Homelessness Isn't Inevitable Rather A Manifestation of a Society that Is Sorely Lacking in Justice

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/activism/homelessness-isnt-inevitable-rather-manifestation-society-sorely-lacking-justice



When you first meet Paul Boden, the executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) that's working to end homelessness, his initial shyness leaves you unprepared for what’s about to come. Just start chatting with Boden about homelessness, and his energy surfaces as if he’s explaining the crisis for the first time. Within minutes, he’s waving his hands and dropping f-bombs, which oddly makes you warm up to him quickly. It's probably because the best part about talking to Boden is you know he’s the real deal. While homeless himself in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood in the '80s, Boden started organizing to eliminate homelessness and he's continued ever since.

I recently had the opportunity to meet with Boden to talk about his new book, House Keys Not Handcuffs: Homeless Organizing, Art and Politics in San Francisco and Beyond, which details what he’s learned from over 30 years of community organizing.Images are dispersed throughout the book, chronicling the role art played in the movement (slideshow below). One of the first things Boden emphasizes is that homelessness isn't inevitable. It was the result of massive federal cuts to affordable housing, approximately $50 billion between 1979 and 1983 under the Reagan administration.

“That’s when shelters began,” Boden writes in the book. “That’s when people were beginning to be forced to live on the street in numbers unheard of since the 1930s.”

The city of San Francisco responded by creating bureaucratic programs that provided only short-term solutions. That’s why, in 1987, he and a few others created the Coalition on Homelessness, so people on the frontlines could push for change. Boden went on to develop WRAP in 2001, after speaking with other homeless advocacy groups about the need for a larger network on the West Coast. WRAP is currently focused on passing a Homeless Bill of Rights in several states to stop the criminalization of homeless people.

[merrily]

1. Daily Show just did a bit on Utah building housing for the homeless.

One homeless person costs taxpayers of Utal, on average, $20K a year. Providing housing for them costs, on average, $8K a year.

This is not news. At least five years ago, I saw a TV program showing that providing housing for the homelss was much cheaper than allowing them to be homeless. So, it's not even the money folks. We're just a crappy species.

[reddread]

5. it is ALL about the money

those figures are not applicable to the very small scale LARGE budget
faux solutions being passed off as "housing first"
the Daily Show program was a dirty joke.

[Triana]

2. Someone wise said: "Charity is no substitute for Justice"

It's not. Nothing is. But America sure likes to try anything - ANYTHING BUT actual justice.

I think the person who said that was responding to idiot Libertarians who think charities and churches should donate for poor people - for their housing, food, medical expenses. How fucking realistic is THAT? Seriously?

How about instead:

providing the DIGNITY of good jobs with decent pay so they don't NEED charity or social help?
providing a decent publicly-funded education so that they can GET those good jobs?
preventing all the US's good jobs from being sent ELSEWHERE so greedy corprats can benefit from cheap/slave labor - here and elsewhere - wages that no one can live on?

JUSTICE. ECONOMIC JUSTICE. There is no substitute.

Asshole America will try - but bottom line: There is NO substitute for JUSTICE.

[Scuba]

3. ...

[xchrom]

4. +1