How to Get 1000 Homeless People
in Off the Streets of Portland Oregon
Right Now for Cheap!
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/12/396325.shtml
author: Pearl E Moon
e-mail: queen@activist.com
The Portland Scrooge commission must read this, it only takes one signature or maybe several, to get possibly hundreds or even potentially 1000+ homeless people in off the streets right now this week. Read the article to find out how simple, quick, and do-able this could be.
A Portland Victorian Industrial Revolution Christmas Carol....
IT'S SO SIMPLE. one way to get hundreds or thousands of homeless/ near homeless men, women and youth housed right now, with the stroke of a pen:
REVISE the Housing Authority of Portland regulations so that anyone on Section 8 or Public Housing can allow their immediate family to come and stay/ live with them if the homeless person is currently below poverty level, etc. Use a reasonable criteria that includes those factors (person to be added is closely related, homeless/ at risk for homelessness, at or below poverty level, etc).
Close relatives such as parents, grandparents, greatgrandparents: children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren; brother, sister.
If you are afraid of "abuses", then for God's sake establish some parameters, instead of shutting down this much needed housing completely!
Currently it appears that a very scroogey change was made that will not allow this. So a 60 year old disabled Mom can't allow her 40 year old unemployable daughter to come live with her in many instances, even if the daughter is homeless and she is direct family. Only under certain circumstances could she come in out of the cold mean streets and NOT create a violation for her Mom. (She would have had to be on the Mom's benefits when Mom first applied for them 5 years ago, in order to be allowed to come live with her mom when needed later).
This fairly recent rule also makes the Mom, for instance, endangered if she allows her adult child to come stay with her to keep her off the streets. Why? because she currently could lose her Housing and end up on the street herself if she lets her daughter stay with her. Talk about emotional abuse. Tear a Mom's heart right out with such a choice. SCROOGES!
BUT WITH THE STROKE OF A PEN, the Housing Authority could restore the lost right of a family member to allow their adult child or other homeless close relative, to live with them in their Housing unit. Doesn't this only seem reasonable and normal? Anything short of it is just plain, senseless and inhumane.
ok Scrooges, Christmas Day is almost here! believe me, Hell will be colder than the streets of Portland for you, if you don't sign such a revision. Because there is a God, He cares a lot about the Least of These, and He is watching. He's meaner than Santa when you're bad. You won't just get a lump of coal. You'll get raked over the hot burning coals, no doubt in public.
I really hope we'll hear you singing a different Christmas Carol, before the winter progresses and the Ghost of Christmas Future gets you; the current one is way too Dickensian. Fitting for Victorian Industrial London, but NOT modern Portland.
God Bless us, every one.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/12/396325.shtml
