Here are the top three states with the largest number of homeless people per capita: 1) Washington, D.C. 2) Hawaii 3) Oregon To get an idea of what triggers homelessness in any given area, here's a random snapshot of the Harris County (TX) region, showing that Houston, you DEFINITELY have a problem:
Source: Houston/Harris County Coalition for the Homeless: http://ow.ly/jtteX. Right off the top, you can see that 50% of it is due to issues with income. My next blog post will cover a recent study about that. Meanwhile, the National Coalition for the Homeless runs a fantastic Facebook page that I encourage everyone to check out and "like": https://www.facebook.com/NationalCoalitionfortheHomeless
When Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) was in the area last month for a Town Hall meeting, his opening remarks to the crowd were about how the sequestration was a bunch of phony theater and scaremongering on the part of the Party of No. The essence of his comments:
“We need to end the sequestration, and once and for all stop lurching from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis. This is no way to run a country."
“The sequester is a D.C.-created disaster in the making. It’s time to take Congress’s foot off the economic brake, make some smart choices about how we build for the future, and spare Americans from a politician-induced recession.”
Today, there is a really great article over on Bloomberg News, where Josh Barro further illustrates how completely full of shit the Republicans are about deficts. In the article titled, "Boehner Accidentally Explains Why His Deficit Position is Phony," Barro writes:
"Boehner doesn’t really care about the public debt, as he made clear when he repeatedly supported debt-expanding measures under a Republican president. What Boehner and House Republicans really want are excuses to cut federal spending, particularly on programs such as Medicaid and food stamps that support low-income Americans. But those cuts are unpopular, so Republicans frame fiscal debate to make such cuts appear necessary to avoid disaster. If you can’t borrow or tax more, and can’t cut old-age entitlements or the military, which command the majority of federal spending, you’re not left with many options but to soak the poor."
"Soaking the poor is a policy option. It is not, as Boehner would have it, a policy necessity dictated by the inability of the federal government to borrow or tax sustainably. But if the debate instead becomes about tax and spending priorities -- is it more important to provide universal health care or keep tax rates low on high earners -- it shifts to turf unfavorable to Republicans. So they pretend."
So there you have everything you need to know about deficits in a nutshell. Read the brief, full article anyway, since it explains how the U.S. has done just fine with deficits for 55 of the last 60 years (before the bankers stole everything from the public treasury), and that comparing running the federal government to running a business or a household is a bogus analogy.
There is a Facebook page that is an aggregate of articles and tips about homelessness and car living as specifically related to the economy and housing crisis. Visit them at https://www.facebook.com/PeopleLivingOutOfTheirCars and "like" them so they will be encouraged to continue their important compilation work.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition has a nifty calculator on their website that shows how much you need to earn in order to afford your rent--without spending more than 30% of your income on housing. In Oregon, for example, the average studio apartment is $600 per month. According to the calculator, you would have to earn $11.54 per hour/$24,000 per year to afford that rent without spending more than 30% of your income on housing. The minimum wage in Oregon is $8.95/hr. Do the math. This is why bills such as Sen. Harkin-Rep. Miller's Fair Minimum Wage Act are such sick jokes, and nothing more than posturing bills to create the illusion of actually doing something. According to Rep. Miller:
"Miller and Harkin’s proposal would raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from its current $7.25—in three steps of 95 cents—then provide for automatic annual increases linked to changes in the cost of living. Miller and Harkin’s bill would also gradually raise the minimum wage for tipped workers—which currently stands at just $2.13 an hour—for the first time in more than 20 years, to 70 percent of the regular minimum wage."
"Wealth inequality widened dramatically during the first two years of the economic recovery, as the upper 7 percent of American households saw their average net worth increase 28 percent, while the wealth of the other 93 percent declined, according to a report released Tuesday."
"The study by the Pew Research Center underscored other data showing that the economic growth that has followed the Great Recession has benefited mainly those at the top. The uneven recovery has only accelerated a decades-long trend of growing wealth inequality in the country, despite rising popular and political awareness of the dynamic."
So the corrupt and unfair system continues to flourish unabated. George Carlin was right--it's a big club, and you ain't in it.
The book is finally published and on sale at Amazon.com. You can find it in paperback or in Kindle. If you need a PDF or ePub (Apple) version, contact me and I'll send you the file.
"This weekend, Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, called the lack of affordable housing and the failure to raise the minimum wage ''a one-two punch'' that had ''devastated'' the homeless and the working poor. "
And nothing has changed. Politicians wring their hands, lacking the political courage and will to implement the obvious solutions (raising the minimum wage and offering tax breaks for people/companies who provide affordable housing, defined as charging no more than 1/4 of a person's income for rent.) Meanwhile, the problem gets worse as the numbers increase due to inaction.
