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Report Links Homelessness To Federal Spending Priorities
According to a report released by the Western Regional Advocacy Project, "massive homelessness" has been created in the U.S. over the last twenty-five years because of cutbacks in federal affordable-housing programs. In the last decade, HUD has spent no money at all directly on construction of new public housing. Instead, the government has focused on the Hope VI grant program, which transforms distressed public housing into mixed-income communities.
Also during the last decade, HUD has demolished, sold or re-developed 100,000 housing units. As a result, the report says, there are fewer subsidized dwellings available. Over 4 million families live in HUD-subsidized housing, and between 2 and 3.5 million are homeless in any given year.
This study is of particular interest in New Orleans, whose public housing has been steadily decreasing for years, and because of the damage done by Hurricane Katrina. There has also been a recent controversy in Jefferson Parish, which is just outside New Orleans, involving Parish Councilman Chris Roberts, who maintains that "With the number of jobs out there, nobody should be on public housing unless you're ignorant or lazy."
Roberts and the Jefferson Parish Council have made it clear that they do not want displaced public housing residents from New Orleans moving to Jefferson Parish. The rationale is that low-income housing causes crime. As da po' blog points out, people who relied on public housing in the city before Katrina cannot afford to come back, a lot of working poor rely on public housing, and low-income housing does not cause crime. "You can't eliminate crime by eliminating low-income housing. Try fair education and workers' rights to achieve that end." da po' blog also points out that most of the people not wanted by Jefferson Parish just happen to be African American.
Is America a country 'by, for and of the people' or is it not? That is the question. According to the Republican party it is not a country by, for and of the people. We the people are here merely to provide labor for the corporations until they can completely outsource everything to third world countries that are free to exploit them until they drop from exhaustion as China and Mexico do.
Then they want 'we the people' to fight and die in their wars for them.
Before this last year of my life. I might not have been convinced that this information was all that accurate. I was a modest income level white man. My open mindedness came from living with HIV since 1985, and now having AIDS. Seeing this with my own eyes. My negative partner, and I were the target of a hate crime last summer. Which left him temporarily disabled. It also left us homeless, and in need of relocation. All of the funding set aside for AIDS housing, etc., was unavailable.
Fortunately for us we were welcomed into a wonderful, mostly African-American, West Philadelphia neighborhood that we are both very proud to now call our home. My partner, a physician/businessman from a wealthy white background, and myself from a very modest white background. Saw the ugly truth up close, and personal. It has been a devastating year out of our lives. We are just starting to rebuild again. How does our society get away with sweeping so much ugly garbage under the rug? That rug is ready to explode.
For us, the answer is that we simply fear leaving our "comfort zone" suburban mindset behind, shucking our false pride, and actually acknowledging the truth as it is, and not as it is being presented to us. The working poor aren't lazy. Most homeless people are not criminals. Society is lazy, and criminally negligent for not letting the ugly uncomfortable, factual news. Get to the mainstream average middle American. If the average middle American knew the truth. They would not tolerate it. When, or if we are ever back on our feet again, I won't forget this either.
It is going to become my life's big issue, not AIDS as I had previously thought. To try to help this homeless/working poor issue. Like hate, racism, sexism, whateverism. It is a human issue, period. Seeing my doctor/partner apply for welfare, because he had no medical insurance. His previous job was at a Catholic hospital. Which had just cut his hours, just enough, to cut his insurance coverage. Which they can legally do, being a Catholic hospital. After providing care for some family, of those involved with this same hate crime no less. It's taught me a tough life lesson about what actually constitutes a lazy welfare type of person. And what doesn't.
Our society needs to get over it's label-ism. Criminals all usually have money. Look at our government? Things might change if we stop trying to put labels on everyone, and everything. I know that isn't profitable, therefore it will be unpopular. But it is practical. I propose in my own humble opinion at least. That we begin a more practical practice of "universalized-ism?" That acknowledges all human issues without labels. Being Gay is now no longer an AIDS issue. Though it was for "my" entire adult life. I am working now with the "new" face of AIDS. Not Gay like me. Human like me.
What a privilege it has been. To have been allowed to live through the last twenty-three years of life with AIDS. To be able to now help those left out of the loop, with critical knowledge about living with HIV. Because they were straight, or being taught abstinence only sexual ideologies. Instead of life saving, practical human management, living tools, like safer sex. They are now the most at risk, and sadly the most vulnerable. I thank our higher power that I will take what I have learned, and pass that along to this next generation. I just pray that I can do that with as much love, respect, class, and compassion as I have found for me, here in West Philly. As humans, we are all going to need that.
After all. Were all only human. Equally.
David R. Amselm, Jr.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania