Ennyman's Territory: homelessness

Showing posts with label homelessness. Show all posts

Friday, December 23, 2022

Saturday, April 9, 2022

Homelessness In Duluth: Hiding In Plain Sight

For near six months I have been researching the issue of Homelessness in Duluth. This week the article I assembled appeared in Business North, a regional publication serving the Northland business community.

I had hoped to find a single cause for this problem and initially hypothesized that the primary issue was a lack of affordable housing. Quite a while before completing the article I saw two separate problems come into view. Affordable housing is one these twin peaks. The second is the social dysfunction caused by addiction and mental illness.

My aim was to help shed light on what has been going on with the hope that there will be increased dialogue on these matters.

It was surprising how many pronouncements there have been, both at the national and local levels, regarding "putting an end to homelessness." One of the most insightful discussions I had was with former mayor Don Ness, who essentially stated that politicians vowing to "end" or "solve" an issue like homelessness will only create frustration, because when the money is spent and the problem hasn't gone away it looks like failure.

The better path, he feels (as I understand him) is to keep doing things to help matters improve, and to not assume it will ever be completely resolved. It's complicated, but we can't sweep it under the rug and it needs sustained attention.

As regards affordable housing, this is also an immense problem that needs to be addressed. My aim these next several months is to get a better understanding of the obstacles we're facing as a city. Just because the problem is shared by many other cities does not mean we don't have our own unique contours. Duluth has succeeded at selling itself as "a place to want to be." Unfortunately, the housing supply is crimped, hence we see skyrocketing prices in the real estate market. The same goes for rental housing.

If you have any thoughts you wish to share regarding affordable housing in Duluth (or the lack thereof) please leave a comment below, or send an email to ennyman3@gmail.com.

IN PLAIN SIGHT

Homelessness in Duluth impacts everyone, even entrepreneurs. Here, businesses join the difficult conversation.

After spending days attempting to subdue profane shouting matches among customers, managers of a popular downtown Duluth cafe put away their tables and chairs for three weeks last month and only served takeout. It's one of many downtown firms struggling to address a problem that business owners believe has been downplayed by local government and law enforcement leaders.

Homelessness has impacted the Twin Ports region for decades and remains a pressing issue for a number of social, humanitarian and economic reasons. In this article, BusinessNorth will focus on how homelessness in our region impacts the business community. To be clear, the majority of downtown offenses such as vandalism, panhandling and public intoxication are not necessarily started by people experiencing homelessness. Neither do the great majority of people experiencing homelessness commit crimes. But homelessness is a challenge in Duluth, and one that affects the business community. People we spoke with downtown are frustrated by the impact this is having on their companies but were reluctant to speak on the record. As one business owner said, “It's problematic. We're empathetic, but it keeps customers away.”

Read the full story here: In Plain Sight

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

A Few Notes from Michael Shellenberger's San Fransicko

This past six months or so I have been researching the topic of homelessness ever since I read about the 2007 St. Louis County initiative called End Homelessness In Ten (EHIT). The EHIT story caught my attention mostly because by 2020 homelessness in the region not only continues but seems to have doubled.

It would be easy to make a barbed remark here about politicians creating slogans for programs. MAGA and Build Back Better aren't the first such declarations. In Duluth the population has been in the 86,000-87,000 range for the 35 years I have lived here, but because of the the need to expand our tax base the former mayor Don Ness initiated a 90/20 goal. That would be a population of 90,000 by 2020.

It was a worthy objective, and hopefully the effort produced a few insights as to where the obstacles lay.

* * *

In order to gain a better understanding of homelessness I created a Google Alert on the topic which delivers a daily feed of news stories about this issue. This is how I became aware of Michael Shellenberger's San Fran-sicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.

Shellenberger is not immune to controversy. His book Apocalypse Never created something of an upheaval because he had been for two decades a super-advocate for environmental action. When he began running into young people who were planning to not have families because of their belief in an environmental apocalypse, he realized that environmentalists had been striing the "end of the world chord" a little too hard. At first, they felt they needed to make enough noise to create awareness. Instead, they created a fear vibe that permeated a generation. Panic is not rational and difficult to reason with.

That was his last book. His latest is about California. Here are a few notes.

Between 2008 and 2019, 18,000 companies including Toyota, Charles Schwab, and Hewlett Packard, fled California due to a constellation of problems sometimes summarized as “poor business climate." California has the highest income tax, highest gasoline tax, and higher sales tax in United States, spends significantly more than other states on homelessness, and yet has worse outcomes.

California has had its share of troubles for decades, he notes, but things have grown exponentially worse in the past ten years.

I was confused. So I have been a progressive in this Democrat all of my adult life, I find myself asking a question that sounded rather conservative. What were we getting for our big high taxes? And why after 20 years of voting for ballot initiatives promising to address drug addiction, mental illness, and homelessness, had all three gotten worse? Why had progressive Democratic elected officials stopped enforcing many laws against certain groups of people, from people suffering mental illness and drug addiction in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, to heavily armed and mostly white anarchists in Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis?

Shellenberger says he wrote San Fransicko because he didn’t have the answers to those questions and he felt he needed them. I identified with that feeling because it's what drove me to read hundreds of pages of think tank reports on this issue so as to organize my own thinking. My aim is to apply what I learn to our community, just as Shellenberger's intent is to get clarity about his city.

From 2005 to 2020, San Francisco experienced an astonishing 95% increase in unsheltered homelessness has the number of permanent supportive housing units offered by the city rose from 6487 to 10,051.

Today San Francisco has the greatest quantity of permanent supportive housing units per capita of any major city in the United States. It has 11 permanent supportive housing units per thousand people which is nearly 3 times as much as New York City and Chicago and over six times as much as Miami-Dade County. All of that and yet the sheltered homeless population of New York City, Chicago and Miami fell 11, 10 and 50% respectively between 2005 and 2020 whereas San Francisco’s rose 95%. Why was that?

* * *

Correcting Another Narrative

One of the canards that people have repeated so often that it's accepted as truth is that Ronald Reagan was responsible for the closing of mental institutions. Shellenberger, leaving no stone unturned, digs into this a little further unearth's this.

While it's true that as California’s governor Reagan oversaw the closure of mental hospitals, he didn’t start the de-institutionalization. It began nationally in the 1930s, mostly to save money. The closure of California’s mental hospitals began in earnest in the 1950s, more than a decade before Reagan became governor. The emptying of state mental hospitals continued at the same rate between 1959 and 1969. By the time Reagan took office in 1967 nearly half the patients in California state mental hospitals had already been released.

As for the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, it was a creation of civil libertarians, mental health professionals, and anti-psychiatry activists. Sponsored by two Democrats, it passed by a 77-1 vote. It would’ve passed even had Reagan vetoed it. And while Reagan, as president, cut over 300,000 workers from Social Security insurance and Social Security disability insurance, he reversed course a year and a half later. By the end of his presidency nearly 200,000 won back their benefits.

In reality it was a Democrat who got the de-institutionalization of psychiatric hospitals rolling. President John F Kennedy proposed successfully proposed and successfully advocated a crucial 1963 reform that required the federal government to fund community mental health centers but leave it to the states to fund these mental hospitals.

In 1963, JFK argued that medical advances would enable "most of the mentally ill to be successfully and quickly treated in their own communities and return to a usual place in society."

Optimism may be good at the beginning, but when the problems worsen, it seems new approaches need to be considered.

Shellenberger has an issue with the abundance of human poop on the sidewalks and the acceptance of open air addiction communities. Most of us have images in our heads of Amsterdam's Needle Park. Shellenberger flew there to see it for himself and discovered that it has all been cleaned up. The outcomes were troublesome and unhealthy. Amsterdam solved their problem by having the police and social workers working together to help individuals get off the junk and on to a new kind of life.

This is not what's been happening in California.

More can be said, but our research has only just begun.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Joanna Deming On Homelessness: The View from Pittsburgh

Photo by Ev on Unsplash

After years of reading news stories about homeless, both nationally and locally here in Duluth, I decided to make a more serious effort to understand the causes and, if such is possible, solutions to this perpetual issue. Early last year I was quite surprised at how large the tent cities had grown in parts of South Minneapolis. Despite the inhospitable weather and initiatives to reverse the trend, the number of homeless in Duluth and St. Louis County have been steadily growing for years.

Seeing that this is a national problem, I have been reading about what other cities are doing. What follows are some insights from Pittsburgh. Joanna Deming Executive Director of Fineview and Perry Hilltop Citizens Councils. She has more than 15 years experience in the housing and community development sector.

ADDRESSING HOMELESSNESS IN PITTSBURGH

Pittsburgh is not a wealthy city, but it does have an affordable housing issue particularly due to low wages. This is especially true for residents of color. However, as Pittsburgh's economy has been picking up and new housing is being built, more wealthy people are moving into the city which is adding to this affordable housing issue. A 2016 study said there is a shortage of 17,000 affordable units in Pittsburgh. There is a shortage of 423 affordable units in the neighborhoods where I work.

Affordable housing is a tricky term which often begs the question "Affordable to WHOM?"
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sets income guidelines for each geography based on area median income. If you are 30% income your area is very low income for example. Housing affordability is also defined as whether someone is "cost-burdened" by their housing. According to HUD, if you pay over 30% of your income on your housing costs (rent, utilities, etc), you are cost burdened. The lower your income, the more likely you will be cost-burdened. The more expensive housing is in your area, the more likely you will be cost-burdened regardless of your income, but those with the lowest income will be challenged the most.

One solution to homelessness and the lack of affordable housing is to pay people more.
Make sure everyone has access to changing economies and can afford to stay in their homes or purchase homes as values go up. As long as we have low wage jobs and as long as schools only prepare adults for low wage jobs, we will have a need for more affordable and subsidized housing.

The Housing Market is there to reward property owners financially for their housing investment.
As prices go up home and property owners win, renters face higher costs and homelessness and low/moderate-income people who would like to buy a home are unable to purchase one.

To have a balanced Housing Market, systems need to be put in place to protect affordable rental housing and affordable homeowners.

Examples that have worked around the country are below:

1. State and Local Housing Trust Funds: Public resources dedicated to affordable housing solutions. I helped establish these with various housing coalitions and serve on the City of Pittsburgh's Housing Opportunity Fund Advisory Board. The realty transfer tax is a potential funding stream.

2. Community Land Trusts: Community owns the land, sells the building, and places a restriction on the property which limits the amount of funding that can be earned by the buyer when they sell that building. This allows buyers some equity, while preventing them from benefiting from a windfall of profit due to changing land values in the area that will make future low/mod buyers unable to purchase the same property. This works for homeownership and rental housing. My two neighborhood Community Development Corporations, Fineview Citizens Council and Perry Hilltop Citizens Council, are partnering with the City of Bridges Community Land Trust to advance this model in our community. This organization is based partially off of a large CLT in Minneapolis. City of Lakes CLT.

3. Protection of Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing: As affordable rental properties come onto the market, mission minded organizations/companies can purchase the property and keep the rents affordable. We are working on using this model to get to scale with protecting affordable rental homes in our community. We are partnering with an organization called Rising Tide Partners to help with acquisition (purchase) and disposition (sales).

4. Housing Authority Solutions: Some housing authorities are purchasing high end housing and when units become available, then they lease them to someone with a lower income.

5. Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC): This is a very popular bi-partisan funding mechanism for building more affordable units. It tends to be expensive ($300K per unit) and the number of units that can be built is limited based on tax credit availability based on limited corporate demand and capped government allocations. In other words, the state only allocates a specific number of tax credits and there are only so many corporations who want to invest in this program based on their need for the tax credits.

* * *

My initial focus when I started thinking about these issues was on resolving homelessness issues. It wasn't long before I saw the link between homelessness and the need for affordable housing. As with many issues, the devil is in the details. Here's more from Joanna Deming:

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Housing and homelessness often get put into two different buckets, when really the solution to homelessness is housing. Many homelessness programs fail, because they focus on temporary shelter and place restrictions on people (e.g. no drug/alcohol use) which deter people from staying there and keep people on the street. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has moved towards permanent housing as a focus in the past 10 or so years. There are some effective models out there:

1. Housing First: These types of programs allow people to live somewhere without restrictions. This way they have a roof over their head, while they search for a job, meet with their doctor/therapist/social worker, and start their new life.

2. Rental Assistance: Can be provided by a government or nonprofit to reduce the cost of housing for a resident. Housing Choice Vouchers (known as Section 8) is one form of rental assistance. Departments of Human Services also provide rental assistance for vulnerable populations (e.g. veterans)

3. Master Leasing: Where landlords are skeptical about having vulnerable populations live in their units, nonprofits or governments "Master Lease" the units--they are the tenant on record reporting to those landlords and providing support to the residents.

4. Affordable Housing: Increase supply

Ideally, people get help to STAY in their home BEFORE they are homeless. This is called Homeless Prevention. Most people have support systems, so they may face challenges, but they have a friend or family member that may help them pay rent or make a mortgage payment. Other people need private or public programs that can step in to assist with rent or mortgage payments. Some people also need legal help to prevent eviction. Once someone is evicted it is MUCH harder to find a new place to live, so it is critical that people can stay where they are if they have an affordable place to live.

Lastly, property tax relief is needed for seniors in changing markets, so they can stay and age in place. It makes no sense to pay off your house and then risk losing it due to rising tax rates.

Here's a publication I worked on a while back that may be useful. The Housing Alliance of PA, where I used to work has a lot of great resources.

Also, here is my community's 5 Year Affordable Housing Plan, which is our roadmap for protecting and expanding affordable homes, while preventing the displacement of low-income residents and people of color from our community. We have already made good progress advancing this plan, by expanding our real estate capacity and attracting a $450K Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant from HUD to work with our Housing Authority on a redevelopment strategy that protects public housing residents in our community.

* * *

Thank you, Joanna, for sharing these insights from your many years of experience wrestling with these important issues.

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Politics, Homelessness and the Lack of Affordable Housing

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I came to Duluth in 1986 when the city had not yet recovered from what was called "The Reagan Recession" even though its roots were in the 70's which ended with double digit inflation, high unemployment and an energy crisis. What I remember most vividly was reading a front page story about a new paper mill that had 100 job openings and 13,000 job applicants.

Another article at the time highlighted the problem of affordable housing here. In the subsequent decades homelessness and the lack of affordable housing have been recurring themes here.

In 2007 the St. Louis County and our city kicked off a major program to eliminate homelessness titled End Homelessness In Ten (EHIT). Despite the fanfare surrounding this ambitious effort, a May story in the Duluth News Tribune stated that we have more homeless than ever in this county. The article, titled "Our Community Is In Need": St. Louis County Hears Grim Report On Homelessness, stated "In 2020, 2,188 households, totaling 3,170 people, were served by programs for people experiencing homelessness, including 751 people homeless for the first time."

* * *

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal produce an early morning eNewsletter highlighting the day's top stories. The WSJ version ends The 10-Point with a question that readers can respond to. Yesterday's question had to do with affordable housing. Or rather, the question was about soaring housing prices. Here are a few notes from this morning's replies.

Ben K stated that soaring prices were a reflection of unmet demand. The solution to reduce housing costs? "We must increase supply."

Someone told me recently that to build the paper mill in West Duluth they had to eliminate 400 family homes. Have these ever been replaced? The population of Duluth has not increased sine we got here 35 years ago, although the Mayor had a press conference last week in which she announced we increased by a little under 500 since 2010. (It is still in the 86,000 range.)

Ben K went on to say, "Allow accessory dwelling units in single-family zoning. Allow apartments to be built above shops, even above big-box retailers. Reduce minimum lot and square footage requirements. Reduce paperwork for demolish-and-rebuild projects. Reduce mandatory parking requirements. Reduce paperwork for changing a property’s zoning to match its neighbors, and aggressively upzone along transit lines. In other words, get the government out of the way!"

By way of contrast, Myles Z of New Jersey believes, "It is time for the government to get back into building public housing. There is no profit to be made [by developers] in providing housing to the poorest members of our society." Incentives matter.

* * *

In September, Reason magazine published an article titled "California Is Clueless About Homelessness." It's a story about how Los Angeles has been using 1.2 billion dollars to build houses for homeless people in L.A. The money was approved in 2016 to build 10,000 new units for homeless people. Over the past five years only 700 homes have been completed. At that rate, they city will end up with 1400 homes at an average cost of $857,143 each.

* * *

Politicians are good at ribbon cutting and making pronouncements, there seems to be no end of programs initiated with good intentions that get bogged down and tangled in red tape. End Homelessness In Ten (EHIT) was a good slogan. What we need are real solutions.

This is the first of several articles I'm hoping to assemble. Thanks for reading.

Sunday, August 8, 2021

Miscellaneous Observations on Green Cards, Homelessness and the Eviction Moratorium Extension

According to the WSJ "about 100,000 green cards are at risk of going to waste this year as the application backlog grows." Having a Green Card is what enables you to permanently live and work in the U.S. The Washington Post published an opinion piece on this last week. The problem is primarily caused by slow processing of paperwork.

What it actually shows is that government officials excel at making pronouncements but all too frequently haven't done the heavy lifting of HOW TO IMPLEMENT their noble plans. As nearly everyone knows, the devil is in the details.

* * *

Businesses can be guilty of this as well. The consequences can be costly and even damage a company's future, though more often it simply produces frustration amongst internal staff. The Fed has no such concern. When too many people notice a failure to deliver, they just point to another crisis over there and this one over here to divert our attention. There are more than enough crises to go around.

* * *

The ongoing Eviction Moratorium is a strange and convoluted story. Reason magazine published a story this week titled After Claiming It Didn't Have the Power To Impose A New Eviction Moratorium, the Biden Administration Imposes a New Eviction Moratorium.

The lead editorial of the WSJ's weekend edition succinctly addresses this matter. The first eviction moratorium was illegal, but went forward anyways because the president stated he would not do it again. The Supreme Court explicitly said "any further action would need legislative steps." In other words, you can't just do this via executive order.

Needless to say, Biden did it again but says he didn't because it's different this time. It only applies to 87% of U.S. counties. (Including all the most crowded ones.)

I am reminded of the Peanuts comic in which Lucy persuaded Charlie Brown that she won't pull the football away this time. She always does, of course.

* * *

Los Angeles does not have the highest homeless population in the world, but it certainly has a large one. Over 66,000 according to this article, which places it 2nd behind New York City. This YouTube video gives you a visual overview of the way homelessness manifests itself in L.A.

This is not just a U.S. problem. Mumbai, Moscow and Manila have massive numbers of homeless people. Is this ever-growing homeless population our new normal?

Here are a couple comments from the YouTube video cited above:

1. Being a Filipino, i've gotten quite used to seeing homeless people on the streets but seeing them in large numbers for the first time in an affluent and world renowned American city like L.A. is quite shocking. Makes me realize how lucky i am for having my own home in my 3rd world country, no matter how humble it is.

2. I live 15 minutes away from downtown and it’s been 5 years since I’ve been down there and two weeks ago I passed by at night and let me tell you I was so shocked at how downtown looks it’s sad

3. I wish someone would do this for Seattle (YouTube vid) to bring more awareness to how bad it's getting. Our homeless situation is headed for this as well. We used to be the clean and green city. Now I hate going into downtown. smh

4. It is insane for American government to spend money on foreign charity, while ignoring the homeless problem Americans face everyday!

* * *

As for me, painted apartments in South Minneapolis in the early 80's and do not recall ever seeing people living in tents. Two years ago I drove through the "old neighborhood" and was quite surprised at the size of the tent city there near the freeway.

All this raises questions such as...
What are city governments doing to alleviate this problem?
What are the underlying causes of this problem?
What should politicians be doing about it?

Perhaps you have suggestions. Feel free to leave a comment.

* * *

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Duluth Soup -- Creative Fundraising Helps Address Community Needs

This week I got invited to Duluth Soup, a fundraising event that took place at Clyde Iron Works this past Thursday evening. I didn't really know much about it except that five dollars would get me a bowl of soup and a salad, and a vote. The soups were being provided by the New Scenic Cafe & The Amazing Grace, so how could you go wrong. There were also salads and other delights presented by Pizza Luce, 3rd Street Bakery, Lake Superior Bakehouse and the Rambler Foodtruck. I just didn't know what the vote part was about.

A relatively long line was being patiently processed when I arrive close to the six o'clock starting time. I paid my five spot and was handed a ballot. Upon entering I saw the entire room filled with tables and chairs, a small stage set up below the big screen. Inside the door there was a table with flyers about the program along with miniature handbills describing the various groups that would be presenting, four in all. On the perimeter of the room tables had been set up for artist displays along with presentations by these same four groups.

Lake Superior Flow Art

As it turns out, Duluth Soup is modeled after a Detroit Soup fundraising system, of the people, by the people and for the people. Essentially, before we ate the four teams presented their proposals. Using the ballots that had been distributed as we entered, we cast our votes on a ranked ballot system, 1, 2, 3, 4.

What's cool is that you got to engage the various presenters both before and after. Thus the event not only raised money for these various philanthropic efforts, it also raised awareness for the same.

Proposal 1 was titled Let It Grow. The presentation by the Junior League of Duluth was quite excellent, and I wondered if the best idea would win or the best presenters. They explained that they were raising money for a deep-winter greenhouse to be built on an underutilized lot near Denfeld High School adjacent to a food-damaged lot upon which a community garden nd edible forest would grow. The floor was open for questions after the timed presentation and the presenters indeed fielded many questions.

Proposal 2 had the clever title Hart and Soul. They desired to promote an annual music festival in Lake Nebagamon in memory of Alex Hart, who took his own life. It's aim was suicide awareness.

Proposal 3 was a very cool outline of the Tragic Tale of the Timber Beast by Lincoln Park Haunted Happenings. For Halloween they are transforming the Harrison Community Center into an abandoned north woods logging camp to bring families a ghost story that deals with the issue of bullying. This proposal looked interesting as a written paragraph, but was brought to life in a very intriguing manner by the presenters. I thought, "Well, that's pretty neat."

Proposal 4 featured Lake Superior Flow Art, a collaboration of individuals whose mission is to give back to the Twin Ports by fundraising, teaching and performing. They shared how they craft and sell hula hoops and other items to raise money for the Duluth homeless.

After the presentations, everyone lined up for soup.

During the course of the evening there was musical accompaniment by Keir of Lay Low & Bender, Chase Down Blue & the Clover Street Cronies. After the meal there would be a presentation by last year's winner as well as Fair Vote MN, a group advocating a ranked choice voting system for Minnesota with the aim of raising awareness about voting systems.

Thank you to Clyde Iron for hosting this event and to all the volunteers who made it happen.

Next time you hear, "Soup's on!" check it out.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Author Julia Dinsmore on Homelessness (Part 3)

This is the closing portion of an interview with Julia Dinsmore, author of My Name is Child of God... Not "Those People": A First Person Look a Poverty.

E: One of the problems that I think we have here in America, is that people who are middle class, the majority, have too much to lose to want to overthrow the system. They can see the injustice, they can see the wrongs, but they fear risking their livelihood, their all, for something like that. It's unfortunate. So part of your fight is to eliminate poverty but the reality is, do you ever see it happening? Because I feel like our politicians don't have the gumption or they're too afraid to do whatever it takes.

Julia: Yeah. They're handcuffed to their constituencies. But so often they're handcuffed to big corporate wealth, and to this ridiculous idea of the free market job. We have chosen an economic system that doesn't even work, by definition, at full employment. When I learned that I thought, “Oh my gosh, the poor have been doing the world a great service in our poverty, for a very long time. You'd think they would have been treating us better. You know? So that someone's kid can get fat and lay by a swimming pool. When you really want to break it down, I'm amazed. I never ever learned that for it to work right, it starts going haywire any time we reach full employment.

E: Some economists have said that a healthy economy is 5% unemployment. Well 5% is 5 million out of every 100 million so you've got 5 million people who are struggling to find meaningful work for their lives and a place to fit in that doesn't exist, and right now unemployment is 10%.

Julia: I know! And in our economy it's so important and so valuable and that goes back to my storytelling and midwifing others’ stories from generational poverty. I have felt called to do that. And that's why I work with the kids and the poets and always encourage other people who have not been completely destroyed by this experience to learn how to tell their stories, because there's so much value to this world that we can bring.

E: Well I appreciate the time that you gave me here, I will email you when I go ahead and blog it. I'll transcribe some of what we talked about and maybe I'll even ask more questions later.

Julia: Yes, because we're just scratching the surface.

E: Yes, we're just scratching the surface. I'm just trying to draw some attention to your book.

Julia: I love that, thank you. Could you mention, to0, the Give Us Your Poor CD?

E: Is that available on Amazon.com?

Julia: Yes it is. Give us your Poor. We've got Bon Jovi, we've got Bruce Springsteen, we’ve got Natalie Merchant… she chose a song by a girl from Duluth, my son's ex-girlfriend. She was only 14 when she wrote her song. I had just gotten home from Washington DC at the national coalition for the homeless conference, and I said, “Can you write a song?” because she had experienced a lot of homelessness, and she wrote this song, and we recorded it and sent it in. Natalie Merchant picked it and it is a hot track. And then Danny Glover does two of my pieces that are on that CD as well. There's a beautiful, beautiful 19 tracks. There's a cut called Land of 10,000 Homeless that is interviews with men women and children on the streets of the Twin Cities set to music.

E: I see that Pete Seeger's on it, as well as Tim Robbins, John Sebastian…

Julia: I think that it's so valuable to look at progress like this because it shows what we can do. This is a CD to end homelessness, and to let people who are experiencing homelessness get together with rich famous people to collaborate and do something. When we had our world release party in Boston, we raised 20,000 dollars to send little Kyra Middleton, who sang Boll Weevil on it, to college. And her family is permanently housed now. It's my dream to have a Give us Your Poor concert in the Twin Cities with Bon Jovi and Natalie Merchant and local musicians. It’s important to see what we can do.

E: Thank you.

The rest of the interview involved off topic discussions about my upcoming art show and other things. Julia has a good spirit, is thoughtful and perceptive. But as I post the last piece this morning, it feels as if the task she has set before us -- eliminating homelessness -- is truly insurmountable. The problems are so entrenched, the systems so broken. But this is an essential first step... being aware of the extent of the problem, and the need to keep it in front of us, not swept into a corner or under the rug. Be sure to check out the CD Give us your Poor. And have a reflective Fourth of July weekend.

Friday, July 2, 2010

A Discussion On Poverty with Author Julia Dinsmore (Part 2)

This is a continuation of yesterday's post from a recent interview with Julia Dinsmore. Much to think about.

Julia: We continue to blame individuals who have been trapped of the underbelly of America generationally. It does a great disservice to everyone really, all of us. We don't look at the structural issues. I like that woman who coins the term affluenza, a spiritual disease of wealth and resources being hoarded by a few, causing a great imbalance upon the planet. And that to your question about why I wrote my book, my poem, My Name Is Not “Those People,” which is world famous -- it’s studied in universities all over the world and it’s been translated into a bazillion different languages. Crazy. At one point my son said, "Momma, why do you have a world famous poem and we're still on food stamps? It’s just crazy. I even found it in a sociology textbook that was selling for 33 dollars a pop, while I was losing my home.

What happened is after that poem I began getting in to speak at colleges and different groups who are seeking to understand socioeconomic disparity. And you’ve got to remember, I've been functionally illiterate my whole life so to write a poem the first thing that I ever wrote that was longer than a song, that went around the world that was read into the floor of the United States Congress by Paul Wellstone, I got a golden box copy of the congressional record with my poem in it. The power of the poem, I mean I have so many stories about those poems. I have a whole chapter in my next book, The Not Those People Chronicles, dedicated to telling stories of my baby, my poem. But anyway what happened was I discovered every time I went speaking, especially in educational places, people kept remarking that they had learned more about poverty in the short time that we had together than all their studying. And that told me something pretty big, that it's very valuable for us from the silent underbelly, America's permanent underclass, to tell our stories, that our stories are sacred, number one, and number two that I decided to start valuing my experiences, learning how to share them with a creative voice in a useful way because people get so confused about class and they flip into their things.

We go to all kinds of crazy places when we start talking about the distribution of wealth and resources. And when we start talking about poverty, we get stuck in stupid places because we have a lot of baggage around that issue. So I kept hearing, “You know, if you would write a book, you need to write a book!” And I struggled for years, like how do I do that? I'm functionally illiterate? How do I translate my stories into this language that I don't even know? I was bilingual, I could speak bad English and I eventually learned how to speak good English.

E: So through this experience, I'm sure you've known and met a lot of people whose stories would be worth telling. What does it take? How do they share their stories or what are the challenges to sharing your story?

Julia: Well, that's kind of a two way street. Historically, Americans have drifted into this social divide, the haves and the have nots. And that gulf has grown so large that people became socialized like the rich people who experience social economic privilege have been socialized to not recognize the gift and the talent and the worth and the value and the brilliance and the spiritual fortitude and the wisdom of people from generational poverty. And they think because there's a lens that people have looked through of seeing us as deficient, incapable, useless, lazy, you know, all those words that I used in my poem that we are not. So then eventually, you know, a lot of us begin to believe the lies that are told about us and start acting them out.

What happened before people in America is the poverty industry taught us to take on the identity of victim. So that's how people were socialized to relate to us. What will save you, or will give you a few crumbs, you learn to take on this yolk of victim.

E: You start to see yourself the way you're being portrayed rather than the way you are.

Julia: Right. And we had to do that in order to qualify for our crumbs in the poverty industry, for our food stamps, our section 8 or whatever, our welfare. And because those systems have been practiced to living in an unnatural way, like for example the new immigrant people groups who have come into the neighborhood year after year, they have their whole intact extended family and they practice economics together, and they share their resources and they help one another and practice mutual assistance. But if you're trapped in the poverty industry, you're penalized for living in those kinds of ways and helping each other. So we had to unlearn all the creative survival tactics that poor people have always employed, like the underground economy of generosity. Even though we still practice generosity, it's illegal when we take in our homeless relatives. We could commit a felony.

E: Explain that.

Julia: The strings that are attached from getting one iota of any assistance program are first and foremost that you can't go against practicing mutual assistance. Doubling up. Pooling resources. There are systemic barriers built into the qualifications for obtaining assistance in America.

E: How did that happen?

Julia: It's criminalized. The practices that poor people have always done because the industrial complex, which is part of the poverty industry, said so and it has criminalized us. And it's horrible. It's horrible. And we're supposed to subsist on way below the poverty level type of maintenance income yet you will do what you have to do to feed your kids, so it creates this awful thing to have to provide in, it wears on you.

E: Is part of the stress just from the fear that they create because you're so vulnerable?

Julia: I don't understand that question.

E: If you're a recipient on the receiving end of government “kindness” or whatever they give you, the safety net, is there stress from always living in fear of begin cut off because you don't make the rules?

Julia: Right, and not only making the rules but inadvertently breaking the rules. Like for example, I cannot tell you how many people I know in the last 10 years -- this is really for background information only -- but I know who have been charged. It’s been kind of broad because either they don't fill out their paperwork right or, and this is happening more and more, but the poor workers, who get new guidelines don't do their jobs right and they blame the clients and they can easily lose paperwork out of their flies believe me. And the poor people end up getting charged because the workers need to keep their jobs. We have become...

E: You're telling me I can't write that?

Julia: Well, go ahead.

E: I feel like that's important. I mean we're not naming any names.

Julia: It's a dicey territory because people are so into blaming and scamming and scapegoating poor people out of their own fear of becoming poor. They've been socialized to do that, and it's a particular kind of hating. I can’t deal with it, it’s so disgusting, so abhorrent to me. it makes me sick to my core. Trying to dissect what is really going on… sometimes it feels like people don't really want to know. I always thought this horrible system we created, this safety net that's really more like a trap, would change if we ever had a big economic downturn a big crisis and middle class people were subjected to the same things we had been all along, that their outrage would cause a lot of social transformation but I'm not seeing that happen yet.

PART 3 is tentatively scheduled for tomorrow. Click to hear Danny Glover perform Not "Those People" and learn more about the movement to end homelessness.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

My Name Is Not "Those People"

As you know I love the way the Internet enables our lives to intersect and interconnect in so many unexpected ways. Last Monday I wrote about a young man from Duluth who ten years ago became one of the characters in a downtown Duluth memorial aimed at keeping us from forgetting the terribleness of hate. De'Lon Grant posed as Isaac McGhie, one of three blacks lynched here in 1920 Duluth.

This morning on Twitter I was contacted by a woman whose son went to school with Grant and called him "an amazing young man." Her profile reads, "I am a Grandma, Edu-Performace Artist, Author, Singer, Poet, Public Speaker, Humorist, and Story Teller. My talents are used to end homelessness and poverty."

A few exchanges later and it became apparent Julia Dinsmore is an amazing woman in her own right. Her first book, My Name Is Child of God...Not "Those People": A First Person Look at Poverty has received five star reviews at Amazon.com from all who have read it. You don't have to dig very deep to recognize that Dinsmore is fighting the good fight.

This personal and provocative look at poverty in America is shaped around the author's own engaging stories, song lyrics, and poems, including the well-known Call Me Child of God ... Not Those People. The story of her growing up in a large Irish Catholic working-class family in Minneapolis, Minnesota, draws together the experiences of living in poverty, the role of the church and music in her life, and the many remarkable people who populated her life and the lives of her family.

The author describes economic hardship and social challenges as being as "regular as the turning seasons in my coming up years," and refers to her life in poverty as the "soil of my art." Through her stories and reflections, Julia Dinsmore puts a face on poverty and challenges readers to answer God's call to respond to poverty and its effects.

In reading the reviews, I get the impression that what impresses readers is her honesty. As one reviewer aptly puts it...

In her ground breaking first book, Julia holds nothing back. She tells her story about living a life time challenged by poverty. Poverty gets defeminized, gets politically corrected and becomes a multicultural and universal story and phenomena through humor, social commentary and poetry. Julia, as social prophet, unravels a tongue that's sharp, accurate and liberating.

Danny Glover narrated one of her poems as part of a project she is involved with called Building Changes, End Homelessness Together. Their aim is to be a catalyst for ending homelessness forever. While the media keeps jawboning about the economic turnaround we're experiencing, unemployment continues at an untenable rate.

Recommended: Take a couple minutes to hear Glover's performance of Dinsmore's poem.

Ennyman's Territory

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Wednesday, November 17, 2021

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Wednesday, September 29, 2021

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Miscellaneous Observations on Green Cards, Homelessness and the Eviction Moratorium Extension

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Duluth Soup -- Creative Fundraising Helps Address Community Needs

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Author Julia Dinsmore on Homelessness (Part 3)

Friday, July 2, 2010

A Discussion On Poverty with Author Julia Dinsmore (Part 2)

Saturday, June 12, 2010

My Name Is Not "Those People"

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