Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force – SRRT/ALA

On January 19, police and fire officials in St. Petersburg, Florida, dismantled a tent city inhabited by homeless people.

According to The Ledger and other media, officers reportedly destroyed many of the tents and the personal possessions left inside.

Facing litigation and public outrage at the manner in which the city acted, Mayor Rick Baker announced the availability of $150,000 to help homeless people and plans for a new shelter with 200 beds.

Outside City Hall, an advocate for the homeless said he was puzzled that no one who is homeless had a say in Baker’s plan.

“Homeless people are more than happy to sit down and share their experiences,” Eric Rubin said. “Aren’t they the best ones to know what will work?” …

Darryl Rouson, the former president of the St. Petersburg NAACP, represents the Rev. Bruce Wright and his Refuge Ministries, as well as several homeless people who had their belongings destroyed in the police raids.

On the same day that he attended Baker’s news conference, Rouson formally notified the city that it could face a lawsuit for civil rights violations that include destroying personal property without due process.

More than a week before the raid, Mayor Baker published an op-ed that speaks to his belief that poverty is a lifestyle:

The difficult balance is to satisfy our societal and moral obligation to help those in our community who are in need and who are willing to work toward independence, but not open the door to make us a magnet for people to come from other places, or for those who simply want our taxpayers to support a lifestyle that should not be tax-subsidized.

As the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty points out, the “magnet theory” is a myth: 75% of homeless people remain in the city in which they became homeless. That said, perhaps more people would “choose” a different “lifestyle” if living wages and affordable housing were available to everyone.

A week before the raid, the St. Petersburg Times profiled some of the tent city’s residents, including a woman who escaped domestic abuse, a couple in their late-20s, a bi-polar woman on disability, and a former felon.

Watching Jessica Tennyson sweep out her tent, it’s hard to imagine she could lose anything. Slowly, meticulously, she slides the broom bristles across the lip of the dustpan. Back and forth, she strains to get every grain of sand, every sliver of grass.

But she did lose something: her Social Security disability check. Two months running the checks have failed to come, and now she says the government has put a freeze on her account until it can determine if the checks were stolen and cashed.

Want to be a part of the solution in St. Pete? Here are some organizations seeking your help:

Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless
www.pinellashomeless.org/ez/
727-528-5763

St. Vincent de Paul
www.svdpsouthpinellas.org/donations.html
727-823-2516

Catholic Charities
www.ccdosp.org
727-893-1313

What a great way to start 2007! We almost missed the following positive news, which appeared December 25th:

Last week, the city [of Worcester, Mass.] settled with the Legal Assistance Corp. of Central Massachusetts and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which filed the suit on behalf of three co-plaintiffs who live in shelters and felt they were discriminated against.

Under the settlement, the library has scrapped its policy restricting borrowing privileges of residents of shelters, transitional housing programs and adolescent programs.

In addition, the city has agreed to host the National Coalition for the Homeless’ Faces of Homelessness Speakers’ Bureau in Worcester, according to a joint statement released by the library and Legal Assistance Corporation. As part of the event, people who have experienced homelessness share their stories with the community, telling of the hardships and discrimination they faced …

The head of the local chapter of the ACLU said when the suit was filed that people should be judged on their own merits, and not on their living status. Last week, those involved in the case praised the resolution without the need for further legal action.

“We appreciate the willingness of the city and the library board of directors to come to the table to discuss equal access to the library and its materials for all,” Jonathan L. Mannina, executive director of Legal Assistance, said.

The complete story is available on the LACCM’s Web site.

Via SRRT’s Fred Stoss and DrWeb’s Domain, a profile of the Seattle Public Library’s relationship with homeless patrons:

“New Library a Haven for Homeless”
by Vanessa Ho
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2006

… [T]oday, the library is doing more to accommodate both rich and poor. There are more programs for a wider audience, from noontime lectures to children’s events to writing workshops for homeless people …

Anyone who reeks gets a polite request to leave and a card telling him or her where to get a free shower.

“That’s probably the one that’s the most difficult to enforce, because it’s really personal,” [security officer Christopher] Hogan said.

Since the library opened, officers have barred more than 800 rule breakers, mostly for sleeping or being disruptive. The exclusions last for a few days to one year.

[Tiberious] Shapiro, who often plays pinochle online, said he had a spell of nodding off at the library, which got him banned. He had torn his shoulder at a job heaving 50-pound sacks of rice, was on painkillers and couldn’t stay awake. But the officers, he said, had been nice about it.

“They go out of their way to give you every possible chance they can.”

Earlier this year, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compiled and organized links to state-based benefits programs and related resources.

Virtually all states have made information regarding the five main state-administered low-income benefit programs—food stamps, Medicaid, SCHIP, TANF and child care—available to the public via the internet. There is significant variation between what online information is provided across states.

Some provide a simple description of each program on their agencies websites. Others offer additional information, such as application forms, eligibility screening tools, and policy and procedure manuals used by state agency caseworkers.

Find your state here: www.cbpp.org/1-14-04tanf.htm

The CBPP has also created a 2006 tax toolkit for low-income families who may benefit from the Earned Income Credit (EIC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). In their words, “Make Tax Time Pay!”

For more info visit: www.cbpp.org/eic2006/index.html

Satia Orange in ALA’s Office for Literacy and Outreach Services (OLOS) shared a recent Bill Moyers speech. Delivered to the Council of Great City Schools in October, the address treats inequality in the U.S., including IRS persecution of poor people:

In 2001, 397,000 people who applied for the Earned Income Tax Credit were audited, one out of every 47 returns. That’s a rate eight times higher than the rate for people earning $100,000 or more. Only one out of every 366 returns of wealthy households was audited. Over the previous 11 years, in fact, audit rates for the poor increased by a third, while the wealthiest enjoyed a 90% decline in IRS scrutiny. Of all the 744,000 tax returns audited by the IRS in 2002, more than half, David Cay Johnston finds, were filed by the working poor. More than half of IRS audits targeted people who account for less than 20% of taxpayers, the poorest 20%.

For the complete speech (a PDF), visit:

www.cgcs.org/pdfs/Bill_Moyers.pdf

For more on the IRS and its resistance to public scrutiny, visit:

http://trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/current/

On a similar note, Ben Stein writes in The New York Times of Warren Buffett’s frustration with the tax system (“In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning,” Nov. 26, 2006):

Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all.

It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

November 12-18, 2006, marks National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. Advocacy efforts are sponsored by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Student Campaign Against Hunger & Homelessness.

Participating in National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week not only brings greater awareness to your community, but also helps to promote the national endeavor to end hunger and homelessness. The plight of those without a home can be both lonely and difficult. Addressing their struggles by organizing and participating in this week may bring greater solidarity and understanding, as well as promote future involvement … It is imperative to dispel myths that label homelessness as someone else’s problem or claim that an end to homelessness is impossible.

A manual featuring organizing ideas and tips is available as a PDF. For more information, visit www.nationalhomeless.org.

In an article titled “Downtown ‘Problems’ Might not Exist,” the Colorado Springs Business Journal offers another classic example of how commercial interests contribute to the criminalization of homeless people.

The basic formula:

Step 1: Foment unreasonable fear of street people.

Step 2: Employ punitive measures to “manage” them.

The Business Improvement District and Downtown Partnership have set aside $137,000 to address problems caused by the street population by hiring off-duty police officers to patrol downtown, but neither the groups nor the police department have any statistical data to show that “problems” truly exist …

In a white paper entitled “Street People Letter,” [Beth] Kosley, the Downtown Partnership’s executive director, cites several “facts” as reasons why the partnership and the BID need to address the “problem” of the street population.

“Worse, the most recent reports we have received speak to actual physical threats to safety, in the form of mugging, a baby-snatching attempt and robbery in a home by an assailant,” the report says.

When asked about the mugging, baby-snatching attempt and robbery, Kosley referred to the incidents as “anecdotal,” but Gold Hill [Police] Commander Kurt Pillard used another term: urban legend …

Who are “those people”—those men with backpacks and sleeping bags that are causing such alarm that, according to the Downtown Partnership’s white paper, they scared a woman back into her car just by their presence outside the main door of the Penrose Library?

According to Homeward Pikes Peak director Bob Holmes, about 85 percent of the Pike Peak region’s 1,450 homeless are “crisis homeless”—women and children left without homes temporarily. The other 15 percent are chronically homeless …

“It’s important to remember that 62 percent of the people who eat at the Marian House once a day are not homeless,” he said. “They’re the working poor—they have jobs—or they’re retired on fixed incomes. They can afford a place to live, but can’t always afford food.” …

Michael Stoops, acting director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, D.C. said the Downtown Partnership’s and BID’s measures are “draconian.”

“There are ways to address the problem that are less expensive,” he said. “If they hired civilian outreach workers to intervene, mediate disputes, do case management, it would be cheaper. Some cities—such as Fort Lauderdale—have tried this and been very successful.”

Read the complete article here:
www.thepbj.com/story.cfm?ID=9887

The May/June 2006 issue of MotherJones compiled some interesting facts illustrating gross extremes between the Haves and the Have-Nots:

If the $5.15 hourly minimum wage had risen at the same rate as CEO compensation since 1990, it would now stand at $23.03.

A minimum wage employee who works 40 hours a week for 51 weeks a year goes home with $10,506 before taxes.

The $17,530 earned by the average Wal-Mart employee last year was $1,820 below the poverty line for a family of 4.

5 of America’s 10 richest people are Wal-Mart heirs.

A follow-up piece in the July/August 2006 issue of the magazine further illustrates the inequality and disadvantages poor people confront:

51% of the uninsured are $2,000 or more in medical debt. 16% owe at least $10,000.

Inner-city grocery stores sell milk for 43% more than suburban supermarkets.

In Chicago’s poorest areas, the ratio of check-cashing outlets to banks is 10-to-1.

In 2003, the IRS estimated it “protected” $3.1 billion of revenue by cracking down on EITC [Earned Income Tax Credit] filings. Half of all audits are now conducted on taxpayers earning less than $25,000.

The IRS, incidentally, has been involved in an ongoing FOIA-related lawsuit. The agency has resisted public scrutiny of its statistical information. See, for example:

http://trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/current/ http://trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/147/

We’ve just added a “Basic Needs” category to our Resources area. Librarians and low-income people can use the compiled links to find:

• community services referral
• child care
• food assistance
• health care
• legal help
• mental health care
• substance abuse treatment
• and more!

Does your library Web site contain information tailored to the needs of low-income people? Are you looking for examples? Try the New York Public Library’s Community Information page.

The Santa Cruz Public Libraries system has managed a Community Information Database (CID) since 1990. Some context on how it was created:

[The CID] was first developed in 1987. The database was a cooperative effort between five public agencies: Santa Cruz County Human Resources Agency, Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency, United Way, Watsonville Public Library, and the Santa Cruz City-County Library. Funding was provided through a Library Services and Construction Act grant. The goal was to develop a comprehensive database of human service resources available to people in Santa Cruz County.

Who is collecting and distributing information like this in your area? And how can your library play a part?

For potential answers to these questions, consult Information Behavior in Everyday Contexts (IBEC), a research program of The Information School at the University of Washington:

http://ibec.ischool.washington.edu

A U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast has been circulating online of late and lists “The 10 Occupations with the Largest Job Growth, 2004-14.”

It will surprise few people that primarily low-wage jobs are identified, ranging from retail salespersons and janitors to home health aides.

For a quick look at the difference a living wage could make for low-wage earners in your area, try the Living Wage Calculator, created by the Poverty in America project at Penn State.

So what’s up with Congress and its reticence in raising the federal minimum wage? A diarist at DailyKos.com describes “caging,” the method by which honest debates about income and family expenses are stifled.

He cites Beth Shulman and her book The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans and Their Families:

Caging is a way to defeat policy proposals on an entire set of related issues by designing public discourse in a way that makes sure that those issues never get raised …

[P]eople who insist that all people work jobs—any jobs—in order to support their families, must surely also argue that anyone who follows their advice and works full time … should be able to feed his or, more often, her family, right? …

[W]hat happened to the discussions of minimum wage increases, about mandatory livable wages, about guaranteed health insurance? Where are they? You’ll find them, of course, in the cage, right where they know you won’t look.

In 2004, MotherJones interviewed Shulman about her research:

MJ.com: You write that low pay is only one of the problems low-wage workers face.

Beth Shulman: Low-wage workers don’t only make a low wage. Low wage jobs are the least likely to provide health insurance, sick leave, family leave, vacations, pensions. And they’re the most likely to be part time, give fewer hours and less flexibility. They’re often the most hazardous jobs. Low-wage workers get the least training and the least opportunity for advancement if there’s a ladder, which often there isn’t. There’s a whole group of characteristics that make these jobs so difficult. The largest costs for workers and their families are housing, medical expenses, and child-care. It makes life extraordinarily difficult for them.

MJ.com: Have things gotten worse for low-wage workers?

Beth Shulman: The data I looked at were from the best of times, and low-wage workers have been hit disproportionately hard in the downturn. The Bush administration has been disastrous for these workers, from the tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthy, to cuts in essential programs like health insurance for children. We’re going in the opposite direction from the one we need to go.

Information professionals can learn more about economic justice (and thriving state-based campaigns) from advocacy groups like ACORN, the Center for Community Change, Change to Win, the Economic Policy Institute, United for a Fair Economy, the Universal Living Wage Campaign, and many others.