All posts in the topic To Guy, and all those affordable housing advocates; (Short link)
Summary
- There are 5 posts — by 3 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Wizard Marks at Jul 08 15:52 UTC
When I was last homeless, it was after the tragedy of 9/11 destroyed my heavily
leveraged cab company. It's funny how when you close an airport for 2 weeks,
and no one travels for another 6 months, it will have a disastrous effect on
your taxi company, and thus my credit. I finally got a lease (with a cosigner)
2+ years later. This period of time, while I lived in either my car or office
or in motels, was far from fun, and I have vocally maintained since then that
renters need to have enumerated rights in both Minneapolis and the State of
Minnesota. I also maintain that "affordable housing" should be seen as a
temporary solution, except in the cases of the elderly and the disabled. We
have to root out the real problems holding our brethren back from joining the
middle class and achieving the promise of a better life for their children and
themselves. I see no disposable people in our society and worry that those who
make their living on aiding the poor seek to perpetuate poverty, thereby
keeping themselves in a job. I believe It's time to teach our under-employed
citizens personal responsibility by forming a partnership with them that will
elevate them to self reliance. If we did this, perhaps someday we could put
those who live off of poverty out of business: no poor people, no work managing
them. We all know that the social safety net has been eroded since 1980, but
it was President Clinton, a Democrat, that tossed the welfare mothers to the
curb and began the further destruction of the low income family that has led to
the loss of morality in these communities. (When mom is working three jobs to
feed her kids, they are being brought up by television and then gangs.) In my
opinion, we must do all we can to bring back the 40 hour work week and
reinforce the family. We must learn from our mistakes, and replace a
threadbare social safety net with a social trampoline propelling our neighbors
who fall on hard times right back into the mainstream of American life instead
of becoming a burden on those who are struggling themselves. I truly hope those
who are running this year will read this post and take appropriate action as I
will not be joining Farheen, Jeff and Harry in this venture, as I promised at
the SD 61 DFL convention. I like all three candidates personally; I was in
MADDADS with Jeff, I am on the MPS' Citizen's Budget Advisory Committee with
Harry, and Farheen has crossed my path in the social activism I have
volunteered to do. Guy Gambill's resume makes my own look sad when one
realizes all of the amazing work he has done. I can only hope that my morals
and goals will be echoed in St Paul by whomever arrives there.
Michael Katch: "We all know that the social safety net has been eroded since
1980, but it was President Clinton, a Democrat, that tossed the welfare mothers
to the curb and began the further destruction of the low income family that has
led to the loss of morality in these communities. (When mom is working three
jobs to feed her kids, they are being brought up by television and then gangs.)
... We have to root out the real problems holding our brethren back from
joining the middle class and achieving the promise of a better life for their
children and themselves."
In theory, what Clinton did needed to be done and could only be done by a
Democrat. How he did it is another matter.
The observation was made in the U S Congress by Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
(served 1977-2000), that the laws congress was proposing vis-a-vis welfare,
within three generations of recipients, would create a mess that we would have
trouble untangling.
Collectively, we had decided that man-in-the-house rules destroyed families
because unemployed/unemployable men were leaving their families to cope without
a second adult. They posited with the laws they wrote that keeping families
together would allow those families to be in a better position to prosper. That
is arguable well into next month and beyond. I don't know whether that
proposition holds water or not. But, in all the written documents creating the
mess we have now, there was an undertone of expectation that the poor would
maintain a nuclear family--mommy, daddy, kiddies, dog, tv. Among the poor, that
doesn't always exist. Nor is it necessarily desirable principally because it is
an expensive lifestyle. So we continue to feed ourselves a lot of romantic
drivel which in no way matches anyone's reality and we write the laws and voice
the expectations that support the fantasy.
I do know that people should work for a living, including the wealthy. I know
also that the training to work needs to be done at home and away beginning
early in life. The job of your kid is to go to school, help with chores after
school, do homework, and be building the skills for that first entry level job.
More than that, we as a people, need to repeat often enough that it sinks in,
that we expect all of the children to work at some legitimate job when they
reach 14, baring physical complications. If we do that, how many generations
would it take to reverse our present circumstances?
How we undo the damage we have done to the expectations of the succeeding
generations of citizens is something that will take a bigger brain than mine to
untangle. I do know that it will take a considerable sea change in our
attitudes toward all our citizens to shift the paradigm off it's present
course. Regardless of who we choose (unless someone really good comes along
before the last day to declare), none of the candidates will be able to do
that. So we choose between frick and frack.
As an aside: I didn't "join" the middle class until I was 54 (bought a house,
which describes the dividing line between the strivers and the petit
bourgeoisie). I was always among the lower class strivers. I have a certain
class loyalty, despite the house.
I don't think we are seeing this issue as clear as we could. The marketplace is
demanding small to medium affordable housing. But there are many issues keeping
the marketplace from responding to the need.
1. Ample credit.(poorly administered)
2. Housing seen as investment versus as a utility.
3. The negative connotation around affordable housing.
Neighborhood associations encourage many of the issues. They are made of up
people who view housing as a middle class 'right' that should increase in value
like stock. They then place incredible barriers to entry such that their values
are protected.
Why?
1. For many their home is all the savings they have.
2. Many have overleveraged their homes and need overall values to increase to
maintain access to cheap credit.
3. No one wants someone else to get a better deal than they did.
Ok so how do they do it?
1. They will make builders include features that protect their values.
(basements, garages)
2. They express that families need room. (read cost high enough to limit the
type of families that are encouraged to come)
3. The housing must match existing stock. By default this creates a set
marketplace.
Look there are only so many upper middleclass 2 parent households with 2 kids.
As a matter of fact, this type of family is as sought after as the other
species referred to as the mass affluent.
So what can we do?
1. Take the power away from the neighborhood associations. Focus on building
housing that people can truly afford.
2. Encourage builders that cheap doesn't mean low quality. Set clear simple
guidelines.
3. Minneapolis should do an Xprize competition that encourages builders and
architechs globally to compete to build homes for under $40k. Provide access to
a lucrative building site.
Look this problem is not easy to fix, but we need to ensure that everyone has
access to housing. Housing is not an option. It's a right.
To Wizard Marks:
I can sometimes become cynical as well, but when I do, I look to my role models
for help, so that I can continue to be optimistic and keep up the fight for
what we all desire. In this, I have to recall the speech made by John F
Kennedy at Rice University in 1962:
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet.
Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all
mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again.
But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And, they may well
ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?
Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do
the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because
that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and
skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are
unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
We do not take on the cycle of poverty because it is easy. We do it because
it is hard. Even if President Clinton needed to end welfare as a way of life,
he caused more harm than good by doing it on the cheap, and not replacing it
with a course of action that would have guaranteed those who once received
benefits a job paying at least half of the median income, and thus making way
for a living wage in a 40 hour work week. He did it in a way that did not
strengthen organized labor or create true value for those he pressed into the
work force as under-employed Americans. Shoring up the single family unit was
and is now our responsibility as a State, a Nation, and a Society. He failed,
and we, as concerned adults living together in this ever shrinking life boat,
must not continue to fail. I may never be elected to office, but I will also
never stop fighting for true justice, and your implication that we can lie down
in despair is not acceptable. Guy Gambill has not stopped fighting for
justice, and Michelle Gross continues her crusade against police brutality and
civil rights. I would rather be in their company than in anyone else's.
No matter what parties the candidates represent, we must hold all of them
accountable. This is our future, it is not a game. I will not give quarter to
any of them. They must do more than play follow the leader. They must lead,
and inspire. Our neighbors have chosen who the contestants will be. It is not
up to us to defend them, and their silence, at a moment when the conversation
must become heated, is deafening. They must speak out and lead us, now and in
the years to come.
To Eric Pone:
I actually agree with you on most of the comments you have generously added to
my thread. As you have written, housing should be seen as a utility instead
of an investment. Unfortunately, your home is the only investment that can
protect your savings from income tax, as the interest on your mortgage is still
fully tax deductible. I am reluctant to remove this weapon from my arsenal
when fighting to raise those out of poverty into the middle class and beyond.
As housing must be a right and not a privilege, the thought of leaving millions
of our fellow Americans behind to live lives of quiet desperation is not
acceptable to me. Housing is only one component in recreating the American
middle class. We must also re-educate a generation not only to qualify for the
skilled jobs that will pay a living wage, but we must also teach budgeting, and
life style skills to those who have never fully participated in our American
dream. We must do this in such a way that we are not giving out a hand out,
but in a way where we allow them to be our partners. Personal responsibility
must be the watch word for this Renaissance. We must enter into a contract
with those who wish to throw off the bonds of oppressive poverty, whereby we
will pay not only for tuition and books, but also provide vouchers for rent,
food, utilities, and clothing for not only those moving up, but also for their
dependents, while they are in this program. We are currently spending $17
million a year on the Minneapolis Employment and Training Program, and yet, we
are not focusing that program on ending the cycle of poverty. Those choosing
this way, as this has to be a choice and not something we force upon them, must
be responsible to attend classes, seek help if they have trouble learning their
lessons, graduate, and take the job that they have trained for at our expense.
Should they fail to complete their responsibilities, they must pay us back all
that we have invested in them.
If they complete their program, then they will no longer be a burden to our
society. They will be not only contributing tax dollars, but will be creating
even more jobs through their consumer spending of moneys they have never had
access to before. This program is much less expensive than prison, and is also
morally superior.
People may fall on hard times now and again, but we must make the option
available for them to catapult right back into the race. Senator Tom Harkin
once told me that it is our duty to build the ladder that others can climb if
they so choose, but it is not our job to force them up it
Michael Katch: "Even if President Clinton needed to end welfare as a way of
life, he caused more harm than good by doing it on the cheap, and not replacing
it with a course of action that would have guaranteed those who once received
benefits a job paying at least half of the median income, and thus making way
for a living wage in a 40 hour work week."
All Clinton did is transfer money to the haves from the have nots with a smile.
It was not designed to help anyone but those who needed no help. (Wealthy
corporations and people pay for campaigns, presidents work for them.) Within
that imposed structure it is unrealistic to insist that the states go against
the grain and initiate a system which will actually care for the have nots in
any practical fashion. The whole, monumental structure is a fail safe to keep
that from happening.
(The Russian Revolution in 1917 was executed to overthrow the feudal system
held in place by the Romanov tsars. It was promoted as the 'dictatorship of the
proletariat,' the alleged opposite of capitalism. It failed in less than a
century only to be replaced by capitalism, the dictatorship of the most
rapacious.)
The welfare-prison-justice system we have is designed to keep the middle class
employed in keeping the poor from creating a revolution. Someone on this list
stated that "housing is a right." Would that that were true, but it is not.
"Housing is a right" is a progressive position, but it cannot become a reality
within the constraints of our system of welfare. It did have part of a system
in place after WWII with the GI Bill and FHA loans for mortgages to build the
suburbs. With the decision to discontinue the draft, one massive incubator for
the lower class strivers was decimated. From that decision on, the economy
shifted to create the preconditions for exponentially greater homelessness. The
armed forces gave the nation's poor resumes to get employed.
There must be upteen dozen organizations, all of which purport to be addressing
homelessness. How much money is expended annually in keeping all those
organizations working (count all volunteer hours at a rate of $20 per)? If,
instead, there were a system which assigned a housing unit to each person at
the age of 18, (hypothetically), and was assigned by the Social Security Agency
through a letter, it would be much cheaper than the present system.
The adjustment to such a system, or any system which guaranteed shelter to
everyone living in the USofA, would bring down the economy because it would
bring down huge numbers of employed people in the welfare system, the justice
system, the housing industry all across the country. From the viewpoint of the
Congress of the United States, what incentive do they have for bringing on
Armageddon?
I've never met Guy Gambill, but I feel confident in saying that his forehead is
absolutely flat with great dents from beating his head against that wall. He
has said as much.
In terms of the candidates for 61B, none have the moxie to undertake such a
massive paradigm change, nor would their colleagues allow them to attempt it.
Hakeem claims to understand these issues. She comes from a wealthy family, was
educated at Oberlin at great expense to someone ($35,000/year). She has no
basis in either education or experience to make any proclamations about people
she has barely come in contact with. Hayden works on the front lines of this
issue and comes from struggle. He, at the very least, has experience with the
people for whom this issue exists.
On the other hand, I question the motives of both candidates for seeking the
seat. Hakeem has stated, as of first importance to her that, if elected, she
would be "the first Green Party Muslim woman" to hold the seat. She has
intelligence, but she is largely clueless as to how to go about making changes
and she does not have any background upon which she could call for information
about her constituency's needs. To expect that she can impact policy in a
positive way about homelessness is to be disappointed.
Hayden presents himself as have street cred and a willingness to advocate. He
cannot paint us a picture of the particulars of what he can accomplish at the
legislature. He can learn that if he is willing, but he'll never be a great
thinker. As a DFLer, he has support and teachers going into the position. And,
after a while, if he doesn't screw up in any discoverable way, the party will
continue to support him out of loyalty. He will tinker with the system as much
as he can, but he won't provide leverage for a paradigm shift.
The person who would be the ideal choice for 61B has not stepped forward this
year. I don't know who that person is because I've been a DFL drop out for the
past several years and I was never very good at it. A careful perusal of any
policy decision documented as law in MN is a long compendium of poor writing in
service to lawyers. Fo-fo-fo-fo-fo.