Was [PLUG-TALK] I don't like a certain change on plug...

[Jeme A Brelin]

On Sat, 13 Nov 2004, Darkhorse wrote:
> Portland has one of the highest teen homeless rates in the nation, but
> was this ever talked about during the campaign for city mayor?  I don't
> remember hearing about it as a campaign issue at all.

Well, the candidates have about the same stance on the issue, so there's
not much to discuss during a campaign.  I think that stance is something
like "keep doing what we're doing" and I think that stance is just about
the best option we have the moment.

And before you tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, I'll tell you
that I'm writing this from a teen homeless shelter where I work several
nights each month.  The program that runs this shelter is funded primarily
by the county (to cover facilities costs and personel) and supported by
donations from businesses and individuals (in the form of food for our
nightly meals, bedding, toiletries, etc.) and gets a few grants here and
there from other sources.

This is a really good program that includes mechanisms for getting youths
off the streets, off of drugs or out of prostitution (where applicable)
and into more conventional and socially-acceptable living situations.

There is overwhelming agreement that such a program is necessary, but
there is some disagreement over how it is to be administered.  Years ago,
this was a program run directly by the county.  But the so-called fiscal
conservatives balked at social services being provided directly by the
"government" (see my previous post on the ridiculousness of this
application of the word) and it was spun off into a private agency that is
contracted by the county to provide this service to the public.  Costs are
MUCH higher than they would be if this were directly a public agency.  For
instance, we wouldn't have a director that earned $130K/year nor would we
have a separate payroll group or separate group health insurance, etc.
Pooling those resources with other public service agencies would save an
enormous amount of money.  But the conservatives won't have it.  Instead,
the system diverts even more public money into private hands.

We have plenty of space, but too few case managers.  Consider that tonight
neither of the two shelters in this facility (one is more of a place to
sleep and the other a night-residence for youths waiting for transitional
housing or homes) are full (about a third of the female beds and
two-thirds of the male beds in this shelter are empty tonight) and it's
pretty cold out there.  The system, I think, does as well as a system can
when it's held to the puritanical values imposed upon us by the
conservatives.


> I am for welfare reform myself, the benefits offered should be adjusted
> as people find work so that they are not worse off working than they
> were on welfare unemployed.  Set a level of assistance and as as people
> start to earn money, only reduce their benefits for the portion they
> earn on their own.  If you need $1k/month to live and you start
> consistently earning 600$ a month, you should still get $400/month in
> welfare.  A system where you get $1k/month benefit if you don't work and
> nothing if you work for less than that doesn't make sense.

With a less than 1-1 wage-benefit trade-off, you can also provide an
economic incentive to work for wages to supplement the natural desire a
person has to productively engage his environment.  Consider a system in
which you lose only 50 cents in benefits for each dollar of wages.  Your
hypothetical person would then get $600 in wages and $700 in benefits.
That way, they actually ARE better off working for wages than they would
be not working at all.  (The system you described still includes no
economic incentive to work for wages.)

> Streetcars and aerial trams are extremely expensive, and the increasing
> cost of real estate in downtown Portland doesn't help with the poverty
> problem either.  Condos at the end of an expensive streetcar system, who
> thought about the poor when this project was planned and approved?

If you looked into it at all, Michael, you'd see that each of these
projects includes plans for affordable housing.  Now, that "affordable
housing" is still rental property which makes poor people poorer and rich
people richer, but that is almost inevitable in today's economic system.

In other words, the city thought about the poor when the project was
planned and approved.

Now, this affordable housing is nothing more than slave quarters for the
wage-slaves that serve the elite in those areas.  That's a problem that
needs to be addressed, but public discourse doesn't even allow some of
those words to be used these days.

> The tram towers had to be redesigned to be more attractive, for what
> reason?

If we cannot engage our environment esthetically, we won't care about it
as much.  Public welfare has as much to do with the psychological
well-being of the people as the physical.  We must respect all of the ways
in which people relate to their environment, not just the bare
functionality.

> The money that went to hiring an engineer to come up with a more
> attractive tower design could have gone into social programs.

I would argue that attractive tower design IS a social program.

> Who will ensure that there is enough low income housing? Katz must have
> cared more about impressing an elite circle of political friends then
> she did about the poor.

Well, that's a given.  She certainly got more automobile parking psaces
built than human living spaces for the poor.

> Why is a swiss company instead of a local one heading up the big pipe
> project?  Shouldn't a state with a hurting economy keep those jobs home?

Well, I personally believe that publicly funded projects should directly
contract workers and engineers rather than firms that will skim off
profits before they reach workers.

But the system reduces everything to a purely monetary economic argument
and nothing but the monetary cost and potential for profiteering is fair
game for discussion when seeking contractors to do public works.

J.
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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