WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT THE HOMELESS II

     I grew up at a time when a family home could be afforded on a single-earner paycheck. We still had poverty, but about 30% of the workforce was covered by a union contract, and that became the floor payed by non-union employers. Back in that time we were employees, and none of us had heard of an HR Dept. This was a time when we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We had, after all defeated fascism. We had, thanks toKeynesian economic, FDR and the Democrats, in the previous two decades built the strongest middle-class in the world, and we rebuilt the cities of Europe bombed out during
WWII. Even the cities of what had been our enemies.
     We had eight decades of relative peace among those old allies and enemies, with the exception of a cold war world-wide, and a hot was in Indochina where we shouldn't have been. All was not perfect, we still had the scourge of racism to defeat, but we were working on it. For a while we thought we were starting to make progress. We would have if Richard Nixon had not invited the Dixiecrats to join his party.
     In the 1960s, President Lyndon B Johnsonhad initiated a war on poverty. Had he not declared a war in Vietnam, that war at home may have also made progress. A part of that war included increasing stocks of low-income housing. Housingas far removed as inner-city housing and poor rural housing. Chicago to Appalachia. There is a picture of John F. Kennedy running forpresident, standing before one of those Appalachian cabins speaking to the folks that lived there. I am maybe a bit out on a limb here, but I don't remember any Republican candidate performing that same courtesy. There was even housing for migrant labor, though the rules for migrant housing were often poorly enforced. Hobo camps usually existed near a rail line where trains were fo4ced to slow down. Cultural history tells us that the Hobos knew, and passed on,the farms where they could get fed and perform some day labor. We had social problems and we were working on them. We even studied them in classrooms.
     We also had some awful human beings. What we did not have was media that appealed to those awful human beings. The media that appealed to those awful human beings existed, but were not in general circulation; more like pamphlets passed out at cross-burnings.
     What happened? The Republican party, starting with Nixon, attacked poverty by making it more prevalent and criticizing those unfortunate to have been left behind for one reason or another. They had never approved of Unions so they made it harder for unions to be unionized. Southern states especially, passed right-to-work laws. Right-to-work meaning, right to pay workers less. Ronald Reagan attacked the Air Traffic Control union. Concurrently, Reagans administration encouraged off-shoring of labor to low-wage nations. Since that time executive compensation has gone from 50X mean worker pay, to in excess of 500X. Minimum wages in red states remains lower than blue states. This is, I believe, the description of a wealth transfer. Ronald Reagan ended free schooling in California universities and reduced funding for low-income housing. He reduced funding for veterans Healthcare, just as Vietnam veterans were finding out about Agent Orange. And he made a not funny joke about women in "welfare Cadillacs, but they weren't well-maintained. Hidden behind that phrase was that those women were of a color not well-repres3nted in the Republican party.
     As of 2022, hedgefunds own nearly 4% of housing. They are called institutional investors, and should you trace the contact information from a hand-lettered sign offering cash for old homes regardless of livability, you will find an institutional investor. Trailer parks used to be low-income property. You owned the trailer and payed a modest amount to the owners. Today, many of those mobile home parks have become part of the prospectus of investment clubs. Rents are out of range of low-income people. What happens to those old houses they buy up? They tear them down and build condo's. In 1968 the Fair Housing Act was passed. The purpose was to tear down low-income neighborhoods in black areas for urban development. That included running freeways throught those areas, or it could lead to gentrification. Either way, people who were not participating in our prosperity were burdened by even more expensive housing. Since that time things have gotten worse. Republican presidents took advantage of the leadership tri-fecta between 2001 and 2020 to install conservative Supreme Court judges and lower court judges. Two of those Republican president's lost the popular vote but won the electrical college. In some of those red states Florida among them, there was evidence of shady election shenanigans. Shocking, I know. And for the first time since Plessy vs Ferguson, people have watched justices get "befriended" by generous billionaires with business before the court. So that's where we are: that strong suspicion that rightwing pressure groups are putting their fat feet on the scales of justice and a former President, indicted in four states with a total of 89 charges. That former president is running for election again, and should he win, he could absolve himself of the federal crimes of which he has been charged, thanks to compliant justices who have delayed those court cases beyond the window of adjudication. The stink of corruption is stronger than Donald Trumps gastric eruptions in the Stormy Daniels case. And people are forced to live on the streets.

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