​Homeless and sleepless in Seattle—and everywhere else

A $3,456,789 lunch for the homeless

In a country when on any given night we have over 600,000 people homeless, including 64,000 families with about 123,000 children, we have basketball fans paying $49,500 for courtside seats at the 2016 final game of the National Basketball Association playoffs. Lesser seats on the floor are a billionaire’s bargain at $8,500. In the richest city in the world one can see “Hamilton,” the leading musical of the year so far, for $849 a seat.

Some of the public elementary schools in parts of New York City have enrollments where half of the young students are homeless. They probably won’t see the story about one of our founding fathers, who was also homeless for a time as a child.

While the wealth of Americans has reached a record level of $88.1 trillion in the first quarter of 2016, while hedge fund managers making over $1 million a day buy multi-million dollar apartments in the luxury apartment towers in Manhattan and other New York City boroughs, over 65,000 people sleep, eat, and barely survive on the sidewalks and in the shadows of those symbols of immense wealth.

While old buildings in Downtown Fargo are demolished or rehabbed, while new housing and businesses taking advantage of Renaissance financing are raising rents, living costs, and bank accounts, about 1,000 people live under bridges, on sidewalks, or in packed homeless shelters in the metro area.

The term “urban gentrification” is used to describe the process of middle-class populations moving into low-income areas in both New York City and Fargo-Moorhead, away from expensive housing in the suburbs. These newcomers and new businesses replace cheap housing and also drive up other costs. As a result, there are thousands of homeless students attending public schools in New York City and dozens of homeless students attending public schools in Fargo-Moorhead.

And the numbers are increasing. There were 46 public schools in NYC where at least a third of the students were homeless last year. The NYC school district counted 82,514 children who were either in shelters, staying with relatives, or in some other type of makeshift situation. At Public School 188 on the Lower Eastside of Manhattan, as an example, over half of the students do not finish the school year. Students are constantly moving in and out.

While many of the roofs of these schools leak, the school supply closets in the schools contain toothbrushes, soap, deodorants, clothing, and hundreds of pairs of shoes besides regular pencils and paper. The schools with homeless students also install washers and dryers so the parents of homeless children can use them in an attempt to keep clothing clean.

The teachers and staff of P.S. 188 distribute hundreds of pairs of shoes each year. They give away dozens of backpacks, refurbished computers—and even Christmas presents. The principal of P.S. 188 calls herself the “beggar principal” so she can keep all of these items in stock. Almost all of the students at P.S. 188 are poor and most live in public housing. There are four homeless shelters within the immediate area of the school. A third of all homeless students are in grades K-2, with the most in first grade.

Some live in impossible situations. One second grader lives with seven other children and three adults in a one-bedroom apartment. Meanwhile, 20 CEOs of the Standard & Poor’s top 500 receive perks of $1 million or more beyond their salaries. Omar Ishrak of Minnesota-based Medtronic gets annual “other compensation” normally called perks totaling $25,678,463. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook got $5,037,840 in perks last year.

A majority of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings

While all the nation’s wealthiest got an average 5.2% raise last year, millions of poor Americans were evicted from their homes. As an example, over one-fourth of the poorest Milwaukee resident-renters were forced from their homes in 2015, disrupting jobs, children in schools, and any kind of family life.

While all of this activity was going on, Warren Buffett, the third richest man in the world at $66.5 billion, auctioned off a luncheon for investors on e-Bay who want to have a beneficial lunch with the great Democrat from Omaha, supposedly to get a few stock tips. An anonymous bidder got a lunch for eight with Buffett at Smith & Wollensky, a famous steak place in NYC, for $3,456,789, equaling the highest sum any bidder has paid in the 17 years Buffett has had the auction.

Buffet, who has lived in the same house in Omaha since before he was rich, donates all of the auction money to his late wife’s favorite charity, a San Francisco homeless charity named Glide. Since his first auction Warren has donated $23.6 million to the homeless charity.

Since the riches made in the Silicon Valley from data technology have transformed the economy of San Francisco and California, high rents and other living costs have dramatically increased homelessness among the poor.

The five top hoarders of cash overseas are all California-based technologies: Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Alphabet, and Oracle. They have helped make San Francisco and several other California cities unaffordable for the poor and middle class. These five companies alone are sitting on $430.5 billion in cash.

A letter to the mayor and police chief by wealthy entrepreneur Justin Keller kind of blew the lid off the problems in the northern California city. He complained as follows, not making many friends among the poor: “Wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city. I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people to and from my way to work.” He wants the homeless out of sight so he doesn’t have to control his anger and disgust. Nice guy. He might be another Trump voter.

The charity Glide alone provides 850,000 meals a year and provides some housing and health services to the homeless. It runs daycare and after-school programs for 450 students. It gives away over 800,000 syringes a year to those struggling with drug abuse and to reduce diseases among the homeless.

Where the homeless are washed into the gutters

Should a worker who has a full-time job be forced to spend his nights with his family in a homeless shelter? It happens all the time in NYC. While full-time CVS CEO Larry Merlo makes $13,914 an hour, while full-time Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz makes $9,659 an hour, while full-time CEO Leslie Wexner of Victoria’s Secret makes $13,062 an hour, why can’t we pay Kewanee Colbert enough as a full-timer worker for a gourmet food company, which only serves the rich who can afford the service, so he can house and feed his family?

Kewanee is forced to live in a homeless shelter in the Bronx with his partner and three kids ages 2, 4, and 7. Family life? The family cannot have any visitors, not even relatives, not even grandmas. Adults have a 9pm curfew. If all of the family does not log in each day they are kicked out of the shelter. They are not allowed to leave town, not even for a funeral. They cannot have an air conditioner, microwave, cable TV, or a large TV. They do have a mini-fridge—but it has to be inspected once a week for contents. They are only allowed two pieces of luggage each.

Some NYC shelters are worse than others. Kewanee’s family moved from one where they had one room, no running water, no kitchen, and shared a bathroom with other homeless. His four-year-old daughter is autistic and she often cried throughout the night—in the one room. She also had a mental problem in sharing a bathroom with another family, so she often peed in her pants during the night. Welcome to the American Dream.

Some California businesses try to solve the homeless problem in their areas by washing the homeless into the streets each night. Bonhams fine arts and auction house on Utah Street in San Francisco serves the rich clientele of Silicon Valley. One of the world’s largest and oldest auction houses, it has a large windowless façade and wide sidewalk which attracts the homeless tents and sleeping bags. Bonham’s has installed a hose and sprinkling system to eliminate the homeless–not to grow grass. At sporadic times during the night unexpected showers flood the sidewalk area, wetting down the homeless sleepers and their food, clothing, and sleeping bags.

A homeless woman utilizing the attractive area reacted to the showers this way in a Guardian article: “They treat us like we’re not even human, It’s already too much, but to be wet too—that’s crazy. I just want to have a life. I just want somewhere to live.” She did live under a nearby overpass until she was chased out by police. A one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco rents for $3,500 a month now.

Bonhams attempts to claim they turn on the sprinkling system at night only to clean the sidewalks of dirt and grime. A spokesperson said the auction house intended no disrespect to the homeless visitors on their property, “but the situation has escalated as of late, leading to dozens of encampments, garbage piles with feces and needles, fires, theft, and other crime.” Meanwhile, as an example of the tremendous income inequality in this country, Bonhams recently sold a pair of 17th Century German pistols valued at up to $70,000 to a wealthy collector.

It’s now a crime to be poor in the United States

We presently have thousands of the poor in jails across this land of liberty because they cannot pay fines and fees. In a June 11, 2016 article, New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof asked the question: “Is it a crime to be poor in the 21st century in the United States?”

He answered the question in the affirmative after visiting the poor in the Tulsa, Oklahoma jail. He interviewed 53-year-old Rosalind Hall who has struggled for most of her lifetime with mental illness and drug addiction. She has a history of shoplifting because she was hungry or trying to support her drug habit. Hall had already been in jail for ten days for failing to pay restitution for five bad checks she had written to buy groceries over eight years ago. She is bipolar, suffers from depression, is poorly educated, and with her criminal record is often unable to find a job. The five bad checks totaled slightly over $100, but she has been making some restitution payments for eight years—and with fees, charges, and fines she still owes over $1,200! If not in jail, Hall lives with a friend and barely survives on food stamps. She earns $50 a month cleaning a house. It costs the city of Tulsa $64 a day to keep her in jail.

Oklahoma, perhaps the reddest Republican state in the Union, charges criminal defendants 66 different kinds of fees. Some of the fees illustrate the creativity of politicians when it comes to balancing budgets. A poor person who requests a public defender is billed a fee for making the request. If he does not pay the fee, a warrant is issued for his arrest—and a fine may be imposed on top of that! If a person is brought to court, he is charged a “courthouse security fee.” If a person is arrested on the street or in a place of business he is charged a sheriff’s fee “for pursuing a fugitive from justice.” That’s real creative stuff! One current Tulsa inmate owes $170,000 in fees and fines, and never has a hope of paying them. Another one owes $70,000. This is the home of the feed and fined and land of the slave.

Most countries in the world closed their debtor’s prisons by 1840 because inmates could not make any money to pay their debts. I guess we haven’t learned that yet.