Appleseed Humanity

As the melodramatic, stage-managed bun fight that is the debate over the debt limit continues in Congress the full horror of the cuts proposed by some members as a solution is causing concern among people who serve those at risk.

Among the cuts proposed by conservative members is a significant reduction in the funding for ‘WIC’ – a nutritional program for women, infants and children. And the cuts would be inflicted while tax breaks for billionaires and oil companies remain blocked as ‘unfair.’

For years both parties had followed an unspoken tradition to always fund WIC, but early this year the GOP-led House passed a funding bill that would slash $733-million from the program.

If it ever becomes law 300-450,000 women and children would instantly go hungry.

To propose slashing funds for programs like WIC while insisting that tax breaks for billionaires and oil companies are preserved for the good of the nation is not only blatant pandering to those who fund both their lifestyle and election campaigns it’s also unsupported by facts:

Economists say every $1 invested in feeding a pregnant woman through WIC saves up to $2.13 in health care costs over the life of her child. At the same time, just one week of the revenue lost from the tax breaks would fund WIC in full for a year – With a profit.

44.5-million Americans now live beneath the poverty line. One in three are so poor they can’t eat every day. And to propose cutting funds to programs that help those with so little while preserving vote-gaining perks for those with more than enough is callous, deceptive, self-serving malfeasance.

The election cycle is almost upon us. Next time you hear a politician tell you they love this country and truly care about the people, find out where they stand on the funding for WIC.

You might not care about them quite so much when you know.

Source: Half-in-Ten

In a move clearly tailored to do more for their image than for the intended recipients, several elected officials LAPD representatives, social services officials and other community leaders all pledged their undying support on Wednesday for a plan designed to give homeless veterans and those who have lived on the streets of LA for some time a new source of housing.

But they plan to take five years to do it.

Released on November 9, this vastly inadequate and long-overdue plan – which is still inexplicably described by its supporters as ‘ambitious’ – aims to allocate around $230-million of the city council’s budget to fund long-term homes for some of the 48,000+ people these self-satisfied leaders so blithely allowed to suffer the unwarranted misery of street life until the cameras turned up.

The money will come from savings achieved by freeing those people from the indignities of emergency shelters, hospitals and frequent spells in jail for vagrancy that is the fault of these leaders, not theirs.

“It’s over 40% cheaper to house them this way and support them than to leave them on the streets,” Jerry Neuman, who co-chaired the ‘LA Business Leaders Task Force on Homelessness,’ a joint program by the local Chamber of Commerce and the United Way.

And why, may we ask, did it take them so long to see that? Was it really necessary to get cameras there first?

LA’s Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Mayor of  Long Beach, Bob Foster have are also part of the plan, together with LA Police Chief Charlie Beck, LA’s County Sheriff Lee Baca, Los Angeles and Santa Monica city councils, federal officials, religious leaders and nonprofits.

The project was inspired by a growing belief among those who work with the homeless that putting a permanent roof over their client’s heads must be the priority. This also matches President Obama’s declared aim to end homelessness among veterans and those who have been displaced for more than a year.

Naturally, a plan to help those Americans whose lives have been blighted by homelessness, usually by no fault of theirs, has hit fierce resistance – from their fellow Americans;

LA County Supervisor Michael Antonovich has complained about the program’s intent to use taxpayer funds to provide housing for people who abuse drugs and refuse treatment. He calls it “Warehousing without healing.”

Previous programs were also short-lived, thanks to a vocal minority who were perfectly willing for homeless people to get a new start – as long as it was not in their zip code.

”We think every city in the county has to recognize they have homeless people in their community, and they have to help  take care of them,” Neuman told the LA Times.

The task force now plans to engage other county and city officials in order to expand the program and its benefits.

And with such selfish, bigoted, knee-jerk resistance ranged against it we can only hope this plan’s leaders are thick-skinned.

[Appleseed] — A program in Massachusetts is providing yet more proof that ending homelessness is not merely possible, it’s far more affordable than those who block any such effort have the unselfish nerve to admit.

In December of 2008 the state’s Governor, Deval Patrick launched ‘Housing First.’ a program designed to end homelessness in the state by 2013.

And it’s working – On a budget of just $8-million ten regional networks have already placed 376 people in housing and helped almost 11,000 families avoid losing their homes.

And in more good news, last month the state announced another $1.56 million would be given to these teams.

“It’s a miracle and a dream come true for me,” Junior Rosario, 35, told the Globe, having been given his own apartment by the program after 15 cold years on the streets. “It’s shown me I have something to live for.”

The idea of the project is that if a long-term homeless person like Junior is given a home and some simple support they are clearly more able to secure a job, and thus restart their lives.

Individual cities say the new program has already reduced both the population in shelters and the total homeless state-wide. In 2007, Springfield officials set a goal of rehousing 250 chronically homeless people. So far, 100 have homes and another fifty homes are under construction.

The number of homeless people on the town’s streets has dropped from 98 to 10 in six years, and 75 shelter beds were no longer needed. Boston’s ‘Pine Street Inn’ was also able to discard 65 beds – directly because of ‘Housing First.’

But there’s a long way to go – As of September 27 there were still 919 families housed in hotels and motels, for which the council is paying.

And research proves that providing a homeless person with housing rather than space in a hotel or shelter saves the city $9,000 per person, chiefly because they stay healthy and thus avoid medical costs.

A fine case in point, Rosario is now studying for his GED and hopes to secure his first job very soon. But his biggest dream at the moment is Christmas:

“I haven’t set up a tree for 20-years,” he said.

None of you reading this can probably even imagine a life like that — But more than 8-million Americans can. Help us spread the word of what we do and let’s make that stop…

Photo by Spinnick

[Appleseed Humanity] – A recent report by Realty Trac shows that a record 2.8-million homes faced foreclosure last year. This year that number is expected to top 3-million. And the mainstream media’s reaction to this almost unprecedented calamity is nothing short of chilling.

In one article produced this week by that usually well-moderated purveyor of news, the New York Times they reported that banks and other home lenders have been cutting corners so they could reduce the workload required to put people on the streets.

Lately, however, some lenders have become concerned that the huge numbers of vacant houses created by this reprehensible eagerness to evict rather than undo the problem might damage the profits accrued from the homes they have left.

So after placing thousands of people on the streets for debts they didn’t deliberately cause and couldn’t repair the lenders have decided to find ways to collect future mortgage arrears, instead of simply evicting the borrowers.

And how does the Times describe the greed-fueled purge of inculpable victims that has been the norm up to now?

A ‘misstep.’

Thousands of people – and in most cases their children – had their homes repossessed and lives immeasurably damaged so the banks could post stronger profits for their shareholders, and the New York Times excuses and supports them by utilizing a noun that makes this callous act of cold-blooded greed sound like a victim-less and utterly trivial error.

The lenders destroyed lives simply to protect profits, and were only coerced into ending this repellent behavior by the very same motive. They should be deeply and enduringly ashamed of their acts, and the New York Times shares in that shame for so clearly proving they consider the lenders’ behavior to be both perfectly innocent and entirely excusable.

This company was formed in November last year after a group in the financial industry told me they would fund our project to re-house the homeless with $25-million in seed capital.

In February those backers walked away, with no explanation whatever. And trying to replace them has been a quest of such endless frustration it hardly bares thinking about.

Our plan is to secure a small amount of money [less than $5m] from an investor, then use that as the seed capital to get the $500m+ funding the project will cost. We then pay the investor a very healthy profit and use the rest of the funding to buy homes, which will then be donated to non-profit groups who work with the homeless.

The goal is to give their clients – especially those with children – a chance to reboot their lives and rejoin a society from which they were suddenly and rudely excluded through no fault of their own.

Many people have told me we’re crazy to plan to just ‘give away’ $100,000+ homes with no wish for a profit, but homeless people have no savings and no immediate chance of a job in an economy this damaged, so what else can you do?

They need and deserve a new chance in life, giving them that chance requires a radical solution and this is the most obvious one we can think of.

But to make it happen takes money, so first we need an investor.

Our ideal candidate is someone who cares enough to want to help homeless families get a new start, and wouldn’t mind making money and looking like a hero in front of countless examples of the national media in the process.

And what do we find? Swarms of slack-jawed, self-serving intellectual anorexics who swear they can fund us…for a very fat fee. Paid up-front.

The winter is coming and it’s making me sick that I still can’t find one individual who thinks making a great deal of money for helping 3+ million children escape six freezing months on the streets, while being the focus of a vast swathe of media attention is a bearable idea.

If you know or can locate this rare being I’d appreciate the introduction. Get back to me today and let’s take it from there…

Photo by Elver Barnes.