Everyone's a Critic -- Responses to the Vox Article from March 2016

It never fails.

No matter *WHAT* a person's homelessness is due to, there is always a large subset of people who are absolutely certain that ending up in that situation is 110% your fault. Somewhere in life, you morally failed, or didn't do something you were supposed to do, so your homeless plight is all on you.

For that crowd, homelessness can never, ever, EVER can be caused by lack of affordable housing and lack of a living wage. To them, this recent story in the Associated Press is a profile in how many people over the last several years have increasingly "failed at life" through their "poor life choices," and became homeless. To them, it's never this:

“I’ve got economically zero unemployment in my city, and I’ve got thousands of homeless people that actually are working and just can’t afford housing,” said Seattle City Councilman Mike O’Brien. “There’s nowhere for these folks to move to. Every time we open up a new place, it fills up.”

Take his word for it. The new term for these conditions is "working homeless."  And the picture is exceedingly bleak:  

I think people who blame the homeless for their plight do so because if they actually looked into it with any depth, they'd have to do something about it, and people don't like to be responsible for things that don't personally affect them. Look at what's happening with the sexual harassment victims lately--they are rarely believed, and almost always blamed.

My own critics usually fall into one of two categories: 1) Women who blame me for not getting married, and 2) Men who are over a year's salary in credit card or other debt, counseling me about an imaginary inability to handle finances properly. Then, there are the usual jerks who are convinced that people who don't even have boots can just pull themselves up by their (non-existent) bootstraps.

So here's my responses to some of these geniuses, who commented on my Vox article from last year:

In the article, I wrote: "My moderate savings was destroyed in my 30s by health care costs that insurance wouldn't cover."

So one critic who clearly didn't read the article said, "Sounds like she choose [sic] not to have health insurance at a time when it wasn't mandatory." 

Got that? I had insurance, and that insurer denied my claims, but the reader goes straight into their blame-the-victim bias.

Another critic wrote: "I think I have less sympathy for the writer of this article. I'm willing to bet she made some pretty piss poor choices to be in her situation at 50. Keep in mind she didn't go to college so she has no loans."

Well, I did go to college, but went pay-as-you-go, and had to leave school when my hours were cut at work so I couldn't afford both school and rent. With people like this, it's considered a "poor choice" to not go into debt because I didn't qualify for loans or credit cards. Institutions don't lend money to poor people--that's why rapacious payday lenders exist. And when poor people can get a loan, it's often at usury rates that will keep them trapped in debt and poverty forever.

Another critic opines: "I don't feel pity for homeless people...To me, all it takes is a little resourcefulness to dig yourself out of a bad spot. Why didn't she move to a better place? She wanted the immediate gratification that contract work affords. Why didn't she accept permanent work so she could prove her value?...Why didn't she get a second job? Ask a friend to let her crash on the couch? Offer to house sit? Pet sit? The possibilities seem endless in this world." 

Let's unpack that shitshow: 1) You can't move to a "better" place if you are poor. You need thousands of dollars for moving expenses and deposits and rent; you need to find a new job in the new location and live off meager savings until you do, and all of that costs money a homeless or working poor person doesn't have. 2) Contract work wasn't "immediate gratification" --it was all that was available. 3) I did have permanent work periodically, but left for better-paying opportunities that resulted in layoffs (e.g., dot com bubble, downsizing) or other dead ends. 4) I worked a full-time job, a part-time job, and went to trade school part-time. Then, 9-11 hit, and my area of the country went into a deep recession. 5) Most friends were struggling themselves, and their leases don't allow long-term guests or people not on the lease to stay with them. 6) People with money don't want to hire homeless people to house-sit, pet-sit, or do odd jobs for them--get real. 

And then there's age discrimination:

"Older workers are at a particular disadvantage," says Joseph Carbone, president and CEO of the Bridgeport, Conn., jobs development group The WorkPlace. “If you’re 50 or older, you face an almost impenetrable wall of discrimination,” he says. “Companies have a very narrow view of what they want. When you walk into an interview with a lot of gray hair, it’s usually over very quickly.”  -- Time Magazine

So to my critics, taking contract jobs that paid better, not going into debt, not doing drugs or alcohol, living in an area that wasn't expensive when I first moved there, and then not having enough money to leave when it did get pricey, on top of aging out of the workforce, are all my personal failings, and why I deserve to be homeless.

But it's not just people like me they blame. Homeless families are on the rise, and those rugged individualist critics are the first to ask, "Why did you have kids if you can't afford them?" Answer: No one had a crystal ball when the kids were born years ago to foresee that the bankers would destroy the economy, and the government would abet their crime by letting thousands lose their homes to foreclosure. 

This is now the brutal reality:

“Americans raised at the top and bottom of the income ladder are likely to remain there themselves as adults. Forty-three percent of those who start in the bottom are stuck there as adults, and 70 percent remain below the middle quintile. Only 4 percent of adults raised in the bottom make it all the way to the top, showing that the “rags-to-riches” story is more often found in Hollywood than in reality.”

 -- Forbes Magazine

Some people just need you to draw a picture. Here's the graph of the relationship of employee wages to after-tax corporate profits:

Source: https://twitter.com/rortybomb/status/930928492992221184

And finally, there's 34Justice's detailed account of how policymakers (such as Paul Ryan) use a structured playbook to justify dunking on the poor to serve the rich. Here's an excerpt:

3) Imply that poor people’s personal failings are what’s holding them back. You can’t pull off the enlightened nice-guy routine if you’re blaming poor people for their problems outright. So you need to do it subtly: say that what we really need is worker training and programs that encourage people to work (again, who’s going to be against that?). Never mind that there’s little actual evidence of a “skills gap” and that most people who can work already do. People are predisposed to believe that our success relative to those less fortunate is a result of our superior work ethic and talents (rather than a product of race, class, gender, and/or other forms of privilege and sheer dumb luck). The more you tap into that predisposition, the more people will oppose downward redistribution and support imposing burdensome requirements on the Have Nots instead.

And there you have it: blame the victim for their plight, so you don't have to actually do anything to address their legitimate grievances.

Fourth Time's a Charm -- Status Update & Vox article

Thanks for visiting!

Vox.com has published an article of mine that updates many things since I wrote the book back in Spring, 2013. 

For the ONPA award-winning article about me and the book from 2013, visit here: 
http://www.dailytidings.com/article/20130201/NEWS02/302010303 

--VH

PS--I've gotten so many emails and messages of support from so many wonderful people--THANK YOU! It may take awhile, but I promise I will reply to every single person who wrote as soon as I can. I'm packing to get ready to move out, so my time (and internet connection) is limited. Thanks for your understanding. :)

Staggering Numbers About San Francisco's Homeless Population

71% of San Francisco's homeless population used to be housed residents in the city.

• http://sfist.com/2016/02/11/71_of_sf_homeless_once_had_homes_in.php
• http://www.sfexaminer.com/despite-help-homeless-population-increases/
• https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/sfgov.org.lhcb/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report_0.pdf
• http://www.48hills.org/2016/02/16/five-myths-about-the-homeless-problem-in-san-francisco/

That's nothing short of unbelievable.

From the article in the last bullet point above:

The vast majority of the people who are homeless today used to be housed – in San Francisco. According to the city’s 2015 homeless count, 71 percent of the people on the streets were living in San Francisco when they lost their housing. That means seven out of ten homeless people used to be your neighbors – before the tech boom and the eviction epidemic. Those are, to a significant extent, people who are homeless not because they did anything wrong but because they aren’t rich enough to live in Ed Lee’s San Francisco.

Let the Fast Food CEO's Try to Survive on Their Worker's Wages!

A truly depressing story from PBS thoroughly illustrates the absolute struggle of one fast-food working mother of seven who tries to get by on $8 an hour. An excerpt:

"Over the past several months, activists and some fast-food workers, including Shenita, have been organizing for higher wages. They point out that, like Shenita, almost 40 percent of all fast-food workers are 25 or older, and more than 25 percent are raising children. It's not just teenagers flipping burgers part-time."

And what is the response of many commenters on the story? Generally one of two things:

• It is not the responsibility of companies to pay a living wage.
• Don't have kids if you can't afford them.

So there you have it. The ideas that the whole reason people work is so they can afford to live unassisted is lost on many people, as is the idea that it's wrong-headed that only rich people should have kids. Any wonder the problems aren't being addressed, let alone solved?

Voltaire got it right: "The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor."

Happy Labor Day! American Wages Are Flatter & Lower Than a Decade Ago in Spite of Increased Productivity!

The International Business Times has noted that American workers' wages are flat and in some cases, lower over the last 13 years, in spite of increased productivity. Not to mention that more than 1 in 5 Americans have zero or negative net worth.  

It's not like the reasons are a secret. The cause of the problem is articulated perfectly by Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute:

"Policy makers should be viewing broad-based wage growth and the quality of jobs as the lens through which they view economic policy. Right now, economic policy is focused on promoting high consumption and low prices, which lead economic growth to be dependent on cyclical asset bubbles and precipitous accumulation of personal debt."

Critics argue that higher wages for workers means inflation and a higher cost of living, but as you can see from the Times article:

"Groups like the CATO Institute say that the key to economic prosperity is to freeze or eliminate the federal minimum wage rather than increase it -- because they claim higher wages leads poorer people to lose their jobs as companies seek to offset payroll rises. But if stagnant and lower wages are the key to economic prosperity, then the U.S. economy has had more than a decade to prove that.

It hasn’t."

So on this Labor Day, take a look at the short animation fact presentation from the EPI, and understand why all those fast-food workers are striking. And think about what YOU will do this upcoming year to improve your economic standing in a system completely rigged against you.

Hopeful Farm Part 2: Organic Produce Donated to Local Food Banks

In 2012 when I moved back to Oregon, I lived on a farm and had grown organic produce and donated most of it to local food banks. Then, due to job loss, I had to leave the farm and live in my car. 

Back in December, 2012, when it was 22 degrees outside (and inside my car, since I had no heat), the last thing I was thinking about was farming. But time and circumstances were fortunate to me, and the place I moved to after I secured a job was...on a farm!

My generous Kickstarter backers had given me enough of a boost to make it happen; you can read about the preliminaries here: http://www.carliving.org/2013/01/hopeful-farm-2013-all-produce-to-be.html

People come to look at the vegetable garden and are amazed. It was a lot of work only in the sense of the setup/layout--once you have everything structured and arranged, it's easy to maintain each year thereafter if you keep the same setup. I do not have any agricultural training or any kind of green thumb. You literally mulch and compost, put the plants in the ground and water them, and Nature takes over without your help.

Here are some before and after photos:

From the start, expenses HAD to be kept to a shoestring. I could not afford fertilizer, and refused to use bug spray, so I mulched and composted weekly. I was lucky, because the property owner is a landscaper by trade, so he always brought in an endless supply of leaves and grass clippings. This eliminated the need for weeding, as I would never garden if I had to spend any serious amount of time weeding. I think I maybe pulled one weed a week out of the garden, and that was because I was bored. Usually I just dumped more mulch on top of the very few weeds I did see, and that took care of the problem.

The most fortunate part of all was that the property is not only on a well, but it also has flood irrigation rights. This project would have been IMPOSSIBLE if I had to rely on city water, as the cost would have been prohibitive.

The seed had been saved from the farm the previous year, or had been bought years prior, and stored in my storage unit over the dreadful, homeless winter. A little (such as the corn) was purchased from Territorial Seed Company here in Oregon. A neighbor gave me a lot of year-old seed packets as well, for things such as spinach and cilantro. I also raided his chicken coop over the winter for chicken manure as well. I did have to purchase a couple of sprinklers and nozzles, as the ones on site were broken or slated for other use.

Most of the farm equipment such as hoses and hand tools were already on site, or had been given to the property owner over the season. At one point, he scored an extra wheelbarrow and metal cart for hauling! A new home was built down the street from the farm, so there was lots of fill dirt for compost, plastic sheeting, buckets and cardboard (weed barrier) free for the hauling. New home construction waste is a gardener's best friend!

So far, over 125 pounds of organic produce from the farm has been donated to local food banks such as ACCESS Medford, Talent Food Bank, and Ashland Emergency Food Bank. Donations included cucumbers, corn, beans, hot peppers, swiss chard, parsley, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, celery, basil, green onions and a few bell peppers. The bulk of the winter squash, giant heirloom tomatoes, regular tomatoes, more hot peppers and most of the bell peppers have not ripened yet, so there's plenty more on the way when they do.

Box of produce and bag of lettuce being prepped for delivery to the Ashland Food Bank

Almost 50 pounds of produce donated to AEFB in a single week! That's prolific!

Everything wasn't a total success though. The bok choy and cauliflower bolted from the July 100+ degree weather, and the Brussels sprouts never happened. I still have some January King cabbage waiting for the first frost in about a month and a half.

Right now, the ground is being prepared with tillage/cover crop radishes for next season. A limited amount of lettuce, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and snow peas will be grown for fall/winter donation until the weather kills them. I would like to work on a coldframe or greenouse to grow for the food banks overwinter, when demand for fresh, organic vegetables is highest.

But even though I'm not homeless anymore, any day I could have to leave again due to a volatile employment situation just like last year, and start all over somewhere else. That's the very real risk when you don't own the place you live. You don't want to invest in greenhouses and infrastructure, only to have to abandon it. 

So for now, I'll see what the fall and winter brings, and work with what I have.

Meanwhile, check out the Plant a Row for the Hungry program from the Garden Writers Association. They were the inspiration behind my first-ever garden in 2005--when the program was little-known and barely 3 years old--and still are today. From their website:

"Since 1995, over 16 million pounds of produce providing over 60 million meals have been donated by American gardeners. All this has been achieved without government subsidy or bureaucratic red tape — just people helping people.

Launched in 1995, Plant A Row is a public service program of the Garden Writers Association and the GWA Foundation. Garden writers are asked to encourage their readers/listeners to plant an extra row of produce each year and donate their surplus to local food banks, soup kitchens and service organizations to help feed America’s hungry.

There are over 84 million households with a yard or garden in the U.S. If every gardener plants one extra row of vegetables and donates their surplus to local food agencies and soup kitchens, a significant impact can be made on reducing hunger."

Top 5 Car Living Expenses That Will Rapidly Deplete Your Savings

The fact that you're living in your car means you're already on thin ice and on the brink financially. One major financial blow and you're practically done for. These are the top 5 expenses that can push you over the edge. If you're fortunate enough to be able to plan for them before you begin car living, it's to your considerable advantage.

1. Gas and car insurance. Unfortunately, gas is creeping very close to $4 a gallon in the U.S. for the forseeable future. Car insurance, luckily, can be paid monthly in small amounts, or in advance for a discount. Remember, if your car gets towed because you don't have insurance, you're homeless and on the streets.
2. Laundromats. If you can find a friend or family member who is willing to let you do your laundry for free, you'll save the $5-$10 weekly cost of trying to keep things clean. Try to purchase laundry supplies from dollar stores, or buy them on sale in stores rather than at the laundromat, where the cost is excessive.
3. Medical bills or vet bills. Of course anyone can go to the emergency room for something dire, but if you are diabetic or have another chronic condition, medical expenses can eat you alive. Many cities have free clinics where medical needs can be addressed for free or nearly free. The catch is, you have to wait for the scheduled day they serve the public, or make an appointment, prolonging the time until your medical problem can be addressed. If your state has public health insurance, see if you can enroll prior to becoming homeless. Many of them have very long waiting lists, so the sooner you apply, the better.
4. Equipment. This includes items like heaters in the winter, and solar fans in the summer. Or a decent sleeping bag.
5. Unforeseen expenses. This is a huge category, that can include car repairs, money for a motel room during extreme weather, or police tickets for speeding, parking or vagrancy.

You'll have enough planned expenses to have to pay for (gym membership, storage), let alone have to scrape up the cash to handle emergencies. Thinking ahead helps a lot, but luck, unfortunately, which you can't control, will also play a major role.