Bush Appointee Fiddles as Homeless People Burn
One person is lit on fire while he sleeps, another is shot for panhandling, two older men are attacked by three teenagers who smash one in the face with a cinderblock, and another person wakes up in a coma after being beaten (also while sleeping) with a baseball bat. While these crimes are all recent, a 2006 National Coalition report on violent, random, hate-filled attacks on homeless people shows a 65% increase from 2005, including five rapes, six people set on fire, and 20 murders. In all, 142 reported attacks. Everyone at the front lines of homelessness is scared shitless of what the next set of numbers is going to show. Sleeping, eating, panhandling, loitering and trespassing have been the focus of local government efforts to eliminate homelessness, and local press have shown their support of this focus with absolutely horrid depictions of who homeless people are. As a result, local animosity and loathing have gotten steadily more brazen, racist and, unfortunately, acceptable.
In the midst of this local climate of fear, hate, brutality and local legislative efforts to perform economic cleansing of downtown business districts, both the House and Senate branches of our federal government held hearings on homelessness. The hearings have focused on how the Stewart B. McKinney Act (McKinney), our nation’s primary funding and policy program on homelessness, should function when it is reauthorized by Congress.
Surely these hearings are the time to call everyone’s attention to the divisive and extreme elements that have been increasing since 1983 when homelessness first reemerged across the country. Surely, these hearings would serve as a platform to call out the fact of HUD’s $52 billion a year reduction in affordable housing funding compared to 1979, to bring to light the 904,000 children in our public schools who have no place to call home, to show the vast amounts of documentation that the federal minimum wage is nowhere near close to covering the housing needs of millions of people, or to emphasize the fact that US prisons have now surpassed treatment facilities as the primary residential care places for mentally ill and addicted poor people.
Surely, these visceral and passionate experiences would provide the framework for congressional representatives to hear from local communities on what is required of our federal government so that we may bring back some semblance of humanity to our health care, housing, education and immigration programs and policies. Surely, much discussion would follow regarding the correlation between federal priority changes in these programs and their negative impact on the lives of millions of people.
Well, unfortunately, the answer is surely not! Congress is focusing its time and energy on semantics, on how HUD can redefine when a family is in fact homeless and eligible to receive assistance from a homeless program service provider. Their focus is to reduce the number of homeless families by forcing them to move from place to place and document each move before they are identified as homeless.
Another focus in these hearings is on how local communities can be forced to follow the asinine premise expounded by “the experts” at the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) and Bush’s InterAgency Council on Homelessness (ICH). They want 30% of the chump change McKinney homeless funding to be set aside for supportive housing. What they should be doing instead is calling for HUD to refund its housing programs.
The Federal government continues to fund studies to show how a $52 billion reduction in housing funding can be filled with a $1.2 billion allocation of homelessness funding. These studies purport to show that by reducing the numbers of people who qualify for services and by leasing as many funky already existing hotel rooms (think robbing Peter to pay Paul), we can end homelessness.
Fortunately, the domestic violence, family, education, and youth groups testified as to how screwed up this perspective is. It creates a Byzantine process of documenting people’s suffering and misery instead of providing them with help.
The truly amazing aspect of these hearings was the constant refrain that we need data driven planning. You want to reduce the numbers of homeless people? Then change how you define who is homeless and data will show you that the numbers of homeless people have gone down. Or lease current affordable hotel/apartment units, displace residents who are poor themselves, and then proclaim you are housing homeless people.
We have had three hearings in Congress on homelessness, but we have had no serious discussion of restoring the massive cuts to treatment, housing, education or increasing the minimum wage to a livable standard. No discussion of the hate that is increasing and is becoming more a part of our daily discourse. No looking back at the New Deal as a potential solution.
Why is this so? Because for the most part, the “experts” who are testifying are known to our representatives and their staffs. They have been selected for what they will say. They are safe. They are deferential.
Instead of opening testimony by saying, “I thank you for allowing me to speak and for all you have done,” what should be said is, “You work for us. We are your bosses. You’re doing a spectacularly lousy job. We want the New Deal back, today.”
WRAP