A View From The Street©

FEMA IS A FOUR LETTER WORD

                                                  FEMA IS A FOUR LETTER WORD

                                                          View From The Street

     I've been working in the homeless business now for six years, as the day to day manager of a 91 bed men's shelter.   WE ARE ALWAYS FULL!  There is a waiting list of about 150 men, men sleeping in the bushes, on loading docks or sleeping on someones couch if they are lucky.  I live with the homeless agony every working day.  I think I can speak with authority on the homeless disaster surrounding us.

     Just whose fault is homelessness anyway?  There are a lot of factors, but basically it is the government's fault.  In many ways, the  government enforces poverty.  For instance:  A social security  disability recipient receives about $580.00 a month in cash.  In this town...the average rent on a one bedroom apartment is $500.00 plus!  Just what are they to do with the remaining fifty or sixty bucks, blow it on food, blow it on heat or a bottle of whiskey to numb the mind? Alcohol often seems to be the only answer to hopelessness.

     It is also government enforced humiliation.  For now the homeless must stand in lines...lines for food stamps, lines for housing vouchers, lines for clothing, lines to take a shower!!

     We have all seen the Katrina homeless waiting for government assistance, waiting for help.  Waiting for FEMA to put up a tent, waiting for a FEMA trailer, waiting for medicine.

     FEMA has become the largest single provider of homeless shelters with their tents and trailers and vouchers for hotel rooms.  And FEMA has become the new four letter word.  Like here...wipe your FEMA on this!  Why?  Because they are government, they never act fast enough, and they frustrate and destroy human dignity. That's  why.  How many FEMA cities will we have?  How long will these "temporary" trailer cities exist?  I don't know but Columbia Villa, right here in Portland Oregon was built during the war as temporary housing as was the University housing project in North Portland.  University lasted about 50 years before they turned most of it into a hi way.  Columbia Villa lasted 70 years.

     I ask you again how long will the tent cities and FEMA trailer cities, this "temporary" housing last? Columbia Villa became a ghetto where mostly poor and black people lived.  I know because I was a street cop in those days and Columbia Villa was often in my patrol district.  How long before the FEMA  cities become the new ghettos?

    What is driving this disaster is more than 100,000 homes and business's in New Orleans are gone forever.  The power company is bankrupt.  Only one school is open.  350,000 automobiles were destroyed.  Most of them are still where the storm left them.  That means that 100,000 families that used to pay taxes on those homes and businesses are no longer revenue producers, but have become revenue takers.  They are the ones in the lines waiting and waiting.  The government once said it expected 200 billion to reach New Orleans, but the money has stalled at about 70 billion.  People are angry, disillusioned, indignant and insulted.  And black people are the most indignant of all!

     And now the final insult to these newly homeless is that no jurisdiction really wants them.  "We can't afford more people on the welfare roll.  We can't afford more people needing medical care."  No one wants the homeless of about a half a million from all over the South.  A half a million newly homeless have become the new lepers!  And ask any of the 3000 homeless here in Portland if they are not treated as lepers.  We build a Street of Dreams here, homes for the wealthy, and allow 3000 homeless humans sleep in the streets!  SHAME ON US!

     You not only lose your possessions and your dignity when you become homeless, you can lose your rights as Americans too.  The FEMA cities have tried to make it so that folks that live there can not own a firearm.  "Can't trust those poor folks with guns."  Too much crime in those FEMA cities.  Why?  Again, crime is almost forced on them by the government.  When people have no money, which is why there in a FEMA city in the first place, they sell cocaine, heroin, their pills their take out doses of Methadone...their bodies.

     The solution to homelessness is to give people a livable income, say $2500.00 a month.  Then people could afford their own housing and their own groceries and their own medicine and the government could get out of the homeless business and people could have their dignity back.

     70 billion already sent to New Orleans...that's a lot of decent monthly incomes

     I

INSTANT HOMELESSNESS.......JUST......ADD......WATER!

     We have all been deluged by the pictures of the devastation left by Katrina, the catastrophe that happens when we get too much water, too much wind, and not enough help from the government.  In a flash hundreds of thousands of Americans are left with out a job-no job to return to, without a home-no home to return to, no car, no money, and no medicine...no drug stores open!

     Of course there was plenty of warning and a lot of people left, the people with money left. People that had a car that runs good enough to get out of town left, but poor people, the already homeless stayed there because they had no choice.  There was no bus to take them to an out-of-state homeless shelter.  No air force one to take them to safety at the ranch in Crawford Texas.

     If the federal government has a purpose it is to come to the aid of it's people in a disaster.  That aid was too slow in coming.  We all see that now.  I wonder if the response from the government would have been the same if the hurricane had hit say...the Hamptons where all the rich folks live.

     BET NOT!

     Besides not having a house or a job or a car or any money, how about not having your medication?  How long can you go without insulin or blood pressure meds or pain killing drugs, or your methadone or if you are a heroin addict, where's the next fix coming  from? I wonder just who it was that opened the pharmacy in New Orleans with a fork lift truck?  Was it a junkie looking for a heroin replacement, or a Vicodin patient trying to refill his 'script?   Was it looting?  To me a looter is a guy that steals a TV he can't plug in anywhere.  Someone getting food, water and medicine is trying to be...self sufficient I guess.

     My point here is there are now thousands of homeless people looking for government help from a government that is used to ignoring homeless people.  Who speaks for the homeless, the the helpless and the unheard besides me?

     Our local tv told us to get ready for 1,000 homeless people from out of state.  So the information went out to the city to open the old Washington High school and the Red Cross to get it ready for refugees.  I was thrilled that our city responded with open arms for folks so  far away, but I immediately wondered would our own homeless people be allowed to drop in and stay there too.  After all, they WERE here first!!  So I sent Portland's Mayor Tom Potter an e-mail asking him that question.  He replied that "Portland had a 10 year homeless plan and building were being built," and that's true, "and he didn't think our local homeless folks presented a disaster that warranted calling out the Red Cross.  Well, he is full of it if he thinks the 2 to 3 thousand folks homeless in Portland every night is not a disaster.  It is a disaster and the Mayor needs to address where people will be sleeping tonight!!  Winter is coming on and the city and the Red Cross need to be set up to deal with it.

     But I've already said our government is used to ignoring homeless people and somehow that is the response I would expect from Mayor Potter, a man that makes over $200,000 a year and who is always impeccably dressed and never had a hair out of place, never been broke (he was always a cop) and never been homeless!

     George Bush has the same mentality.  I ran into a guy on the bus just up here from New Orleans.  The government gives him a whopping $10.00 per day as a single adult. "Hey dude, here's ten bucks a day.  Go live in Portland.

     What a joke!

     Do you know what I'd like to see?  I'd like to see George Bush come to Portland.  I'll give him ten bucks. I'll show him the free places to eat.  I'll show him the missions where he can sleep for $2.00 a night or some bushes where he can sleep for free until the cops roust him out in time to go stand in line for free food again.  If he plays his cards right he might even be able to save some of that ten dollars.

     I'd like to see Airforce One hauling supplies TO the Gulf coast and displaced Americans AWAY from there.

    And I'd like to see Tom Potter standing at a freeway exit with his hair messed up holding a cardboard sign asking for help.

     For those who ask what all this has to do with marijuana?  You've heard the saying, Where there's no dope there's no hope?  So...if you know someone that is homeless, offer to smoke joint with them.  Lord knows they need it.!!

THE HOMELESS THE HELPLESS THE UNHEARD

 

                                         THE HOMELESS THE HELPLESS THE UNHEARD

View From The Street

Don DuPay

     Did you pick up a penny the last time you saw one on the ground?  No?  Why not?  If you saw a quarter would you pick it up?  You probably would, but why?  The last time you walked by a homeless person sleeping in a doorway, did you stop to see it there was help you could offer, or did you look the other way choosing to ignore what you saw?

     Picking up a penny or not...picking up the quarter or not, helping the homeless...or not to me is a matter of value perception. It's because the penny is perceived as not having enough value to bend over and retrieve. (metal lint?)  Two bits has enough value to tempt you, but a human being?  Ahhh...not enough value to motivate you?

     I find it incredible that we perceive homeless people as valueless and as a society we continue to relegate the homeless, the helpless and the unheard to sleeping in doorways, alleys, loading docks and in the bushes.  Society's outright neglect is compounded by the rude, equestrian mounted, club wielding, helmeted blue suits saying "move along homeless person, you are breaking the law sleeping on the ground."

     Authority responds to what they consider a nuisance by making the activity unlawful...so sleeping on the ground is unlawful.  The government that controls the police and our tax money sees no value in the homeless population, but see them as boozers, they see them as losers, choosing a life style the authority does not approve of, so move along homeless person, move along, move along.  As long as they can keep them moving they will never have to deal with the problem.  Make sleeping on the ground unlawful because poor people can't fight back and damned few lawyers  work for free.     How do we solve the homeless problem?  By perceiving value in another human being.  I'm confounded that we pick up pop cans to redeem for 5 cents and let the humans lay!

     I don't see the homeless as a problem, I see them as an "unmined" asset.  I work with the homeless population, many are only temporarily down on their luck, there are lawyers, computer programmers, welders, electricians, a doctor or two and a cop, intelligent people and assets to any community if helped in their time of need to return to a sober life, a job, and most important to the authority, PAYING TAXES!

     To the authority, I say stop harassing, stop intimidating and start helping.  Cultivate these potential taxpayers by providing housing first.  With out a roof over your head, you can't get to anything else.

    The average American has given up on owning a home and moved into an apartment but apartments are owned by investors, investors demand profits on their investments so rents go up and poor people are out on the street again!

    There are those that will never work again, veterans old and disabled.  What do we owe them?  The 76 year old Navy vet, tears still well in his eyes as he remembers torpedoes hitting his ship. The heat, the flash of explosions, his shipmates being blown to bits.  Or "pops" a 70 year old unable to work.  He was a WWII paratrooper.  That man jumped out of airplanes in full combat gear with a rifle over his shoulder for America.  How do you tell the Viet Nam vet crippled from agent Orange you can't help him?  "I went to war for you," he said, tears in his eyes too. 

     Yes he did, they all did and America owes them a place to stay!

     And then there are the unheard, homeless who will never be taxpayers either.  Those lost in addiction and mental illness.  If we  are all children of the same God we owe them help too1

     All humans have value!!

     Every year wealthy home builders create a new street of dreams, custom built mansions for the wealthy.  I support a moratorium on any further $300.000 plus homes until Portland get 1000 units of housing for the poor people.  Now that's what I would call a  real street of dreams

View from The Street

Don DuPay