Futile Complications of Wagery

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, back in 2007, back before the massive foreclosures:

On any given night, approximately 750,000 men, women, and children are homeless in the US.

* 56% are living in shelters and transitional housing, while 44% are unsheltered.
* 59% are single adults and 41% are persons living in families.
* 98,452 are homeless families
* 23% are chronically homeless according to HUD’s definition.

Regarding hunger:

The [Greater Chicago] Food Depository defines "food insecurity" as "reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet," or, put simply, "unsure where they will find their next meal." Overall, Chicago has a 20.6 percent rate of food insecurity. That means 581,558 people are food insecure, a fairly terrifying number. Even worse, 36% of those who are food insecure are thus not eligible for federal nutrition programs because of their income - suggesting that the income cap for those programs may be too low.

In the impoverished, underresourced, segregated South side neighborhoods of Englewood and East Garfield Park where I've taught, nearly a third of residents (31.2%) face food insecurity.

We don't, oddly enough, have a shortage of houses or food. Just as we don't have a shortage of doctors or pharmaceuticals. We have a shortage of meaningful, living-wage jobs that provide adequate means to food, shelter, medical care, transportation, and a degree of economic security. There need not be a shortage of ingenuity nor of resources*. But there sure seems to be a shortage of imagination. Not because we are not intelligent, but because all of our thoughts of work and resultant earnings have been reduced (by the Powers That Be and, sadly, by our own complicity with them) to thinking about making paper money. How one job or another can afford us more paper money than another, what that can afford us, and how far that can last or get us.

Rather, I propose, we should be thinking in terms of direct ownership of our tools, talents, work, hands and how these can get us direct access to that which we need.

The world as it is set up is simply needlessly complicated. Wagery. That's what we live for. A certain amount of money that may or may not have anything to do with our skills, use, talents, passion, vision, focus. Nor the usefulness of those to people or the environment. Our aspiration is largely wasted on wagery.

The non-irony in all of this is that the most-compensated - the best waged - are those who control and run the Big Wagery. The Money People are those who, in general, receive the Most Money. And their control over us is predicated on our need for wages. Wage jobs give us money and with money we get...

Stuff.

Stuff like food and clothing and and electronics and housing and transport to our distant jobs and schools and stores where we may continually purchase food and clothing and... stuff. Much of which we know we could live without.

We are like fish who have been incepted to love us some bicycles.

It's all both largely important and immeasurably futile. We are playing a game of life and death - with someone else's rules, and on his island.

And until we loosen their control over our lives and get off their damned island, we have little control over our own lives.

JasDye for State Senator (Rent Is Too Damn High)

In a recent story in the venerable Cracked (which I generally adore, by the way), I ran across this paragraph and got my little danders up:

Hating capitalism is not on the table. This is America. Capitalism defines our history, our economy, and our national psyche And the purpose of this protest cannot be a naive attempt to change the very souls of American businesspeople. To punish businesses for their greed. It's the wrong message and counterproductive. Call me jaded, but I thought we all just took it for granted that businesses are amoral creatures driven by profit. Being enraged at Corporate America for being greedy is like reading Cracked.com and being enraged by its use of the list format. This is who we are.

I'm constantly bemused but really always annoyed by variants of this claim I just read in Crack'd:
Why punish the greedy bankers?


Maybe it's the fact that the question is a distraction. It's a ruse, meant to frame complex issues into bloody solutions.

Maybe it's the sheer hypocrisy of the statement. After all, rarely do the same people argue that we shouldn't punish immigrants for jumping a fence and an arbitrary border to allow their families to survive and give their kids a chance in life.  Sort of akin to this:

Or maybe it's the fact that I'm a moralist and supposedly, so are those who usually argue this point. Many are Christians. The Cracked writer self-identifies as a liberal. And yet the very question is antithetical to two basic tenets of Christianity and liberalism.

• Sharing is good.
• Greed is bad.

Any economical, political, and social system based on greed is one that deprives the majority of basic needs.

And while the rich can afford mansions, the shrinking middle class increasingly steal away into gated communities, and the noveau-rich try out sampler McMansions, those of us who question the system are patronized like children.

"But you can't say what they should and should not make, nor what they should or can buy with those. Besides, they work hard for their money."

I know many families scrunch together in one measly apartment. We have personally taken in people who would otherwise be homeless for various periods of time, partially because the housing laws and practices are unfair for those with bad credit. But also because people were in between jobs, or were treated unjustly by the system, or recently divorced.

Yet tons of acres of land are currently unused in the barrios and ghettos that could be turned into affordable or sustainable housing, or community gardens and even farms, but landowners don't want to give up temporary rights.

Families were foreclosed on their homes - even if they were making their mortgages - when the bubble burst. Even though they invested in their properties and lived in them and were finally settling into a place of their own they were told was theirs by the very people who would forcibly take it from them, they were out on the streets and lost their investment.

And their homes.

Let's view it from another perspective, though. One-fourth of all jobs in the US now pays enough to qualify as poverty-level or below. That is one out of every four jobs that the typical American could have - from the shrinking few that are available - is making less money than necessary to survive on, under an old rubric that needs to change.

The old rubric of poverty is based on food. Because food was a much more expensive portion of the typical American family's budget, it was estimated to be a third of the monthly cost of living. And that is what the rubric of the poverty level is based on: How much would it cost an American family to sustain themselves on emergency food - and then multiply that by three. Which may be a fine way to still describe who qualifies for federal or state aid, but it's completely disastrous if, say, it's no longer relevant.

While the overall prices of food have largely stabilized and not moved much over the last thirty years or so (of course, we are dealing with that cost in other ways), the costs of housing and insurance have bloated far out of proportion. While food used to account for a third of the budget and housing roughly one-fourth, now food counts for a seventh of the typical budget while families are lucky to find a place to live that will only cost them a third of their intake. But at poverty levels, without subsidized housing it's nearly impossible for a working class family to find safe housing - let alone housing that is easily accessible to their places of work (often, they are across town from their low-paying jobs) that costs anywhere near fifty percent of their wages.

And, again, we are in a recession. And the first cuts during a recession are to social programs of uplift. Programs that would help ease the financial burden of finding affordable housing. Oddly, the very programs that are most necessary during these very times for the most people. But, since those people don't have access to the halls of power, more of those people are left under the burden of both food and living scarcity.

So, after their regressive payroll taxes are taken out, what little remains for a vast amount of working class Americans is chewed up between child care (if possible), food, clothes, car notes, gas to get them across the city to their low-paying jobs, and rent. Health care may not be an option because they aren't wealthy enough to afford it and are considered too wealthy to go on Medicaid.

Everything is in a constant state of emergency for a third of US citizens. 


This is unacceptable.

And frankly, I'm not interested in blaming landowners, or bankers, or even banks - as a whole (Some are guilty, for sure. But not all). I'm interested in dismantling a system.

An economic and political system that favors a few for the price of the many is an evil system. Greed is EVIL. It should not be the primary motivator of any system.

There are solutions, but I am under the conviction that it would mean changing our entire society's values around.
To live more simply.
To truly have a love revolution of sharing.
To give control back to community.
To live off the earth and therefore employ everybody who is able to work.

It is called Localism. We're continuing to talk about that, but I also want to talk about my possible run for a political seat.

My name is JasDye. And I will speak truth to power with the American people. Because, for most of us, the Rent Is Too Damn High.

Chicago Tuesdays: Why Local?

Tonight a few thousand Chicagoans are going to be grilling mayoral candidates about issues of local interest at UIC. While most of the world is interested in Rahm "Hammer" Emanuel, this forum excites me with the possibility of introducing Miguel del Valle to these entrenched citizens. Community activists of the most pure type, they are here to fight for the rights of their families and their neighbors. And I love them for that. (Suck on that, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin)

Speaking of Beck and Palin (and.... SUCK IT!), I realize that they are the big names. That if I want traffic to my site, all I need to do is talk about them - or some other big national name, but the KKKlowns tend to be the biggest draw - and then post a link on some sort of (usually left-leaning) political-interest/humor site. But the problem is, as much as I can't stand those ignorant racists and the profit-induced lies they spew, they really don't have much to do with the everyday mechanisms of our daily worlds (well, maybe they helped destroy true health care reform. Thanks for letting my extended family members suffer, a**holes!).

Although all politics ain't local, much of it is. The groundwork sure is. It seems obvious that most of the concern for politics in this nation only occurs every four years, at the election of a president. But of course, with the division of power in this country, and with its immense size, the president really only has so much power (though executive orders and the scope of the military industrial complex and 'homeland security' industrial complex, etc., have enlarged it in scary proportions lately). Localized communities, however, have more access to their local pols and policies.

Take, for instance, two issues we've been dealing with at this site for a while: health care access and affordable housing. Both issues could use some national help, for sure (creating laws that recognize health care and housing as a fundamental human right issue could be one such way, for starters), but, if we're honest, the work to accomplish such practicalities is local. Even if nationally we were to establish, say, Single Payer Health Care, we must acknowledge that that only changes the way hospitals and hcp's are paid, and the way that we - as a collective society - pay for our care. It can't, however, make sure that the hospitals, techs, nurses, and doctors provide equitable care to Black and Latino populations. And their neighborhoods.

Housing is also very local. Of course this only makes sense - after all, prices for a place in Manhattan are going to wildly vary from the same space in Aurora, Cleveland, Chicago, LA, Oak Lawn, Boston, or Seattle. In fact, in Chicago, it should become even more localized. The rubric for measuring what housing is "affordable" in this area is based on not just what the median payment is for a rental in the city, but in the surrounding collar counties - which includes the super-affluent North Shore. So, someone paying $600 for a three-bedroom in Garfield Park (ok, I totally made that up) is not going to be considered as weighty because someone is paying four times as much for something like that in Wicker Park, six times as much in Lincoln Park, and eight times as much in Wilmette. The result is that what is deemed as "affordable" in Chicago is not affordable for the typical working class family. People who typically make $20,000 a year between two jobs shouldn't have to pay half or more than that just to keep their families indoors.

Having said all of that, I'm going to try to maintain Chicago Tuesdays and ask my blogging friends to also have periodical local features (if not local blogs). I'm also in the process of adding a blogroll of Chicago interests. If you know of any worthwhile Chicago-area sites, please keep me informed. Thanks!

* Chicago and suburbs neighborhoods map courtesy of http://www.wildonions.org/Neighborhoods-Suburbs.htm

Chicago Tuesdays (Late Edition): Bad News, Good News

First, the bad news. Bad, I suppose, if you were hoping for miracles in this city. But I like to be hopeful; it's a nice change of pace.

And here's the link to that story in the Chicago Journal.

Last week 13 members of a committee defied Daley and forwarded the ordinance to set aside 20 percent of the city’s annual tax increment financing revenues toward affordable housing to a full city council vote last Wednesday.

With more than half of the aldermen in support, sponsor Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27th) was concerned that a few might “double cross” he and others who have worked since last spring to bring the ordinance to vote.

One week later the ordinance was back in the joint committee after intervention by the Mayor’s office. In the end, it was Burnett who decided to avoid the full vote. He decided that the wiser course of action was to negotiate a new substitute ordinance over the original—one that Daley could agree on while satisfying other aldermen now seeking amendments and reelection.

One possible amendment rips the guts out of the affordable housing ordinance by turning the articulated mandate to spend 20 percent of annual TIF dollars—about $100 million in 2009—into an unenforceable goal.

But now for some good news, just in time for our elaborately long winter season (care of Humboldt Park Portal News):

Eight years of hard work, long hours, and countless SOS calls culminated today in the opening of Humboldt Park Social Services' (HPSS) new interim-housing facility for men. Deborah McCoy, HPSS Board President, cut the ribbon for this new 22-bed facility that will allow homeless men to transition from emergency shelter to interim housing.

During an impassioned speech, Delia Ramirez, HPSS Executive Director, explained that this new model is critically important. Emergency facilities only provide extremely temporary shelter – often no more than one night, given intense demand. Interim housing, on the other hand, provides several months of shelter along with the wraparound services essential to a successful transition from homelessness to permanent housing and independent living.

Through its Center for Changing Lives and Center for Working Families, HPSS will offer such wraparound services as housing placement, housing relocation, housing counseling, and employment preparation to men housed within the facility. They will also offer job training to interim-housing residents through their soup kitchen, which feeds 100 people daily...

As a volunteer for the project, Dan Splaingard, Rose Architectural Fellow for Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation, designed and helped build the custom bunk beds for the space that will serve as the sleeping area. He explained, “We were trying to make something that, while utilitarian, was trying to give a bit of an uplift . . . a quality of the handmade with colors that will imbue a sense of home.”

James, one of the inaugural residents of the facility, seemed to agree. The university graduate had always held a job, but suddenly found himself unemployed, then homeless, several months ago. He expressed gratitude for the services provided by HPSS, asserting, “We need more like them” in the community.

5

Sweet Home Chicago (Come On! Baby Don't You Want to Go?)

Chances are, if you're at all 1) a Chicagoan and 2) involved in local politics, you've heard of TIFs (Tax Incremental Financing). You also know that TIFs are a form of tax that are supposed to be diverted to help blighted communities (such as Lawndale) garner business interests and stay together. Of course, they're not being used for that purpose. They're largely being used to court big businesses that least need the incentives.

So, let's make it about retaining community. Sweet Home Chicago is a coalition of various community groups that advocate for affordable housing funding from TIFs.

The Sweet Home proposal:

Each year the city would dedicate 20 percent of TIF funds collected towards affordable housing. If this were in effect in 2009, $99 million would have gone towards housing.
Developments would qualify to receive funds if 50 percent of the units were affordable to households earning less than $37,000 for a family of four. In addition, citywide, 40 percent of the units created each with the dedicated funds must serve households earning less than $22,600 a year for a family of four.
For housing that is for sale, units would have to be affordable to families of four earning less than $60,300.

Please sign the petition for Sweet Home Chicago.

The ability to pay rent and stay housed comes before any other need of a community. If TIF (tax increment financing) dollars are meant to build and support blighted communities, there is surely no greater way for Chicago to use them than on affordable housing.

Affordable housing needs to be a priority. It is the long-term sort of investment that is too often overlooked for short-sighted, quick infusions of cash that don't sustain communities. We agree with other housing advocates and organizations that the language of the Sweet Home Chicago bill can ensure planning flexibility while still prioritizing affordable housing.

Please don't let this opportunity to ensure a place to live for Chicago's neediest citizens pass by.

This petition is to let the Mayor and Councilmen of Chicago know that, as negotiations on the bill move forward, the provision of affordable housing must remain a priority.