As the French said more than a century ago, it is equally illegal for the rich and for the poor to sleep under the bridges. We have nurtured our worst nature, not our best. As a people, have we at long last no shame?

Not to mention that Obama's "health care reform" will criminalize the uninsured.

Hooray! Atlanta is number 4! I knew we could do it!

Seriously, Atlanta, like most of the cities on the list, is constantly prodded by local corporate interests to carry out "economic cleansing."

The only thing that I don't understand is how Dallas, TX, stayed off of that list

q

Ah, I should post this here then. Something I had the displeasure of flagging at work yesterday:

Bill Cunningham advocates "beat[ing] the hell outta" homeless people with "a big old cane, Singapore-style"

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907140050

I am the "proud" resident of a city on the meanest list, #5 Gainesville FL, which made the list along with 3 other Florida cities. We do know how to be mean in Florida; here the laws against residence of sex offenders within 2500 feet (state law) or as few as 1000 feet (in some cities)of places where children "congregate" have given such people no place at all to live legally (and in a Jacksonville case, the 1000 foot rule made even a homeless "city" under a bridge off-limits to sex offenders.) When we do the scarlet letter thing, we do it up right.

Gainesville specifically "earned" its rating by putting limits on the number of people who can be served meals at a downtown shelter, and vigorous police action in breaking up a "tent city" as the City Commission drags its heels endlessly on proposals for a "one stop" center for the homeless. Gainesville had been on the list also as #5 in 2004 but then dropped off. When Michael Stoops visited here during the time we were off the list, I "complained" to him that our absence was getting in the way of local efforts to shame our citizens into a better performance. The Mayor of Gainesville (a personal friend for whom I have campaigned and most of whose agenda I support) apparently didn't "get it" about the political advantage of the listing when she tried to excuse us by looking at the Top Ten list and saying:

"If you look at the list, many of them are places that you would generally consider to be pretty progressive, Berkeley and San Francisco ... The folks who end up on that list are cities who are doing something but maybe not to the full satisfaction of the advocates,"

What this seems to say is that it's relatively OK for "pretty progressive" (meaning, I guess, those who voted for Obama in 08) cities to make the meanest list because homeless "advocates" are holding them to higher standards for such treatment. This is nonsense, of course, as there was nothing in the National Coalition's rating criteria that factored in what local advocates were expecting; as they rate only the "something" that cities were doing or not doing.

For those of you who still read, see if you can find a copy of Orwell's "Down and Out in London and Paris," London's "People of the Abyss" and "The Iron Heel."

If you read them, you'll have few illusions about what is going on in the "United" States today. A good dose of Dickens wouldn't hurt either.

As the Oligarchy has consolidated its power, we are rapidly reverting back to the same conditions that existed in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Vast, unimagined wealth and privilege on the one side and unbelievable poverty on the other. The wealth has the power to persecute and degrade the poor, and uses it.

I'm sure the private prison lobby would love nothing more than to have people go straight to prison on foreclosure day. Profits!

Ah, the peace, freedom and opportunity that all those terrorist countries hate us for.

I just love how they say they put these policies in place to "protect the most vulnerable" people. Who is it that is more vulnerable than the homeless? It seems to me that making people who already have nothing into criminals is just adding insult to injury, as well as further injury.

God, I just hate politicians. I think they should all be kicked out of office and forced onto the streets for at least a month so they can learn just what the reality is, and to hell with their ideology. Until politicians can actually deal with REALITY in some way other than "this is what my ideology says", they will earn my disdain.

If they really wanted to do something to change this, and not just make things worse, then they should do something to get these people employment and housing. And as things get worse economically, they will only increase the homelessness. We can't keep arresting everyone for not living up to some sick and twisted ideology that only the ultra rich can live up to. It's time to start trying to be human towards each other for a change. This right wing "screw those who are already screwed" BS has got to stop. We are destroying our society with it.

Homeless rates are growing, spilling people on to the streets where they are harassed for sleeping. Cities bowing to those who object to having to deal humanely with reality, meaning the middle class mostly. (Oh please not in my back yard!) Limiting the number of meals served to the homeless! What, bread and water next?!
Having worked in a shelter, I find as with the population at large that there are those I like and those I don't, for various reasons. However I find that the homeless by and large are a great deal less of a drain on the environment.
How on earth are the homeless going to find "homes" when we do not allow them to? I hear say that they should be working but when the issue of actually employing them the excuses spew forth! It is well known that the longer one is homeless the less likely one will want a home and one is culturized to living on the streets or out in the open.
On the whole the homeless are a likable bunch and I've enjoyed their company. I wish the middle class could overcome their fear and distaste for the homeless and open their hearts and minds.

New York City is worse than SF. By a hundred country miles. SF feeds and overnites all homeless, men on mats on church floors, out at 5:00 a.m., but it is still shelter from the wind. NY? No. At least in Brooklyn and Manhatten where I went. I slept in Central Park, it was cool, but dangerous for naiive muggers....

As the lower middle class of yesterday slips through the sieve into the streets and finds they are lower class trash, homeless, to be spit upon, they will pine for their remotes and couches.

When the MIDDLE CLASS, slips down through cracks which have become crevasses,

Karl Marx's predictions will be manifest, and these disenfranchised classes will catalyze, rise up, and cut the throats of the Cheney's, Tillersons, and Limbaughs, and take back an entire stolen country, take back our Fields, our Meadows, our Dreams.

What % of the US population is w/o shelter, is an EXACT indicator of how far we are from Violent Revolution.

Home is where the Heart is, and my Heart beats in my chest, I was never never Homeless, I am Houseless Officer, "If you can stand up and walk away, you don't have to...," Thank You Officer, I'm leaving.

One of the reasons why Los Angeles is at the top of the list is an unofficial policy that is quite prevalent in the South & Midwest called "California Therapy." It is basically a bus ticket to Los Angeles issued to those whom should be in psych wards, or petty criminals whom the local sheriff strongly suggested leave town. Thus it is no surprise that the center of skid row in Los Angeles stands the Greyhound bus station. Making the matter worse in skid row are local Southern California municipalities (hospitals with indigent patients do so as well) unofficial practice of dumping their homeless on to skid row as well.

Homeless peoples' only crime is not paying taxes to fund our wars and bailouts.

This is another job for: The ACLU

Remember how things work in the US:

--If you are homeless, you are often a "criminal" even if you never commit (a real) crime.
--If you are poor but not homeless, you will in many cases be homeless at one time or another, in which case see the previous item.
--If you are poor but never homeless, you deserve an award. But instead of an award, there is a good chance you too are a criminal, since statistics show that the poor are far more likely to have violated a law than the non-poor. By far the most prevalent motivation for breaking the law among the poor is to avoid total destitution and homelessness. In other words, they break the law to try to avoid being a homeless-criminal.
--If you are rich, except in rare cases, you are not a criminal regardless of how many crimes you commit. The rich very often know how to avoid getting caught, and they have plenty of money for highly qualified defense attorneys if they do get caught.
--Many rich people make some of their huge pots of money by doing things that are considered crimes in many other countires of the world. Selling health insurance policies and then refusing to pay for care is an example.
--The rich are getting richer, everyone else is getting poorer. Some formerly middle class people are falling into poverty so quickly that their heads are spinning.
--Even though it is more than ever society's fault, homelessness and poverty in general is virtually always blamed on the victim by the established institutions. There may be some sympathy for the poor from time to time, but officially the poor themselves are always to blame for poverty. For example, if a poor person (or anyone, actually) can not get a job, it's the individual's fault, even when the number of jobs available is shrinking, so that it is not mathematically possible for everyone to get a job!

I know, this stuff is very confusing and very disturbing to say the least, but what can I say? Don't expect things to make sense in countries run by right wingers.

Here is the full report, 194 pages, pdf:

http://nlchp.org/content/pubs/2009HomesNotHandcuffs1.pdf

housing\homelessness, supported by the ownership of property and industrial economics, will be the straw that breaks the camel's back...if we cannot view the right to minimal housing as part and parcel of being alive, then the citizens will either need to unite to protect themselves from the henchmen of the landlord\banker, or begin to share housing already paid for, or the contributions to such...otherwise, they will watch each other get hauled off, residence by residence, to jail or slavery as they lose their jobs, due to economic upheaval and resource depletion, and, therefore, their ability to afford...

George Carlin said something like:

The rich are there to enjoy all the best things in life.

The middle class are there to support the rich.

The poor are there to scare the hell out of everybody!

Warning! The following post contains sarkasm. For side effects consult Your dictionary.

Ordinary people never understand the underlying deeper wisdom of political power. As the result of the 2001 New York 'Powder Festival' in Manhattan, wise leaders like Cheney and Bush paved the highway to 'National Security' with a brilliant plan to alter the appearance of the most preferred immigration destination and target for envy-derivated so called 'terrorist' attacks.

Their goal was noble, sophisticated and ambitious in its nature. They implemented as quickly as the slow political process would allow them the 'Project For A New American Global Image'.

At its core the project was extraordinary. With the creation of the 'Lesser Liberty Act' an important step was initiated towards the overall goal to change the global image of the US into a place nobody would want to emmigrate to or even less so plan to assault or attack.

Carefully and intrinsically engineered financial strategies were unleashed and with the support of leading, high ranking monetary specialists like Greenspan, implemented in a smooth almost undetectable fashion in order to allow continued prosperity of the main bearers of financial responsibilities and risks.

Like true visionaries, Bush and Cheney, with the honorable support of the entire legislative including the judicial system, military and law enforcement, knew that the program that included a provision for increased transparency of the populace, would take some time to show full effect.

Their patriotic efforts are now crowned by the full funcionality of 'PNAGI'. Thanks to restless sacrifice of both mental and financial resources of the rulers we are now able to benefit from the program.

Healthcare has finally turned into 'I could health care less'. Housing has become what it always was, a luxury, that is respectfully rejected by those Americans that believe that less homeness leads to enlightenment. The jobmarket has ultimately reacted to policymakers' vision to provide income sources only for those who really want it. Thus it is clear, that whoever remains unemployed does so out of one choice to follow the higher principle of Being, which makes 'having' and 'doing' obstacle prone limitations for the Freedom of the Mind.

Witnessing how this phantastic plan shows its first results is only comparable with driving a car on the moon.

Worldwide people have come to the understanding, that their coup-trained banana republic offers more than the country with the 'Statue Of Bribery' could ever provide. Scores of uneducated workers turn around in their boats and inner tubes, as they realize that they would lose the little they know by entering the 'United States of Uneducation'. People that intended to come to the US for plastic surgery are now better off to have the job done in Bhurma or Bangla Desh.

Of course most important of all is the final diversion of US bound terrorism to other, more promising targets like Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. The tireless efforts of The Troops™ all over the planet showed the movement of United Enemy Combatants®, that it is way easier now to 'fight them over here' than 'over there'.

All in all, the foresight and wisdom of the "Greatest Führer Of All Times' (GRÖFAT) Bush, has opened a door for this country that was closed so tightly for way too long.

The letters on that door read 'Insignificance'.

May All Beings Be Blessed.
No Restrictions Or Limitations Shall Apply.

HENRY THE EIGHTH PERHAPS YOU WOULD FIND YOURSELF AGREEING
MORE WITH THE DENIZENS OF RIGHT WING SITES. YOUR OPINION OF TEXAS IS FAR DIFFERENT THEN THOSE OF US WHO HAVE VISITED
OR TRAVELED ON BUSINESS THERE. IT WAS QUITE A CULTURE SHOCK
TO SAY THE LEAST TO SEE SO MANY FOLKS WALKING AROUND ARMED!
FOR WHAT REASON?WAS A WAR GOING TO BREAK OUT? WAS MEXICO
GOING TO GO TO WAR WITH YOU. AUSTIN ONE OF THE COOLEST
CITIES IN ALL AMERICA IS LIKE AN OASIS IN A DESERT!
ALSO THE MEAN SPIRITED NESS OF YOUR JUSTICE SYSTEM
AND THE ALARMING NUMBER OF EXECUTIONS CARRIED OUT THERE
MAKE THE REST OF AMERICA SHAKE OUR HEADS IN COLLECT
SADNESS AND DISBELIEF.NOT TO MENTION THAT YOU ELECTED
KING GEORGIE 2 OVER AN INCREDIBLY GIFTED AND VISIONARY
LIKE ANN RICHARDSON. THATS OUR BEEF!

The only freedom that exists in the good ole USA is
the freedom to starve to death in the streets...

Gee, you'd think that this was a NEW problem. Many of the northern cities and probably some in the south as well, have been participating in "GREY HOUND THEORAPY" for many years now. A family becomes 'homeless' and moves into a local shelter. (Since they no longer have a permanent mailing address they're taken off the voter registration list). The local shelters will usually only help for a couple of weeks, and then some well meaning organization or local government, in a magnanimous gesture supplies a 'one-way' ticket to some warmer, southern city where there may be work or better conditions. But, most of these areas still have 'vagrancy' laws which automaticly qualifies the newcomers as criminals. As the list points out, except for those hanging out around the University of Michigan, nine of the top ten are warmer climate cities. Although the north has some homelessness, the burden is carried by locations where exposure to the elements is not so deadly.

how can you love your neighbour when you don't have one?

Los Angeles--"The City of the Angels"? Not really, more like Germany in 1933 when Hitler was making the rules. First you take a group of people and dehumanize them. After you vilify them you stuff them into box cars and ship them off to centers which have gates stating "Work Makes Freedom". Then you send them to the showers. After that you pull out their gold fillings and send whats left to the furnace. When you criminalize the poor and homeless you are doing the work which the corporations started and Wall Street encourages. You are beyond immorality. THESE PEOPLE ARE HUMAN BEINGS!
FEAR GOD !!!!

I had my grandkids at the public playground recently when I saw two police cars boxing in an old clunker.

Three police were talking to the guy who had stopped to rest.

The car was packed full of cloths and probably everything else the guy owned.

I and my grandkids walked down to the shelter for a drink of water and parked ourselves as far as possible from the others. It wasn't a big shelter. I could hear everything.

The guy was not allowed to go until he was checked out by the people back at the station. I knew they wouldn't curse, beat, or otherwise abuse him while I was there.

When the police finally left we stayed a few more minutes. I wanted to teach my grandkids something.

This is a suspicious society. We wouldn't be so suspicious if we were not sneaky and mean ourselves.

It always has been illegal to be poor and homeless. If you are moving you are a vagrant; if you are sitting still you are loitering.

Poet July 15, 2009 1:40pm

Great comment, thank you.

genie

While visiting Farmington, NM one winter (4 Corners- gets very cold) a community leader told me they often have intentional public disturbances in town- homeless (often Navajo) individuals who get drunk or do something to catch a cop's attention just to get a warm place to sleep for the night.

Pretty sad, if our jails might turn into the only possibility of someone not freezing to death.

After reading through the posts so far I'm prepared to offer a "theory" about those cities that made the "meanest" list---ignoring for the moment the likelihood that there is a lot of arbitrariness and happenstance in which cities "earned" this honor (just like most of those 10 Best Whatever lists). Assuming that these indeed are "mean" cities, there is a pattern here I think. As was said above, they are mostly cities in "nice" climates and "liberal" social environments so that they attract relatively large numbers of the homeless. But (and here comes the theory part) they are also attractive destinations for people seeking to avoid less appealing conditions in other cities and parts of the country. In this sense they are the analogs of the suburbs of post-war America, in which people were "escaping" the perceived crime and crowding of the big cities. Cities in central Florida, such as Orlando and my home city of Gainesville (2 of the "meanest"), have grown rapidly from people who have left coastal regions of Florida in search of less hurricane-prone areas.

If you're going to compare these "more attractive" cities to traditional suburban explosions, it would be useful to see how suburbanites behave in their "dream" communities. Often as not, they locate themselves in gated communities or in condominiums with "security" protections that keep out the riff-raff of those who might invade their comfy enclaves. With suburbanization actually giving way now to the "new urban" trend toward middle class residents in downtown areas, the problem of the riff-raff becomes especially pronounced in the process of "gentrification" by means of which low-income downtown areas are giving way to housing for these new urbanists. Downtown Gainesville illustrates this to a t. If you've been to the city but not in 5 or 10 years, you'll get a big surprise if you go downtown where endless medium rise condos are replacing the semi-slum housing that has previously prevailed. And the conflict between the gentrifying new urbanists and the remnants of homeless "undesirables" was dramatized a couple of years ago when a major part of the downtown plaza where many of the homeless hang out was closed just to make space for storing building materials for a very nearby condo project.

So the "theory" is that those cities are "meanest" in their treatment of the homeless which have been most attractive BOTH to homeless people seeking a place where they can survive and new urbanists seeking to solidify that "better" environment by controlling the dysfunctional (i.e. the homeless) elements in in their environment.

Thinking like a sociologist, no theory is much good if it purports to explain only one situation (Gainesville FL in this case). It should as well explain other situations like the one I recently observed in Costa Rica: the co-existence of a very attractive climate and social atmosphere for both tourists and ex-pats from other countries, and a level of perceived dysfunction reflected in an incredible amount of barbed wires and iron gates surrounding practically every house and business in the capitol city of San Jose, whose streets are littered with homeless and other victims of a society which has virtually no "welfare" system for any unfortunate victims of social dislocation.

Gainesville Florida/San Jose, Costa Rica: a thin brew of evidence for the "theory" but maybe a starting point for a direction of explanation.

For some of the snide early posters on this thread, I have news for you. Homelessness can happen to just about anyone except perhaps the top ten per cent bracket (Bernard Madoff has a home!).

When I was around 40, the last time official unemployment was around 10 per cent---1982-83, when Reagan's Fed Chief Paul Volcker was called in to raise interest rates drastically, to slow down the then-maddening inflation rate unfairly attributed to Jimmy Carter---I suddenly became homeless. There is nothing funny about it.

A year earlier I had been a City Councilman, elected. My term had run out and I had taken some unpopular positions and had a new baby and could not find a real job despite my several skills. I could no longer pay the rent and was evicted and my wife left me and I followed her to her home city so I could be near my wife and daughter and try to work things out.

Things did not work out.

It is only in a crisis that you learn who your real friends are.

I ended up living in a storage space for a year, and please allow me to tell you that even in the early 80s there was a "safety net." For example, Ohio participated in a welfare program that offered a stipend EVEN to unemployed single males, in my case of around $100 a month. No longer exists. You are on yore own, Brother.

Meanwhile, whatever weaknesses the original article here may have, it should draw attention to an increasingly serious issue that the MSM are avoiding for the most part.

Today, on paper I am worth around a fifth of a million dollars, while one cancer could render me penniless in the mere pursuit of survival in our sick society.

We have lost our Culture, which was the reciprocity between the Individual and the Group. It was based in Law thousands of years old. (When was the last time you heard the word "reciprocity"?)

We have been violated. We need to defend ourselves. Our Selves.

Where once I was a Philosopher I am now a Scavenger. I still seek, and sometimes find.

Homelessness is NOT an individual failure; it is a failure of Culture. It is as much a crime as a "war of aggression" a la Nuremburg.

Former Treasury Secretary "Hank" Paulson's annual salary while at Goldman-Sachs probably could have solved LA's homeless "problem" for example.

Either you tax the rich to redistribute income or you end up with NO Democracy, an Oligarchy, Plutocracy, or something similar in this new electronic digital age of instant "information"...

It is getting harder to have a conscience when it is needed more than ever.

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