By: Grainne Rhuad
“Being poor is a state of mind, not a condition.” HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson explaining to Congress why he refused to discuss housing the poor. May 21,2004. It is deeply troubling when our secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) doesn’t want to address housing the poor. That is, the job description of HUD and its secretary.
A term has been coined for the homeless amongst us: “The Invisible Population” The homeless are invisible only if your eyes are shut. Even then we should be increasingly aware of those living in poverty and on the streets as America approaches third world status in its treatment of homeless people.
As long as there have been communities there have been people excluded from them. Some by choice, others due to not following social mores. Some of these outsiders whether they were lepers, criminals or fanatics had no shelter and could be considered homeless.
“Homelessness” is defined in the United States Code, Chapter 119, Subchapter I, §11302, “General definition of homeless individual”:
The term “homeless” or “homeless individual or homeless person” includes:
1. An individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence; and
2. An individual who has a primary nighttime residence that is —
A. A supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations (including welfare hotels, congregate shelters, and transitional housing for the mentally ill)
B. An institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized; or
C. A public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.
Now as ever, most people would prefer to not see the homeless on their doorstep. It makes one feel like they are living in less than desirable circumstances; which they are. Also for a lot of people it shows a picture that is a little too close to home.
But have the types of people who are currently homeless changed in the last few years? The answer is yes and no. Recent statistics show the following:
- 32% were homeless persons in families.
- 68% were homeless individuals.
- 64% of homeless adults were male.
- 62% of the homeless were a minority.
- 43% had a disability.
- 40% of all these individuals were between 31 and 50 years old.
In addition Estimates of subpopulations of the homeless based on the nationwide single-night January 2008 PIT count show:
- About 15% were veterans.
- Almost 13% were recent victims of domestic violence.
- Nearly 26% were persons with severe mental illness.
- 37% were persons with chronic substance abuse issues.
- 2% were unaccompanied youth under age 18.
- 4% were persons with HIV/AIDS.
The chronically homeless are another subpopulation. The federal definition of chronically homeless used by HUD states that a chronically homeless person is either an unaccompanied homeless individual with a disabling condition who has been continuously homeless for a year or more or an unaccompanied individual with a disabling condition who has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.
To be considered chronically homeless, a person must have been on the streets or in emergency shelter (i.e., not in transitional or permanent housing).
There are other subcategories of homeless people that are important to look at. It’s a lot easier to see the homeless in our cities and urban areas. However rural homelessness is on the rise as well. The most distinguishing factor of rural homelessness is access to services. Unlike in urban areas, many rural homeless assistance systems lack the infrastructure to provide quick, comprehensive care to those experiencing homelessness. The reason for higher rates of rural homelessness is rural areas tend to have higher rates of poverty, only compounding the risk of becoming and staying homeless in those areas. It’s a basic formula: Less people=less representation x less money.
Homeless By the numbers:
- There are 643,067 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in the United States.
- Of that number, 238,110 are people in families, and
- 404,957 are individuals.
- 17 percent of the homeless population is considered “chronically homeless,” and
- 12 percent of the homeless populations are veterans.
These numbers come from point-in-time counts, which are conducted, community by community, on a single night in January every other year. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires communities to submit this data every other year in order to qualify for federal homeless assistance funds. Many communities conduct counts more regularly.
“The homeless don’t need our help. They just want everything for free.” -Ronald Reagan
A broad and insulting statement coming from the man who while Governor of California closed almost all of the Mental Health facilities housing the gravely mentally ill without providing a plan for where they would go. Ronald Reagan is directly responsible for raising the amount of the gravely mentally ill homeless people on the streets in California.
Mental illness is the third largest cause for single homeless people. “According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20 to 25% of the homeless population in the United States suffers from some form of severe mental illness. In comparison, only 6% of Americans are severely mentally ill (National Institute of Mental Health, 2009). “[Source: http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Mental_Illness.pdf]
An inability to work a regular schedule due to mental illness combined with lack of services and instability of medication makes it extremely difficult for the Mentally ill to find and keep housing. Because we have chosen to not provide institutionalized housing or communal housing for the mentally ill, we are seeing exactly what should be expected. People on the streets.
But it is a self perpetuating cycle. Because people have unaddressed problems they will most likely always be homeless. Their chronically untreated conditions do not allow them to get better. They make no money and what money they get panhandling goes straight to self medication in the form of drugs and alcohol. This, because they will never be able to afford appropriate treatment.
Another reason people become homeless is due abuses. Currently in the U.S. 1.6 to 1.7 million of those who are homeless have at some time in their lives been abused. [Source: http://nccp.org/] Young people run away from dire situations only to find themselves in another dire state. While they may have escaped the abuse of home or foster care, another 28% end up suffering abuse while homeless, especially youth, women and GLBT individuals. Whether that abuse is rape, beatings or the way society looks at them it matters not. Their internal self ends up further traumatized and they very often do not feel like they deserve any better.
There are the very poor people on the streets. Very often these people have family in tow. Once you have gotten to the place wherein you are homeless it is very hard to overcome that. The ability to look for viable employment is almost an insurmountable task. The lack of access to clothing, grooming and even paper and computer to use for resumes keeps people on the streets.
It is worth pointing out that there are a small percentage of people who actually want to be homeless. There are several reasons for this, some of which have been listed above. However there is the very small amount of people who are actually dangerous even sociopathic. It is easier to fly under the radar and commit crimes that your sociopathic compulsions demand while homeless.
Analysis by the “Opening Doors Coalition”- a federally funded project; shows some of the top reasons why people are homeless in America include foreclosures, poverty, less secure jobs, declining availability of public assistance, addiction disorders, and mental illnesses.
The sheltered homeless population is estimated to be 42 percent Black, 38 percent White, 20 percent Hispanic, 4 percent Native American and 2 percent Asian. These interesting statistics point to how we live our lives culturally. Just glancing at the numbers and employing basic historic knowledge we can see that those who value family responsibility and have a long history of multi-generational living end up being at less risk for homelessness.
A major factor in homelessness in the U.S. is the lack of affordable housing. Many things contribute to this and this is not just a result of the housing market dive. It was a factor beforehand as well.
Most of us have a picture in our mind of homeless or near-homeless people and families living in cheap motels. People often wonder why someone would chose hotel living over say renting a house. It’s a valid question. Currently the cheapest of motel rooms cost around $42 a night. (Including taxes). That equals about $1260.00 for the month which seems like enough to rent a house or apartment in most areas. However, a lot of owners will not rent to someone who has a bankruptcy or a history of missing payments; not to mention a criminal record or conversely no credit record at all. The risk is not worth it to them, even if it helps homeless families reestablish themselves.
Also, renting a home requires deposits very often at a higher amount than the rent itself. It can be hard enough to come up with the money to pay for your rent but for far too many people it is impossible to come up with rent and deposit money.
The housing market crash does however contribute to lack of affordable housing in a different way. During the housing boom many people invested in rental properties hoping to make a killing off their investments. When things took a dive, the rents went up. Owners had to find a way to make their mortgage payments on these houses or lose them. They also were and are unable to sell them because they are upside down in their loans. As a result very often, rents were raised in order to meet the mortgage liability of the owners.
Add to that the fact that single family home owners are continuing to lose their homes. Recently top White House advisers questioned the need for a blanket stoppage of all home foreclosures, even as pressure grows on the Obama administration to do something about mounting evidence that banks have used inaccurate documents to evict homeowners.
There are of course many countries in which homelessness doesn’t even enter into their lexicon. There are a couple of reasons for this.
- The countries themselves are so poor and/or war torn that dealing with people without shelter is the least of their worries. When there is no national stability for anyone, it’s hard to be concerned about the people without roofs over their heads.
- Some countries care for their own. By providing housing for extended family and including everyone in the community both socially and with work, homelessness ceases to be a problem. This is something we and other “developed” nations have gotten away from. It seems that as we acquire more in terms of tangible goods, the less we want to share. You will rarely anymore see generations living together in homes in the U.S. Here especially we want to have reminders of familial duty as well as age and handicap out of our view. We seem over concerned with how we present ourselves to the public and sometimes having Nan tottering about is a stress inducing picture for the upwardly mobile set.
- Many other cultures view homelessness differently. It is not always a given that those without their own homes; either rented or owned are homeless. It may in fact be a choice. In the U.S. This choice would still be counted as homelessness, not so in other places. Also those living for extended periods of time with family or friends would not automatically be labeled homeless.
For the purpose of illustration let’s take a look at some of the home states of our staff:
In 2008, Alaska ranked tenth among the 50 states in concentration of homeless people, with 0.24 percent of the total state estimated to be homeless. Oregon was number one with 0.54 percent, and California was fourth ranked with 0.43 percent.
Homelessness in the U.S. is concentrated in urban areas. But from September 2007 to September 2008, the number of homeless nationally in suburban and rural areas rose from 23 percent of the homeless population to 32 percent.
In my home county in Northern California, we now have at least 1,772 people who are homeless. As a point of reference, that’s close to the stated population of Biggs, California- a medium farming community also in Northern California
Houston is the fourth largest city in the U.S. and possesses the third highest homeless population in the nation. Approximately 15,000 homeless individuals in Houston live in abandoned buildings, on cardboard makeshift beds, under freeways, and in shelters throughout the city.
“An underpaid worker that cannot afford housing is an industrial slave.” [P.22 American Homeless Land Model]
“On Homeless Empowerment”: “There seems to be an attitude that homeless people are homeless only because they were too stupid to keep their homes and are therefore not very competent at thinking for themselves, and that they therefore need the guidance of more intelligent, “enlightened” people to help them back onto the path to a “normal” life. To any person with an I.Q. of more than 50 who is homeless because of the worsening economic conditions in the country this attitude is, to say the least, extremely insulting. What is lacking here, or maybe only partially formed, is the concept of homeless empowerment: that we should have the power to control our own lives, to use our intelligence to find out own creative solutions to our predicament, and that we are entitled to keep our dignity in the process; that we have the same constitutional rights as every other citizen, and that the very last thing we need is to be treated like criminals or idiots while we are struggling to survive.” -Bridget Reilly
“Why keep the poor weak, then punish them for being weak, and glorify ourselves by handing them charity that they would not need if they were treated justly from the beginning?” [P.24 American Homeless Land Model]
We can work within our communities to combat homelessness and the resultant problems. In fact this is the most effective way to address this issue. It does little good to work with National programs as they are bigger and bulkier in their administration, thus a lot of the money gets eaten up therein.
Within your communities vote for measures that provide housing whether temporary or long-term. For example, my city used to have a housing task force wherein case managers from several different agencies from Hospital Workers to Child Protective services met monthly to present, discuss and approve city funding for apartments. Criteria to be met included support systems and ability to keep housing once individuals or families were placed in it. It was a good program which provided housing for around 100 families a year. The constituents of the city voted out of this program because they didn’t want to pay the extra taxes. As a result the funding was lost. This is entirely the fault of the voters. City managers were in favor of it, agencies working with people in the area were in favor of it and rental owners as well as property management agencies were in favor of it. Replacing this program was an increase to parks and recreation and public art.
It’s not that either of those things are bad. However, what good are murals when people are sleeping in their cars and on sidewalks.
In London an orgainization called Centripoint has hosted a very sucessful fundraiser for a number of years now. During its annual event during which participants, called “Sleepers,” give up the comfort of their beds for one night and spend the time outside on the streets. The event allows people to experience a flavor of the daily plight of homeless young adults throughout Britain, albeit with food, security and a roof, amenities the homeless do not have. In addition to a cold, uncomfortable night, Sleepers must raise 500 pounds (a little over $800) that goes to the center. In its inaugural event five years ago, Sleep Out raised about $65,000; last year it raised about $145,000.
There’s another area in your community in which you can be effective. Feeding people. The homeless amongst us obviously have no kitchen access or money. Providing food is crucial. Voting in favor of laws that protect food servers like ‘Food Not Bombs’ is also crucial. Nationwide in the past year, food assistance programs have confronted numerous challenges. The increased cost of food and fuel has made it difficult for food banks to expand or even maintain their normal supply of food. Meanwhile, the economic downturn and rising unemployment have increased the demand for food assistance while decreasing the number of donations from individual donors.
Increased efficiencies among large grocery chains and food suppliers have resulted in less excess supply and thus decreased donations to food banks. The sharp increase in the price of food means that an increase in funding is necessary just to maintain supply at previous levels. Over the last year, the price of food increased 6.2 percent, the largest increase in nearly 20 years. The cost of key staples increased even more dramatically – for example the cost of cereals increased 12.3 percent and the cost of fruits and vegetables increased 10.3 percent. Los Angeles, Boston and Portland reported that increases in the price of food have lead to a decrease in the quantity of food they are able to purchase. Transporting food from large suppliers to those in need also became more expensive because of a significant increase in the price of gasoline. In Phoenix, where the cost of fuel and trucking expenses has increased by as much as 72 percent, the total amount of food distributed decreased by 13 percent even though the level of funding increased by 30%” [source:U.S. Mayors.org]
Keep in mind however there will always be those who don’t consider themselves homeless even though they technically have no established residence. It is neither necessary nor helpful to make somebody else conform to your ideal of how a live should be led.
“I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.” –Frederico Garcia Lorca
And let’s leave off with this: A very telling quote which illustrates why those who both have family money and connections. It is, I think the reason that people are not willing to help their fellow human beings:
“At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that “people are poor because they are lazy.” He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to “free market competition.” To him, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was “socialism.” [Source: Poor=Lazy President Bush and the Gilded Age By Yoshi Tsurumi March 1, 2004 excerpt from article:]
Further Reading:
http://www.homeless.org.au/statistics/
http://www.chicoshelter.org/about-homelessness/node/41\
http://www.chicoshelter.org/files/2011_FINAL_Butte_CoC_Homeless_Census__Survey_Report%20web.pdf
http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/comm_planning/homeless
http://www.usich.gov/usich_resources/fact_sheets/
http://www.endhomelessness.org/content/article/detail/2797
http://usmayors.org/pressreleases/documents/hungerhomelessnessreport_121208.pdf
L. A. Breaux 
Subversify Staff
Grainne, i want to thank you for a comprehensive report on homelessness. You not only state the conditions and currently existing problems exacerbating homelessness, you present the elastic definition of what constitutes a homeless person. I’m going to go out on a limb a little and state what i believe to be a major factor in why California, Oregon and Alaska are up there in the ten states with the highest degree of homelessness. All three states are migratory routes for people who believe by moving, they will receive better job opportunities. Despite the housing bust, California is generally viewed as the land of opportunity. Oregon is reputed to have some of the highest wages in comparison to cost of living. Alaska has always been the last ditch effort for people desperately trying to remain solvent, with “boom or bust” their slogan. These states must not only cope with their local chronic homeless, they must also try and accommodate the migratory homeless. This is a daunting task for any state as they are all affected by the deflated economy.
America likes to look good on the outside, even when its in shambles on the inside. You might have faulty plumbing, an ancient furnace that’s not efficiently generating heat, peeling paint on the living room walls, but as long as your yard looks good and a fresh coat of paint covers the outside, the neighbors won’t complain. Use your money instead to buy a new furnace, instead of outside improvements, and the wrath of city assembly comes down upon you.
This is also reflected in the decisions of where the homeless are allowed to go. Residential areas, fearing property devaluation, do not want a homeless shelter built near them. The parks are made for strolling and practicing tai chi, not for overnight tents. In Central America, you can see cardboard shacks propped right up against the outside walls of wealthy mansions. The wealthy use this work resource to transcript small jobs; an errand boy, an extra girl in the kitchen, someone to help the carpenter lay planks or carry water to the crew, for a day’s pay. You do not see this in America. The homeless are simply unwanted, undesired and forced to go somewhere else.
It appalls me to think of the number of vacant buildings and homes that could be housing the homeless, but whose good citizens go into an uproar if just one person is discovered sneaking into one with a sleeping bag and backpack. It sickens me to think of the number of homeless who have been beaten for finding shelter under bridges or in the shadows of an overpass. America, worshiping beauty on the outside, is so ugly on the inside.
I believe it was Will who pointed out that the next step in economic deflation is migration. If we don’t begin finding adequate solutions for joblessness, dispossession and consequent homelessness, we may have to adjust to an entirely new lifestyle, one that not only harbors the migrant worker but that has formed large groups of nomadic, gypsy-like people. I won’t say this is bad. Human nature has some basic nomadic tendencies, only that this is the adjustment we will have to make, the acceptance we will have to learn if we continue to keep a blind eye to the homeless situation.
devastating indictment of mankind ……
Such a sad statement about humanity in our country. Yet you’ve identified those who are making a difference and encourage us all to work within our own communities to effect change. The unfortunate comments about homelessness and poverty in general are disturbing. There is a fella who lives in the bushes behind my office has a work ethic better than many I’ve worked with in the past. The fact of the matter is that all of us are a small step from homelessness. Mental illness, addiction and unemployment doesn’t discriminate. You’ve reminded me why I chose to do Social Work as my life path.
[…] Our “Invisible” Population-Homelessness An individual who has a primary nighttime residence that is — A. A supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations (including welfare hotels, congregate shelters, and transitional housing for the … Read more on Subversify […]
“I want to feed them and house them and pay them. Not much, but enough to send home to their parents. So they can hold their heads up again and be proud to be Americans.” (From Little Orphan Annie)
That’s about the nature of it. What I saw in shelters were homeless people who WERE working, quite often. But they weren’t earning a liveable wage. So they couldn’t afford to maintain a residence. Many of them worked hard and then spent hours waiting to get into shelters for the night.
But for the homeless in California, once they are involved in some type of transitional shelter program, things often change. Many homeless have plenty of access to clothing, grooming and or paper and computer to use for resumes. That’s an assumption many of us make that is only true of the homeless on the streets…and even then, many of them also have access to clothing and medical care. In Los Angeles, we have a program for health care called Healthy Way LA that the homeless qualify into. I don’t think I ever had more access to free clothing and food than when I was homeless and living in a shelter. But what I didn’t have access to was an opportunity to relax much.
What I saw were people using some of those donated items to sell and make money. I saw many talk on Facebook, much of the time instead of seeking work on the computers. It was such a problem that shelters now explain that Facebook is not an option for computer research. On the flip side of that, Facebook does make a homeless person feel connected to the world, when everything else does not.
Most shelters actually do hand out decent clothing and they offer vouchers to many thrift shops for clothing as well. If you want to know where to get free anything — ask a homeless person. That’s the first thing you learn…free meals, free clothing, free socks, free backpacks…
As far as why people come to California? It is more basic than jobs. It’s the weather and the knowledge that there is a more liberal attitude towards the homeless in the programs to help. Believe it or not, WEATHER is a key motivator for homeless people sleeping on the streets. It has to be. One can freeze on the streets. So places like Florida and California are frequently discussed in homeless forums.
Having lived in some of these environments, I now believe the key thing towards helping the homeless to overcome their burden is not public understanding. Although, I hope people finally do realize this is a condition that is tough to overcome.
For me, the most important thing to helping the homeless is holding the people accountable who run shelters. Never in my life have I seen more cruel people as I saw working in shelters. And this simply should not be! They are safe in being this way, because there are few organizations who oversee these places. And in many, the donations are stolen and sold for profit, the same as entitlement programs are taken advantage of by many of the employees. Bus tokens are given to employees and family members, food too. Donations that people offer out of the goodness of their hearts often are snatched up by greedy employees before they reach the residents.
We need to hold these shelters and our donations accountable. When employees are driving brand new leased vehicles from the profits and taking expensive vacations to different countries under the guise of research, Houston, we have a problem.
@Jennifer. You are right about a lot of the Californian shelters. The ones in my community are similar. The problem with people working jobs is there are only beds for 75 people and you have to show up at 4:00 to get in line to get a bed. If someone is working, they just aren’t able to get there. We also have a center for youth on the streets that provides lockers, computers, case managers who will drive you about looking for jobs-etc. But it too fills up, Case managers have their favorites and personal items disappear. It’s easy to blame the clientele for this.
It’s a hard thing to fix because in reality the people working at shelters are either volunteers or working for wages that put them pretty close to being out of money too. So yes they use the resources there too. It’s hard to say this is good or bad when they are so close to the edge and just losing that job would put them on the streets without family support. (Okay it’s not hard to say it’s wrong, but one gets the sense of how they justify it)
Not every state is so gracious. And the weather, who wouldn’t rather be in milder weather? Which as you say is why we see more of the homeless in the coastal regions of California. We see a lot in the rural areas now because they can actually camp out without their camps being broken up every week. So what does my city do about this? Find the camps and tear down the areas making them more public.
Example: We have the biggest public park in the Nation. Our city’s founders set it aside for public use forever. There used to be huge blackberry brambles that provided protected living space about the size of small houses scattered throughout the park. You could in fact find couches, dressers, coffee tables and cots in them when I was young, if you knew someone homeless or knew where to look. Otherwise they were out of the way and out of sight. They didn’t bother anyone. All of a sudden about 15 years ago the city found out and decided to cut down all the blackberries. No more fruit to eat and no more shelter. Also there are “lost” areas of the park that nobody uses and really are not great for usage. The homeless made use of these. They actually don’t want to disturb the community, they just want a place to be, but now those also are being “reclaimed” I see no reason for it. They are wonky bits of the park that will never be sustainable for everyday use, but we want to push people out that are being respectful, cleaning up and doing thier best, mostly because we are scared of the homeless boogey man. We need to provide space.
I have always thought the huge tracts of land that waste resources like water and contaminate things with chemicals which some people call “golf courses” would make the most excellent areas to house homeless people.
But no, we don’t really like other humans very much. I am reminded of Ebineezer Scrooge “Are there no workhouses? Are there no Prisons?” except we say isn’t there HUD? Well yes but even HUD denies people based on poor credit scores and rental history, which seems pretty stupid. Of course you have poor histories in this area if you are poor, it’s unavoidable. We really seem to not want to help people.
Grainne, your description of how the homeless are driven from discreet rural areas is what bugs me most about this campaign to keep the homeless moving. Many of the homeless have found ways to work collectively, some working to maintain the camps, some going out on a daily basis to find a bit of work, food or comforts for their survival.
We had one such camp just a few miles from Anchorage, in an area where people were always dumping their junked out vehicles. The homeless turned these vehicles into bedrooms. They painted the outsides with explosive, colorful pop art. In fact, they did such an astonishing job of turning junk into art, our local newspaper did a coverage of it. Several months later, the mayor sent in a crew to chase the homeless out and confiscate their belongings. That year, we had six homeless deaths attributed to exposure.
This may look like a modest figure until you turn it into percentages. If you have 200 homeless in the City of Anchorage (a modest figure), you have five percent of the population. If six homeless people died of exposure that year, that is three percent of the homeless population. Three percent; with more casualties with each passing season.
What is the purpose of clearing the homeless out of the rural areas? I think the answer is relatively simple. By thriving without government aid, they can’t be included in social assistance programs. They can’t be individually tracked and controlled. They have basically fallen out of the machine. When they group, they add a statement that people can survive and get along without social supervision.
I believe the spillage of homeless into the rural districts is necessary. Eighty percent of America’s population live in urbanized areas. Vast tracts of land have little to no development. They aren’t being preserved for future generations. They are being preserved for future energy and resource development by major corporations. The rural towns are made to believe the only way to prosper is by allowing corporations in; corporations that drain their resources, than move on. While the cities continue to expand, they also continue ransack the rural areas, leaving them with little to no fresh water, stripping the forests, and turning arable farm land into worthless, chemically treated dirt.
The homeless have very little impact on rural areas. In fact, there are many small towns that would willingly take hard working homeless people in. They’ve watched the sizes of their towns dwindle as their young people leave home and wander off to the cities to try and make the big bucks. They need help with manual labor, child supervision, teaching skills and small business enterprise. Of course, living in a rural area often means downsizing your needs. Many rural towns barely make enough money to cover the cost of living. You won’t get paid vacations, probably not even an insurance plan. You’ll have to settle for an old fashioned television, with no flat screen, no high definition, and probably no cable. Entertainment will more often be the sounds of the local musicians at a community picnic than they will be a visit to a nightclub or concert, listening to a popular band play. Your computer will be at least three years old and kept together by replacing the parts that fry with other second hand computer parts. The only top brand clothing you’ll be able to afford will be from a thrift store. You might have to work incredibly hard just to remain stable, but you won’t be homeless.
The one thing the government fears is independent resolution that has no need for its supervision or intervention. It fears communities that are not swayed by media popularity or the need to spend everything they have on throw away commercial values. They fear the communities that say no to corporate investment, such as the Bristol Bay that stubbornly continues to refuse the propaganda for large scale mining in their fish and wildlife preserves. The cities are the life blood of the corporations because the people living in the cities cannot imagine life without the support of corporations and consequently, big government. They believe their status as the majority gives them the right to guzzle down and waste our water resources, to carelessly chop down trees for sawdust to make into particle board, to ruin miles of productive earth for agri-farming, to move entire mountains and pave them over for shopping malls and suburban housing and destabilize the environment for energy use. While they are asserting their rights as a majority, they are killing the rural areas. Once they have done that, they leave no places people can go and no resources for future generations.
A dirty little secret in Los Angeles…
Here, the way we keep count of homeless people lies in the clothing we give them to brand them. Last year, there was a campaign to hand out a bright orange shirt to the homeless that had black writing on it. I can’t recall the words but the only place you get these shirts are the shelters dotted around the area.
Nobody but the homeless wear these shirts and it tells the cops they are homeless, as well as everyone else. That way they can count the homeless on the streets too.
Of course, they don’t tell the homeless this. They give the shirts as if they are benevolent. I wonder how many wearing these shirts have been harassed because of them?
Jennifer, that’s disturbing! What’s next? Round up the homeless and put them in concentration camps? America really needs to quit gazing at the window dressing and take a good look inside the store. It’s filthy.
[…] conditions, not the least of which is mental illness and abuse within the home. Contrary to the opinion of U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Alphonso Jackson, homelessness is not a state of […]
[…] form of drugs and alcohol. This, because they will never be able to afford appropriate treatment. Our “Invisible” Population-Homelessness __________________ Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing […]
I’d probably just smack a cop in the mouth and get 3 sqaures a day and roof overhead. That’s what the homeless need to do. Break laws en masse and bankrupt the crap legal system. Make them house them all.