Brainstorming a grass roots solution to homelessness.

[Cleita]

Stand and Fight made a suggestion to me that interested DUers should get together and help out those who need help with housing and other problems. Some of these people living marginally are fellow Duers and it could be any of us in the future as well. The administrators would rather we did our fund raising elsewhere and rightfully so. DU is for political discussion not charity.

What I thought we could do is set up a non-profit foundation for this purpose with it's own website. Of course there are many details to work out about this and we would need volunteer talent to accomplish this not to mention some seed money to get it started. We would need people who are lawyers, web designer, writers, researchers and anything else I could think of.

My idea is that although there are services out there like Social Security, HUD and Medicaid for needy people, they are inadequate to meet the needs of the homeless if that person doesn't have a place to live. So the purpose of the foundation would be to get them into adequate housing that is safe and rent free. Then their disability checks, Social Security or whatever they collect could be used by them for their personal needs.

So this post is for brainstorming only and coming up with a plan. Mods I'm not looking for money but ideas.

[Stand and Fight]

1. Sent you a PM... n/t

[antigop]

2. I don't have a lot of time today. Let me think about it and talk with some others.

Also, I think there was an article I came across that had some suggestions...I'll see if I can find it.

[Cleita]

3. Thanks.

No rush. It's an idea that I'm giving birth to right now and I think it might be a long labor. LOL!

[antigop]

5. One thought I had...I think policies need to be put in place to prevent homelessness to begin with

Universal healthcare, decent wages, etc.

Sorry, gotta go...

[truedelphi]

4. Ideally helping out people befoe they become homeless as well

Knowing people who faced eviction last year, and who were saved by a totally righteous yet little known ruling on evictions in California - I can't imagine their lives if that loophole ahd not been discovered for them by an internet researcher and then explained to them by a lawyer (pretty much for free)

The poor face countless hassles in looking for housing. In many large cities, while you try to find a sympathetic landlord, you have to submit to credit checks - each apartment or condo you apply for may want $ 25 to $ 35 just for checking on your credit (And then they will reject you of course)

If a person gets Section 8 In CAlifornia, it is a governemtn guarantee on the moneybeing paid so that can help.

Also am composing a longer response - but an emergency calls.

[demgrrrll]

6. There are resources available in our area and I am sure in areas all

over the country. I don't think that people realize how close they may be to the circumstances that would make one homeless. It is always over there and not "here". Many people are just a paycheck or two away from the streets and with these sub prime mortgages you know that many people are going to be in dire straits. I just finished watching Pursuit of Happyness. The story was different because that person obviously had many qualities that made it possible for him to escape a life of shelter living but it did show how a working couple through bad breaks and mistakes could be homeless in a matter of weeks. I think given the current economic configuration that this is a good time to be working on this project, I will be glad to help.

[bobbolink]

7. Those "resources" may not be what you think.

Most people agree with you.... they think there are so many resources all over.

When one looks closely, however, what one discovers is that those resources may meet very few of the actual needs.

I remember a woman who worked for an agency in a small town. She attended their fundraising meeting and heard them say, "If you are able to help 2 out of 100 people, you are doing great." She left upset, wondering what happened to the other 98.

The community, however, thought this agency was meeting all the needs.

You can't take it for granted.

[fed-up]

8. biggest problem for many is coming up w/1st last and deposit nt

[Cleita]

9. This is where an outfit like the Grameen Bank could help.

For those who don't know what the Grameen Bank is, it's a bank that makes small loans to poor people at reasonable interest rates and small payments. It's to help people out of a hole and get them in a better place. Also, if you absolutely cannot pay back the loan, they won't come after you with bad credit ratings and other punishments the main lending industry does.

[antigop]

10. OK what do we know about this guy....

Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Sorry it took me a while to get back to this thread. I was doing research.

I remembered reading about this guy -- he is called Bush's "homeless czar".
http://www.star-telegram.com/metro_news/story/250026.html

I think it's inhumane to talk about this strictly as a dollar and cents issue -- I think it's a question of dignity and respect and how we treat one another.

However, I did like the solution presented as affordable housing and support services.
>>
Gone are the days of simply providing emergency shelter focused on short-term needs, he said. Communities must go after long-term solutions such as finding affordable housing for the homeless and providing support services such as mental-health care, addiction services and job training.
>>

I don't like the fact that these solutions are "long-term"-- there is no reason for them to be "long-term" if the community would get its act together and do something now.

Thoughts?

[antigop]

11. Here is the website for the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness

http://www.ich.gov/

Does anyone know anything about this council and their work?

[TimBean]

12. kill two birds with one stone

so many people now can't sell their homes. So many homeless need homes to live in. Let's think. Gee, How about the government steps in, does their job and buys the homes off those who don't want them for the homeless to live in?

[Cleita]

13. Because that would make too much sense.

Welcome to DU!

:toast:

[TimBean]

14. Wouldn't it be interesting ...

if every home on sale today were given to someone who needs a home?

If you don't want to live there, guess what, we can find someone who does.

[Cleita]

15. I would like to see all the vacation and second homes of the rich

that go empty most of the year to be taxed a lot more than 1% (like in California) with the proceeds going to provide housing for the poor.

[TimBean]

16. there is plenty of homes for everyone

if we share. Put poor people in those vacation homes, they're not getting used. Got a spare bedroom? Guess what, not anymore. No while there are still people sleeping on the streets.

[Cleita]

17. I agree 100% and I have been trying to do exactly that to try

to get a homeless person into that situation, but so far have come up with excuses. A friend of mine who has a small cabin in the woods that she hardly uses, said no because she wouldn't want anyone around when she does go there occassionally. Not another thought about it or drop of compassion.

[Hannah Bell]

18. where i live...

small town, pop ~50K...

we have a women's shelter (30 day max, 30 beds) getting 1 mill/yr in funding, & a general shelter (~100 beds crammed to the roof, usually about 80 at reasonable capacity, 500K in cash funding, 500K in in-kind).

Each facility has about 10 employees, & that's where most of the money goes.

That's 2 million for a small town.

Plus we have some church feeding programs, Salvation army feeding program, a church drug recovery resident program (similar clientele as the shelters), HUD housing, transitional housing...probably other stuff I don't know about, but those are the biggies.

I figure that's several million more in funding. Let's say 6 million, on the conservative side.

Now, say that these programs serve about 300-400 people/month.

That's 500,000/month. If you just divided it equally between the clients, it would be 1250-1600 each.

Instead, most of it goes to salaries for fewer than 100 people, probably about 50. Some low-wage, but others more respectable.

While volunteering at the big shelter, I had access to their budget.

Knowing most of the residents, & knowing that about half of them had some income - from SSI, day-labor, or low-wage jobs, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation & came to the conclusion that if the residents pooled their resources, they could make the mortgage & utility payments on the building themselves, live in it & run it themselves.

Why wouldn't this work? I thought about it & concluded for most, it wouldn't, for many reasons.

But most of the folks I saw eventually got into some kind of housing.

Problem was, about half of them eventually came back: Drugs, job problems, family problems including illness were the big reasons.

One person who broke my heart was a woman in her early 50s who came in, got a job at a chicken plant - backbreaking work, but she was doing pretty well, looking good & feeling good about herself. Long story short: she slipped up, had some drinks & blew a bad breathlyzer, they kicked her out, she spiraled downhill, lost her job, & died several months later.

If I had the money to do something, my choice would be a business making some useful, saleable product: concrete blocks, fruitcakes, whatever - & run it as a non-profit where folks could start at entry level, get lots of second chances & support if they screwed up, & work their way up into positions of increasing responsibility with decent wages, until they're effectively doing most of the managing.

It would have a housing adjunct, & then as people got more & more stable & got nest-eggs stored, they could move "off-reservation" into market housing.

Some kind of stable, long-term & supportive work environment is, imo, key. To supply both money, dignity, & supportive community. & something that wouldn't
require 50-year old women to do back-breaking hard labor for the rest of their lives.

over my volunteer life, i've become more & more disillusioned with charity services. sure, emergency services are needed, but many folks get stuck in that revolving door, & it strips people of their sense of self-worth, which is deadly. it doesn't do much for folks who work in the system either; cynicism, opportunism & cruelty are occupational hazards.

Nothing's going to change much until the whole system changes. Right now millions are spent on bandaids for a system that produces homelessness like an apple tree produces apples.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. What about housing cooperatives?

Not the fancy Manhattan-style cooperatives or co-housing, where you need to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the types of places that students often live in...older houses with a bedroom for each person, a common living room, a couple of bathrooms, a washer-dryer, and a kitchen where people share meals (the cheapest way to handle food).

Most people don't do that once they're in the "real world," but why not?

A person making minimum wage may not be able to rent an apartment on their own, but a room in a big old house for $150 a month plus their share of the grocery money? Probably doable.

Some charitable foundation would have to own the houses, but they would be governed by the residents.

[RuleOfNah]

20. How about some transport neutral domain specific commune mashups?

I have been wondering when communes would make a comeback. Given a large lump of aging population in the USA, current and future Shock Doctrine economic disasters, and retrograde fashion it seems inevitable that communes will go mainstream, rapidly if government checks bounce. Hopefully medicine won't be so buggy this time.

http://www.foodnotbombs.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_school
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extract_Method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_%28web_application_hybrid%29