Showing posts with label Homelessness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homelessness. Show all posts
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Why Don't Homeless People Stay At Homeless Shelters? Lots Of Reasons... Good Reasons!
This is not surprising if one considers the county and city of Santa Cruz never wanted a shelter program to start with, so they've done their best, with taxpayers dollars, to make it absolutely useless to anyone but exactly the cohort within the homeless population that the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the Downtown (business) Association, and Take Back Santa Cruz complain about... Funny how that happens. You'd think they had created their own perception management program for vilifying the homeless.
[A little perception management for the rest of us]
Because they have. Only people who have been institutionalized, unaware they're being institutionalized, or forced by circumstances beyond their control into an institutionalized environment, would tolerate it, and many of the people mentioned, the mentally ill, drug addicts in need of substance abuse/psychological care, and sociopaths unable to integrate in a cooperative manner with the larger community of homeless, make the best 'poster people' for 'everything wrong with the homeless'.
[Thank YOU for being here James... Filmed @ SXSW 2010 in Austin, Texas.
Ask any of the literally thousands of travelers coming through Santa Cruz every year, some young and adventurous... 'roadies', some older and simply looking for work or a safe place where they won't freeze to death in the winter.
Ask them if they've been out to 'River Street'.
They'll tell you either they'd been there, but won't be again, or that they'd heard through the grapevine before they ever arrived in town that SCRCH is an out of control behavioral health unit and were warned to stay away from it.
It's disgusting that homeless 'activists' in Santa Cruz would support a facility like this... but they do.
It's NOT a 'shelter'... Or even a 'resource center'. It's a county run prison yard for drug addicts and people with' behavioral problems' who can be used by the city and business community as PR and rationale for their overall hostile attitude and often illegal (unconstitutional laws intended to target the homeless and blatantly selective enforcement of those laws) behavior towards their un-housed citizens, whom a recent survey showed a large majority of those people were working and housed in the area until unchecked redevelopment and gentrification occurred in the wake of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake . ~~Razer Ray
This post is dedicated to Logan. Panhandling and sleeping out doesn't kill people, but living simply as a young person in a world based on 'stuff' can be a killer. Even still one must pity people so poor that all they have are money and 'things'.
After my first rape, it was a homeless man who saved me. I was tucked into a bloodied ball behind a dumpster, deep in shock. Without his intervention, I would have died. He covered me and sang mumbled songs. He bathed me like a child in someone's motel room where he'd carried me. Fittingly, his name was Justus. My angel had Parkinson's and had suffered several strokes. His bladder control wasn't perfect so he smelled pretty bad, too. He talked to me of soldiers he'd seen shell-shocked in Vietnam. He prayed and sang "Amazing Grace" as I stared into space, trembling and waiting, hoping to die while he carefully dabbed my face with a washcloth. He showed me a very old picture of his daughter, a cute toddler in corn rows. He spoke of her with such love. It was then I unfroze and began to cry. If this gentle, lovely man could be discarded and dying out where no one cared what hope was there for anyone? (source)
1> Homeless Shelter Hours Incompatible with Work HoursPlease Read FirstI spent a lot of the time when I was homeless sleeping "in the rough" which is another way of saying outdoors. I've been asked a lot of times why I didn't just stay in homeless shelters. The two answers most homed people will give as to why homeless people don't use shelters is that either such people are drug users and drug use is against homeless shelter rules or that some people refuse to follow homeless shelter rules pertaining to check in and checkout.
As someone who has worked in homeless shelters I am very aware that the vast majority of homeless shelter workers are good people who are doing their best. I am glad that homeless shelters exist to help people without homes. However, it would be an injustice to pretend that homeless shelters in America are plentiful enough or that all of those shelters that exist are safe enough, or free from downsides.
The issue is pretty complex, but no, I was neither using drugs nor too defiant to obey homeless shelter rules. I'd like to give my reasons for sleeping in the rough and also some of the reasons I've seen other homeless people avoid shelters while exposing some common homeless shelter dangers. Some of these reasons might surprise you. I know I was shocked to discover a few myself. ~~Kylyssa
Homeless shelters operate on rigid schedules... So do jobs!
Contrary to popular belief, many homeless people have jobs. Because check in hours for shelters are often rigid and the process of waiting in line and checking in usually takes hours, most working homeless people cannot use them. Other homeless people work evening or night hours which don't allow them to get into a shelter before curfew. People who work from nine to five usually can't use homeless shelters, either; by the time they get off work, it's usually too late for them to get in line to check into a shelter.
Another reason some homeless shelters are incompatible with having a job is that they require the shelter users to attend AA or other drug abuse rehab classes (often held during normal work hours) every day they use the shelter - whether those people have a drug or alcohol problem or not.
By the time I had a regular job, I had decided to sleep outside exclusively so this was not a problem for me.
Continue reading Why Homeless People Don't Use Shelters @ Kylyssa's Squidoo. Also see another of her articles: "What I Learned While Being Homeless" that addresses topics such as "Why I Hate The Words "The Homeless" and tips for survival if you find yourself in that situation.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Perhaps Not... "Veterans Affairs Claims Progress In Ending Homelessness Among Vets"
And many of the new generation will end up out on the streets again (I KNOW THIS for a fact having witnessed it personally with Veteran acquaintances over the years...).(Image at the left, 11/7/2007) «o» Historically, a number of fighters in U.S. wars have become homeless. In the post-Civil War era, homeless veterans sang old Army songs to dramatize their need for work and became known as “tramps,” which had meant to march into war, said Todd DePastino, a historian at Penn State University’s Beaver campus who wrote a book on the history of homelessness.
After World War I, thousands of veterans — many of them homeless — camped in the nation’s capital seeking bonus money. Their camps were destroyed by the government, creating a public relations disaster for President Herbert Hoover.
The end of the Vietnam War coincided with a time of economic restructuring, and many of the same people who fought in Vietnam were also those most affected by the loss of manufacturing jobs, DePastino said.
Their entrance to the streets was traumatic and, as they aged, their problems became more chronic... [More @ MSNBC]
From today's Washington Post:
"Making aggressive use of a voucher program, Veterans Affairs has housed more than 33,000 veterans in the past 21 / 2 years. It did so by changing its longtime policy of requiring homeless veterans to be successfully treated for substance abuse and mental ailments before being given apartments." [Washington Post Federal Insider]The vouchers for the housing, at least the regulatory details, seem to be cribbed from Section 8 FHA/HUD programs (Google) and all the federal requirements of the tenants are the same. "Act out", or have any drug related altercations, and yer out.
I just wonder if the VA IS usurping federal housing money (via some back door transfer of funds perhaps) that was to be used for other people like those 38 percent increase in homeless children (and their mothers) over the last four years reported the other day?
(Just in... A local VFW officer and friend in-the-know has informed me that indeed, the money has been diverted from civilian housing preograms)
I also suspect that many high school and college students will find less service jobs available next summer as SOME Vets return, and are immediately plugged into "Do you want fries with that..." jobs.
In my estimation, the US government IS SCARED of it's veterans, and their pandering to them with jobs/housing is a fear based reaction. Not due to any patriotic 'love' for them. If you have any doubts just look up the phrase "Bonus Army" on your favorite search engine or at Wikipedia
I wonder how many returning Veterans will be satisfied for long with those 'funny hat' jobs and housing that resembles in sociological detail and regulations, 'project housing'?
Labels:
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Thursday, January 20, 2011
Voices From The (Santa Cruz) Village: Controversy at the "Red Church" - Is The City Interfering With The Church's Homeless Outreach Program?
[This Video Is One Hour Long... Pop Out Player?]
Louis LaFortune, host of Santa Cruz Community Television's "Voices From The Village" hosts a roundtable discussion with local leaders about the situation between the city and Calvary Episcopal Church's homeless outreach program, which illustrates the unnecessary city-driven adversarial relationship between the independent homeless programs of Santa Cruz and the city, with Father Joel Miller, Pastor at Calvary Church, Richard Enriquez, a Calvary Church volunteer, Don Lane, Santa Cruz City Councilman, and Scott Galloway, Calvary Church volunteer/former Santa Cruz Metro Transit District Director, and others.Video source: Santa Cruz Community Television
The document in question is Here... Written by FORMER city councilmember Cynthia Matthews, the document is a letter to the archdiocese of the Episcopalian church on a Santa Cruz city letterhead requesting their assistance in forcing Reverend Joel Miller of the Calvary Episcopal Church to end the homeless assistance program by pretty much falsely claiming alleged 'behavioral problems' and 'noise issues' "requiring" 'excessive' police and emergency service calls.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Houseless: An Audio Collage... Media & Music - Skidmark Bob, Pop dEFECT Radio
Skidmark Bob from PoP dEFECT RADIO, Free Radio Santa Cruz, with an audio collage of media & music on the current economic crisis, mortgage and job loss The housing bubble as explained by comedian Lewis Black also various media & news stories of people made houseless by foreclosures. Unreported World program on Boston and California Homeless and Al Jazeera English Witness program on Las Vegas homeless living in the sewers.Note: This mix is ONE HOUR LONG!
Pop Out Player? Click Here
Produced mixed and edited by Skidmark Bob live on Free Radio Santa Cruz 101fm http://www.freakradio.org/ Tuesdays 2pm Music by Ben Harper, Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello, Otis Taylor, John Mellencamp, Unkle, Eric Clapton, Bruce Hornsby.
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