There is an old African saying that it takes a village to raise a child. In our society there is no village. We bulldoze affordable housing to make the community more pleasing adding to the homeless population. What about these developers pay for these people to get housing. People are not trash but in the wealthiest country in the world, my personal experience unless you have mastercard and good credit you are trash. Greed is why we are in the crisis we are. Lets look at prevention of more homelessness. People want a hand up and if you havent experienced homeleesness rent the movie The Pursuit of Happyness and get in touch with how hard it is to get out of that situation!!!

1998 "ONE STOPS" for services didn't work because its underfunded, so instead you have multiple versions of Case Workers offering the same thing  "AND"  no centralized information. "Where do I apply for Housing First"? ..no answer?...So are we going to continue our inadequate attempts at making progress or will we get serious and respond to the needs our previous reluctance's have fostered? Half measures avail us nothing but the same. By the time we actually attend to certain needs others have been added.Only because we never do what we see is needed. The passing the buck routine by each succession of politicians ends up in truth passing it on to the next generation. The umbrella of affordable housing or workforce housing as it's now being called in some circles is brewing a crisis that will demand attention. Will we get stuck with half measures to appease the voters and dumb us to sleep ? Will some politician stand up and expose the neglect that our actions as a society teaches? Is Human Rights a polite way of saying in the next 100 years?  1948 and 1949  were years of conceptual design of Human Rights. But we will soon not have anyone alive that could speak first person about how and why we came together in those moments for Housing and Human Rights.  Housing First may get added into the choices out there , but without units of housing we are just creating more false hope.  Anytime a politician can alter a definition then we are in trouble. This Website is about the best source of information out there. Lots of positive changes seem to be taking place in congress , 360 localities nationwide have adopted a 10 year plan to End Homelessness. So by 2020? Bush declared an end to Chronic Homelessness in 2002, which means that 2012 is a the date. But Bush isn't here and Obama would need to follow through to see that happen. Parents may benefit by children's rights overlapping the parents. Our HUMAN RIGHTS numbers start in the negative for adults. My Push would be HUMAN RIGHTS MIRRORING and AFFORDABLE FOR ALL HOUSING.   Too much time gets wasted on half measures. Do we even see these actions as half measures? We are standing at a turning point. do you see that?

SOLUTION BASED ACTIVITY .  Centralised information by region.  Accessible information means outreach. treating the source of this as a spiritual malady within our society . Seeing it as a malady we all share.  Recognizing that the People we refer to are on a spiritual journey too. Whether they choose to acknowledge it that way is up to them, but respecting that process allows us to be of service to them.  They /We want housing that's stable. All the rest is Icing on the cake.

Can I get Perez's autograph? On my room bill.

In no particular order:

1. You can't end homelessness without housing - AFFORDABLE housing.  Right now, we have as others have mentioned through processes like "gentrification" replaced all much of the affordable housing in many cities with flashy new condos and whatnot thanks to local policies favoring developers with no thought whatsoever about the poor who are being chased out or what they're going to do for housing or even about how they're supposed to be able to move as their buildings are bought out or even condemned in the name of stuff like "progress" or "beautification".  And as others have mentioned, this just adds to the pressure on already underfunded housing programs and to the numbers of the homeless.  So a basic starting point needs to be adequate funding of shelters and housing programs - and like yesterday.

2. We need a safety net of assistance programs with adequate funding, a figuring of the poverty line that recognizes true poverty not the way-below-poverty unrealistic version recognized by the Federal Poverty Line, policies for the programs that are reasonable, easily interpreted (by workers and the public - strangely enough the public and advocates seem to understand current rules better than many workers); and rules that DO NOT discriminate on the basis of things like disability, homelessness or childlessness because these things don't make it "easier" to get work or to go without necessities like TP or dishsoap (and yes, I had a social worker at a welfare office once tell me flat out that adults didn't need things like TP or dishsoap and that this was why adults don't get any cash aid).

3. Our nation needs to quit picking and choosing which human rights we'll recognize and which ones we won't.  It's quite hypocritical that we're quick to recognize political rights in far off nations but not the rights of our own poor to basic survival.

4. The poor, any of them - including the homeless - have a right to be treated with dignity.  I've left homeless shelters to return to situations I knew were dangerous because they were cleaner AND SAFER than the shelter. This should NEVER happen, but some shelters think their job is done if they simply open their door to a filthy area with filthy blankets and do absolutely nothing to ensure even the most basic level of safety even amongst the residents (at one place, once people started waking up there were 3 fights by 6am).  I'm not saying that a homeless shelter should, necessarily look or feel like a luxury resort, but it should AT LEAST be clean and safe with adequate food and beverages that you don't have to buy and with access to basic services without having to wait for a week day.

This is good news to arm myself with when I visit the conference in  KY.  They really need a star to come up with a hair-brained strategy.

Fight the cause not the result according to those I help, homeless is caused by poverty. Few people call the Maine/National hot line saying their Bi-polar has acted up and they must find a new apartment due to their mental illness.

And when an active substance user does, call I suggest getting off the pills or alcohol first. Then locating an apt. But the main difficulty is lack of money. If the are working they are lucky to get $7 dollar an hour, when the cost of living is $17.60 an hour.

If they are on SSI and in one of the 16 states who pays less then the cost of an apt. Their Basic trouble is not the disease its not being paid enough

I will use this hair brain idea at the KY conference. There is a conference billed as taking up where MLK.Jr left off at Spalding  uni, in Louisville KY on July 16th-19th. God willing, I and my partner will take off and land safety tomorrow. 

This was my first blog post as a guest here. Thank you for the replies and as I had hoped - the best content is in the replies.

I hoped to agitate, provoke, inspire and learn. My future blog posts will likely be in the same tradition.

If there is a topic or issue you want me to blog about related to homelessness let me know so I can get it covered.