Two Snapshots

I came across two articles yesterday which disheartened me. Both deal with the Midwest, that great area known as "The Heartland," and both provide vivid pictures of the state of our union.

The first has to do Minnesota and a new kind of homelessness problem.

Homelessness is rising in Twin Cities suburbs, officials say. It's more pervasive in Anoka County than in Hennepin County, but harder to detect. Suburban panhandlers are rare. And some suburban homeless adults have steady jobs, but couldn't avoid foreclosures. ...

Homelessness has quadrupled over four years in Washington County -- from 93 in 2008 to 381 in January. In Dakota County, where the homeless population exceeds 1,000 for the first time, it's grown 20 percent the past year -- from 841 in 2011 to 1,013 this year.

Unemployment, rising costs and mental illness all are factors. ...

Anoka County found 1,463 homeless individuals on Jan. 25, when the county's Continuum of Care group, which works to end homelessness, conducted an annual count of the homeless.

The same night, agencies in other counties, including Hennepin, Dakota, Washington, Carver and Scott, did the same. Hennepin County counted 3,690 homeless people.

These counts are considered unscientific and conservative by those who conduct them, but show one other alarming trait -- an increase in the number of homeless adolescents. [Emphasis added]

Two things shocked me. The first is the presence of homelessness in suburbia. I think most of us have been lulled into believing that the condition is endemic only to the city and only to the poorest of the poor. Clearly both are wrong. People who ten years ago had a house and a job and a future have been undercut by the foul economy and the housing bubble so that now they are sleeping in their cars (if they are fortunate to still have them), on friends' couches, or in the streets.

The second is the enormous number of young people suddenly without homes. Even assuming access to a shelter which would meet some of their needs, the stability of a home is gone, which complicates any kind of education program those kids should be engaged in.

Again, this is happening in the suburbs, in the heartland.

The second snapshot is from Kansas and has to do with health care and its overall effect.

Pundits and politicians like to say the United States has the best health care in the world. If so, it’s not showing up in how long we live, a new study suggests.

While life expectancies in some parts of the U.S. match those of the healthiest nations on earth, in vast swaths of this country preschoolers can expect to live no longer than their peers in some of the poorest and most strife-ridden parts of the world.

That holds true in the Kansas City area, where life expectancies in Johnson County match those of Switzerland and Sweden, while those in Wyandotte County are more like what’s found in Libya or Sri Lanka. Jackson County life expectancies compare to those in Mexico and Uruguay, and Clay County’s to those in Cuba. ...

Infant mortality rates in Kansas City’s poorest ZIP codes were five times higher than in its wealthiest, according to the Health Department’s data.

High unemployment, low rates of homeownership and low educational attainment all contribute to poor health, Kansas City Health Department director Rex Archer said.

“It’s neighborhood conditions,” Archer said. “These dynamics make a difference. All these combined stressors increase infectious diseases, chronic diseases, intentional and unintentional injuries.” [Emphasis added]

I'm sure there are a few other factors not mentioned in the cited portion which play into it, like environmental conditions and lack of access to affordable healthcare, especially preventative healthcare. But the important point is that the system just doesn't work for those without a whole boatload of money, and that shows up in the long run.

That there are places in this country with declining life expectancies based solely on money and location is shameful. And that some of those places are located in areas outside the megalopolis coasts is eye-opening.

May Day! May Day! May Day!

A Little Slice of Good News

The other day at Eschaton, Atrios posted on a move by the city of Philadelphia to stop charitable groups from feeding the homeless out on the street. The city fathers wanted to move such laudatory efforts indoors and the primary reason given was "food safety." The fact that such activities were taking place in a part of the city which was being upgraded to attract more tourists had nothing to do with it. Nope not at all.

The discussion by the Atriots was pretty lively (as usual) and we all pretty much agreed that the city fathers wanted to "hide" the homeless because they were poor, because they were crazies, druggies, and drunks, because they were "other." We also agreed that most, if not all, cities tended to treat the homeless in the same way. Governments just don't want to be bothered by the existence of a class of "losers." That certainly doesn't say much for us as a nation.

Sacramento, California's state capital, is just like those cities. It too has what appears to be an intractable homeless problem, one that has gotten worse as the economy has gotten worse. Local groups have had to step in and provide "stop-gap" measures. Usually that involves feeding and sheltering away from the city center to places where "decent people" wouldn't have to be confronted with the underclass. And that's why this article in the Sacramento Bee is such a stunner.

It involves a man named Mark Bell who became homeless when his roommate died and he couldn't afford any place to live. He eventually wound up at the tent city located along side the American River Parkway. He also became one of the drunks. But with a little bit of help he crawled out of the bottle and began writing poetry and essays about his experiences. When people began noticing him writing, things began to take off. The Bee published a story about him and the real decent people stepped forward to help.

Bee readers responded to his poetry and his interest in publishing with the Sacramento Public Library's Espresso Book Machine.

Sande Parker, a Lincoln photographer, gave him a used laptop computer so he could type his poems when he wasn't working at Loaves & Fishes. ...

Another person offered to pay for printing. The library put up an upgrade in his printing package.

A group of local writers and artists volunteered to help him prepare his manuscript for printing.

He met with Larry Fox and Maryellen Burns-Dabaghian Friday to discuss formatting – size of the book, borders, order of material and size of type. ...

Burns-Dabaghian and Fox loaded Bell's files onto a flash drive.

Alison Givens, who runs the Espresso book machine for the library, loaded the text and cover design from the drive into the machine.

In minutes, Bell was holding a bound proof copy of "The Hobo Speaks." ...

Bell's backers are funding an ISBN number and Library of Congress catalog number, which will make it more available.

Burns-Dabaghian also plans to help him connect with bookstores, online sales and possible funders for two additional books he has planned.

I know, I know.

It's just one guy who got lucky. There's still lots of people living on the streets and in tent cities and one guy getting a break isn't even going to dent those numbers. But it's at least something, a little ray of life, a tiny green shoot.

And sometimes that's enough to get things moving in the right direction.

And I'll tell you what: as soon as the Bee updates the story with information on where Bell's book is available, I intend to buy a copy.

Little Yellow Ribbons

Back on June 10 I pointed out the horrifying fact that there are over 8,000 vets living on the streets in the Los Angeles, some of them sleeping next to the fence surrounding the Veteran's Administration facility in Westwood. That facility is a sprawling campus with several buildings not in use at all or leased to outside groups and companies.

Congress apparently got the message. Included in a Senate budget bill for the VA is an amendment which would at least start rolling back this shameful state of affairs. It provides funding for renovating and bringing up to code one of those vacant buildings for use as housing for the homeless vets.

It isn't much, but it's a start, and the first step towards housing the men and women who served.

The renovated Building 209 -- the first of three slated for conversion into housing units -- would have room for only a fraction of the thousands of chronically homeless vets in Los Angeles County. That's why some local advocates are pushing for the VA to move faster. Among other steps, that faction is supporting a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union that would force the VA to provide more permanent, supportive housing at the West Los Angeles campus.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has promised to shepherd the bill through the Senate. With any luck, it will also make its way through the House, even given the Republicans current slash-and-burn tactics when it comes to social welfare programs. They surely wouldn't begrudge housing and treating veterans who have served their country well.

Or would they.

For Shame

Here's an ugly statistic for you, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times:

Of the estimated 107,000 homeless veterans in the United States, about 8,200 are in the Los Angeles region, the VA says, citing 2009 figures. More chronically homeless veterans reside in Los Angeles than in any other city. Some sleep on the sidewalks just outside the VA fence.

That there are so many homeless veterans in the nation is astounding. That so many of those homeless vets are located in Los Angeles which has a huge Veteran's Administration campus developed on land originally donated for the purpose of providing housing for veterans is even more shocking. But the story gets even worse.

Contending that the region's population of disabled homeless veterans has reached crisis proportions, a coalition led by the ACLU of Southern California filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that the federal Department of Veterans Affairs has misused large portions of its West Los Angeles campus and failed to provide adequate housing and treatment for the people it was intended to serve.

"This is the first lawsuit of its kind in the country seeking to end homelessness for U.S. veterans," said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU's L.A. office. "In Los Angeles we have a 387-acre parcel deeded in 1888 for the specific purpose of housing a permanent home for U.S. soldiers, and it's now housing rental cars, buses, hotel laundry facilities and state-of-the-art sports facilities for a private school." ...

Rosenbaum said the ACLU would be calling on VA officials, legislators and the White House to launch a congressional investigation into how the sprawling campus has been used. Some of the companies occupying portions of the property under an "enhanced sharing agreement" include Enterprise Rent-a-Car; Tumbleweed Transportation, a charter bus company; Sodexho Marriott, a hotel laundry facility; the UCLA baseball team; and Brentwood School, a private school with state-of-the-art sports facilities on the campus. Such uses limit the amount of land that can be devoted to housing veterans, the lawsuit contends.

VA officials claim that the money from those private rentals funded programs for veterans using its services. Even so, why are there other vacant or underused buildings on the campus which aren't being converted to housing/treatment facilities for homeless vets? Why are those homeless vets sleeping on the sidewalks just outside the facility rather than on beds inside the facility?

The answer, of course, is that the Veteran's Administration is not getting the funding and the mandate it needs to get the job done. Congress and the White House is willing to spend billions on fancy tanks and fighter jets, drones and munitions, but not on the men and women who fight those wars, declared and secret, which just keep on keeping on.

Shameful.

Utterly, completely shameful.

The Least Of These: Redux

Back in February, I posted on a pilot project which dealt with the chronic homeless, the people who are not only unemployed and destitute, but also suffering with physical and mental illnesses which are not being consistently treated. The post was based on a column written for the Los Angeles Times by Steve Lopez.

Mr. Lopez has written another column on this issue, only this time he is part of the story. He had been invited to speak before a Congressional Committee about the chronic homeless and the programs which have developed to take care of them. He led off the testimony and then deferred to those who run such programs which include "permanent supportive housing". All of the speakers came to the hearing to push for increased federal funding.

The homeless population is growing across the country because of the recession and returning veterans who are physically and mentally wounded. It's not that we don't know how to help them rebuild their lives, I tell my audience, but that we haven't provided nearly enough support for alternative courts and for programs like Lamp.

And so vets sleep in Santa Monica parks, not far from abandoned VA barracks; L.A. County Jail serves as a mental institution; and there's a waiting list at Lamp and other agencies with good track records but limited funds. ...

Deborah DeSantis, chief executive of the Corp. for Supportive Housing, lists a number of cities that have reduced homeless populations and asks congressional staffers to go back to their bosses and tell them how it was done.

"Study after study shows we're going to save money by putting people into permanent supportive housing," she says.

DeSantis and other speakers have a specific request: They want a budget allocation of $2.2 billion this year in the Housing and Urban Development Department's McKinney-Vento grants. That would be an increase of about $500 million over this year's funding, and it would pay for 15,000 new supportive housing units.

They also are arguing for $120 million to support programs that help keep formerly homeless people from ending up back on the pavement.

Those studies have indeed shown that the programs actually save local governments money. Spending for emergency rooms and county hospitals clogged with patients whose diabetes has spiralled out of control, or jails filled with a staggering number of inmates whose only crimes are a combination of homelessness and a psychotic break or drug induced rage is much, much higher than it would be if the chronic homeless had permanent supportive housing in which their conditions could be monitored and treated.

Yes, these groups are asking for a lot of money, but in the general scheme of things (i.e. very recent history), it really isn't that much.

Sister Mary Scullion of Philadelphia is convinced beyond a doubt that with a combination of public investment and private support, investing in permanent supportive housing is humane and cost-effective. ...

If Congress can find $80 billion to bail out the inept insurance giant AIG, she says, surely it can come up with $2.2 billion for supportive housing. As for the request for $120 million in support services, Scullion adds, that was roughly what AIG paid in executive bonuses.

It's all a matter of priorities. That, and doing the right thing, the just thing.

Oh, and Mr. Lopez: you needn't be embarrassed by being part of the story you were covering. You did the right thing.