A stroll through Breton woods

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view, to see things from that person's angle as well as from your own. -- Henry Ford

There has been a flurry of newsprint in the local daily about the long-simmering (and on occasion boiling) idea of creating a legal homeless campground. A new lukewarm splash of interest came Tuesday as result of Mayor Kevin Johnson pledging support for a campground under the aegis of SafeGround at one of two locations that have been identified. It was hoped by Johnson with the fervent support of fellow council member Jay Schenirer and others that at the weekly city council meeting that night some progress could be achieved toward getting something done.

But no; didn’t happen. Quoting a disappointed late-night commenter to the Bee article, who goes by the moniker The Ghost of Belle Cooledge, “at tonight’s City Council Meeting, addressing the homeless issue was AGAIN thrown under the bus with the poser supporter Councilman Schenirer playing the good cop saying he will take in ideas and will have it agenized in January. WHERE IS THE LEADERSHIP ON THIS ISSUE? Kevin Johnson promised this EONS ago.”

The next day, the Bee’s Marcos Breton weighed in with a column crudely titled “A camp for Sacramento's homeless would be a waste.” As has always been the case in the years I’ve read Breton, he pipes in without a scintilla of knowledge of what being rendered homeless is like, or of the myriad frustrations of dealing with authoritarian, often-dysfunctional and sometimes-overwhelmed homeless-services charities. His logic in his column is on the order of “other cities push their homeless out of town; we must do much the same or we’d be chumps.” He writes his dismissive columns on this topic without ever getting up from his desk chair.

Well, I’m overstating it. Breton does summarize at the end by tossing in the age-old bromide “a hand up for the homeless – not a hand out.” And he tells us “Helping people who want to help themselves” – by “stay(ing) clean, law-abiding and focused on employment” -- is something the public would support. BUT, all this through private charity – like Cottage Housing which he endorses – not through government financial support.

Many commenters to the column took Breton to task, with one using the moniker paulal (Paula Lomazzi of SHOC, no doubt) stating the pro-SafeGround position splendidly:

There are not enough shelter beds or transitional housing or other homeless housing programs. There are over 1,000 that must sleep outdoors because of no other option no matter how much they want to get out of homelessness. If we don't provide any place where people can legally camp, that's when you have unsanitary conditions. With a legal place for people to sleep until they can access housing, they would be able to have portable toilets, at the least. No cost to the city or county. Advocates have wanted to rent portable toilets for homeless people, but the city would not allow it. Also a legal place to camp would give people a bit more stability and ability to improve their lives and their conditions, easily accessible to service providers, peer support. Right now people must hide from [public] and police, move constantly, vulnerable being alone, etc.

In contrast to what Breton would have happen, which is in effect nothing since Cottage Housing isn’t going to expand overnight, legalizing a campground is very much necessary since it is clearly, as Lomazzi writes, safer and cleaner and free and allows people opportunities to get their lives together, as compared to what is inadequate, currently. This camp would only help a hundred people, but that would help. Again, a SafeGround camp – which is what it would be – is necessary. It is likely to prevent much suffering, and possibly prevent a life from being lost.

Understand, I am no fan of the SafeGround organization. They are a part of several connected charities that have national-political positions that are as stupid as dirt and to the Left of Neptune, bound up in the mutterings of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America which was formerly named the Communist League, and is self-described at the homepage of their website as wanting "public ownership of the means of production, and the distribution of the products of society according to need." I know it sounds crazy, but it is certainly true: many homeless people have been indoctrinated with politics from these fiery Depths of Hell. [See the “Ugliness of SafeGround”.]

I put a Henry Ford quote at the top of this blogpost. Here’s another one:

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty. -- Henry Ford

This quote would seem to be doubly damning of capital punishment and charity. But while it is damning of capital punishment – made more clearly so in Ford’s extended thoughts on the topic – Ford did not damn charity. Indeed, at his death he gave the vast majority of his wealth to the Ford Foundation, "to receive and administer funds for scientific, educational and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare.”

Charity is part of the equation for helping the neediest of the needy. And while there are nonprofit charities that play a role in helping people, the government – federal, state and local – has a role here, too. It is so easy and cheap to banish extraordinary suffering and aid the dispossessed. There is enormous payoff at so little cost. For Sacramento city and county to do nothing or what’s minimal – particularly if it is by Breton’s reasoning that we don’t want to be a chump, helping the poorest of the poor when other local governments aren’t – then the cruelty is overwhelming.

I know the city of Sacramento, at Mayor Johnson's behest, fully wasted a million dollars in early spring of 2009 getting a scant few beds for people at VOA’s Cal Expo winter shelter. Often, government money gets wasted for desired positive publicity rather than providing real help. And, yes, many local homeless-help charities are scoundrals, as, certainly, was VOA in 2009. But with a little care and a watchful eye, a lot of good can be done with little money.

Henry Ford’s point was that charity alone is like a kind of death for the poor. A way out, a helping hand, is necessary, too, to restore people who can work (or be otherwise productive) to meaningful lives. AND, a helping hand is needed to find a niche in the world for folks who are captured by addiction or mental problems that alienate them from society.  A lot of homeless people are beat up in myriad ways. To merely provide means for homeless folk to make a beeline to a job is inadequate.  Within the lowest caste (that is, among homeless folk) are many whose work skills and job-getting skills aren't competent, and will never be.  But these are people, too, who love and suffer and bleed. Their lives should not be thrown away.

The Big Picture (The good, the bad and the ugly in Homeless World Sacramento) Part I

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? -- William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice

While I feel certain that homeless people (including myself) deserve the sympathies and aid of the public and much robust support from the government, I don’t think this because I believe Sacramento’s homeless population could pass as a cross section of the general population (as we're often portrayed). The homeless, who are the bottom 1% socially and economically in our society are, as you would suppose, disproportionate to the whole in being mentally ill; or mentally unusual; or psychically beat up; or depressed; or addicted; or in having quirks or criminal records or spotty resumes or damaged psyches that frustrate getting or holding onto a job.

Too, among the homeless are a great many who are asocial – who will steal or destroy things without a moment’s consideration of others who are hurt by these actions. There are also many charming con men “out here” who use lies and deception to get what they want, and think all others are morally just as they are -- but soft, somehow, and without the skill-set to match these con artists’ supposed rates of conniving ”success.” Others are rascals who take sadistic pleasure in what mayhem they stir up. The least-mature of these adult rascals litter and write on wet cement and mess up public restrooms and giggle when they poop on the sides of buildings at night.

There are actions and antics by many of my brethren that are ground for all the hate that gets directed toward homeless folk. Any time an article or Marcos Breton column about the homeless is published in the Bee, the usual haters whip out their keyboards to pound out mean-spirited spiels as online comments. No doubt, these haters are representative of a large number of people in our metropolis -- who feel similarly to Michele Bachmann who not long ago said, “if the sick and homeless want healthcare, they should get a job and make their own way.” Yes, well. It’s not that easy.

While a good many of the Sacramento homeless could never acquire a veneer of gentility such to be made ready for a pleasant dinner party or a spirited discussion of Spinoza, they think and feel in complete abundance and their lives – our lives – are as much an entire universe of joy and drama and meaning as any more-conventional citizen’s. We are real – though, for some of us, we’re not always altogether sure of that in the beat-up condition we find ourselves.

Among the homeless, too, is an overabundance of people who don’t have a grasp of how the world operates; they don’t see “the big picture.” They believed that one nutty Gospel Mission preacher [who lasted for just the one night] who told us the sun goes around the earth or that people once shared the planet with dinosaurs or that Obama is the antiChrist. These homeless fellows' knowledge isn’t enough encyclopedic to warn them away from the complete nonsense that often comes along disguised as information. They are insecured, left gullible, and this vulnerability leaves them wide open to being taken advantage of (or of being rendered homeless in the first place).

Yet others have very simply fallen out of their lives in one of the many ways that can happen. The money ran out and they are broken. A consumptive sequence of events has left them bedraggled and without resources.

But there are great virtues in Homeless World, too. One -- completely contrary to the stereotype that the homeless are all lay-abouts unwilling to work – is that homeless guys wanting to work always outnumber the jobs that can be found. There is always a desire for work and no job that comes along goes unfilled.

So-called “Daily Bread” casual-labor jobs that Loaves & Fishes used to offer (and may still, on a limited basis) get filled, always – except in the case of “employers” who gain the reputation of cheating guys out of what pay is owed. Casual jobs at Loaves & Fishes that are paid using $5 McDonald’s giftcards are always filled. Indeed, may homeless people volunteer to work at Loaves & Fishes on a scheduled basis.

At the mission, if there is a shortage of guys assigned kitchen duty, there is no problem rustling up volunteers to work, with no benefit forthcoming to these instant recruits for doing so.

Famously, too, homeless guys collect bottles and cans for recycling. There’s neither reluctance nor embarrassment to do that. Some fellows have mapped out favored collection spots and tell me they feel well compensated by the recycling business for their efforts. Other guys collect cans but complain they don't make much from it. Other guys are hooked up with folks who will use them to hold signs on the sidewalk at intersections.  Often, in these Hard Times, these jobs -- which in years past had paid OK -- are now npaid under the table at less than minimum wage.

Other guys, may not think of it that way, but they truly have launched themselves as small-business men. A couple skilled guys I know get work in Granite Bay providing the manpower for home-improvement projects. Another fellow gets permission from businessmen and homeowners to pass his metal-detector equipment over a property to find treasure. By some prior arrangement, this fellow either gets paid for what is found, or gets a split of what coins, jewelry or whatever is unearthed.

Another guy I know frequently does yardwork for an appreciative homeowner. Yet another guy has set himself up washing businesses’ windows. Other fellows used to use Labor Ready for temporary manual labor, but that agency is no longer in business or open to homeless clients.  Other agencies sometimes can be talked into giving a homeless fellow a chance.  Doors get knocked on; it's rare, but sometimes opportunity follows.

The Union Gospel Mission, as part of its Rehab program, used to be able to arrange opportunities for many of the graduates to get employment.  In recent years, UGM's efforts at helping find jobs has been significantly waylaid by the bad economy.

It’s a wacky, dirty world – homelessness is. But primarily, it is achingly poignant. Even the biggest scoundrels in this world have sides to their personalities that are funny or wistful or oddly -- but fully -- generous. We get by with little, endure suffering, live in the midst of a lot of craziness and there is something weirdly OK and distressingly habitual that settles into being our routine. We become like the frog in the beaker where the water temperature rises so slowly he doesn’t notice that he's being slowly boiled unto death. In many ways, our life, our future is escaping from us – drifting away like a gentle patch of steam.

But even when weeks pass by without the simplest "luxury" -- a cup of Starbuck's or clean socks -- just as with anyone, the circumstance that we’re in NOW is our life.  It's where attachments and friends and challenges and intrigue meld into a daily drama.  In this -- behold! -- we are just like conventional citizens.  No different, whatever.

Hunger can cause obesity

Keith Olbermann of the Current TV show Countdown named Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum today's Worst Person in the World because of content in a speech he gave in Iowa saying that obesity that is common among poor people shows that they are not really going hungry.

There's a svelte middle-class person inside every homeless person.

Olbermann quoted Santorum, via an Iowa newspaper: Said Santorum with respect to Food Stamps, "If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?

The answer to Santorum's question is that obesity is commonly caused by hunger, as contrary to commonsense as that may seem to many.

Quoting the Food Research & Action Center [as Olberman did, also] [emphases, mine]:

Obesity is a major public health problem in the U.S. While all segments of the population are affected, low-income and food insecure people are especially vulnerable due to the additional risk factors associated with poverty, including limited resources, limited access to healthy and affordable foods, and limited opportunities for physical activity. Even individuals who are highly motivated can have difficulty eating healthy and being active if their environments do not support or allow such behaviors (Institute of Medicine, 2009).

In addition, households with limited resources to buy enough food often try to stretch their food budgets by purchasing cheap, energy-dense foods that are filling – meaning that they try to maximize their calories per dollar in order to stave off hunger. Those who are food insecure may also overeat when food does become available, resulting in chronic ups and downs in food intake that can contribute to weight gain. This is especially a problem for low-income women, who often restrict their food intake to protect their children from hunger.

And by the way, obesity is common among those who eat at Loaves & Fishes for these reasons. Loaves and Fishes which claims with pride that it does without government funding means, too, it does without nutritional oversight. Loaves & Fishes serves large quantities of cheap, energy-dense foods because of cheap, dense administrators at that charity.

It's cold out there

Forensic graph from the National Weather Service.

The National Weather Service records the temperature hourly. Their forensic record for Sacramento shows the subfreezing temperatures that many homeless folk sleeping outside have to deal with.

The red line in the graph, at right, shows hourly temperatures measured at Sacramento Executive Airport over a seven-day period.  As you can see, for the past five nights, the red line touches or nearly touches the gray horizontal line that represents a temperature reading of 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Indeed, each night there are recorded subfreezing temperature readings.  It's cold out there, often windy, but mostly dry with frost on the grass visible at dawn.  Stay well out there, homeless friends.