally known.

Even college students who are financially secure, with the full backing of their families and other advantages, have to put in a lot of hours of hard work for their grades. Sure, plenty of undergraduates also work, but with such split priorities they can’t get the full value from their education, so let’s not hold them up as models.

For a homeless youth, doing well in school means everything, because there is a genuine and exigent need to recoup the investment. All that struggle can’t end up being for naught. Getting enough education to secure employment and not be a public charge is this person’s job at this point in time. To expect him or her to also make enough money to set up a household is quite unreasonable.

Apparently, a lot of citizens don’t know that homeless college students even exist, so here is a short reading list that an advocate can offer to an unbeliever:

• “Behind the Problem of Student Homelessness“
• “This Is What It’s Like to Be Homeless in College“
• “1 In 10 College Students In Mass. Are Homeless. More Are Hungry. It’s Past Time We Recognize Their Reality“
• “The hidden problem of homelessness on college campuses“
• “Hunger And Homelessness Are Widespread Among College Students, Study Finds“

We also recommend…

Remember the survey of people experiencing homelessness in Austin, and how it showed that 47% of the respondents were too disabled to work? House the Homeless co-founder Richard R. Troxell reminds us, “This leaves about 52% who are capable of working. Another statistic that we unearthed is that these folks want to work… for Living Wages.”

Three Things to Know About Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week

We are in the midst of Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, and it’s not too late to find a local activity that will welcome your participation. Whether your area of expertise is education, service, fundraising, or advocacy, you can make a difference.

The National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness offer a useful resource, a downloadable PDF file called “Resolve to Fight Poverty.”

Now, this is the most important thing to know. Austin’s Annual Homeless Memorial Service
takes place on November 18, 2018 at sunrise (6:57 a.m.). The location is by the river at Auditorium Shores, South First and Riverside Drive (on the south side of Lady Bird Lake). As always, the event is created by House the Homeless.

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Photo credit: Ed Yourdon on Visualhunt/CC BY-NC-SA

Referencing myths about homelessness is a reliable way to create an easily-understandable title for a piece of journalism, yet the word itself is a bit too glamorous for comfort. “Myth” is a rather positive word, one that elevates and ennobles, associated with grand old tales of conquest and heroism, pertaining to such figures as Odysseus, the Centaur, King Arthur, Robin Hood, Aphrodite, Sisyphus, unicorns, and even Santa Claus.

Maybe a better word is “trope,” which means something closer to “stereotype,” and implies a theme that is familiar, often repeated, and even overused.

Reporter Chris Nichols consulted several policy experts about homelessness and the people caught up in it. He speaks of the misconceptions that sometimes tend to make homeless people seem “one-dimensional.” But California alone contains about 134,000 of them, making it highly unlikely that they could be all the same. California’s count, incidentally went up 14% between 2016 and 2017.

What they say

One frequent allegation, especially in warm-weather states like California and Florida, is that people come flooding in from elsewhere, and therefore are not entitled to receive help from the administrative district they land in. But a study conducted earlier this year by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority revealed that 75% of L.A. County’s street people used to live in the county previously, when they were housed.

Indeed, many individuals live outdoors close to where they used to dwell indoors. Further,

It also showed that 65 percent of the unsheltered homeless had lived in that county for at least 20 years. Only 13 percent were from out of state.

Psychology Professor Paul A. Toro has for years worked with people experiencing homelessness, and in the 1980s noticed the correlation between the government’s deinstitutionalization policy and the growing number of homeless Americans. The sad results of that policy are still with us today. This connects with another popular misconception, the idea that people become homeless because they are mentally ill or addicted to alcohol or hard drugs. Very often, it’s the other way around.

Walk a mile in their shoes

Newly homeless people are stressed and traumatized in certain ways, and anyone who has been out from under a roof for a long time is traumatized and stressed in the same ways, except that now, the emotional pain has piled up and multiplied. Losing all of one’s belongings is a severe shock. Losing all respect from law enforcement, government bureaucrats, retail employees, and the general public means a continuing and ever-worsening series of shocks.

People with nowhere to live face uncertainty, physical risk, hunger, dangerously inadequate sleep, foul weather and, if they seek help, masses of paperwork to fill out and documents to procure. They are pitched headlong into a totally different world with a completely different set of rules. It is a lot to cope with, and if people seem a little strange, maybe it behooves us to give them the benefit of the doubt.

How would we react to lives turned upside down and eviscerated? And it doesn’t cause just mental and emotional wear and tear, but physical stress as well, impairing the immune system while at the same time, chances of obtaining medical help dwindle away.

So if 15% of the people in Los Angeles County have substance abuse disorder, maybe they were already like that, or maybe being homeless pushed them over the edge. If 27% suffer from serious mental illness, maybe they managed to function adequately when housed, and only because problematic to themselves and others when forced into the streets. Professor Toro says,

Studies done by our group and others over the last 30 years have found that only one-quarter to one-third of homeless adults show a documented serious mental disorder, like schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder… Sixty to 75 percent of homeless people struggle with substance abuse at some point in their lifetime, versus 16 percent among the general population.

Everyone who looks into these matters brings up a point very needful of recognition. To employ yet another trope, we, as a society, must not “throw out the baby with the bathwater.” When draconian laws are passed, and when policies are difficult or impossible to adhere to, sure, maybe that prevents the waste of taxpayers’ money on people who have no interest in either becoming healed or in living up to society’s expectations.

But ruthless gatekeeping is very harmful to at least four cohorts who report very little mental illness or substance abuse amongst them: homeless mothers; their children; unaccompanied youth; and college students. Every time we make it harder for a chronically homeless person with a habit and a bad attitude to receive help, whether it’s dinner at a park or a spot in a transitional facility, we make it harder for the harried mothers and their confused kids.

We make it harder for the young people coping with not only the routine problems of adolescence, but homelessness in addition. Most cruelly of all, we deprive the brave, determined, and deserving youth who somehow manage to climb the first steps of the higher education ladder, and at the same time deprive ourselves and the rest of America of the contributions these amazing people could make.

Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, Nov. 10-18

Consult this page for information on National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. The related events have raised millions for local service providers. Find out who is doing what in your area, and what you can do in the areas of education, service, fundraising, or advocacy.

And, if you are in the vicinity of Austin, Texas, please plan to attend the Annual Homeless Memorial Service on November 18. This sunrise ceremony will take place as always on the south side of Lady Bird Lake, at South First and Riverside Drive.

Reactions?

Source: “Dispelling myths about California’s homeless,” PolitiFact.com, 06/28/18
Source: “Busting 3 common myths about homelessness,” TheConversation.com, 07/05/18
Photo credit: Shutterbug Fotos on Visualhunt/CC BY-ND

Quite a few recent posts have been about the statues and the many groups of Americans represented by the figures — including children, women, minorities, senior citizens, veterans, the elderly, and the sick, also including returning service members with Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Today, we mention some of the ugly details that surround the broad strokes that paint the picture of homelessness in the U.S.A.

The way things are for a lot of folks, homelessness is only one of their problems, and not necessarily even the worst. Whether housed or not, a 90-year-old with one leg will still be a nonagenarian amputee. In that quandary, as in many others, homelessness is the unhealthy condition that is perfectly capable of being upgraded; a factor and perhaps the only factor that is amenable to change.

This leads to the philosophical position that zero homelessness is not an end point, but a bare and basic starter level from which we can launch humanity into a universe where existence beneath a roof is the bare minimum achievement, surmounted and left behind in an effort to assure that everyone is not only housed, but healthy. Imagine that world!

Why bring this up?

A recent attention-commanding headline from GlobeSt.com reads, “Housing Isn’t the Key to the Homeless Crisis,” which, if true, is startling news. “Maybe merely housing the homeless isn’t the right approach,” say those who prefer to recognize and address the complicated, multi-faceted nature that societal problems tend to possess.

Kelsi Maree Borland reported on the Re-Habit concept, which aims to help people become self-sustaining. This happens through support centers that provide aid, treatment, counseling, and training programs that last for a year or maybe even two. She quotes David Senden of KTGY Architecture + Planning, who says,

If we keep thinking about homelessness as a housing problem, I think we are missing the point. A big reason for homelessness is not because people can’t find housing but because of other issues that have led them into homelessness.

As in many other programs, seniority leads to leadership. People who have overcome problems become counselors, and only need to learn the skills, because they already know the street-level sociology.

But with no implied disrespect, this concept is also reminiscent of the rough outline followed by many agencies and not-for-profit organizations, who have taken advantage of the system to rip off taxpayers and unlawfully hold desperate people as virtual prisoners, while profiting from their labor. Among the public there is a certain amount of interest in reform, like the idea of diverting low-level offenders away from the penal system and toward alternatives. Seeing this, some unscrupulous, overly-entrepreneurial opportunists have taken advantage of the need for various kinds of rehab facilities.

Watching over the weak

All programs, everywhere, that deal with vulnerable people, need oversight not only by responsible authorities, but by caring members of the public. Speaking of which, we live in a country where, to a large degree, skin color is still destiny. By and large, people of color tend to wind up on the wrong side of legal charges, at a disproportionate rate, and not because they are inherently more prone to crime.

Not surprisingly, people who have served time are less likely to be able to find work, and more likely to find themselves on the street. Here is the gist of a report by Jeff Stein for The Washington Post. (The rest of it may be behind a paywall.):

About 6 percent of baby boomers and 17 percent of African American baby boomers have been homeless at some point in their lives, according to the first national study in decades to look at lifetime homeless rates. The study, released last month, suggests older black Americans are about three times more likely to experience homelessness than white Americans.

By the way — and this should really not need to be said — but please do not celebrate the upcoming Halloween festival by creating for yourself, or anyone, a costume meant to represent a homeless person. Thank you.

Reactions?

Source: “Housing Isn’t the Key to the Homeless Crisis,” Globest.com, 08/24/18
Source: “1 in 6 older black people have been homeless at some point in their life, study finds,” WashingtonPost.com, 10/09/18
Photo credit: Beau B on Visualhunt/CC BY

In 2006, radio personalities Opie and Anthony, whose audience feels cult-like devotion, attracted negative attention for a street performance. Andrew, a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk, offered them some cake. Anthony declined to touch it, and Opie jumped on it with both feet.

A media ruckus ensued. Fans familiar with the entertainers’ style realized that it was a “bit,” though, years later, others still dispute the point. Also, Andrew made some money. An online commenter noted that the radio guys had been giving him donations for years. Other listeners were totally condemnatory.

In the summer of 2013 Opie and Anthony focused public attention on the incident again. It was not, incidentally, a cake stomping, as some media would have us believe. That would imply repeated action with one or both feet. The assault on the cake was a single, two-footed landing.

Social media had grown a lot in those seven years, and Opie reaped a whirlwind. People were upset. One commenter wrote,

There’s nothing good that can come out of something like this.

The entertainers professed amazement that people could still want to discuss the cake incident, or remain so upset about it. Opie never apologized or justified, because didn’t think he had to.

But they talked about it on the show (strong language warning), covering the variety of relationships that can develop between street people and media people in New York City. Here is a condensed interpretation with no cussing:

Back when the cake thing happened, Opie and Anthony routinely walked along the same route every day, and interacted with two kinds of people. According to their narrative (and there is no reason to doubt them), their fans would gravitate to the area, and give generously to the local people who held out cups. Word gets around about that sort of thing, and it tends to attract more people. Opie (or perhaps Anthony) asks, “Does anyone else out there know a homeless guy by name? We probably know 20 of ’em.” As for Andrew, Opie says, “We messed with him every day. We goofed on him every day.”

Another side of the story

More than likely, a staff member bought the cake, and gave it to Andrew, with instructions to offer some to Opie and Anthony. And, if anyone asked, to say he found it in a dumpster. Because the optics are suspicious. It’s a full-size cheesecake or similar, in a box, with tissue between the slices, and clear plastic wrap stretched over the top. If it ever was in a dumpster, it was both placed there and retrieved with extreme care.

Anyway, Opie knew the cake-squashing would make even his co-hosts cringe. On the other hand, professional comedians routinely play pranks, some offensive and cruel, on their friends.

Opie and Anthony have also angered the citizenry by taking a bus full of men to a suburban New Jersey mall and supplying them with gift cards and a ride back to the city. This actually doesn’t sound so bad, but critics have found plenty of reasons to complain, and called the field trip “publicly degrading and humiliating” for people experiencing homelessness.

But other news sources viewed it through a different lens, for instance:

Opie and Anthony’s annual event provides a busload of homeless people money to shop at an upscale mall, and about 2,200 O&A fans came out not only to see the show but to provide the homeless with extra shopping money.

It also sounds like the mall food courts sold a few more sodas and fries that day. But the event has been called inhumane and shameful. These are the kinds of questions that society could greatly benefit from discussing in nuanced ways, but somehow the avalanche of events prohibits it.

Shame on so many levels

A Instagram video clip is going around, that features a woman seated on a step, surrounded by belongings. A man’s voice starts out by complimenting her, and by any objective standard, she does have a beautiful smile. Then he starts “negging” her, a technique that men actually pay money and attend classes to study. The insults revert to sweet talk, then back and forth a couple more times, and he closes with “I’m bipolar, so I don’t know if you’re ugly or cute.”

An online comment defended the woman, but made the assumption that she was addicted and mentally ill, though we have no proof either way. But other assumptions might not be off base. Quite possibly, this woman has discovered that no matter what she needs, some level of government seems determined to never let her have it, including the ID that would enable her to vote. Or maybe after a long ordeal, she finally got her “papers,” only to lose them to police confiscation during a “sweep.” We don’t know.

Among other things, this incident illustrates one of the problems inherent in having to carry all your stuff around with you. When pestered, it’s not that easy to slip away. From the aggressors’ viewpoint, it brings to mind the expressions “sitting duck” and “shooting fish in a barrel.”

At the same time, this behavior happens every day, and across all demographics. Any woman who works in contact with the general public is a captive audience for acting out by random men, and is faced with the choice between the constant threat of humiliation, or quitting. Quitting a job is the sort of decision that can lead to homelessness, so it is almost impossible to avoid the philosophical position that everything matters.

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless Cake Stomp — Is this okay?,” IGN.com, 2013
Source: “Boston Mayor Angry Over O&A Homeless Shopping Spree,” AllAccess.com, 12/18/06
Images (top to bottom) by @kolikole37, @nattywest, goodiesfirst via Visualhunt

In describing The Home Coming, the group of figures envisioned by Richard R. Troxell and currently in the studio of Timothy P. Schmalz, we have talked about different varieties of people experiencing homelessness: military veterans, TBI and PTSD victims; members of racial and ethnic minorities; children; women; and even animal companions.

Richard describes some dimensions of the sculpture’s symbolism. The father is a veteran whose idealism led him to the military: “As a young man, he really didn’t understand the dynamics of war and the forces behind it… that our republic is based in capitalism.”

No matter what capitalism was meant or intended to be, it has devolved into a “waste product economy” driven by built-in, planned obsolescence. “If you make a bullet, you have to expend it… so you can make another bullet,” Richard says.

“Now, John’s young daughter Colleen sees a different path, one of sharing, offering comfort with another human being… a stranger just like everyone her father ever met on the battlefield. But unlike her father, she greets the stranger with open arms…,” says Richard. The young take the lead and show the way, and hopefully, will continue lighting the path ahead.

The Home Coming celebrates the moment in which Ms. Anateen Tyson, homeless, depressed and with night vision impaired by cataracts, stumbles into the radius of warmth, the circle of not just acceptance but welcome, and realizes that life — complete with a tail-wagging dog named Joey — is taking a turn for the better. Another section of the House the Homeless website contains an expanded version of the imagined histories of the figures represented here.

Another aspect of the project

Now let’s move to the creation of the object itself. Several years ago, Richard R. Troxell, most habitually known as co-founder and President of House the Homeless, also took on the role of artist, and studied sculpture for a year under Steve Dubov of Austin’s Atelier 3-D. News of the project stirred interest among some local institutions and segments of the press. The American-Statesman printed an interview with Richard (front page of the Metro section, above the fold, thank you very much!). Then, there was another interview, by Andrea Ball, on the front page of the paper itself.

Internationally renowned sculptor Timothy P. Schmalz got involved. During the time when interest from many quarters was focused on Schmalz’s glorious and often notorious Homeless Jesus sculpture, the maestro also collaborated long-distance with Richard on developing his concept. This was not a project to be rushed, and they explored more than one avenue, modifying and refining the vision as they went along.

Throughout the early stages, all the usual toil and turmoil continued, of course, notably the ongoing effort to ameliorate the devastating effects of the local No Sit/No Lie ordinance. The UMLAUF Sculpture Garden and Museum hosted a knock-your-socks off fundraiser, where a smaller version of the group of figures was unveiled. The list of supporters grew explosively, and donations accumulated.

For a number of tediously bureaucratic reasons, The Home Coming cannot be placed at the originally intended site, and we urge interested Austinites and indeed everybody to follow the saga of finding a home for The Homecoming. Appropriately locating this work could help it become a tremendous example to the rest of the nation. You, dear reader, might be the one who suggests a brilliant solution that will allow for happiness all around!

If the spirit behind The Home Coming were to be boiled down into one statement, the work is an homage to people who have little or nothing, and who are still willing to share with others whatever they can. That’s what it’s all about. That, and the belief that tomorrow will be a better day, and the determination to make it so.

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Image by House the Homeless

This photo shows an intermediate stage in the creation of one of the figures in The Home Coming. The fictitious Ms. Anateen Tyson represents women, people of color, and the elderly, but her symbolism does not stop there because, as we have learned, she also endures health problems.

A couple of years ago there was a rabidly publicized mess in New York City. The New York Post, which writer John Del Signore calls “America’s foulest tabloid,” devoted its cover to a homeless woman who had been shepherding her caravan of shopping carts around the city for years. Mayor de Blasio directed sanitation workers and the police to roll her up, and amid plenty of additional publicity, they did so. Her belongings were reduced to a single bag, and the authorities discarded the rest of her possessions.

A friend of House the Homeless wrote,

My experiences in senior low-income housing have been so horrific as to leave me actually contemplating storing my things and sleeping at a shelter. I have never felt less safe in all of my life and to my amazement I fear the women here every bit as much as the men. My apartment itself is a delight, but what lies outside my front door is the stuff of nightmares… The reason for my fear is 100% based on the high ratio of mentally ill inmates… I mean tenants!

How bad must senior housing conditions be, to inspire someone to contemplate giving up an apartment for space in a shelter? And the final sentence is chilling. The building is mostly tenanted by people who are just barely holding on, and who display enough bizarre and dangerous behavior to terrify a woman who merely suffers from multiple physical problems.

And where are the damaged senior citizens who can’t even keep it together sufficiently to manage living in such a building? A lot of them are on the streets, because there is no place else for them to be.

Older people become homeless in many ways. Job loss, divorce, death of spouse. A reverse mortgage didn’t work out, or some other unwise financial decision went bad. There is a foreclosure. Medical bills lead to bankruptcy. Greedy or desperate relatives drain their resources. Trying to do something they used to be able to do leads to disabling injury. The rent goes up and there is nowhere affordable to live.

When anyone transitions from housed to homeless, a phenomenon called “age acceleration” kicks in. Living on the streets has a prematurely aging effect, which exacerbates whatever age-related problems a person already has.

To take one obvious and widespread example, no patient’s arthritis has ever improved from spending the day on a bus bench in freezing weather. There are shelters where people in their 70s, 80s and 90s sleep on mattresses on floors. It’s pretty hard for some of them to get up and down, and even harder if they are one notch less fortunate, and sleep outside on cardboard.

Among Americans age 65 and older, in 2016 more than 7 million had incomes below the poverty line, based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure. That metric is different from what the government uses, and results in a number that exceeds the official count by 2.6 million. Alana Semuels says,

While poverty fell among people 18 and under and people 18 to 64 between 2015 and 2016, it rose to 14.5 percent for people over 65. In America in 2016, nearly half of all single homeless adults were aged 50 and older, compared to 11 percent in 1990.

Run that by us again? In the most recent year for which statistics have been compiled, nearly half of all single homeless adults were aged 50 and older. The housed people who confidently advise, “They should just get a job” are oblivious to the fact that few jobs are available for people over 50 who do not possess the means to keep themselves and their clothes clean, or even get a good night’s sleep. Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of senior citizens are scraping by, wondering where the next dollar will come from, teetering on the very edge of a chasm, praying they will not be pitched down into homelessness.

For The Atlantic, Semuels chronicled the misfortunes of a 76-year-old Californian, Roberta Gordon, who received $915 per month from Social Security and SSI (insufficient to pay her $1,040 monthly rent). A roommate who shared the costs had recently died, so Ms. Gordon was taking on credit card debt and eating from a local church’s food pantry.

However much a person made during their working years, they are said to need 70% of their pre-retirement income to live “comfortably,” and being as how Social Security usually only supplies 40%, they’d better have something else going for them. Semuels writes that women…

[…] typically receive lower benefits than men do. In 2014, older women received on average $4,500 less annually in Social Security benefits than men did. They received lower wages when they worked, which leads to smaller monthly checks from Social Security. They also are more likely to take time off from work to care for children or aging parents, which translates to less time contributing to Social Security and thus lower monthly benefit amounts.

 

In Riverside County, CA, Rose Mayes, executive director of the Fair Housing Council, told the press that her organization is seeing more homeless seniors than ever before. Some places are more seriously affected than others. In the state of Massachusetts as a whole, 16% of the people are over 65, but in Cape Cod, it’s more like 30%, and a great many individuals in that demographic are in danger of losing their homes.

Journalist Cynthia McCormick spoke with Elizabeth Albert, the county’s executive director of human services, who was greatly alarmed by the annual “point-in-time” count and told the reporter,

Forty-two percent of the unsheltered — meaning people living in emergency shelters, transitional housing, on the street and in cars — were between the ages of 50 and 64, and 5 percent were over the age of 65.

In nearby Fall River, shelter coordinator Karen Ready described conditions at St. Joseph’s House, where elderly individuals may be dealing with issues of balance, weakness, incontinence, hearing loss, deteriorating vision, and dementia.

From the left coast, Gale Holland told LATimes.com readers that among people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, the 62+ age group grew by 22% since the last count, and now encompasses almost 5,000 senior Americans. She adds a reminder that shelters are not equipped, or adequately staffed, for the needs of frail elderly people.

Furthermore, “emergency housing is focused on families going through a rough patch, who can recover financially and move on.” In other words, resources are invested in those who have a future.

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Source: “NY Post Wins Decisive Victory Against Elderly Homeless Woman,” Gothamist.com, 03/10/16
Source: “How Many Seniors Are Living in Poverty?,” KFF.org, 03/02/18
Source: “This Is What Life Without Retirement Savings Looks Like,” TheAtlantic.com, 02/22/18
Source: “Aging Homeless Population Poses New Challenges for Shelters,” USNews.com, 22/27/17
Source: “22% surge in number of older homeless people catches L.A. officials off guard,” LATimes.com, 07/19/18
Image by House the Homeless

Here at House the Homeless we are still working our way through all the symbolism encapsulated in the figures of The Home Coming sculpture. In addition to being female, the elderly woman represents two other groups, one of which we look at today.

The creator of the artwork, Richard R. Troxell, has names for all the characters, and this lady is Anateen Tyson. Like the others, she has an entire backstory.

Her husband became disabled and unemployable, and finally went missing. The kids drifted away too, and the family dissolved. With only what she could carry, Ms. Tyson came to Austin hoping to stay with relatives, but similar misfortunes have befallen them, too, and they have no help to give.

Forlorn, depressed, and with vision clouded by cataracts, this woman wanders through the night with no destination and no hope. The statue captures the moment when she encounters a returned veteran named John and his daughter Colleen and their dog Joey. They welcome her to share the warmth of their fire, and we are warmed too, at the thought of the three displaced humans and one animal companion, forming an alliance that could lead to all kinds of beneficial results. Their commonality is stronger than their differences, and they bond.

The really sad part

But… the wonderful human moment depicted by the statue almost doesn’t happen. Because Ms. Tyson is a person of color, and John and Colleen are not, she initially hesitates, and almost fades back into the night without approaching them. We know this because it is part of the richly textured context of story behind this artwork. It rings true because real life unfortunately contains a lot of racism.

The people who in America are often known as Indians are known up north as Aboriginal Canadians (which only indicates that they were there first, since ab origine means “from the start”). Keeping in mind that the U.S. is very similar to Canada, we read the findings of a significant 2013 study of people experiencing homelessness in Calgary:

Aboriginal participants were found to be younger, less educated, more likely to be unemployed, to have experienced foster care, and to have been the victim of an attack. They tended to use health services more. These results are discussed in light of the social and political challenges facing Aboriginal people. They point to the need for attention to the special needs of Aboriginal people in plans to end homelessness.

In his short story “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” from the collection Blasphemy, Sherman Alexie relates details about being down-and-out in Washington state. He remarks among the large number of homeless Indians in Seattle, who mostly came from Alaska looking for opportunity that is seldom found in the Lower 48, either.

The author assumes the persona of a young Spokane Indian with six years on the streets, a man who is not without self-respect, and who has his standards:

I’ve made friends with restaurant and convenience-store managers who let me use their bathrooms. I don’t mean the public bathrooms, either. I mean the employees’ bathrooms, the ones hidden in the back of the kitchen or the pantry or the cooler. I know it sounds strange to be proud of, but it means a lot to me.

Many Anglos tend not to understand the particular challenges presented by racism in every area of American life. For instance, take the childhood obesity epidemic. Parents are advised to let their children play outside and get plenty of exercise. But the nonprofit organization Salud America! completed a study on race, ethnicity, and access to public recreational space. In four out of five predominantly Latino neighborhoods there is no access to parks or recreation facilities.

It’s bigger than parks

Others may shake their heads and say, “If they don’t want their kids to be fat, they should just send them to the park to run off the extra pounds.” Easy advice to give, but not easy advice to follow when the circumstances simply don’t support it. It’s like advice about how to avoid homelessness, or how to escape homelessness. Tactics that work for one person, or type of person, are not always guaranteed to bring success to someone else, or to a whole different ethnic group.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, most minority groups make up a larger share of the homeless population than they do of the general population. For instance,

American Indians/Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and those of more than one race each make up less than 5 percent of the general population. But each group’s share of the homeless population is more than double their share of the general population.

Despite numerous socio-economic disadvantages, in this one respect, Hispanic Americans are relatively well off. They are 18% of the entire populace, but 21% of people experiencing homelessness, so that’s not too awful of a discrepancy. African Americans, on the other hand, are 13% of the American population, but 40% of the homeless population — a shockingly large discrepancy. The Alliance goes on to say,

Any effort to end homelessness in the United States must address the range of issues that have resulted from racial inequity. This includes assuring affordable, stable housing for all.

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Source: “Are There Differences between the Aboriginal Homeless Population and the non-Aboriginal Homeless Population in Calgary?”, HomelessHub.ca, 2013
Source: “The Insidious Reason Latino Kids Are More Obese Than Their Peers,” TakePart.com, 01/12/16
Source: “Racial Disparities in Homelessness in the United States,” EndHomelessness.org, 06/06/18
Photo credit: Mahalie Stackpole on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA