Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
11.12.09 - 12:39 PM
Shelter From the Storm
After a seven-city tour, a U.N special investigator has accused the U.S. government of pouring billions of dollars into rescuing Wall Street but failing to address the shameful, growing problem of homelessness. Raquel Rolnik said the housing crisis is "invisible" to many people even though we have the resources to address it.
"In the US, it's feasible to provide adequate housing for all. You have a lot of money, a lot of dollars available. You have a lot of expertise. This is a perfect setting to really embrace housing as a human right."
Comments are closed
84 Comments so far
Show AllSmall towns are littered with empty houses.
Larger ones have tens of thousands of sq. ft. in abandoned industrial buildings.
Cities have foreclosures everywhere.
Open the doors.
Nonsense.
Most of these "homeless" people are homeless because they want to be. Many won't work even if offered the simplest of jobs. Some are addicted to drugs and won't go to rehab to try to break their habit. Others realize that with a $7 an hour minimum wage, it is easier to ask for handouts than it is to get a job. (They can collect welfare/unemployment as well) So what's the point in working?
If we are to get real about the "problem" of homelessness we need to attack it at the source. Stop giving these people handouts and educate them on how to support themselves. Drug test all homeless persons coming to shelters and force them into rehab if positive. Clean them up and give them some self esteem.
Giving these people handouts and (LAUGH) "opening the doors" of foreclosed properties only increases the problem.
Our tax dollars can be put to better use than giving them to some junkie that's too lazy to work.
So you personally know "most" of the homeless? it seems like your poor "insight" stems from ignorance, lack of empathy and a big lump of coal where humans normally have a heart.
don't feed the trolls.
LOL, LOL, LOL!
TheLorax
Did you not read the piece or are you being sarcastic? Sometimes it's hard to tell just by reading what somebody wrote.
The UN was complaining that the Government was spending huge amounts of money to bailout Wall Street while ignoring the homeless. Then you say "Stop giving these people handouts and educate them on how to support themselves". Who are you talking about the homeless or Wall Street?
We have basically bailed out a bunch of irresponsible Wall Street reckless gamblers that should be in Jail, or some Gamblers Anonymous twelve step program themselves. And may I add here I wonder how many Wall Streeters could pass a drug test themselves. With all the money they have my guess is that many of them are pretty well self medicated.
"Our tax dollars can be put to better use than giving them to some junkie that's too lazy to work."
LOL again. OK let me get off the floor and back in my chair before I type any more.
Yea our tax dollars are better spent giving it to a bunch of rich, self absorbed, sociopathic, wealth squandering, tax money stealing, lowlife Wall Street types that don't want the goberment to regulate them but then goes running to the goberment to bail out their sorry butts when they get themselves into trouble. They are like a bunch of irresponsible teenagers. They say mommy and daddy are jerks and want mummy and daddy to leave them alone until they get in trouble, then the want mommy and daddy to bail them out.
LOL, ROTFLMAO, too funny, yuck yuck, Oh god I can't catch my breath.
thanks for your reply to Thorax re who are the ones getting the "handouts". Most ppl can't imagine what its like to be homeless unless it happens to them. Unfortunately more and more are receiving that rude awakening. What we need is more compassion and less generic stereotyping.
And so often the people that cant imagine it happening to them are many times only a paycheck or two away from it themselves. You would think that would make them more empathetic to the homeless. I really don't get it at all.
NC-Tom
Thank you for saying what I'm thinking.
Very poor satire. Makes you look stoopid and immoral. Good satire is subtle and doesn't use cliches or vomit up propaganda.
You are either joking or are a heartless dumb ass.
I don't know if everything after "nonsense" is satire or not. I hope so, because inartful satire can always be improved with thought and practice.
If it's sincere mean-spiritedness, I suggest that the Lorax try to wrap a tune around it if he/she hopes to sell it.
Because the musical version might hit the charts with a bullet; it nicely fills the niche created by "Welfare Cadilac".
· Yr Obd't Servant
To: TheLorax
Judging from your comments, you must have had a free ride in life. Just wait and see what it is waiting for you in the near future. YOU MIGHT BECOME ANOTHER HOMELESS INDIVIDUAL.
You are another one of those living within your own family little cub. It makes me sick that you show no empathy for others who are having a hard time now.
Vive la France, Vive la revolution
ABAJO LA MUGRE USURERA
Cars sleep in heated garages. Oil-war veterans sleep in the park. Get it? Stop the autosprawl subsidies.
http://freepublictransit.org
I don't know if Lorax is serious or not.
It's true that some are pro's that boast of bagging $200 a day, then rent motel rooms, and I'm sure that some welfare recipients do sit on their porches drinking beer all day.
But, I'll tell you this as a lifelong campaholic that cruises these lower 48. The homeless are showing up in campgrounds all over; men, women, and whole families. Some towns have four or five houses for sale on every block, curtainless empty houses. Remember that as you waste a hundred candles in paper bags to make the neighborhood look cool for the holiday, or when you're fully stuffed with turkey and sprawl out in the stratolounger to watch the ball game.
Well said. The eyes wide shut crowd is going to have to buy body suit rubber bumpers to keep from getting injured from numerous daily run ins with walls and reality.
And these morons really believe the criminals in government and Wall street aren't the real welfare cheats. Don't these morons know basic mathematics? Wall Street has done a great PR job on these idiots by convincing them that the ROI (return on investment) from bailing out wall street crooks is better than spending to help the homeless live lives of dignity. It seems okay for banks to rip off billions but if 3 to 6% of homeless are trying to milk the system, it's okay to shaft the other 94%. It's okay to reward massive wall street grand larceny but heaven forbid allowing petty larceny from a tiny group for the benefit of the entire community. I would pity these people that are so calloused about the homeless if I didn't get so angry just reading their profound hate speach founded on ignorance and bigotry.
Welfare for the homeless in Los Angeles County consists of $228 a month. It is not even enough to pay for a cheap room in a flop house. So even the homeless who are on welfare remain homeless.
The bankers have received their orders: "Cry 'Havoc' and unleash the dogs of war."
This is a serious issue. But our nations true terrorist group and certified chicken hawks did this yesterday on the growing problem of homeless Vets.
Yesterday, the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development held a hearing on ending veterans' homelessness, a growing problem, especially in the midst of the current recession. The hearing was noticeably without its Republican members. So here's the list of those domestic terrorists who were too busy to give a damn about homeless vets:
Richard C. Shelby, Ranking Member (R-AL)
Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Bob Corker (R-TN)
Jim DeMint (R-SC)
David Vitter (R-LA)
Mike Johanns (R-NE)
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)
Judd Gregg (R-NH)
In his defense, Hutchison was at Fort Hood for the memorial service, but his state of Texas has the highest number of homeless vets. The rest of them should be iiving under a freeway bridge eating cat food.
The French guillotined about 2000 aristocrats. Not many, but enough to empower the middle and working classes. I think 10,000 bankers and predator capitalists would be a fine start here. Of course the Paris Commune of 1871 got it right, but they were massacred by the establishment.
No, the French didn't guillotine 2000 aristocrats. They guillotined 2000 people, who consisted of the royals, nobles, AND middle class, AND working class.
Empower the middle and working classes? What was empowered was just another new group of elite rulers. All the Terror did was replace one group of authoritatrian elite rulers with another group of authoritarian elite rulers.
As Madame Defarge would say, "Nobody is perfect. We were just setting some examples". It's the old breaking some eggs to make the omelette rule. Wall Street applies that rule to us every fucking minute of every day. Turnabout can be ugly but it's still fair play.
I know that if Geithner, Buffett, Blankfein, Schumer, Dodd, Lieberman, Paulson, Summers, etc. et al were suddenly "involuntarily suicided" (old CIA joke), a fresh crop of fecal, cancerous coliforms would rush in to take their place.
However, I wouldn't miss the old crop of crap.
The joke is new to me and funny as hell.
this is the more correct version.
what really happened in france was:
the KING - the monarchy , was basically a more or less "benign" ruler - by most standards...the nobility around him, was really the RIVAL faction TO the king , with their own interests. below them was the RISING "bourgiesie" or "middle class" - consisting of the merchants, businessmen..who - with the rise of the "monetary system" began to see their own power.
below them were the peasants and laborers .
the rising bourgoisie actually USED the peasantry to act against the NOBILITY whom the businessmen wanted to replace as the main drivers of society .
the Monarchy, the king of course was, by that time, , though still powerful, partly at the mercy of either the nobility or their rising rivals -= the bourgoisies -- today , known as the "middle class" .
although today's "nobility" would probably be the "corporatocracy" or big businesses.
the peasants would be most of us working EITHER for the
"bourgoisie" BUSINESS CLASS - whether small or big - but basically "without possession".
at least that's how it seems to me.
but France, indeed, came (and still does, imo) closest to a path leading to a socialist state..where the end of the monarchy actually was brought about BY the bourgoisies USING the peasantry -- in order for the bourgoisies to become the replacement rulers over the peasantry after getting rid of the power of the monarchy and the "nobility" to which LEVEL
the BOURGOISIE ALSO aspired.
in a way - this one reason, perhaps, that Karl Marx and other socialist/communist thinkers of class war - POINTEDLY focused on the BOURGOISIE itself as PART of the problem.
someone correct me , please, if i comprehended these things wrongly.
2000 aristocrats. About 40,000 total.
Since it was a U.N. special investigator who made this report, will the congress now pass an act condemning the report?
It wasn't satire or an attempt at satire. My post was 100% sincere.
So you want to give all your money to the homeless so they can shoot up meth and get drunk that's fine with me. Don't ask me to donate thank you.
If it's a program to actually END homelessness (not one to give away free housing or money) then I'm in on it.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not for bailing out wall street either. Our money should be going to education, transportation, and alternative energy. Instead we're wasting it on war and corporate bailouts.
Giving these people money and housing is NOT the answer. Do that and you will doube the number of homeless. Build huge condominiums and hire caterers to ensure they all get meals and soon everyone will be homeless. What you are suggesting is NOT the solution.
Get these people OFF drugs, OFF welfare, and OFF the streets. Help them WORK to earn money for themselves. EDUCATE and promote their self-esteem.
Not seeing your logic in giving them money and housing so they can be happier in their homelessness.
Wake up. Not all people who are homeless fit your ideas. Many are regular families who for various reasons, including job loss or dire medical situations have lost their income. Or how about the working poor who have 2 or 3 mnimum wage jobs but still don't earn enough for first and last month's rent etc. You need to get down off your high horse and see how the poor are struggling these days. I find you pathetic.
As far as a homeless person finding work.
Where does that person fill out an application that does not ask for their home address and telephone?
This is ALSO a problem if trying to register to vote or even rent a post office box. One must give a physical street address in order to register or to rent from the US POST OFFICE.
Then you are a heartless dumb ass.
What "welfare". Homeless men aren't even eligible for Medicaid; and wher is their food-card even going to be mailed to?
You seem to be unaware that since the Clinton's end-welfare act, the US doesn't even have a welfare system that anyone from a civilized country would recognize.
And last I checked, unemployment insurance is NOT a handout - one has to to work to earn it, and all workers pay into.
And no, homeless people have exhausted any unemployment they might have been due long ago.
Lorax, haven't you ever taken unemployment? I thought everyone by the time they are 40-50 has taken unemployment a least a couple times. Never been out or work? Have you ever worked at all? Oh, I see, maybe just get a automatic deposit from you rich-daddy's trust fund every week. Or are you such a brainwashed slave of the capitalists that you refuse to draw unemployment even when you are due it?
I am homeless, and I'd like to comment on Thelorax's post.
"Most of these "homeless" people are homeless because they want to be."
Completely false. I know boatloads of homeless people and none of them - not a single one - wants to be homeless.
"Many won't work even if offered the simplest of jobs."
True, but don't be misled by the word "many." If I had to guess, and it would be a very tentative one, I'd say that about 15% have no intention of ever working if they can possibly help it.
"Some are addicted to drugs and won't go to rehab to try to break their habit."
True, and drugs aren't even the worst of it...alcoholism is much more prevalent. I think I'd take issue with them not going to rehab, because most of them go up to ten times a year, spend three days drying out, and hit the liquor store within hours of their release.
"Others realize that with a $7 an hour minimum wage, it is easier to ask for handouts than it is to get a job."
Very few panhandlers make as much as $7 an hour. Most spend three or four hours at it and are lucky to bring in 6 or 8 bucks, which is usually enough for a pouch of cheap tobacco and a pint of rotgut.
"(They can collect welfare/unemployment as well)"
In my state welfare pays homeless people about $116 dollars a month. People with fixed addresses get the princely sum of $305, but we're not talking about them. As for unemployment, it usually pays enough to get an 8X10 room in a weekly flophouse, though I'll admit that there are some homeless guys collecting unemployment.
"So what's the point in working?"
Most of them would work in a heartbeat if given the chance. Period. I'll address why they're not able to momentarily.
"If we are to get real about the "problem" of homelessness we need to attack it at the source."
Erm.....yes.
"Stop giving these people handouts and educate them on how to support themselves."
Again...erm...yes. Presumably on something better than those $7 an hour jobs you were talking about. I'll bet anything you've never tried to save up first month, last month, and security deposit earning minimum wage, and then had to find something accessible by public transportation, then convince a landlord to ignore your police record or credit report.
"Drug test all homeless persons coming to shelters..."
Impossible. What shelter can afford to have ten drug tests a day? Those tests take time, too. Sometimes up to a week. Forget the problems with false positives, but think about this: It's 8 degrees out, and the police won't do their jobs and pc anymore drunks. You gonna' send them out into the snow to freeze to death? That isn't some wildly improbable scenario, either. I see it every night.
"...and force them into rehab if positive."
Only a judge can do that, and the process takes weeks.
"Clean them up and give them some self esteem."
An incredibly simplistic view of the massively complex problem of substance abuse, and you obviously know more than a handful of drunks/junkies, so you ought to know better. I'm sure you do, and were just firing from the hip, so to speak.
"Giving these people handouts and (LAUGH) "opening the doors" of foreclosed properties only increases the problem."
No, it doesn't. I'll admit it does nothing to fix it, but neither does it make it worse. It just eases their suffering for a while.
"Our tax dollars can be put to better use than giving them to some junkie that's too lazy to work."
Amen, brother. Amen. But I think my suggestions vary from yours more than a little. I need a break to get my thoughts together for the next post, but I'll be back in a few.
Thanks for your thoughtful post. I hope you get back on you feet soon, although by what you say and know it won't be easy.
Just to blow up this myth about people not wanting to work let me tell you my experience. I had the opportunity to leave my former job has an early retiree. I had worked there for well over 20 years, and due to several reasons including an outsourcing I figured it was a good time to leave the place. We decided to move from CT to NC for the weather and cheaper cost of living. I started working right out of high school and was NEVER unemployed for my 30 plus year working life. This made me figure I'd have no problem getting a job.
Once we got settled into our new house in January of this year I started looking for a job. Well it's November and I still don't have one, and I am willing to do almost anything that I can physically do. Fortunately we have savings to live on and I have a pension I can fall back on if needed. But if it was not for that we ourselves could be homeless now, so I can first hand appreciate how tough things are out there. The stats say there are 6 unemployed people for every job that is available.
Sure there are some people that don't want to work out there but I can guarantee they are the minority. Unfortunately for all those that want to work but can't I don't see things turning around anytime soon.
Our government is totally transparent when it comes to dealing with the poor and homeless-- no help will be given. Let's not forget the horrendous first display of this policy: Katrina and New Orleans. If I remember correctly, then-Speaker of the House Hastert spoke seriously of just razing NOLA. It hasn't been torn down: just left to rot with no replacement homes or jobs for the working class poor.
We are only just beginning to see a pattern here: the ruling class slowly eliminates the middle class, leaving only the working class to fight against the former; only the poor can't revolt because they will be jobless, landless, homeless, healthcareless while sick, starving and dying. It's in the cards.
We'll never be able to end homelessness because there will always be people who end up without a place to stay. The best we can hope for is to put systems in place to immediately address the needs of those people.
The first thing that has to happen is a sea change in attitudes like TheLorax's. People - all people - possess intrinsic worth, and nobody is better than anybody else. You are equal to the homeless wino in a refrigerator box, and she's equal to your young daughter.
The next thing we have to do is concentrate on making decent jobs available. I'm not talking about minimum wage jobs, either. $15 or $20 an hour jobs, and nothing less. Those jobs need to be available to everyone, regardless of criminal records or bad credit.
Then we need affordable housing, and by affordable I mean no more than $8,000 a year for a two-bedroom apartment, and they also need to be available to everybody regardless of criminal records or bad credit.
We also need support services for substance abuse, but they need to be EQUAL TO THE TASK. Three days at a Spin-Dry center and then a boot to the curb doesn't cut it.
We need support services for the mentally ill, and again, they must be EQUAL TO THE TASK. A one hour session every other week with an overworked therapist is not enough.
We need ADEQUATE public transportation.
Do those things and 80% of the homeless problem will disappear. How will we pay for it?
Start by taxing business owners, and I mean tax the hell out of them. Capitalism requires the business owners to underpay the workers to raise capital, and they've been doing that to us for centuries. There's plenty of money out there - it's just concentrated and in the hands of the rich. Let's liberate some of it for a while. If things don't work out we can always go back to a system that methodically crushes the most vulnerable, but let's try something different and see if it works.
Hansjurg, Thanks for your insight and ideas.
Loved your comments and agree with every single one of them.
Same here.
None of you have to wait for somebody else to end homelessness. You can start right now, all by yourself, no matter what your financial situation is. Here's how:
Go find a homeless person, and make getting that person a home your personal project. Busy taking care of Mom and the kids? Get them involved too. Talk to everyone you know until you find that person a job. Don't stop until you do. If you can't find them a place in one of the overcrowded shelters, and you're nervous about having them in your house, put them up in your garden shed. Clean them up, sober them up, drive them to interviews, drive them to and from work, and help them manage their bank account until they have enough to get an apartment, or a camper, or schoolbus, or somewhere else to live.
That's right. Be a wild anarchist and go fix the problem yourself without help from any corrupt government. It'll be a huge pain in the ass, and it'll cost you money, and the person you're trying to help may very well let you down. Just try again, harder, and eventually you'll succeed in restoring one person to a dignified life worth living.
The alternative is to roll your eyes and point at the Republicans while that person freezes to death.
Homelessness is a heartbreaking national disgrace in America. No human being with good mental health would want to be homeless. Many of the homeless are Veterans with PTSD and many of the non vets who are homeless are people living with mental illness. One of the most common symptoms of mental illness is the inability to handle money on a budget. They get into serious credit problems and are unable to rent even the least expensive place. Although there are all sorts of accommodations made for physically disabled and people who are developmentally delayed, there is no help for the mentally ill who get in trouble with bills they cannot pay in a corporate capitalistic society. When they(I don't know who they are) de-institutionalized the psychiatric patients, they did not legislate the necessary outpatient care for budget management, shelter, nutrition, medical care, or socialization. Now with the economic problems and joblessness there is an increase in homelessness of workers who have families and especially single mothers. Why do Americans resent government helping disadvantaged people and down on their luck Americans but support as patriotic, killing and destroying foreigners in counterproductive wars? Some of the people who protest helping the needy the most are Christian conservatives who say they will get dependent and never work but Jesus never said don't help the needy because you will make them dependent..
Here's my final rant on this subject:
It can happen to you!
I had a good sales job, what I thought was a good marriage, and I was on my way to a nice, middle class existence. I don't mean to beat my chest - I just want you to understand that life can kick you in the teeth and keep on kicking. In four years time all this happened to me:
The grandmother I'd cared for died from a massive stroke.
My mother died from ovarian cancer.
I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea.
My wife ran off with one of her coworkers.
My favorite uncle died from complications from diabetes.
My father died from kidney failure.
I was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.
I was diagnosed with diabetes 2.
I was diagnosed with high blood pressure.
I was diagnosed with recurrent atrial flutter.
I was diagnosed with recurrent unspecified tachycardia.
Unable to work, I had to quit my job to qualify for state subsidized prescriptions.
I lost my apartment and moved into my car.
I've had 6 pulmonary embolisms in the past 4 months.
I simply CAN'T work...but I can't collect disability because my oxygen levels are a few points too high to satisfy the COPD requirements, atrial flutter is usually treatable, and embolisms usually disolve within ten months, which doesn't meet the one year requirement for disability. I can't collect unemployment because they won't grant it if you left your job for medical reasons.
I currently live in a shelter whenever I'm in the front of the line. It's first come, first served, and all of them are overcrowded.
I managed to land a little job - sweeping and vacuuming for an hour a day at a thrift store, but honest to God, I haven't been able to do even that much in a week or so. I think I'm in tachycardia again, but this'll make the 9th? 10th? trip to the hospital this year, and I'm quite sick of the place.
To tell you the truth, I'm considering committing a serious crime or two. I don't know what else to do, and I haven't got much to lose.
The point of all this whining is to illustrate that I'm not a drunk or a junkie. I just got stomped down by circumstances and IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU.
So you failed to get medical insurance and expect others to pay for your health care?
You quit your job when they could have let you go and you would have been able to collect unemployment. (Enough for an apartment)
You have made a series of poor choices in your life - your marriage, health care options, personal health, and financial decisions.
Sorry that you are homeless but you're there because you got yourself there.
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
- The Lorax by Dr. Suess
http://www.seussville.com/lorax/
-TIA
Well aren't you special.
In that case, you should support corporate bailouts.
The corporations have obtained their bailouts because they got themselves there. They put themselves in a position to get trillions of dollars of bailouts. Unlike you. They deserve the trillions of dollars.
You don't. Too bad. That is the logical conclusion of your theory.
No, I was fully insured when I got sick, but I was unable to work and therefore had no money. Without money I could not afford the copays for my prescriptions, without which I'd die. They ran about $20 apiece, but I was on 11 different drugs, and if you're broke $220 a month is an impossible sum. The State had a program that brought that down to $2 apiece, but if you were employed and insured you didn't qualify. I reasoned that since I was unable to work or afford my meds the only way out was to resign and let my insurance lapse, which qualified me for the state program.
As for unemployment, they do not compensate you if you are unable to work for medical reasons, period. One of the weekly questions you have to answer is "Are you willing and able to work?" I was willing, but unable.
My marriage? It's none of your business, but I never saw it coming.
I'll admit that I made some poor choices about my personal health. In my youth I was addicted to nicotine, and I was running about 25 pounds overweight. I corrected both, but not early enough, apparently. On the other hand, Mom had a lot of problems with her heart and Dad had diabetes and high blood pressure, you rude prick.
Hansjung, YOUR second sentence of the original post said it all. IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! It can happen to anybody, irrespective of bad or good choices. I'd suggest that you not waste too much energy arguing your point, since, as my wife always tells me... "you can't fix stupid".... peace
Hate to pop your little bubble, but having health insurance is not always a matter of choice. After my divorce, I did not qualify for COBRA because our family plan was sponsored by an organization, not by an EMPLOYER. So I went searching for a private plan -- BC/BS, USAA, Golden Rule, and one other. One of the first questions I was asked by the insurance companies was: "Have you ever had psychological counselling?" Answer: "Yes". Company: " Have you ever been on anti-depressants?" Answer: "Yes." Company: "You must not have been taking anti-depressants for at least 1 year before we can consider insuring you." End of health insurance coverage for me until I reached Medicare age (11 years). I was financially stable and could have paid high rates for insurance, but that did not matter to the insurance companies; I don't understand what there was about depression that made me dangerous to insure! I was ultimately one of the lucky ones who managed to live to age 65 without losing her assets to the health care industry.
Lorax,
Are you a real human being?
think of it this way... under a national system, you costs for keeping hansjurg in health benefits would be about 0.004 cents per year. Are you that stingy?
Lorax is toying with Progressive sensibilities for the purpose of personal entertainment.