Several posts today featured GOP candidates spouting off about "free money" and "dependency". Yet where is government when it comes to the thing poor people need the most help with: finding/stabilizing housing in an erratic jobs environment.
Where I live rents are off the hook, nonprofits that have nothing to do with housing are receiving non-stop phone calls from desperate people in imminent need of help, while our mayor's best proposal is to encourage people to continue to "couch surf"!
If you talk to anyone who hasn't been in this desperate situation, they have no handle on the situation at all. They think everyone is on Section 8, even though the Section 8 Wait List hasn't opened up in over a decade here (who knows how long before that) and probably never will. The mayor sold all the units of public housing in the city and has made nothing but disparaging comments about the effect of building low-incoming units. The grants we got to help the homeless went into consultants, committees, and reports. There is no political will to fight back because everyone secretly agrees: as long as their own housing is fine, they'd rather all those who lost out just go away.
Don't even try to scream and cry or carry signs in protest. We're in the new "mental health" regime. While no one will do anything tangible to help the homeless or resolve the issues that cause their stress, they will throw a dumptruck of money at checking on whether they need psychiatrists or sending out some police to see whether some uniformed authority figures can do anything to "help".
So much run-around. So much waste of resources and spending *around* the issues instead of spending directly on doing the right thing.
Dudes! We would be saving a heck of a lot of tax money, redeeming a heck of a lot of people for the productive workforce, and probably saving a heck of a lot of sanity if we just recognized the simple problems for what they were: when income is irregular, people can't meet regular commitments for rent and bills. They need to be shored up before the stress itself causes them to lose their jobs, making the problem worse. (Or even exacerbates health problems, causing an irreversible vicious cycle). People need help with very simple things: housing, food, heating, communications, basic necessities. People need to be allowed to earn money on top of help with these things because there are irregular expenses that aren't always covered by standardized categories. A fast-food job might require non-slip shoes, grandma might need a walker with a basket, a woman might need a special support bra. It's ridiculous to block people in poverty from getting the things that might prove to be a stepping stone out of poverty.
Anyway - help poor people take care of those needs, with minimal paper work and indignity. Then suddenly, voila, there is less stress. Then suddenly, those poor people have the breathing room to get a better job and turn their lives around. Just start with the principle of doing what it takes to actually HELP people instead of constantly humiliating people, putting people with through stress, hassle, humiliation, mental torture, and ultimately physical torture as they are herded into homelessness.
It's simpler and cheaper to do the right thing.
But the taxpayers spend more and make things more complicated so jackasses can go on TV and opine about "dependency" on a system that no one can understand because it's so incredibly convoluted and obtuse.
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