Over
the past year I have read a myriad of articles and editorials in the
San Francisco Chronicle talking about homelessness and the opioid
crisis and one thing is clear: if anyone ever heard the saying, “An
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” they're not letting
on.
The
idea of planning for the future is an afterthought for the
politicians and developers who want to build their way out of the
“homeless crisis.” To say, “we need more houses” is no
replacement for saying, “we need to take care of people so that
they don't become homeless and/or drug addicts in the first place.”
Hubert
Humphrey said “the moral test of government is how that government
treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are
in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of
life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” Until this
prescription for the general good becomes the policy of our
government homelessness and drug addiction will persist.
Money
that could have been used to create infrastructure, jobs and a
better educated and healthier America went, instead, to the
military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us against.
Hundreds of billions of dollars that should have gone to meet the
needs of the American people went down rat holes in Afghanistan and
Iraq. In 2016, 57%
of the federal budget was spent on the Department of Defense, wars
and weapons programs, according to the American Friends Service
Committee; 6% was spent on education.
A
federal report from 2011 shows $60 billion lost to war zone
contractor waste and fraud alone. Disabled and traumatized veterans
return home to families broken by the loss and injury of war and
don't get the support or treatment they need. Homelessness and
opioid addiction is the result. “About 11% of the adult homeless
population are veterans. Roughly
45% of all homeless veterans are African American or Hispanic,
despite only accounting for 10.4% and 3.4% of the U.S. veteran
population, respectively,” - National Coalition for Homeless
Veterans.
The
prison-industrial complex, where corporations run prisons for profit
and poor people and people of color are the main “clients” makes
it even harder for those on the margins to maintain homes and get
jobs. The
United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the
world. The self-serving actions of bankers and government officials
during the housing crisis complete the picture of the looting of
America's tax revenues and the eviction of people from their homes.
According
to Forbes “The
Special Inspector General for the Toxic Assets Recovery Program
(TARP) summary of the bailout says that the total commitment of
government is $16.8 trillion dollars with $4.6 trillion already paid
out.” That was in 2016. The banks got the money and have grown
even larger but the regular wage earner can't get financing for a
home purchase. Could we have had government-backed low interest
loans? Of course we could have. With easier credit after 2008,
people would be in houses now, not out on the street. The taxpayer's
money bailed out the big banks. Nobody could get a home loan while
the banks bought back their stock, bought other banks, and bought the
houses they foreclosed on. Does anyone think that might have
something to do with the current housing crisis?
The
federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and hasn't changed since 2009. In 2018 California's minimum wage was
$11 an hour. “Experts estimate that still buys only about half
of what a minimum wage did in 1980,” - San Francisco Chronicle.
You can't even pay rent in California with that income.
The
leading cause of bankruptcy is medical expenses. Might there be some
connection between bankruptcy and homelessness? Single payer
universal health care would cost less and provide better care than a
system that is drowning in paperwork and regulation. The
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq marked the beginning of the
privatization of military services and supplies. The contract to
build Guantanamo went to Halliburton (Dick Cheney's old company.)
An unintended irony of the so-called war on terror: the inmates of
Guantanamo get better medical services than most Americans, as
Michael Moore shows in his film, “Sicko.”
"U.S.
spending on the Afghanistan nation-building project over the last
dozen years now exceeds $104 billion, surpassing the $103.4 billion
current-dollar value of Marshall Plan expenditures, which helped
rebuild European nations after World War II"("U.S. aid to
Afghanistan exceeds Marshall Plan in costs" San Francisco
Chronicle, August 2014). Imagine if $104 billion had been invested
in preschools, education, job training, and social services in the
US? Helping individual homeless people is important, but if you
really want to change people's lives for the better, take a look at
where our tax dollars are going and imagine where they could be
going.
