Are Public Housing Units Subjected To Random, Warrantless "On Demand" Searches By Police?

Reading the NYT editorial below reminded me of a recent conversation with someone I supported in the transition from street to housing who told me that several days ago, police showed up at his public housing apartment complex and went door to door with a drug dog, ordering people out of their homes and searching - without warrants or probable cause (according to my source)- those units for "contraband."

Upon hearing this, I asked the man why he allowed them into his unit without a warrant?  He stated that "the lease has something in it that allows them to do this."  

I searched our local Affordable Housing provider for a sample lease and found the following at http://www.nashville-mdha.org/pdfs/ModelLease.pdf  Nowhere in this lease did I find anything that overruled a Constitutional Right.

Image courtesy of: http://www.ibj.com/renewal-planned-for-towers/PARAMS/post/1640

By the way, if my recollection of my college Constitutional Law course is accurate, no law, rule, regulation or policy in the entire country can overrule a Constitutional Right, and I don't recall seeing any amendments that say public housing authorities have the right to enter "on demand" any domicile without probable cause or a warrant to randomly search the unit.  

What I believe may be happening, if what I've been told turns out to be true ( I want to make it clear this is an allegation at this point), is that the landlord may be using an extraordinarily broad interpretation to the following lease condition:

12.Inspection By Landlord

It is understood and agreed that Landlord shall have the right to enter and inspect premises at all reasonable times to insure maintenance and safety of the premises.

 
As my friend said, he feels like he's living in a prison cell, where guards have the ability to enter and shake him (and every one of his neighbors) down "at will." 

If his allegation turns out to be true, I would agree completely with him.  I would hope too that even the most passionate hardliner against drugs and criminal activity would pause a moment and consider the ramifications...the slippery slope a policy like this brings to the table for all of us.

Then I would reach immediately out to the ACLU and find a good attorney.

I get that public housing has had its share of serious crime and drug problems, and law abiding residents should not have to live in fear of gangs, dope dealers and the "criminal element."   To that end, rigorous enforcement of existing laws, good lighting and security cameras on the property, careful scrutiny and pre-screening or renters, etc., are all effective tools that can significantly reduce the problems associated with drugs and crime.  Cities all over the country have used these tactics with great effectiveness, and have done so without trampling - hell, stomping - Constitutional Rights in the process. 

But I think a very serious line is crossed when residents with few options for alternate housing are coerced into believing that as a condition of their renting of an affordable housing unit they must open the door on demand and be subjected to police searches without any probable cause and/or a warrant. 

Again, I want to point out that at present, I only have one side of the story and I do not have all the facts on the situation, and I may never get them all.  But if there is any truth whatsoever to the allegation made by a resident that he did indeed endure this situation, it is a very serious issue that should not be taken lightly by any of us.

Editorial

Public Housing as a ‘Penal Colony’

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: April 2, 2013

New York City’s constitutionally suspect stop-and-frisk program is rightly being hammered in federal courts. Earlier this year, the court ruled in the case of Ligon v. City of New York that the city had violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure by illegally stopping people outside of private buildings in the Bronx. In the case of Floyd v. City of New York, which is currently being heard in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the plaintiffs charge the city with illegally stopping and frisking citizens based on race.

A third lawsuit, Davis v. City of New York, challenges the legality of the program in the city’s public housing projects, where residents and visitors say they were illegally stopped or arrested. In a ruling in the Davis case just last week, Judge Shira Scheindlin rejected most of the city’s challenges to the plaintiff’s claims, clearing the way for the case to proceed to trial.

In allowing the case to go forward, the judge noted that jurors might reasonably reach several troubling conclusions about the case. They could decide that the police had adopted unconstitutional policies leading to widespread stops and arrests for trespassing; that the practice resulted from “inadequate training and supervision regarding constitutional standards, and inadequate discipline in responses to violation of those standards”; that the police treat similar crime levels more aggressively when they occur in public housing developments that have a large proportion of African-Americans.

Judge Scheindlin agreed that it was necessary to provide security for public housing developments. But the police’s aggressive stop-and-frisk tactics, she suggested, had taken an emotional toll on many innocent tenants.

She cited the testimony of Reginald Bowman, the president of a public housing resident leadership group, who compared life in the public housing projects under stop-and-frisk to a “penal colony” where law-abiding parents are set upon by the police while going to the store to get milk and cookies for their children.

Instead of belittling the claims of the plaintiffs, the city needs to settle these suits and ensure that police policies adhere to Fourth Amendment guarantees of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

"If you want to end homelessness, you've got to house people, as fast as possible. "

Whenever I'm presenting, participating, or listening to talk about ending homelessness, I'm struck by the manner in which so many of us - self included at times - get trapped in the minutiae of delivering services to support the person experiencing homelessness and lose sight of the end goal.

Bottom line: if you want to end homelessness, you've got to house people, as fast as possible. 

Period. 

Rapid Rehousing: Achieving the Greatest Impact in Ending Homelessness        "To build on the legacy of HPRP, we cannot simply celebrate its successes. We have to be willing to learn its lessons. I am asking our grant recipients to...invest an unprecedented percentage of your funding in rapid rehousing...We can have the greatest impact on homelessness by helping people who have just fallen into homelessness quickly get back out by rapidly finding long-term living situations for them."   - HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, Feb 3, 2012 Message to HUD's Emergency Solutions Grant Recipients on the Importance of Rapid Rehousing

Why are we still writing about the Recovery Act's Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP) if its legacy is no longer news? Communities have been living without HPRP for over a year, but they still have choices today about how to use Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG), Continuum of Care, HOME Tenant Base Rental Assistance (TBRA), Supportive Services for Veterans and their Families (SSVF) and even Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) to dramatically decrease the amount of time people experience homelessness by leveraging these funds for rapid rehousing.  Rapid rehousing is an effective and efficient strategy to help families and individuals quickly move out of homelessness and into permanent housing with appropriate services. Following the demonstrated success of the HPRP initiatives in communities across the country, USICH and HUD have been joined by a growing number of federal agencies that are urging investment in rapid rehousing interventions. Rapid rehousing is an important tool to serve individuals and families who need time-limited assistance to get and keep housing. A rapid rehousing model offers five primary program elements: Immediate intervention and engagement to help households obtain housing; Financial assistance to address barriers to secure housing such as security deposits, utility arrearages, and other one-time costs; Flexible funding for short-term rental assistance typically over a period of three to six months but in some cases for over a 24 month period, as well as intermittently; Case management to link households to mainstream benefits and community supports to help families stabilize and retain housing; Frequent reassessment to adapt provider service engagement levels to the households' needs and strengths. The objective is to minimize the need for ongoing assistance while promoting greater family independence.  Known as progressive engagement, this approach begins with a small amount of assistance initially, while adding more assistance if needed to reach a level of household stability. With the end of the HPRP, communities across the country are reallocating funds to increase their ability to offer rapid rehousing because it is a cost effective and viable tool that allows them to serve more families and individuals. Rapid rehousing offers a way out of homelessness, particularly among families, by increasing turnover in shelters so that communities can improve their ability to serve more families in immediate need of emergency placement without increasing shelter-bed capacity.  Most importantly, rapid rehousing minimizes extended shelter stays that can be stressful for individuals and families with children. The VA's SSVF program, which emphasizes a rapid rehousing approach, demonstrates numerous success stories, such as that of Army Veteran Felipe Medrano and his family. Shortly after entering the Emergency Family Shelter at UMOM New Day Centers in Maricopa County, the Medrano family connected with an SSVF case manager and quickly located affordable housing. This allowed them to minimize their shelter stay and return to safe, stable housing much more quickly. After only three months of incrementally lowered rental assistance, the family was able to pay their own rent and thrive independently. Regarding the SSVF program, UMOM New Day Centers says that it "has been of great benefit to the agencies as it has allowed us to truly assess the needs of our Veteran Families and target resources that are appropriate to the housing and supportive needs of the families." Many communities that have adopted rapid rehousing are experiencing the benefits of these systemic changes.  In an evaluation of their Performance Improvement Clinics in seven communities in four states, one presentation from the National Alliance to End Homelessness shows that the rate of return to homelessness for families served in rapid rehousing is only four percent, compared with 10 percent from shelter and nine percent from transitional housing. Furthermore, 85 percent of exits by families to permanent housing were accomplished with rapid rehousing. For single adults, the percent of exits into permanent housing with rapid rehousing was 75 percent. In Utah, The Road Home operates the largest family shelter in Salt Lake County. Over the past five years The Road Home experienced a significant increase in the number of families seeking shelter. They responded by implementing a rapid rehousing and a progressive engagement service delivery model beginning in October 2009. In September 2012, The Road Home reported that the average cost of supporting a family through rapid re-housing was $4,866, with an average length in the rapid rehousing program of five months. Moreover, their average length of stay in shelter has been reduced from 71 days five years ago to 26 days. Most importantly, since the program began, 87 percent of families have remained housed. The Road Home continues to work with the 13 percent of families that do return to homelessness and helps them get rehoused, often with more intensive service packages. Federal agencies are united in their support of rapid rehousing's demonstrated effectiveness in reducing homelessness and urge communities to continue to adopt rapid rehousing strategies.   Recently, Ann Oliva, Director of HUD's Special Needs Assistance Programs encouraged communities to use ESG for rapid rehousing, reinforcing the key point articulated by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan released in a video message a year ago.    Earlier this year, the Department of Health and Human Services released an information memorandum on how states can effectively use TANF as a resource to assist families that are homeless or at risk of homelessness, including rapid rehousing. The Department of Veterans Affairs SSVF program invests in rapid rehousing, providing $300 million this year for services and financial assistance to rehouse Veterans and their family members.  While communities respond to sequestration-related and other budget reductions, investing in rapid rehousing is one way to do more with less.  For more information on Rapid Rehousing see USICH's information in the recently launched Solutions Database.

Affordable Housing Still Out of Reach For Many, Especially Families...

Back in 2011, our friends at the National Low Income Housing Coalition provided a superb"industry decoder" for understanding the housing wage and what those of us living in the "low wage" categories are facing as we try to obtain housing. 

Their latest update in 2013 brings a little good news, primarily related to veterans experiencing homelessness, but paints a bleaker picture for those of us trying to find affordable housing for families.

NLIHC Executive Director Barbara Poppe shared that,

"The most recent national report on homelessness found that as a country we are making progress on ending chronic and Veterans homelessness, yet the number of persons in families experiencing homelessness increased. An increasingly tight rental market and the drop in the number of affordable rental units available to extremely low income households is the greatest barrier to achieving our vision that 'no one should experience homelessness, no one should be without a safe, stable place to call home.'”

Amen.

The Housing Wage: Our Industry Decoder

May 25, 2011

By Danilo Pelletiere

Danilo Pelletiere is the Research Director and Chief Economist for the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
For most “housers,” immersed as we are in the deep details of the world of housing and housing policy, a quick, easy to understand and convincing elevator speech isn’t easy to come by.
As a group, we produce a lot of reports on the need for affordable housing. Within these reports are a lot of numbers arranged in a lot of tables, charts and maps. They break down various housing problems by various measures of tenure, cost, location, income and other household characteristics.
To us, the need for this analysis is clear. Housing markets and housing problems vary over time. Similarly, homes, financing and assistance come in bewildering variations to serve varying needs. But this barrage of numbers and policies can be confusing. In response, longtime antipoverty advocate and National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) founder Cushing Dolbeare developed the Housing Wage.
The Housing Wage boils down important concepts – income, housing costs, quality, and location – to a single number. This year the National Housing Wage is $18.46. On average, nationwide a household has to earn at least this amount an hour, working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment at HUD’s Fair Market Rent, which includes utilities.
The report Out of Reach provides Housing Wages for every metropolitan area and rural county in the country as well as states and combined non-metropolitan areas. The Housing Wage puts the mismatch between what people earn and the price of a modest home into perspective. There is not a state in the country where the two-bedroom fair market rent is affordable to someone earning the minimum wage. In fact, there is not a county nationwide where the full-time minimum wage can secure a two-bedroom apartment.

Expensive coastal cities tend to have the highest Housing Wages, e.g., the top five are San Francisco, $35.25; Stamford, Conn., $34.83; Santa Cruz, Calif., $33.27; Honolulu, $32.73; and San Jose, $32.73.
While these cities are known for being “unaffordable,” the areas with the lowest housing costs may not be any better for the majority of renters. For example, in San Francisco the average renter in that city is estimated to make 75% of what is needed ($26.40). But in Flint, Mich., with a declining population and falling home prices, the average renter earns $9.45 an hour, 78% of the city’s Housing Wage ($12.08). In Michigan’s rural areas, the relationship is worse; the average renter’s wage ($8.39) is just 70% of the Housing Wage ($12.15). Affordable housing is not a coastal or a big city issue. It is a national issue.
These kinds of wage comparisons provide a simple summary of the more complex information needed to understand housing markets, housing choices and the nation’s lack of affordable housing. Most non-housers will likely still have a lot of questions such as: What about other size apartments? What about multiple wage earners? What is the Fair Market Rent? What is the definition of affordable and modest? Fortunately, Out of Reach provides data and related explanations to help address all these topics, too. But if people are asking these questions, you are past the elevator speech.
These are some talking points from Out of Reach that can also be replicated at the local level

• The national two-bedroom Fair Market Rent (FMR) is $960 per month.
• A household must earn $18.46 an hour or $38,400 annually in order to afford that FMR.
• In 2011, the estimated average wage for renters in the United States is just $13.52, a significant decline from $14.44 in 2010 and well below the Housing Wage.
• Lowest income households working at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 would have to work 85 hours each week, more than two full time jobs, to afford the national average FMR for a one-bedroom home.

Help Pro Publica Investigate Temporary Staffing Agencies

Anyone who has ever worked for some of these temporary staffing agencies almost invariably has a horror story about the pay, the hours, the conditions they were forced to work under, the treatment they received at the employment site, and/or the treatment they received at the hands of the temp agency employees themselves.

Many of us have horror stories that include all of the above, and all occurring on the same day.

The most memorable one for me was when I was working as a temp for a company that supplied the big 3 automakers with chrome pieces for the vehicles.  They will remain nameless as I don't want to end up floating in the toxic waste they crank out by the swimming pool load every day (I've clearly been watching too much of the series "Damages" )

I was a second shift forklift operator on the shipping dock of this company, located "somewhere" in mid-western Michigan.  The company often had 5 gallon cans of cyanide and these "mini-kegs" of sulfuric acid stacked on pallets and then stacked top of each other.  No, I am not kidding. Not sure what they used it all for, but I believe it was used in the chroming room.

This chroming room had some nasty chemical soups that would have to be disposed of, and they dumped it into a sealed bin that had to be kept closed, as prolonged contact with air would cause it to burst into flames.  Niiiicccee.

They also had these big flat open air containers that they would fill to about a foot from the top with chemical sludge waste and about once a month, a truck with a boom lift would come in, pick this massive dumpster up with a crane and load it on the back of a truck.  This was accomplished by hooking the crane's lift hook into a set of chains in the center of the dumpster and then just gently lifting and swiveling the mess onto the back of the truck.

Trouble was, the container, even tho it was filled with liquid, wasn't particularly equal in the weight distribution, since some of the waste that was dumped had thick sludge.  Because the forklift trucks could only dump on one side and towards one end of the container, it often was heavier on one side and end than the other.

So one day I was on duty when the boom-truck arrived to put this bubbling, smoking witches brew monstrosity onto the truck.

As the crane lifted the container, it tilted, spilling about half of the contents onto the floor.  The foreman, obviously scared, ordered all of the "temporary" employees to the shipping dock over the loudspeaker.  He then gave the 8 or 9 of us stupid enough to show up push brooms and rubber knee boots and instructed us to "sweep it into the floor drain." 

One of the guys went down into the soup and began sweeping the muck and within minutes was bright red, gasping for air and came running out of the mess.  His boots were smoking and the bristles on the broom were....gone.

The Foreman began yelling at us to "get down there and clean it up," and I told him to "f*ck off," threw the broom down and promptly left the premises.  Not sure about the rest of those poor saps, but after seeing those smoking boots and the bristles of that broom turned into slush, there was no way on God's green earth I was going to get anywhere near that shit.

I reported the company to the EPA the following day.  Not sure they ever did anything; I drove by that plant often and the hundreds and hundreds of 55-gallon drums of waste chemicals were still stacked outside the dock.  The area 1000 feet in any direction around those barrels looked like something out of a post nuclear war landscape, and I often wondered how many people were permanently damaged by the work they did in that factory.

I lost my job at the temporary service for "failing to perform the job assignment."

It's probably why I'm still alive to write this today.

If you've got a story, please share it with the folks at Pro Publica.  You could save someone's life, and at the very least, you may make temporary work a little better for those coming after you...

Have You Worked With a Temp Agency? Help Us Investigate

ProPublica, Apr. 29, 2013, 9:00 am

iStock photo by ricardoazoury

Today we published an investigation on temp agencies in Chicago and the underground labor brokers (known as “raiteros”) who recruit and transport their workers. Reporter Michael Grabell spoke with temp workers who were making less than minimum wage after having to wait for hours off the clock and pay fees for rides to work or getting their paycheck.
Have you worked with a temp agency as a worker, recruiter, or client company? We’re trying to gain a broad perspective. Do you have any tips about issues or situations we should investigate? We want to hear from you.
Tell us your story below (your information will be kept confidential) or contact reporter Michael Grabell directly at Michael.Grabell@propublica.org.
* * *

¿Ha trabajado con una agencia temp? Ayúdenos a investigar.

Hoy hemos publicado una investigación sobre las agencias de trabajo temporal en Chicago y el submundo de intermediarios de empleo (conocidos como “raiteros”) que reclutan y transportan a sus trabajadores. El reportero Michael Grabell habló con trabajadores temporales que ganaban menos del sueldo mínimo después de tener que esperar horas sin cobrar y también pagar tarifas por el transporte al trabajo o para recibir su cheque de paga.
¿Ha trabajado usted con una agencia temp (de trabajo temporal) como trabajador, reclutador o empresa cliente? Estamos intentando conseguir una perspectiva amplia. ¿Tiene usted alguna pista sobre asuntos o situaciones que tendríamos que investigar? Queremos que se ponga en contacto.
Cuéntenos su historia en el espacio debajo (su información será mantenida en la confidencialidad) o contacte directamente con el reportero Michael Grabell a Michael.Grabell@propublica.org.

Prison Profits: "success depends on housing the maximum numbers of inmates for the longest potential time as inexpensively as possible."

Aside from the sickening motivation that arises when shareholders pressure for-profit prisons to produce ever higher dividends, the potential for subversion of the rule of law and the ease in which politicians - who can also invest in these for profit pens - can criminalize behavior to keep them full is beyond terrifying.

We have a mega-problem in this country that arises with the mentality that the default solution to every societal woe that ails us is to send lawbreakers to jail.  Couple this with the power of the criminal justice Lobbying arm and the ability for lawmakers to invest in for profit prisons and you have a real recipe for disaster.

The power of this cabal becomes clearly apparent when solid research on the efficacy of alternative solutions to produce better outcomes than incarceration are repeatedly defeated in favor of "building more prisons," mandatory sentences, 3-strike laws, etc. The clearest supporting evidence I can provide of my fear around how easy it is to "customize justice" is this:

"African-Americans make up 40% of the prison population and are incarcerated seven times more often than whites, despite the fact that African-Americans make up only 12% of the population."

Moral monstrosity: America’s for-profit Gulag system

Nile Bowie is a political analyst and photographer currently residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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Published time: April 23, 2013 14:42

Maricopa County female inmates are padlocked by the ankle for chain gang duty in Phoenix, Arizona October 21, 2003. (Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

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Crime, Human rights, USA

The private prison population in the US has rocketed 17-fold over the last two decades mostly on the shoulders of the deep-pocketed prison lobby, and the business continues to thrive.

Try confining yourself to a small room in your home, like a bathroom or a closet, and spend a few hours there. One only cringes to imagine the detrimental psychological effects that kind of solitude creates for individuals who are subjected to solitary confinement for years at a time, knowing only the walls of their cell and the shades of light that creep across them. The abhorrent state of affairs at the Guantanamo facility often makes international headlines and arguably overshadows the calamity that is the US domestic prison system – where over six million people are subject to some form of correctional supervision, an amount exceeding those who toiled in the Soviet gulags during Stalin’s reign.

In the United States, some fifty thousand inmates pass their days in solitary confinement. While there is undoubtedly no shortage of violent criminals in America’s jails, millions are dolled out annually by privately owned prison lobbies directly to politicians in an effort to influence harsher ‘zero tolerance’ legislation and mandatory sentencing for many non-violent offenses.

While the US faces economic stagnation and unprecedented spending cuts to programs of social uplift, business is booming for the private prison industry. Like any other business, these institutions are run for the purpose of turning a profit. State and federal prisons are contracted out to private companies who are paid a fixed amount to house each inmate per day. Their profit depends on spending the minimum amount necessary on each inmate day-to-day, allowing private-hands to pocket the remaining money.

For the corrections conglomerates of America, success depends on housing the maximum numbers of inmates for the longest potential time as inexpensively as possible. Consider that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, far surpassing any other nation – for every 100,000 Americans, 743 citizens sit behind bars. The harsher sentences meted out to non-violent offenders in contrast to other industrialized nations speaks volumes of America’s enthusiastic embrace of a prison industrial complex.

Inmates walk around a gymnasium where they are housed due to overcrowding at the California Institution for Men state prison in Chino, California, June 3, 2011. (Reuters/Lucy Nicholson)

The number of people imprisoned under state and federal custody increased 772% percent between 1970 and 2009, largely due to the incredible influence that private corrections corporations wield against the American legal system. The argument is that by subjecting correctional services to market pressures, efficiencies will be increased and prison facilities can be run at a lower cost due to market competition.

What these privatizations produce in turn is a system that destroys families by incentivizing the mass long-term detention of non-violent criminals, a system that is increasingly difficult to deconstruct and reform due to millions paid out to state and federal policymakers. According to reports issued by advocacy group Public Campaign, the three major corrections firms –Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the GEO Group, and Cornell, have spent over $22 million lobbying Congress since 2001.

As a means of influencing policymaking at the federal level, at least $3.3 million have been given to political parties, candidates, and their political action committees, while more than $7.3 million has been given to state candidates and political parties since 2001, including $1.9 million in 2010, the highest amount in the past decade. Senators like Lindsay Graham and John McCain have received significant sums from the private prison corporations while Chuck Schumer, Chair of the Rules Committee on Immigration and Border Enforcement, received at least $64,000 from lobbyists.

The prison lobby thrives off of laws that criminalize migrants and submit them to mandatory detention prior to being deported, sometimes up to 10 months or more; private firms have consistently pushed for the classification of immigration violations as felonies to justify throwing more and more immigrants behind bars. The number of illegal immigrants being incarcerated inside the United States has risen exponentially under Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency responsible for annually overseeing the imprisonment of 400,000 foreign nationals at the cost of over $1.9 billion on custody-related operations.

The private prison industry has become increasingly dependent on immigration-detention contracts, and the huge contributions of the prison lobby towards drafting Arizona’s controversial immigration law SB 1070 are all but unexpected. Arizona's SB 1070 requires police to determine the immigration status of someone arrested or detained when there is “reasonable suspicion” that they’ve illegally entered the US, which many view as an invitation for rampant racial profiling against non-whites.

While the administration of Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer is lined with former private prison lobbyists, its Department of Corrections budget has been raised by $10 million in 2012, while all other Arizona state agencies were subject to budget cuts during that fiscal year. The concept of privatizing prisons to reduce expenses comes at great cost to the inmates detained, who are subjected to living in increasingly squalid conditions in jail cells across America. In 2007, the Texas Youth Commission (TYC), a state agency that overseas juvenile corrections facilities, was sent to a West Texas juvenile prison run by GEO Group for the purpose of monitoring its quality standards.

Administrative segregation prisoners take part in a group therapy session at San Quentin state prison in San Quentin, California, June 8, 2012. (Reuters/Lucy Nicholson)

The monitors sent by the TYC were subsequently fired for failing to report the sordid conditions they witnessed in the facility while they awarded the GEO Group with an overall compliance score of nearly 100% - it was later discovered that the TYC monitors were employed by the GEO Group. Independent auditors later visited the facility and discovered that inmates were forced to urinate or defecate in small containers due to a lack of toilets in some of the cells. The independent commission also noted in their list of reported findings that the facility racially segregated prisoners and denied inmates access to lawyers and medical treatment.

The ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center have also highlighted several cases where GEO Group facility administrators turned a blind eye to brutal cases of rape and torture within their facilities, in addition to cases of its staff engaging in violence against inmates. According to the Justice Department data, nearly 210,000 prisoners are abused annually (prison personnel are found responsible half the time), while 4.5 percent of all inmates reported sexual assaults and rape.

It’s not possible to conceive how such institutionalized repression can be rolled back when the Obama administration shows only complicity with the status quo – a staggering $18 billion was spent by his administration on immigration enforcement, including detention, more than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. Under Obama’s watch, today’s private prison population is over 17 times larger than the figure two decades earlier. Accordingly, Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, has condemned the recently passed state laws in Colorado and Washington that legalize the possession of marijuana in small amounts.

The Obama administration is bent on keeping in place the current federal legislation, where a first-time offender caught with marijuana can be thrown in prison for a year. It’s easy to see why common-sense decriminalization is stifled - an annual report released by the CCA in 2010 reiterates the importance of keeping in place harsh sentencing standards, “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.”

An inmate stands in his cell at Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles, California October 3, 2012. (Reuters/Jason Redmond)

Such is the nature of a perverted brand of capitalism, and today’s model bares little difference to the first private prisons introduced following the abolishment of slavery in the late 1800s, where expansive prison farms replaced slave plantations where predominately African-American inmates were made to pick cotton and construct railroads in states such as Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

Today, African-Americans make up 40% of the prison population and are incarcerated seven times more often than whites, despite the fact that African-Americans make up only 12% of the population. Inmates are barred from voting in elections after their release and are denied educational and job opportunities. The disproportionate levels of black people in prisons is undeniably linked to law enforcement’s targeting of intercity black communities through anti-drug stipulations that command maximum sentencing for possession of minute amounts of rock cocaine, a substance that floods poor black neighborhoods.

Perhaps these social ills are byproducts of a system that places predatory profits before human dignity. Compounding the illogic is that state spending on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education over the past two decades. Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s most famous political prisoner, has spent over three decades on death row; he was convicted in 1981 for the murder of a white police officer, while forensic experts say critical evidence vindicating Jamal was withheld from the trial.

In an interview with RT, Jamal relates his youth activism with the Black Panthers party against political imprisonment in contrast to the present day situation, “We could not perceive back then of what it would become… you can literally talk about millions of people incarcerated by the prisoner-industrial complex today: men, women and children. And that level of mass incarceration, really mass repression, has to have an immense impact in effect on the other communities, not just among families, but in a social and communal consciousness way, and in inculcation of fear among generations.”

The fear and immortality the system perpetuates shows no sign of abating. Being one of the few growth industries the United States has left, one can only imagine how many people will be living in cages in the decades to come.

"0.4 Percent" A Reason To Celebrate? Sort Of...

Haven't read through the new National Alliance To End Homelessness's "State of Homelessness" report in its entirety and wanted to state that at the outset, but from what I've seen so far, I think they did a thorough and excellent job in their report.

If there is any encouraging news coming from the info that leapt immediately out to me, it was that there was an oh-so-slight decrease in homelessness over the past couple of years, 0.4 percent. 

Ordinarily, I would say this is not only bad news, it should be embarrassing and shameful news for those of us who work in this field because clearly we are doing everything wrong.  Frankly, if this was the case under "normal" circumstances, I'd say we ought to simply fire everyone who works in homeless services and use all the money we pay in salaries, overhead and administrative costs to purchase as much affordable housing as we can while increasing the supply of Section 8 vouchers. Once that's done, we should then get the hell out of the way of those who would stampede their way into housing (and there are many, I know, who would argue we ought to just do that anyway!)

But the past few years have been anything but "normal" for many of us, especially those of us living at or below the poverty line here in the U.S.A.

Unemployment has remained consistently high (and contrary to the ignorant view that "homeless people don't want to work" we know that most folks enduring homelessness do indeed work, often at several jobs, trying like hell to get far enough ahead to be able to afford the thousands of dollars typically needed to enter into an apartment).

Affordable housing units are in extremely short supply.  Housing subsidies (Section 8, VASH, Shelter Plus Care) are next to impossible to even apply for and the waiting lists for a voucher can exceed 5 years in places.

Rules, regs and background checks flag people out of services far more than we are able to flag them into services, leaving them without any recourse and chaining them damned near permanently to a life on the streets. 

Budget cuts and diminishing grant access has reduced the size of the workforce to support and assist folks in navigating their way out of homelessness.

So when I see any decrease at all in homelessness in our current situation, I think that is reason to remain optimistic that we must be advancing in our approach and our solutions geared toward ending homelessness.

A lot still needs to be done, certainly, and the 0.4 percent number is nothing to be proud of.  But I think given what many of us were expecting to happen over the past few years, we have reason to be happy we saw any decrease at all. 

The State of Homelessness in America 2013

Report | April 8, 2013

Files: The State of Homelessness 2013 (PDF | 9.42 MB | 56 pages) SOH 2013: Chapter 1 - Homelessness Counts (PDF | 2.96 MB | 11 pages) SOH 2013: Chapter 2 - Economic and Housing Factors (PDF | 4.41 MB | 10 pages) SOH 2013: Chapter 3 - Demographic and Household Factors (PDF | 2.12 MB | 4 pages) SOH 2013: Executive Summary (PDF | 130 KB | 3 pages) SOH 2013: Appendices (PDF | 315 KB | 20 pages)

This is an excerpt from the report. To download the full report, please use the link above.
Executive Summary
The State of Homelessness in America 2013 examines trends in homelessness between 2011 and 2012 as well as the economic, housing, and demographic context in which homelessness changes over time. The report shows that, overall, the homeless population decreased by less than 1 percent, but this is not the full story. While the number of people experiencing homelessness as part of a family increased slightly, the number of individuals experiencing chronic homelessness and those identifying as veterans decreased significantly.
The mixed findings may be related to policy changes as well as to the economic climate in which these changes are taking place. Increased federal investment in effective solutions, such as permanent supportive housing, has been aimed at veterans and chronically homeless individuals. Also, during this time period, flexible federal resources were available to communities through the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP) to help prevent and end homelessness for families and individuals. Despite these resources, increased competition for housing resources and growing housing cost burden combined with increases in the size of the population living in doubled-up situations and poor single-adult-headed families make attaining and maintaining housing more difficult for families and single adults who are not chronically homeless.
Report Contents
The National Alliance to End Homelessness has published a series of reports chronicling changes in the levels of homelessness in the nation and individual states and jurisdictions in an effort to chart the nation’s progress in ending homelessness. The most recent of these, The State of Homelessness in America series, not only examines changes in national- and state-level homelessness data, but also provides data on related economic and demographic trends.

The State of Homelessness in America 2013, the third in a series from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, uses the most recently available national data from a variety of sources: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Association of State Budget Officers. This report includes three chapters. Chapter One presents data on homelessness at the national and state levels using point-in-time estimates of the overall homeless population and subpopulations, measured in 2011 and 2012. Chapter Two describes economic and housing factors that impact homelessness including housing cost and unemployment. Chapter Three describes demographic and household factors that impact homelessness including population groups that are at increased risk.

A series of appendices provide detailed, state-level information on all homelessness data and contextual factors described in this report as well as two-year trends.

Major Findings
Homelessness
Using the most recently available national data on homelessness, the 2011 and 2012 point-in-time counts as reported by jurisdictions to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the report chronicles changes in overall homelessness and in homeless subpopulations between 2011 and 2012. Point-in-time methodologies vary and are imperfect and, as such, the aggregated numbers do not represent a precise count of homeless people. The counts, however, when compared over time, provide a way to assess whether the homeless population has increased or decreased.

• The nation’s homeless population decreased by 0.4%, or about 2,325 people. At a point in time in January 2012, 633,782 people were experiencing homelessness. There was a decrease in all homeless subpopulations with the exception of persons in families.
• The largest decreases were among individuals identified as chronically homeless (6.8%) and Veterans (7.2%). The size of the chronic homeless population decreased from 107,148 in 2011 to 99,894 in 2012. The size of the Veteran homeless population decreased from 67,495 in 2011 to 62,619 in 2012.
• The national rate of homelessness was 20 homeless people per 10,000 people in the general population. The rate for Veterans was 29 homeless Veterans per 10,000 Veterans in the general population.
• A majority of persons identified as homeless were staying in emergency shelters or transitional housing, but 38% were unsheltered, living on the streets, or in cars, abandoned buildings, or other places not intended for human habitation. The size of the unsheltered population remained basically unchanged between 2011 and 2012.
• The number of people in homeless families increased by 1.4% between 2011 and 2012; however, there was no change in the number of homeless families.
• While the overall homeless population decreased between 2011 and 2012, it increased in 29 states.

Economic and Housing Factors
Homelessness is essentially caused by the inability of households to pay for housing. In recognition of this, this report examines a variety of economic and housing indicators that affect people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Each of these factors is examined for the years 2010 and 2011, the most recent for which they are available.

• Nationally, median household income decreased by 1.3% between 2010 and 2011, from $51,144 to $50,502. While the majority of states reported a decrease in median household income, 14 states reported increases.
• Between 2010 and 2011, the national poverty rate increased from 15.3% to 15.9%. This represents an almost 5% increase in the number of persons living in poverty; more than 48 million people were living in poverty in 2011.
• The unemployment rate decreased from 9.6% to 8.9% between 2010 and 2011, which represents a decrease of more than one million people who were unemployed in 2011.
• While spending on Medicaid increased between 2010 and 2011, spending on Public Assistance decreased.
• Among the 51 states, 38 reported an increase in the fair market rent between 2010 and 2011. Nationally, the average fair market rent for a two-bedroom housing unit increased by 1.5%.
• In 2011, more than 6.5 million households were spending more than 50% of their income for housing expenses, which was a 5.5% increase from 2010.
• Approximately one-third of households were renting their homes in 2011, a slight increase from 2010. Correspondingly, the rental vacancy rates decreased from 10.6% to 9.7% during this time period.

Demographic and Household Factors
A number of demographic groups have an increased risk of homelessness, including poor households who are living in doubled-up situations, single-person households, and family households with only one adult present.

• Between 2010 and 2011, all but 11 states reported an increase in the number of poor people living in doubled-up households. Nationally, there was a 9.4% increase.
• At the national level, there was an almost 6% increase in the number of poor single-person households. In 2011, 12.9% of all households living in poverty were comprised of a single person.
• More than one-half of the households living in poverty were family households with a single adult present. The number of these households increased by almost 6% between 2010 and 2011.
• In 2011, 48.6% of adults living in poverty were accessing safety net benefits, which represents an 11.5% increase from 2010.

Moving Forward
The State of Homelessness 2013 identifies a number of challenges and opportunities in the efforts to prevent and end homelessness in the United States. Scant decreases in the overall size of the homeless population and the rate of homelessness between 2011 and 2012 remind us that there is still a great deal of work to be done. However, the decreases in chronic and veteran homelessness indicate that, with federal, state, and local investment in strategies proven to end homelessness, progress can be made. The ongoing and increased development of permanent supportive housing, a proven solution to ending homelessness for people with disabilities, is bringing down chronic and veteran homelessness numbers in communities across the country.
Emphasis needs to be placed on creating more affordable housing and strengthening the safety net to prevent homelessness. Federal assistance that was previously available to fill some of those gaps—through the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP)—has been depleted and not replaced. Still, rapid re-housing works: communities have been able to decrease the amount of time households spend homeless and increase the number of households they serve.
Federal investment in rapid re-housing is increasing, but it is still not sufficient to address all of the need. During Fiscal Year 2013, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs made $300 million available for community-based grants for homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing through the Supportive Services for Veterans Families(SSVF) program. The Administration also published a memo to states urging them to consider using Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) assistance to help families gain and maintain housing stability. The new Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) program does provide flexible resources for communities to rapidly re-house households, but it has not been fully funded.
Finally, efforts to improve data quality and ongoing assessment of need and planning for interventions need to continue. Efforts include developing consistent and better methodologies for conducting the annual point-in-time counts of homeless persons. In addition, the HUD requirement that youth be included in the point-in-time counts will provide much needed information on an overlooked homeless subpopulation and provide a more comprehensive view of homelessness in the United States.

Pragmatic: practical as opposed to idealistic

One of keys to ending homelessness is being proactive enough to avoid it in the first place. Our current state of affairs in America don't align well with the idea of being "proactive" to just about anything.

In fact, we increasingly are becoming reactive to dire situations, forcing us to apply very expensive bandaids to exsanguinating social wounds that are literally bleeding our coffers dry in the process.

Many of the problems faced by those in poverty are a direct result of systemic responses to a variety of political decisions.  The root of most of our problems can be found from our social and political structures that create insurmountable challenges and barriers for many, while benefiting the few.

If you want to end homelessness, you must be able to make sure that the citizens of a given community have at their disposal the tools and resources necessary to support them while they labor to take care of themselves.

When a man or woman works 40 hours a week at a minimum wage job and cannot afford the price of rent for a 1 bedroom unit in any city in the United States, that is a systemic problem. 

When a man or woman falls ill or becomes injured and cannot afford the price of their own healthcare, forcing them into bankruptcy and poverty as a result, that is a systemic problem.

When a man or woman falls victim to the ravages of alcoholism or addiction and is sent to jail rather than into treatment, that is a systemic problem.

Solutions to these, and so many other, problems are not only available, they've been studied and their efficacy is documented. Unfortunately, pragmatic, sensible solutions don't seem to rise to the top very often when lawmakers endeavor to address the resultant challenges of broken components within our system. 

I'd prefer not to place the blame solely at the feet of Republicans, as the article below appears to do, because the truth is that politicians under the Democrat tent have for a very long time been just as culpable, just as "blameworthy" for the current system we operate under today. 

It would be nice if we could have our politicians throw out the Party labels and operate under the same pragmatic principles so many of us are forced to use when we wonder how we're going to pay the rent this month and put food on the table.

Sadly, those are issues politicians don't typically have to worry about, since often the rules they create for us don't apply to them....

Explaining Socialism To A Republican

2012/12/11

By Nurse Pam

I was talking recently with a new friend who I’m just getting to know. She tends to be somewhat conservative, while I lean more toward the progressive side.
When our conversation drifted to politics, somehow the dreaded word “socialism” came up. My friend seemed totally shocked when I said “All socialism isn’t bad”.  She became very serious and replied “So you want to take money away from the rich and give to the poor?”  I smiled and said “No, not at all.  Why do you think socialism means taking money from the rich and giving to the poor?
“Well it is, isn’t it?” was her reply.

I explained to her that I rather liked something called Democratic Socialism, just as Senator Bernie Sanders, talk show host Thom Hartman, and many other people do. Democratic Socialism consists of a democratic form of government with a mix of socialism and capitalism. I proceeded to explain to her the actual meaning terms “democracy” and “socialism”.
Democracy is a form of government in which all citizens take part. It is government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Socialism is where we all put our resources together and work for the common good of us all and not just for our own benefit. In this sense, we are sharing the wealth within society.
Of course when people hear that term, “Share the wealth” they start screaming, “OMG you want to rob from the rich and give it all to the poor!”  But that is NOT what Democratic Socialism means.
To a Democratic Socialist, sharing the wealth means pooling tax money together to design social programs that benefit ALL citizens of that country, city, state, etc.
The fire and police departments are both excellent examples of Democratic Socialism in America.  Rather than leaving each individual responsible for protecting their own home from fire, everyone pools their money together, through taxes, to maintain a fire and police department. It’s operated under a non-profit status, and yes, your tax dollars pay for putting out other people’s fires. It would almost seem absurd to think of some corporation profiting from putting out fires.  But it’s more efficient and far less expensive to have government run fire departments funded by tax dollars.
Similarly, public education is another social program in the USA. It benefits all of us to have a taxpayer supported, publicly run education system. Unfortunately, in America, the public education system ends with high school.  Most of Europe now provides low cost or free college education for their citizens. This is because their citizens understand that an educated society is a safer, more productive and more prosperous society. Living in such a society, everyone benefits from public education.
When an American graduates from college, they usually hold burdensome debt in the form of student loans that may take 10 to even 30 years to pay off. Instead of being able to start a business or invest in their career, the college graduate has to send off monthly payments for years on end.
On the other hand, a new college graduate from a European country begins without the burdensome debt that an American is forced to take on. The young man or woman is freer to start up businesses, take an economic risk on a new venture, or invest more money in the economy, instead of spending their money paying off student loans to for-profit financial institutions.  Of course this does not benefit wealthy corporations, but it does greatly benefit everyone in that society.
EXAMPLE  American style capitalistic program for college: If you pay (average) $20,000 annually for four years of college, that will total $80,000 + interest for student loans. The interest you would owe could easily total or exceed the $80,000 you originally borrowed, which means your degree could cost in excess of $100,000.
EXAMPLE  European style social program for college: Your college classes are paid for through government taxes.  When you graduate from that college and begin your career, you also start paying an extra tax for fellow citizens to attend college.
Question - You might be thinking how is that fair? If you’re no longer attending college, why would you want to help everyone else pay for their college degree?
Answer - Every working citizen pays a tax that is equivalent to say, $20 monthly.  If you work for 40 years and then retire, you will have paid $9,600 into the Social college program.  So you could say that your degree ends up costing only $9,600. When everyone pools their money together and the program is non-profit, the price goes down tremendously. This allows you to keep more of your hard earned cash!
Health care is another example: If your employer does not provide health insurance, you must purchase a policy independently.  The cost will be thousands of dollars annually, in addition to deductible and co-pays.
In Holland, an individual will pay around $35 monthly, period.  Everyone pays into the system and this helps reduce the price for everyone, so they get to keep more of their hard earned cash.
In the United States we are told and frequently reminded that anything run by the government is bad and that everything should be operated by for-profit companies. Of course, with for-profit entities the cost to the consumer is much higher because they have corporate executives who expect compensation packages of tens of millions of dollars and shareholders who expect to be paid dividends, and so on.
This (and more) pushes up the price of everything, with much more money going to the already rich and powerful, which in turn, leaves the middle class with less spending money and creates greater class separation.
This economic framework makes it much more difficult for average Joes to ”lift themselves up by their bootstraps” and raise themselves to a higher economic standing.
So next time you hear the word “socialism” and “spreading the wealth” in the same breath, understand that this is a serious misconception.
Social programs require tax money and your taxes may be higher. But as you can see everyone benefits because other costs go down and, in the long run, you get to keep more of your hard earned cash!
Democratic Socialism does NOT mean taking from the rich and giving to the poor.  It works to benefit everyone so the rich can no longer take advantage of the poor and middle class.