Child pages

I created this page because Washington DC has quite a few homeless people, and after running into them daily for a while I started to think, "What could be done to fix this?"

Sources of Information

Wikipedia Articles

Homelessness
- Major reasons and causes for homelessness as documented by many reports and studies include:
  - Unavailability of employment opportunities.
  - Poverty, caused by many factors including unemployment and underemployment.
  - Lack of accessible healthcare. People who have some kind of chronic and weakening disease but cannot get healthcare either because they don't have money to afford it or because the government will not give it to them are simply too weak to go and work every day.
  - Abuse by government or by other people with power.
  - War or armed conflict.
  - Natural Disasters, including but not limited to earthquakes and hurricanes.
  - Mental disorder, where mental health services are unavailable or difficult to access. A United States Federal survey done in 2005 indicated that at least one-third of homeless men and women have serious psychiatric disorders or problems.
  - Disability, especially where disability services are non-existent or poor performing.
  - Social exclusion, including because of sexual orientation and gender identity
  - Substance abuse
  - Lack of affordable housing. By way of example, an article in the November 2007 issue of Atlantic Monthly reported on a study of the cost of obtaining the "right to build" (i.e. a building permit, red tape, bureaucracy, etc.) in different U.S. cities. The "right to build" cost does not include the cost of the land or the cost of constructing the house. The study was conducted by Harvard economists Edward Glaeser and Kristina Tobio. According to the chart accompanying the article, the cost of obtaining the "right to build" adds approximately $600,000 to the cost of each new house that is built in San Francisco.
  - Domestic violence.
  - Relationship breakdown, particularly in relation to young people and their parents.
  - Prison release and re-entry into society.
  - Forced eviction – In many countries, people lose their homes by government order to make way for newer upscale high rise buildings, roadways, and other governmental needs. The compensation may be minimal, in which case the former occupants cannot find appropriate new housing and become homeless.
  - Mortgage foreclosures where mortgage holders see the best solution to a loan default is to take and sell the house to pay off the debt. The popular press made an issue of this in 2008.
  - Foreclosures on landlords often lead to eviction of their tenants. "The Sarasota, Florida, Herald Tribune noted that, by some estimates, more than 311,000 tenants nationwide have been evicted from homes this year after lenders took over the properties."
Homelessness in the United States
Mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani - Relations with the homeless

People

DC Central Kitchen employs ex-cons to help them get back on their feet
Bill Strickland from Pittsburg did something similar

Quora

http://www.quora.com/search?q=homelessness
http://www.quora.com/Homelessness/I-liv ... o-for-them
- In New York City, most of homeless that ask for food aren't exactly in need of food; in fact "the system" provides over $200 per month to anyone that is homeless and without income in New York City. Also, they receive over $250 in cash assistance and great health care (Medicaid). Anyone that's homeless and lives in a shelter in NYC is required to take advantage of these entitlement programs.
  Homeless people can get free clothes (some are really nice) and there are various places that will provide them a meal and a shower no matter what (Bowery Mission comes to mind).
  Unfortunately, a large amount of the homeless population has substance problems which is why they panhandle or they look to make some tax-free money while they keep their benefits.

Videos (YouTube)

Results for "homeless interview" on YouTube
A Unique Approach to Rehab in Indonesia
Life in the Deportee Slums of Mexico
- 7:55 - Cocho
  - "I spent a while in the US, and all of our belongings and savings are still there. I left my family and job over there, a big auto shop. We worked at a body shop. It was our own business. My real wife, who was also there, she came over with my children and now she's in the state of Guererro. God bless her, wherever she may be, little Mayra. I''m here in Tijuana[...] We used to rent a house. It was our home. It was a beautiful thing. All of our family was well behaved. There was a fridge, a washing machine. We even had a guest room. This is really sad. We didn't need anything, we had it all. We ate like regular folk. But this place is truly awful. We've stayed at shelters and hotels, and this place. But it doesn't compare to the home we had in America...with our family over there, enjoying happiness."
  - At one point the woman says that she estimates 90% of the people in the Canal use heroin, and 100% use drugs of some kind.
  - 12:29 - "During Obama's administration there have been more than 1.4 million deportations. The majority of them pass through Tijuana. Throughout the border, Baja California receives the highest number of deportees. An average of two hundred people are deported every day. Of those two hundred, we estimate that 30% are Mexicans that were in prison in the US or that belong to a gang. Another 30% are Mexicans who tried to cross but were arrested and deported. Those people will attempt to cross again, because that's their goal. And the other 30% are Mexicans who have lived for a long time in the US."
  - 14:57 - "The main reason people get deported is for late payment of a traffic ticket or infraction. The other reasons are raids, which are now done in workplaces. Or drunk driving, or being drunk on the street."
Permanently Temporary: The Truth About Temp Labor
A guy who has made many different kinds of small homes from cheap materials

Articles

Companies Say 3 Million Unfilled Positions in Skill Crisis
- Technical proficiency isn't always enough. Employers also report a shortage of what they call "soft skills," including the ability to solve problems, think critically and work in teams. Workers who exhibit such traits can be candidates to train for higher-skilled jobs.
VICE - The Modern-Day 'Harvest of Shame'
2013.02.14 - Priceonomics - The Street Kids of San Francisco
- Our initial hypothesis was that life on Haight Street would be a grim, Dickensian hellhole. Instead, we discovered a world of misunderstood, modern-day nomads, blithely toeing the line between poverty, drug dealing, and hippy nirvana. Most of them seemed to be having fun.
  [...]
  Most street kids we spoke to came from one of two backgrounds: either they had job prospects (whether good or dead-end) but preferred the freedom of homelessness, or were transient homeless who fell in love with the street kid community.
  Kenny, who we met in Golden Gate Park, represents the former. Middle-aged, he is a ten-year veteran of the scene. His story of arriving in Haight-Ashbury unfolds like the tale of Siddhartha:
  "My family owns a major medevac company. We were affluent, well off. My wife and I were both pursuing PhDs when she asked for a divorce and it tore my life apart. In the process of re-examining everything I took for granted, I decided to come here."
  [...]
  Kenny’s story is an extreme case, but he is not the only one who left a comfortable existence for the freedom of the Haight. A number had college degrees or left jobs in retail and construction.
  Stephan, the very first street kid we met, represents the second background:
  “My mom kicked me out of the house at 14 and gave me a ticket to my aunt’s place in Florida. As I was waiting for the bus, a van full of Grateful Dead groupies pulled up. ‘We’re here for you,’ they told me. I got in. They became my family.”
  [...]
  Each street kid like Stephan had a different story for how they became transient: Nix hated moving foster home to foster home and decided to run away. Ritch lost his job and apartment in New York due to a heroin addiction and began hitchhiking. Brand discovered the scene after his friends sold his mobile home for drugs and he fled the law across state lines.
  But they all stayed for the same reason: They found a community where “people will give you the shirt off their back,” where everyone is accepted, and where people share and live communally. The word “family” is repeated a lot.
  Especially for those with mental problems or those who felt scorned elsewhere, the accepting attitudes and communal lifestyle offer a place for them to feel at home.
  [...]
  Whenever Haight Street tourists or bar hoppers crowd the neighborhood, street kids panhandle (hold a palm out for money – resembling a pan handle) and spange (“Spare change?”). An average day of spanging brings in about $40. But with some luck and creative tactics (jumping out of trash cans to scare a group of teenagers, or telling tourists how to take the perfect picture of the Haight and Ashbury street signs), a day’s haul can break into triple digits.
  This struck us as a good deal of money for the homeless. The street kids disagreed. “I have a spot downtown where I can make $50 an hour,” one girl told us. “But I try and respect the spot and not go too often.” Others added that spanging elsewhere easily brings in triple digits every day. Yet they still panhandle in the Haight even though it’s not their most profitable location.
  Selling marijuana is also a consistent source of income for many street kids. They sell weed to a diverse customer base, from tourists to local yuppies and other peddlers, so the amount they make per transaction varies. Tourists may pay two or three times more than a local. Street kids consistently describe making several hundred to a thousand dollars a month and profit margins as high as 50%. We even met a shrewd kid named Swirly selling weed to pay his girlfriend’s tuition.
  Aside from drug dealing and panhandling, a few kids occasionally receive money from their families, while others use food stamp cards. But the majority insist on supporting themselves, and even refuse to spange. Many kids make necklaces or other trinkets out of gemstones, but they seem more interested in talking about their properties and trading them with other street kids than selling them profitably to tourists.
  Many of the kids get part time jobs in construction, in landscaping, or at music festivals, but these jobs are just a temporary “break.” Employment and income is a fun change of pace from the Haight, but it’s not as if they’re antsy to escape their homeless situation.
  [...]
  Their scene also bleeds into the wider and mostly invisible world of America’s transient underclass, unemployed and underemployed street people locked out of much of the job market. We met a number of kids who described working full-time jobs that barely paid for crappy apartments and canned food. Why, these upwardly immobile asked, should they work for a deadening existence when they can dumpster dive and panhandle their way around the United States and even the world?
  [...]
  The street kids’ equitable sharing of the resources seems uncharacteristic of street gangs, which distribute resources and power in vertical hierarchies (according to our understanding as avid watchers of The Sopranos). Nevertheless, a cheerful kid named Joe Camel explained to us, there is a street kid hierarchy. Those who have been in the family longest can hustle potential customers at the start of Golden Gate Park – the prime real estate – whereas new kids start farther back in the park.
  [...]
  The park has gotten rougher over the past decade, so the family has too. Kenny, the former PhD, described how ten years ago, hippy street kids profitably sold weed to clamoring customers and comfortably financed their wanderings to the next music festival. But as the price has dropped – in half over ten years, according to Kenny, due to legal dispensaries and new sellers – kids need to hustle business and competition is fierce.
  Street kids can hitch across the country, but their territory in Golden Gate Park is strictly defined. Kids smoking near Hippy Hill pointed to a tree fifty yards away. If they tried to sell weed there, street kids belonging to a gang called the San Francisco Scum Fucks would beat them up. The Fillmore Kids, who sell near the park entrance, have also picked fights.
  Violence rarely exceeds fists, but street kids can’t rely on peace and love. Not only are there outsider gangs, but the more time we spent in the park, the more street kids we met who came to Haight-Ashbury as part of the transient community and feel no affinity for the neighborhood’s past. “There are fights in the park,” one kid told us, shaking off the idea of being a hippy and pointing to the brace on his foot. “I literally, literally broke my foot on someone’s ass in a fight. It’s not a good time for the park.”
  The kids despise the police, so the family also enforces its own rules. Momma Jude, who plays a motherly role for the kids, recalled the family throwing kids who robbed or fought into nearby “Hep-C” Pond (named for the hundreds of syringes coating the bottom) before telling them to scram.
  [...]
  Separated at night as they seek a spot to sleep, the street kids are vulnerable as lone gazelles. They are robbed so often that they often resort to hiding hundreds of dollars under trashcans. And while they warn each other when someone has been knifed in the park, no one has any idea what to do other than “be careful.”
2013.09.14 - The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?
- This study was referenced in a Newsweek article.
2014.05 - Elderly speak with students in other countries who want to practice English
2014.08.06 - Pew Research Center - AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs
- This looks really good
2014.11.28 - The Guardian - 'Being homeless is better than working for Amazon'
2014.11.30 - Newsweek - Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? Ask a Robot.
2017.12.29 - Washington Post - Even during one of the year’s coldest weeks, some homeless people are refusing to come inside

Organizations

Gathering Background Information on Homeless People

Verifying Veteran Status
- Despite stories of "covert missions" and "classified information," you can indeed verify whether or not someone served in the military. You can find out:
  - Dates of service
  - Rank
  - Marital status
  - Decorations and awards
  - Place of induction and separation
  - Duty assignments
  - Duty status (such as discharged or retired)
  - And more
- Official military records are stored at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Information about U.S. service personnel is available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Getting the information is not difficult. To make a request, all you have to do is download a form and mail or fax it in. Include a cover letter requesting the records under FOIA, and ask for all available releasable information. If the person was never in the military, you'll receive a reply telling you that the center has no record of him or her.
  [...]
  A former SEAL captain, who has done his share of busting fakes, says a simple question might help you spot a phony. It is: "What was your class number?" If the guy stumbles at all in his answer, he's lying. A true SEAL never forgets his BUD/S class number. Class numbers are now up to the mid-200's.

Books

My Life and Work by Henry Ford
- All of our people come into the factory or the offices through the employment departments. As I have said, we do not hire experts--neither do we hire men on past experiences or for any position other than the lowest. Since we do not take a man on his past history, we do not refuse him because of his past history. I never met a man who was thoroughly bad. There is always some good in him--if he gets a chance. That is the reason we do not care in the least about a man's antecedents--we do not hire a man's history, we hire the man. If he has been in jail, that is no reason to say that he will be in jail again. I think, on the contrary, he is, if given a chance, very likely to make a special effort to keep out of jail. Our employment office does not bar a man for anything he has previously done--he is equally acceptable whether he has been in Sing Sing or at Harvard and we do not even inquire from which place he has graduated. All that he needs is the desire to work. If he does not desire to work, it is very unlikely that he will apply for a position, for it is pretty well understood that a man in the Ford plant works.
  We do not, to repeat, care what a man has been. If he has gone to college he ought to be able to go ahead faster, but he has to start at the bottom and prove his ability. Every man's future rests solely with himself. There is far too much loose talk about men being unable to obtain recognition. With us every man is fairly certain to get the exact recognition he deserves.
- In a previous chapter I noted that no one applying for work is refused on account of physical condition. This policy went into effect on January 12, 1914, at the time of setting the minimum wage at five dollars a day and the working day at eight hours. It carried with it the further condition that no one should be discharged on account of physical condition, except, of course, in the case of contagious disease. I think that if an industrial institution is to fill its whole role, it ought to be possible for a cross-section of its employees to show about the same proportions as a cross-section of a society in general. We have always with us the maimed and the halt. There is a most generous disposition to regard all of these people who are physically incapacitated for labour as a charge on society and to support them by charity. There are cases where I imagine that the support must be by charity--as, for instance, an idiot. But those cases are extraordinarily rare, and we have found it possible, among the great number of different tasks that must be performed somewhere in the company, to find an opening for almost any one and on the basis of production. The blind man or cripple can, in the particular place to which he is assigned, perform just as much work and receive exactly the same pay as a wholly able-bodied man would. We do not prefer cripples--but we have demonstrated that they can earn full wages.
  It would be quite outside the spirit of what we are trying to do, to take on men because they were crippled, pay them a lower wage, and be content with a lower output. That might be directly helping the men but it would not be helping them in the best way. The best way is always the way by which they can be put on a productive par with able-bodied men. I believe that there is very little occasion for charity in this world--that is, charity in the sense of making gifts. Most certainly business and charity cannot be combined; the purpose of a factory is to produce, and it ill serves the community in general unless it does produce to the utmost of its capacity. We are too ready to assume without investigation that the full possession of faculties is a condition requisite to the best performance of all jobs. To discover just what was the real situation, I had all of the different jobs in the factory classified to the kind of machine and work--whether the physical labour involved was light, medium, or heavy; whether it were a wet or a dry job, and if not, with what kind of fluid; whether it were clean or dirty; near an oven or a furnace; the condition of the air; whether one or both hands had to be used; whether the employee stood or sat down at his work; whether it was noisy or quiet; whether it required accuracy; whether the light was natural or artificial; the number of pieces that had to be handled per hour; the weight of the material handled; and the description of the strain upon the worker. It turned out at the time of the inquiry that there were then 7,882 different jobs in the factory. Of these, 949 were classified as heavy work requiring strong, able-bodied, and practically physically perfect men; 3,338 required men of ordinary physical development and strength. The remaining 3,595 jobs were disclosed as requiring no physical exertion and could be performed by the slightest, weakest sort of men. In fact, most of them could be satisfactorily filled by women or older children. The lightest jobs were again classified to discover how many of them required the use of full faculties, and we found that 670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637 by one-legged men, 2 by armless men, 715 by one-armed men, and 10 by blind men. Therefore, out of 7,882 kinds of jobs, 4,034--although some of them required strength--did not require full physical capacity. That is, developed industry can provide wage work for a higher average of standard men than are ordinarily included in any normal community. If the jobs in any one industry or, say, any one factory, were analyzed as ours have been analyzed, the proportion might be very different, yet I am quite sure that if work is sufficiently subdivided--subdivided to the point of highest economy--there will be no dearth of places in which the physically incapacitated can do a man's job and get a man's wage. It is economically most wasteful to accept crippled men as charges and then to teach them trivial tasks like the weaving of baskets or some other form of unremunerative hand labour, in the hope, not of aiding them to make a living, but of preventing despondency.
  When a man is taken on by the Employment Department, the theory is to put him into a job suited to his condition. If he is already at work and he does not seem able to perform the work, or if he does not like his work, he is given a transfer card, which he takes up to the transfer department, and after an examination he is tried out in some other work more suited to his condition or disposition. Those who are below the ordinary physical standards are just as good workers, rightly placed, as those who are above. For instance, a blind man was assigned to the stock department to count bolts and nuts for shipment to branch establishments. Two other able-bodied men were already employed on this work. In two days the foreman sent a note to the transfer department releasing the able-bodied men because the blind man was able to do not only his own work but also the work that had formerly been done by the sound men.
  This salvage can be carried further. It is usually taken for granted that when a man is injured he is simply out of the running and should be paid an allowance. But there is always a period of convalescence, especially in fracture cases, where the man is strong enough to work, and, indeed, by that time usually anxious to work, for the largest possible accident allowance can never be as great as a man's wage. If it were, then a business would simply have an additional tax put upon it, and that tax would show up in the cost of the product. There would be less buying of the product and therefore less work for somebody. That is an inevitable sequence that must always be borne in mind.
  We have experimented with bedridden men--men who were able to sit up. We put black oilcloth covers or aprons over the beds and set the men to work screwing nuts on small bolts. This is a job that has to be done by hand and on which fifteen or twenty men are kept busy in the Magneto Department. The men in the hospital could do it just as well as the men in the shop and they were able to receive their regular wages. In fact, their production was about 20 per cent., I believe, above the usual shop production. No man had to do the work unless he wanted to. But they all wanted to. It kept time from hanging on their hands. They slept and ate better and recovered more rapidly.
  No particular consideration has to be given to deaf-and-dumb employees. They do their work one hundred per cent. The tubercular employees--and there are usually about a thousand of them--mostly work in the material salvage department. Those cases which are considered contagious work together in an especially constructed shed. The work of all of them is largely out of doors.
  At the time of the last analysis of employed, there were 9,563 sub-standard men. Of these, 123 had crippled or amputated arms, forearms, or hands. One had both hands off. There were 4 totally blind men, 207 blind in one eye, 253 with one eye nearly blind, 37 deaf and dumb, 60 epileptics, 4 with both legs or feet missing, 234 with one foot or leg missing. The others had minor impediments.
  The length of time required to become proficient in the various occupations is about as follows: 43 per cent. of all the jobs require not over one day of training; 36 per cent. require from one day to one week; 6 per cent. require from one to two weeks; 14 per cent. require from one month to one year; one per cent. require from one to six years. The last jobs require great skill--as in tool making and die sinking.
  The discipline throughout the plant is rigid. There are no petty rules, and no rules the justice of which can reasonably be disputed. The injustice of arbitrary discharge is avoided by confining the right of discharge to the employment manager, and he rarely exercises it. The year 1919 is the last on which statistics were kept. In that year 30,155 changes occurred. Of those 10,334 were absent more than ten days without notice and therefore dropped. Because they refused the job assigned or, without giving cause, demanded a transfer, 3,702 were let go. A refusal to learn English in the school provided accounted for 38 more; 108 enlisted; about 3,000 were transferred to other plants. Going home, going into farming or business accounted for about the same number. Eighty-two women were discharged because their husbands were working--we do not employ married women whose husbands have jobs. Out of the whole lot only 80 were flatly discharged and the causes were: Misrepresentation, 56; by order of Educational Department, 20; and undesirable, 4.

My Thoughts on Various Topics

Reducing Homelessness, Un/Underemployment, Permatemping

Table of contents

Child pages

Sources of Information

Wikipedia Articles

People

Quora

Videos (YouTube)

Articles

Organizations

Gathering Background Information on Homeless People

Books

News Articles

Down Syndrome

Misc Links