Another Non-Solution

YET ANOTHER NON-SOLUTION TO HOMELESSNESS BY

 

MY RESPONSE TO YET ANOTHER NON-SOLUTION TO HOMELESSNESS

That's a cost of $200,000.00 per person. Only an unhinged government bureaucrat would be proud of that kind of financial performance. Unless every one of them is walking away with a bachelor's degree, a new car, and one hell of a down payment on their house... The Price is Wrong, Dow.

 Instead, what I see is about 70% of those funds going to social services cronies and their apparatchiks, and 420 homeless people right back where they are today 36 months from now.

 Let's face it. This homeless problem is not something new. If government could fix it they have had 30 years to do so, but it has only grown worse. Millions upon millions have been spent. Shelters built, funds, allocated, programs launched, and the results have been at best meager. There is a reason why your "visionary" plans have failed in the past, and it's precisely this very same reason why this "visionary" plan will invariably fail.

 Pay attention now…

1.  Homelessness has nothing to do with inadequate funding.

2. Homelessness has nothing to do with building support networks and shelters.

3. Homelessness has nothing to do with drug treatment, or mental health funding.

 These are all "Windmills" you have gone out to joust Dow Quixote because that is the mantra Liberals have maintained for 30 years. An endless choir of, "We need more money! We need more shelters! We need more drug treatment! We need more mental health funding!" We need. We need. We need.

 Still, you don't comprehend... It's not about you. It's not about what you need at all. It's about what they need, and that Dow Quixote is housing costs that are not increasing at up 10.6% to 14.2% per year every #@%$ing year.

 You see, Dow Quixote, while you have been doing your level best to ensure these kinds of astronomical property returns with your green spaces and habitats, tree plantings, and dense high tax yielding golden zones you have been creating the very condition that produces homelessness.

 Congratulations. You're a $100,000,000 failure!

 Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

 

Lee Paul Stark: That Damn Toilet

"As it was in the Beginning, so shall it be in the End."   - Matthew 24:37

It was all because of that damn toilet. None of this would have happened if not for that damn toilet backing up into the bathtub. The opening scene consisted of an old home, old plumbing, and well-seasoned motel manager muttering profanities under his breath every time he flushed. 

His name was Lee, and for weeks he woke up every morning hoping, praying, and finally cursing the problem to work itself out. Plumbing by profanity is a universally applied useful tool, which has a 100% failure rate, but maybe, just maybe, this time it would work. Predictably, it didn't. However, this particular persistent plumbing problem and the distinguished foul-mouthed gentleman name Lee constituted my miracle.

He was aggravated and impatient as he made his way across the parking lot to employ a more cooperative toilet for his morning constitutional. That's what Lee was looking for a more cooperative toilet. What Lee got instead was me. 

I'm somehow drawn, almost led to aggravated and impatient people. That's my superpower which directed me to Lee. 

"What's wrong, brother?" I asked.

"I've got a damn toilet that backs up into my bathtub every time I flush." Lee growled back.
"Well, I can fix it for you if you let me take a look."

Three hours later the problem was remedied, and five years later here I stand telling you about one of the most significant people in my life. One of the very few who not only helped me escape homelessness, but also facilitated me helping others still trapped behind. Like I said, "Lee constituted my miracle."

A toilet is a firm foundation on which to build a relationship, and so we built. It turned out that Lee and I had much in common: both of us raised in large cities, being instinctively argumentative, extraordinarily opinionated, and generally right about everything almost all the time, just to name a few. 

Then, there were the uniquely precious parts that were all Lee. He was a Jew from the Bronx raised in a kosher home. His lineage traced back to the Tribe of the Levites; Priests to the One True God.

His father was a hard-working man who wanted a better life for his boys. Lee's mother was a loving woman who loved her family more than anything else in this world. 

Lee had an old-school American childhood in the archaic days before cell phones. He told me how mothers in his neighborhood would communicate by shouting out the window, then relaying the message from building to building, down the block to its intended recipient. This old urban telephone network was called "Ma Yell". 

Back in these days of real community, if Lee or another child were caught doing wrong, any parent within sight had the obligation to tan the kid's hide as a down payment, then send them home to their father where the principle and interest on the beating came due upon receipt. Lee covered the cost on a number of these, almost always with good cause.

Lee was my mentor, my friend, my surrogate father, and a reminder of my own father because they told the same jokes… repeatedly.

I can count the fights between Lee and I on three fingers. All of them middle ones. All of them laid to rest long ago because none of them really mattered. None of them ever do. Between us and God there is only Eternity. That is what matters. That is the distance each of us will cross. Everything else is meaningless in comparison. Everything else is but ashes and dust.

Lee was one of the good ones. One of the dwindling The Greatest Generation few. One that I was not ready to let go, but now we all must because Lee has crossed Eternity. There Lee remains with our God. Here we remain for just a while longer. 

So, good-bye for now my friend. Until we meet again... you'll have to fix your own damn toilet.

Amen.

Lee is a Star

Homeless Courts: Nothing but the Truth

There's nothing like a bad idea to ease our conscience...

As an advocate, I do not approve of homeless courts. Anything which creates divisions, classes, or separations in a civilization is to its own detriment. All courts should be "problem" solving courts. All institutions should be "problem" solving institutions. Otherwise, those institutions serve no good purpose, and should be abolished. Homelessness is a part OF the community. Homeless courts recasts homelessness as apart FROM the community. Like Drug Courts, Family Courts, and the myriad other "single issue" Courts that have evolved over the years, Homeless Courts are divisive and counter productive. The Homeless Court removes from the public eye an entire segment of the community which suffers injustices before the law. This compartmentalization of jurisprudence normalizes the violence we do to one another behind the veil of law. How can we as a nation guarantee equality before the law when we have created a new court for every subgroup of our community?  

This legal separation feeds our mental schism which dictates, “Homelessness is someone else's problem. It’s those people's problem, not ours.” It is this very schism which has not only allowed homelessness to grow to epidemic proportions, but also fed the very flames of this wholey curable and certainly preventable personal, social, societal disease. 

I ask you, did homeless people do this?

No, it was not homeless people who bid housing prices up to astronomical levels. We did this. We are responsible for the growth in housing costs by many multiples of inflation. But, we do not want to face this TRUTH. We wish to avoid our problem by conveniently blaming the victims. Even more conveniently by segregating them, for their own good of course, into their own Homeless Courts we might never have to face the victims of our crimes against them. Most conveniently, we may continue our reckless race off the cliff of affordability unperturbed by the haunting eyes of those who could not keep pace with our pack of suicidal lemures. A Homeless Court is just another crutch allowing us to buy, buy, buy this illusion, this hallucination, this finance, insurance, and real estate induced frenzy. 

We have yet to comprehend another TRUTH: When you create enough people with nothing to lose, you will lose much. While housing costs are headed towards the stratosphere, we as a civilization are careening towards this rock hard TRUTH.

In this election season, while candidates are handing out free everything from college loan forgiveness to reparations for injustices not suffered, try to remember that while freedom IS, in fact, free deficit spending and the mindless pursuit of ever appreciating property values ain't. 

Our children will pay the costs of our recklessness, and some day we will be called into account before the much HIGHER COURT of the GREAT LAWGIVER.

Silence is Consent Pt. - 2

Silence is Consent Pt. - 1

Another Choice

Those of us with a home have choices to make as well. Ours are more plentiful, more rewarding, more desirable, and perhaps more far reaching than we know. We live a Universe where effect follows a cause. This is causation, not correlation. Sometimes we lose sight of how our Causes lose sight of their effects. That which seems beneficial or even essential can lead us down destructive paths, and the final destination may have sweeping consequences for others. Choices.

We make them everyday.  What to eat. What to wear. Choices. Inconsequential.

Who runs our government. Who sets our policies. Who controls our global financial system. Who delineates right from wrong. Choices. Monumental.

Often, we can't tell the difference between these two magnitudes of our choices. We are focused myopically on one aspect to the detriment of all others. Many times we are told one facet is the only one that matters. Sometimes this may be true. Many times the tunnel vision offered is less than full disclosure.

Our Causes lose sight of their effects. Still the desire to be part of something greater than one's self remains. A biological exploit to be harnessed for good or for evil. Each must choose. Each.

A Choice

When I was on the streets, not so long ago, I was broke, and no one in their right mind would hire a homeless man. I filled out applications by the dozens per day.  Every one of that was reviewed on the spot by a decision maker played out in the same way. I watched my prospects vanish when they read the third line of the application.

Date: 6/23/15
Name: Michael D. Unemployed
Address: Homeless

That third line answer meant they would never make it to the fourth line. Their expression would sour and turned their flesh to stone. There was no coming back from there, because there was no there there.

It didn't matter if it was the least demanding job requiring no qaulifications, I was under qualified by line three. Being homeless was a counter qualification, a negative skill set, the kiss of death. I could have been Henry Ford, the next Rockefeller, or Jeff Bezos, but my homelessness made me persona non grata. Interview interruptus.

I could have stopped right there. Got stuck right there. Rolled my sleeves down and put my hand out as so many of us do. The world isn't fair, so we'll just wait for someone to make it so. It's easy or at least less humiliating in the short run. The very short run. Then, ten years get behind you and you look back and realize it's been a decade of your disgrace. Your life was traded for an existence no one would choose, but you accepted by default. It's yours. Your life. Your fault. Others may have had their bit parts, but you're you full time.

I won't claim that I had some special quality or higher moral standard that differentiates you and I because that would be a lie. In a few words you'll see how preposterous such a claim would be. What I had was a crazy idea. It was crazy idea that started with a petty crime.

How many really bad stories start out with that common miscalculation? They usually end with someone dead on the floor and the perpetrator trying to explain the corpse away with intentions.

By the Grace of a Loving and Merciful God, and with me working against Him to my utmost, I went into a local drug store and shoplifted a pack of post-it notes. Then, I compounded my offense by nabbing a pen from a bank drive-thru. I wrote, "For odd jobs call Mike and put my Obama phone number at the bottom of the Post-it note. Repeating that process fifty-nine more times. I went out and affixed those sixty Post-it notes to an equal number of doors. That evening I got three calls. One was to cut a man's lawn for twenty-five dollars. Two days later I was helping to remodel his house.

When he paid me for cutting the lawn, I walked back into that drug store, slapped a five dollar bill on the counter in front of the clerk, said, "That belongs to you", and then exited quickly. He probably thought I was nuts.

My point is if no one will give you a job, you can make one. The world is full of people and people have needs. If you can fill one or more of those needs, then you can make a job.

You have a choice.