One Person’s View: Does A Middle-Class African American Community Help The Homeless?

Here is an interesting commentary found in Wednesday’s L.A. Times (Inglewood is west of Los Angeles, near the LAX airport).

Is she accurate in her assessment? I don’t think so… Here is the commentary:
__________

Gazing into Inglewood's mirror
By Erin Aubry Kaplan

A COUPLE OF WEEKS ago, as I was driving somewhat hurriedly to the Target in Inglewood to begin my holiday shopping in earnest, I saw a homeless man. This is an increasingly common sight around town, but it almost made me brake. The man was trudging east up Century Boulevard toward Crenshaw, leaning into a cold wind. Large bundles were laced to his back, and his arms were folded tightly, as if to keep body and soul — to say nothing of his belongings — together. What struck me was his urgency, that despite his apparent destitution he was moving, slowly but purposefully. He was not camped on a street corner or left-turn island, begging for money. His effort to simply keep going moved me.

What struck me next was that he should have been able to stay put, especially here in Inglewood. Of course, government everywhere in this wealthy country should aid its least fortunate citizens, and the fact that it continually doesn't — or won't — is a well-documented disgrace. But what stopped me that day was the even more troubling fact that an African American man — a demographic entirely overrepresented among the homeless — had so clearly not found succor in a city with a primarily African American government and a middle class to match, one of the only such places in Los Angeles County.

In the same moment, I recognized that the black middle class is part of the problem. Unlike its white counterpart in, say, Santa Monica (with its model homeless programs) or even in downtown lofts, Inglewood's middle class is precarious and always has been. It has always lived next to poverty and crime, because those conditions exist in black communities everywhere. Despite its numbers, the black middle class is still emerging, struggling to distinguish itself from an underclass that grows larger as the blue-collar middle — the real middle class — shrinks. People in Inglewood may truly want to help their own homeless, but that wish must somehow coexist with a suburban anxiety about maintaining property values and the look, if not the reality, of prosperity.

The hard fact is, folks in Santa Monica can view their homeless more charitably because they are clearly the other. The homeless there are part of the scenery, not the community, and though they may be considered a nuisance, they are not a real threat to the city's long-established good life. In Inglewood, the black homeless (and the jobless, and the dangerously underemployed) are a mirror we are loathe to look into, a prod to our collective conscience about how far we have to go before we can count ourselves safely among the fabled American middle class, with all the social equilibrium and freedom of mind it implies.

Martin Luther King Jr. repeatedly said that none of us is free until all of us are free, and though he was speaking in the largest of metaphors, he was also speaking to the quotidian freedoms that describe daily life and make it worthwhile — riding in the front of the bus, getting served at a lunch counter.

Freedom has evolved since the 1960s to mean more subtle, though less describable, things. The freedom of having a Target in your neighborhood, for instance: It sounds frivolous, until you consider that Target offers goods that all but the poorest of us can afford. Living decently no longer means not having to be a sharecropper but not having to go without health coverage. By such modern measures black people are still perilously unfree; we cannot breathe easy, and it is this knowledge that keeps the middle class so ambivalent about signs of poverty and lack of success — homelessness being the most vivid.

In the car, battling my own bout of middle-class asphyxiation, I thought about pulling over. I thought about giving the man money, or asking him what was wrong or, if I was truly courageous, offering to take him somewhere. But when I looked in my rear-view mirror, he had already moved on.

Dome Village Director—Ted Hayes—Fights Back Hard…

Here's is a commentary piece by Ted Hayes in response to his recent rent increase on his homeless facility:
__________

Prejudice
December 28, 2005

American blacks who are affiliated with the Republican Party are vigorously vilified by Democrats, especially black Democrats. Uncle Tom, sell-out, Oreo -- the list of slurs is long.

But it is not only insults. I am the founder and director of a unique, progressive homeless facility in downtown Los Angeles, known as the Dome Village. Yet the 35 men, women and children and their pets who call the Dome Village home are being "evicted" from privately owned property after 12-and-a-half years -- apparently on account of my political beliefs and activities. You see, though I am a leading homeless activist, I am also a conservative Republican and a strong supporter of President Bush.

Here's how the situation played out. Recently, I was invited to address a local Republican Women's Club; my landlord read an article in the local paper reporting on the event. Soon after, I received a notice raising the Dome Village rent from $2,500 a month to $18,330. Shocked, I inquired as to the seriousness of the change and the property owner blurted out that the cause of our "eviction" was "because you are Republican." He said that as a Democrat, he was tired of helping me and the Dome Village. In other words, let the homeless be damned.

And people think the Democrats are the party of compassion and tolerance. Private property should be protected, of course, and I have no intention of causing any trouble for this property owner as we part ways. Whatever he does with his valuable land -- it is only a few blocks from the Staples Center -- is no concern of mine, and I will not go to court.

Still, I cannot help but be saddened by the whole business. When I founded the Dome Village 12 years ago, we had an understanding that he could ask for his property back at any time for any reason, and I would say "absolutely" without hesitation. Still, his reason was prejudice against Republicans.

We see this across the country. Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor of Maryland and a Republican candidate for the Senate, has been crudely denigrated on racial grounds. A prominent leftist Web site, for instance, depicted him as "Sambo," among other aspersions. When Condoleezza Rice was nominated as Secretary of State, she faced similar treatment: editorial cartoons depicting her as a racial caricature, personalities calling her "Aunt Jemima" on liberal talk radio, and so forth. Clarence Thomas, Ward Connerly, Colin Powell, Thomas Sowell and other black conservatives regularly face similar smears.

These conservatives are attacked not because of the validity or judicious consideration of their views but because those views are supposedly heterodox for American blacks. Yet it is my opinion that many black people in the U.S. are politically and philosophically conservative -- and many are in fact actually closeted Republicans, fearful of persecution by friends, business associates, society clubs, school mates and even churches.

It is time for American blacks to have a conversation about the phenomenon of Democrats persecuting black Republicans. Why is this happening? What is it that the Democrats don't want black folks to understand about Republicans? What is it that the Democrats don't want black folks to know about Democrats? And how is it that we have come to this point -- after having endured so much -- where we have ourselves curtailed the freedom of political expression through the threat of retaliatory consequences?

Update On Cincinnati’s Quest To Build A Homeless Service Mall

The NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) groups are lining up to oppose Cincinnati’s desire to house dozens of social service providers under one roof. Supporters of a Cincinnati mall are patterning their design after the PATH Mall, here in Los Angeles. Here's the latest article.

Hopefully, city leaders and community members will catch on to this unique vision of gathering together homeless service providers into a “one-stop shopping” center rather than spreading services all over a city or county.

San Francisco’s Project Homeless Connect patterns their one-day, every other month, connect day around a “one-stop shopping” model. For the last four years, the PATH Mall has been a one-stop center every day of the year.

Establishing a regional homeless center designed like a mall, would only reduce the number of homeless in Cincinnati. Hopefully, they can overcome NIMBY tendencies.

Slow Week... Some New Ideas...

I will be out of town this week. However, I will try to post some entries...

I'm thinking of adding a few authors to L.A.'s Homeless Blog--people who might bring some unique perspectives to this societal human tragedy. Let me know if you have some (realistic) suggestions on who I should approach.

In a span of six months, there have been over 26,000 hits. I'm glad people are concerned about homelessness.

Hopefully, in 2006, this blog will bring new solutions, reveal facts that are not typically talked about in mainstream media, and help mobilize our community.

When “Home For Christmas” Is Just A Lyric

Here is Christmas in the San Francisco Chronicle’s perspective. Merry Christmas:
_______

THE SONGS of Christmas invoke wonderful images of families gathered, the magic of Santa's stealth visit and mistletoe's subtle aura, chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

We pause to offer our thoughts to those who will not be home for Christmas this year -- who can't be home for Christmas.

There are those who don't have a home. San Francisco is continuing to make progress in reducing chronic homelessness in this city, but the challenge is daunting, as anyone who ventured anywhere near downtown this holiday season has been reminded.

Then, there are the 80,000 foster children in California who -- through no fault of their own -- are under the guardianship of a system that has too few resources and too much inconsistency from county to county. Some of those children enjoy stable and supportive environments. Too many do not. Their plight will continue to be a priority of this editorial page in 2006.

Perhaps the most disturbing story of the year was Hurricane Katrina, whose awesome physical destruction was followed by a crisis of humanity that overwhelmed governments that proved inept and under-prepared. Large sections of New Orleans, among other parts of the Gulf Coast, remain uninhabitable -- with tens of thousands of families staying in temporary quarters far from their ravaged homes and facing the anxiety of a Jan. 7 deadline on federal housing assistance.

No matter your view of the war policies that have put more than 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq on Christmas Day, you should salute the dedication and sacrifice of these young men and women who are separated from their loved ones as they serve their country in a most dangerous duty.

If you are fortunate enough to be home for Christmas, enjoy the day and its many special customs while remembering that the season is about extending your thoughts and blessings to those in less fortunate circumstances.