A Billion Dollar Campaign To House One Family
This season of selecting a new leader for the free world is like none other in the history of our country, especially in the very important money game. By the time February 2008 ended, all of the Presidential candidates raised a combined total of $800 million. This is just shy of the total collected in the 2004 primary and general election campaigns. Experts are projecting that another billion dollars will be donated just for the general election.
We all know this has not been your typical campaign of “Where’s the beef?” debate adages or “Willie Horton” fear-inducing television ads. (Although the general campaign hasn’t started yet, so “swift boat” tactics will certainly be in store for us.) The traditional political process, however, is changing in our country, where people are more connected to the process, much more invested, and actively involved in supporting their candidate.
This political grassroots movement is a sign of hope for our country. But where there is hope, there is also hopelessness. Because hidden, and sometimes very visible, within our society is a layer of extreme poverty called homelessness. Although the number is often debated, experts project about one million of our citizens are living on our streets here in America, the richest and most powerful country in the world.
I was recently interviewed on KIIS-FM, a popular national radio station, and was asked what their listeners could do to help resolve homelessness in America. I know many of these listeners are enthusiastically involved in this political season, the first time in their lives.
I responded with a simple question of my own. Why is our country spending two billion dollars to provide subsidized government housing for one American family—albeit, it’s the White House—when there are hundreds of thousands of families and people in our country who have no home? Especially when we read that income tax returns recently unveiled to the public show that all three of the families currently competing to win the presidency are millionaires.
The obscene amounts of money spent on obnoxious television and radio ads, direct-mail letters not worth the paper they are printed on, gold-plated political consultants, chartered jets and hotels, and those picture perfect rallies, could very well have been spent on providing subsidized housing for thousands of homeless American families.
Recently, the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development proudly announced a new $75 million funding initiative to house 10,000 homeless veterans. That is about the same amount of money that one Presidential candidate, alone, raises in two months.
So imagine a new scenario. What if we suspended the American Presidential campaign, perhaps letting Super Delegates choose, and redirected the $2 billion (a billion on the primaries and another billion on the general campaign) to ending homelessness in America? By leveraging these funds, we could build 100,000 subsidized housing units. With this type of investment, homelessness would be a mere memory in hundreds of cities around the country.
This scenario is not just some crazy wishful thinking. We just need the same zest that we currently see during this historical political season to be transferred to the struggle to end homelessness in America.
The political fervor is growing exponentially like a fanatical crowd at a Justin Timberlake concert. People, young and old, are hosting house parties, jazz brunches, car washes, even setting up lemonade stands to raise money and encourage voters.
One new political website was set up to raise $1 million in one minute. Facebook.com and MySpace.com political websites are all over America’s computer screens to raise even more cash.
So much effort to place one American family in the most famous government subsidized housing in the world.
This is this same level of enthusiasm, optimism, hope—and frankly, money—that is desperately needed to house the hundreds of thousands of families and individuals who go to bed on our streets each night.
(Thanks to the PATH Dallas staff for their amazing insight on this blog last week. I hope to have others share their views. And we are still working on a new design for this blog.)
Pic from www.brainfuel.tv
We all know this has not been your typical campaign of “Where’s the beef?” debate adages or “Willie Horton” fear-inducing television ads. (Although the general campaign hasn’t started yet, so “swift boat” tactics will certainly be in store for us.) The traditional political process, however, is changing in our country, where people are more connected to the process, much more invested, and actively involved in supporting their candidate.
This political grassroots movement is a sign of hope for our country. But where there is hope, there is also hopelessness. Because hidden, and sometimes very visible, within our society is a layer of extreme poverty called homelessness. Although the number is often debated, experts project about one million of our citizens are living on our streets here in America, the richest and most powerful country in the world.
I was recently interviewed on KIIS-FM, a popular national radio station, and was asked what their listeners could do to help resolve homelessness in America. I know many of these listeners are enthusiastically involved in this political season, the first time in their lives.
I responded with a simple question of my own. Why is our country spending two billion dollars to provide subsidized government housing for one American family—albeit, it’s the White House—when there are hundreds of thousands of families and people in our country who have no home? Especially when we read that income tax returns recently unveiled to the public show that all three of the families currently competing to win the presidency are millionaires.
The obscene amounts of money spent on obnoxious television and radio ads, direct-mail letters not worth the paper they are printed on, gold-plated political consultants, chartered jets and hotels, and those picture perfect rallies, could very well have been spent on providing subsidized housing for thousands of homeless American families.
Recently, the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development proudly announced a new $75 million funding initiative to house 10,000 homeless veterans. That is about the same amount of money that one Presidential candidate, alone, raises in two months.
So imagine a new scenario. What if we suspended the American Presidential campaign, perhaps letting Super Delegates choose, and redirected the $2 billion (a billion on the primaries and another billion on the general campaign) to ending homelessness in America? By leveraging these funds, we could build 100,000 subsidized housing units. With this type of investment, homelessness would be a mere memory in hundreds of cities around the country.
This scenario is not just some crazy wishful thinking. We just need the same zest that we currently see during this historical political season to be transferred to the struggle to end homelessness in America.
The political fervor is growing exponentially like a fanatical crowd at a Justin Timberlake concert. People, young and old, are hosting house parties, jazz brunches, car washes, even setting up lemonade stands to raise money and encourage voters.
One new political website was set up to raise $1 million in one minute. Facebook.com and MySpace.com political websites are all over America’s computer screens to raise even more cash.
So much effort to place one American family in the most famous government subsidized housing in the world.
This is this same level of enthusiasm, optimism, hope—and frankly, money—that is desperately needed to house the hundreds of thousands of families and individuals who go to bed on our streets each night.
(Thanks to the PATH Dallas staff for their amazing insight on this blog last week. I hope to have others share their views. And we are still working on a new design for this blog.)
Pic from www.brainfuel.tv
posted by LA's Homeless Blog at
5:01 PM
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