Mayor Bloomberg of New York City has been making some interesting comments about homelessness in the past year. This article does a very good job of deconstructing Bloomberg’s ridiculous statements and proving how foolish he is. Bloomberg made the claim last Fall that NYC’s lack of housing is “a good sign” because it means that “there are no vacancies.” My question is WHO is this a “good sign” for? The answer is MAYOR BLOOMBERG (the 11th richest person in the country and 16th richest in the world, according to Wikipedia) and the rest of the upper class population of NYC. Of course they think that the lack of vacancies and affordable housing is a good thing – it benefits their “thriving” economy. But what about the 270,000 people who are on the waiting list for affordable housing? What are they supposed to do while Mayor Bloomberg creates more luxury housing in the places that public housing needs to be built? To add salt to the wound, Bloomberg has also tried to get the city to “fingerprint public housing residents, and make them scan in using a fingerprint scanner.” Mayor Bloomberg is a great example of a person who is using their power to their own advantage, rather than to help the citizens of his city. He stigmatizes the people he oppresses and he profits off of the homeless problem in NYC. There are far too many people like Bloomberg in power in the U.S. who put themselves first, tossing aside the people who need help the most.
All posts by Sally
Internship Report #2
I have been volunteering at a local organization which provides services to low income and homeless families across the valley. Throughout the past couple months, I have worked in several different areas of service and have observed both positive and negative aspects of the organization. The organization runs on minimal and ever-shrinking government funding, donations from the community, a small staff, and volunteer work. Because the organization gets most of its funds from the contributions of community members, the amount of money it has to work with is inconsistent from year to year.
The staff and volunteers must deal with the unpredictability of low funds and whatever donations happen come their way each day. This uncertainty and instability creates a chaotic environment at times. If one of the fourteen permanent staff members is gone, another staff member may have to juggle two different jobs that day. The association does a relatively good job at maintaining order and organization despite these complications. The staff is flexible and is able to work in any section of the facility. Almost every person involved works hard to help each individual who seeks services. The organization’s infrastructure allows for the staff to bend the rules at times in order to provide the best service possible for each client. If the organization is not able to provide services to a person who is seeking its help, the staff members make sure to refer the person to another place that may be able to help. They do the best they can with what they have.
The organization was founded (over a hundred years ago) with the concept of helping the “worthy poor” and some traces of this idea can still be observed in the intentions of the association today. The association provides free educational programs for individuals including basic life skills, parenting classes, money management, employment readiness, computer classes, counseling, and anger management. Providing these types of classes indicates that the clients need to be “fixed” in a sense. Though it does focus somewhat on fixing the problems of the individual, this organization clearly recognizes that homelessness is structural problem. In fact, one of the brochures about the organization describes the causes of family homelessness as “the combined effects of lack of affordable housing, extreme poverty, decreasing government supports, changing demographics of the family, the challenges of raising children alone, domestic violence, and fractured social supports.” The fact that the organization even acknowledges that homelessness is a structural problem sets it apart from other agencies of its kind.
In my time at this agency, I feel that I have not been as helpful as I have the potential to be. I believe this is because, when a volunteer becomes involved in the organization, they are asked which area(s) they would most prefer to work in but are not asked specifically what skills they can contribute to the organization. I am sure that many of the regular volunteers who have worked at the agency for an extended period of time have found their niche in the organization, but the temporary volunteers, who only work for a few months and then leave, do not make as much of an impact as they have the potential to make. I talked to one of the staff members and he said that one of the hardest issues that the organization faces is the fact that many of the volunteers it receives only work during the school year (September through May) because of affiliations with high schools and the university. This leads to very sparse pools of volunteers during the summer months, which is problematic for the organization. It makes do with what it receives, but it cannot help clients as thoroughly as it would like when there is not an adequate supply of volunteers.
Cleaning up trash or people?
This article describes San Jose’s growing problem of homeless encampments and the public’s reaction to them. There are several encampments in the San Jose area which are becoming more and more polluted as the number of homeless increases. The article is riddled with quotes and phrases from people that expose just how badly the homeless are stigmatized and how little is done to help them. The people interviewed for this article go on and on about how dirty the people in the encampments are and how dirty they’re making San Jose, yet there is no movement to help them. How can you expect someone to stop “defecating” on the sidewalk near your house if there is nowhere else for them to go? One person complains about homeless men washing themselves in public bathrooms during his team’s baseball games: “I leave the bathrooms open for parents, and they’re in the bathrooms stripping down naked, washing themselves. And I’ve got little kids going into those bathrooms. I just can’t have that.” This line frustrated me. Does he not understand that if he were in the same situation as the people he is so disgusted with, he would be forced to do the same things? The only way these people can “get rid of” the homeless near their homes is by providing a place for them to be relocated to, such as affordable housing. The article does not even address this issue, though. It focuses on depicting the homeless as criminals who are “luckless, dispossessed and often mentally ill.” It disregards any reasons for helping these people by criminalizing them: “Those people are homeless, but they’re also part of a criminal element.” This pushes the blame to the individuals, since they are all allegedly criminals. Overall, this article was frustrating and did not offer the point of view of anyone except angry homeowners who do not understand that homelessness is a structural issue, not an individual one that can just be “cleaned up” like the trash that is left behind in the encampments.
Paying Alcoholics in Beer? Good or Bad Idea?
Tonight, I was talking to my dad about this class, and he told me about a program he’d heard of in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This article from BBC News does a very good job of explaining the program. Basically, a company (The Rainbow Group) partially funded by the Dutch government have started a program to help homeless alcoholics in Amsterdam. The article describes how the program works: “They arrive at 09:00 and work until 15:00. They take extended breaks for beer, cigarettes and a hot lunch, all provided free of charge.” The aim of the program is not to fix these people, but to give them a better quality of life, while bettering the neighborhoods at the same time. Though this is a very controversial program that I imagine most Americans would not take seriously, I think it’s a very intriguing idea. The program seems to be helping to keep violence to a minimum and has been fairly cost effective. The people involved in the program are given a sense of dignity because they can work for their beer instead of begging for money. One of the men stated that “‘They used to treat us like garbage – and now we are picking up their garbage, we are not the garbage anymore.'” Rather than trying to change the “unchangeable reality” of alcoholism, this project is aimed at creating a better environment for alcoholics to live in.
I’m not sure about this program and its effectiveness, but I think that the change of thinking about these types of things is a good start to changing society. As the article states, why not “abandon ‘old-fashioned political correctness'” and try something “crazy” like this?
What do you think about this type of program? Do you think it would work in America? Is it making a significant difference?
The Real Causes of Homelessness
I found this story written by Mollie Lowery that hit on many of the points we have been making in class about what truly causes homelessness. Lowery writes the story of a chronically homeless woman named Lourdes. This story is powerful in pointing out the many different flaws of our current system and the ways in which we treat the homeless. I see a lot of the arguments Vincent Lyon-Callo makes in his book Inequality, Poverty, And Neoliberal Governance: Activist Ethnography in the Homeless Sheltering Industry (purchase on Amazon) within Lourdes’ story. One of these arguments is that our society medicalizes homelessness. The best way I can describe this is by pulling a quote from Lowery’s story of getting Lourdes back into housing: “I began each day with reassurances that if Lourdes got in the car with me, I wouldn’t take her to a mental hospital. Such fear and distrust do not emanate from some genetic pathology. It comes from years of being marginalized, excluded, exposed and traumatized.” Both Lyon-Callo and Lowery emphasize the very important fact that the systems that we have in place to “help” homeless people place the blame on personal attributes, rather than acknowledging that the problem comes from these systems that create inequalities. Though we have many systems in place to try to help the ever-growing number of homeless, Lowery stresses that “a far more humane, effective — and cheaper — strategy would be to prevent people like Lourdes from winding up homeless in the first place.” Rather than putting a band-aid on the problem, we need to focus on preventing the problem from ever happening. And this involves seeing the true cause of homelessness instead of focusing on “individual pathologies and solutions.”
Panhandlers in Redlands
I picked up a copy of the Redlands Daily Facts (our local newspaper) today and saw that the front page headline was “POPULAR WITH PANHANDLERS: Redlands’ reputation for giving lures locals, out-of-towners seeking handouts.” Of course, the “handout” stereotype caught my eye, and I proceeded to read the article (which can be found online, here.) Just the way the entire article is set up and written bothers me. It is full of negative stereotypes and stigmas against panhandlers and focuses completely on the police’s and the businesses’ side rather than taking a deeper look into the lives of the panhandlers. The article points out the way people spend the money they receive while panhandling, pulling quotes from interviews with the panhandlers such as, “You’ve got to survive out here. You’ve got to do it to make money to buy your food, beer and tobacco.” The article emphasizes the fact that many panhandlers have drug/alcohol addictions, posing addiction as a cause of the homeless problem rather than an outcome and stereotyping these people as lazy drug-addicts who spend the “handouts” they receive on booze and dope. The article lacks empathy for the people who apparently are “coming from outside city limits to come to Redlands to panhandle because it’s more profitable” due to Redlands citizens’ “big hearts.” The article emphasizes the fact that “one out of three panhandlers are not homeless,” as if to persuade people that the housed people are even more unworthy of donated money. It goes on to explain different tactics panhandlers use to get money, characterizing these people as liars. The police and the newspaper article encourage people to donate to organizations that help the homeless in the area instead of giving directly to homeless people. This is a recurring theme we have seen throughout history. The authorities encourage people to funnel their money through the institutions that help homeless, but there are not enough truly helpful organizations to solve the problem. Overall, this article was frustrating, but not surprising. It lacked an understanding of the homeless problem and brushed over the backgrounds of panhandlers, stigmatizing them as lazy and evil.
Internship Progress Report
Since 1898, the service association I have been interning at has relied on donations and a system of volunteers to provide services to low income and homeless families, disabled adults, and impoverished seniors of the East Valley. Today, there are 14 paid staff members and several volunteers.
Families that receive support from this location are either homeless or on the brink of homelessness. The many services provided by the organization are aimed at helping families in danger of becoming homeless pull themselves out of the rut that many get stuck in. The organization uses a case management-based approach that makes their care more compassionate and personal. Parents can take free classes on budgeting, parenting, anger management, computer skills, etc. and get job training or help with job searching. Housing assistance is provided through the Home Again program, which helps families move from homelessness to permanent housing through several different programs.
Food, clothing, furniture, and many other supplies needed for living are provided to clients through the distribution center. The distribution center contains the food pantry and the clothing room, where volunteers work daily to sort and organize donations. Families can “shop” for clothes and bedding in the clothing room each month. Volunteers in the food pantry put bags of food together for families of different sizes. Giving families the food in grocery bags makes it look as though they are just taking food home from the store like any other person, saving them from judgment.
The childcare center provides a place for children to go while their parents are in class or counseling or any other service they receive. There are plenty of board games, toys, puzzles, books, and crafts available to keep the children busy while they wait for their parents. On certain days, tutoring and homework help is available to the children as needed, to help them keep up with school. This is a very important aspect of the childcare center, as many of the families have a hard time keeping up with school with so many other things to deal with.
Meals are provided to families every night at 5:30 p.m. The dining room is set up with each family at their own table. Parents go to the kitchen to get the food and bring it back to the rest of the family, rather than every person waiting in line, as is done at many charity services. This makes the dining experience more relaxed, dignified, and comfortable for the entire family.
This service organization also puts on holiday programs including Christmas gift giving, in which the parents can pick out and wrap presents for their children, Thanksgiving and Easter meals, Easter baskets, and Easter egg hunts. These are fun experiences that every child deserves to have, and which could not be possible without the volunteer help and donations from the community.
All of these services have helped families in need immensely over the 100+ years that the volunteer-based organization has been around. It is clear that this association understands that everyone deserves respect and dignity and treats its clients with compassion and care.
Raising the Minimum Wage
I saw this image on an Upworthy article, which can be found here. This map shows how many hours a minimum wage worker in each state would have to work per week simply to afford a 2 bedroom apartment, without paying more than 30% of their income. Not a single state’s minimum wage is high enough to adequately cover the costs of housing without working at least 65 hours a week. This means that housed minimum wage workers are either having to sacrifice other necessities for life such as food, child care, transportation, etc., or they are having to work two or more low wage jobs. Most likely, many low wage workers are doing both of these things just to survive.
We have seen several examples throughout this course (and on this blog) that show that a huge cause of homelessness is the imbalance of housing costs and wages in America. It seems so obvious that the current state this nation is in is not sustaining so many of its members. Raising the minimum wage is one way we can start addressing this issue. Gov. Peter Shumlin (Vermont) and Gov. Dan Malloy (Connecticut) wrote a piece on CNN’s Opinion section called “No brainer: Three reasons why a $10.10 minimum wage is good for America.” Their third reason was that “it’s the right thing to do. No American working 40 hours or more a week deserves to live in poverty.” The governors go on to debunk the bogus arguments many make against raising the national minimum wage: “Republican governors across the country have also stood in the way of progress. Some have pandered to stereotype, suggesting that a raise in the minimum wage should be rejected because it would only help young workers rather than acknowledging that 88% of workers who would be affected by moving the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour are over the age of 20, and more are over the age of 55 than are teenagers.”
There is no logical reason that the minimum wage shouldn’t be raised. It is clear that this would be a good start to counteracting the cost of housing and to abolishing homelessness.
Homeless College Students
This article by Blake Ellis from CNN Money describes the issue of being homeless in college. I had never really given thought to homeless college students before reading this article. I suppose I had the assumption that if you could afford to go to college, you couldn’t be homeless. But after reading this article, I realize that this is assumption is just as flawed as the rest. I was shocked that there were 58,158 (reported) homeless college applicants in the 2012-2013 school year. The true number is probably even higher than this, since people often don’t consider themselves homeless if they are living in a car or in on friends’ couches. As Duffield says, “‘There’s an assumption that if you’re homeless, you’re so focused on basic needs like food and shelter that school isn’t a concern,’ said Duffield. ‘But for these youth, education is the answer — the jobs that are available don’t pay good wages if you don’t have a degree, so [education] is the only way out of their situation.'”
These students work harder than most others to get through school because they can barely even afford to pay the 15% (or more) of their tuition that financial aid doesn’t cover.
Yet, they can’t afford to stay on campus over breaks. I know that the University of Redlands charges students to stay on campus over winter break. This makes me wonder how many students can’t afford to stay here during the month long break and if any are technically homeless during that time. Though this is a fairly affluent university, there may be some students who have no home to return to during the breaks.
Problems with P.I.T.
I found a news article on CNN today that relates perfectly to what we have been discussing in class for the past week. This article discusses some of the problems encountered during the P.I.T. (Point-in-Time) count of Camden County, New Jersey. Camden is the poorest city in the U.S. and has an unemployment rate of 13%. Yet last year’s P.I.T. count found only “589 homeless people in the 513,000-person county.” This makes it the perfect example of an area with a very understated homeless count.
As we’ve seen throughout this past week, there are many problems with the current system of P.I.T. counting. P.I.T. counts takes place within a 24-hour period in the last week of January at least every other year. These counts are required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for each county, but they are not funded by the government. There’s the first problem – without proper funding, of course we are not going to get an accurate count. Furthermore, as the homeless in the CNN video repeated many times, homeless people often don’t want to be seen. There are many places that probably go unchecked by counters simply because they can’t see them. There are plenty of homeless sleeping in cars, couchsurfing, living in abandoned buildings or “tent cities,”and hopping back and forth from the street to various family members’ homes. All of these people fit HUD’s description of homeless. Yet they most often are not being counted in the “homeless census.”
Obviously, it is close to impossible to get a completely accurate count of homeless, since the numbers change from day to day as it is. But as shown by this article and the other data we have seen this week, there is a great importance in improving the P.I.T. count. The homeless are being under-counted and therefore misrepresented. These counts determine how much federal aid is given to the shelter systems, so they directly affect the people being misrepresented.