Dreaming Big With Obama

The Western Regional Advocacy Project, of which Real Change is a proud member, sent this off recently to the Obama transition team. My capacity for hope is still tempered by twenty-eight years of well-earned political cynicism, so I'm not holding my breath. Still, it's good to ask. It all seems pretty reasonable to me.

WRAP is an organization of seven West Coast community groups with, on average, 15 years of service in their communities. In 2006 we formed this organization to serve as a vehicle to bring our collective voices to Washington DC. Toward that end I present to you the following paper we prepared for a congressional staff briefing hosted by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office after the release of our report entitled Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures. Since its release we have documented over 25,000 downloads from our website and have distributed our full print run of 3,000 hard copies. The full report (and accompanying artwork) is available on our website for your perusal.

One key recommendation we recently added to this paper is to ensure that affordable housing development is included as part of any economic stimulus proposal. We want to express that at the local level we are hearing a strong call for affordable housing and the proposed economic stimulus package is an ideal opportunity to address the housing and economic crises simultaneously. We can supply you with several examples of Community Housing Developers that have done an incredible job of community development as part of their housing development work -- through local hiring and training, small business generation, use of green technology, and of course paying a living wage to their workforce.

Our briefing paper follows and should you have any questions please do not hesitate to call at the number listed above. WRAP members are also available to meet with you to provide more detailed recommendations and input. We all are truly looking forward to a new day and a new relationship with OUR federal government!!


Thanks,
Paul Boden


Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness, and Policy Failures, written and published by WRAP, documents the direct correlation between homelessness and the massive cuts to HUD and USDA affordable housing programs that began in 1979 and continue today.

The report shows why, after 20 years, the McKinney Act has had no substantial impact on ending homelessness. It shows how the failed policy of having local communities write 5 and 10 year plans to “end” homelessness has pitted them against each other for the miniscule amount of McKinney funding and has shifted the focus away from the lack of funding for affordable housing.

• Between 1978 and 1983 HUD budget authority shrank from $83 billion to little more than $18 billion (in 2004 constant dollars) and has never been more than $30 billion since then (chart 3).
• In 1983 local governments across America began opening “temporary” shelters in response to the emerging numbers of people who had become homeless in their communities.
• The impact of federal cuts to affordable housing programs has been drastic. In 1976, for example, HUD maintained 213,742 existing housing units and built an additional 203,046 to keep up with a growing population. In 2002, HUD maintained only 25,900 existing units and built only 7635 new ones (chart 1).
• HUD funding for new public housing units – the safety net for the poorest among us – has been zero since 1996 (chart 4), while more than 100,000 existing units of public housing have been lost in that same period.
• From 1976-1985 a yearly average of almost 31,000 new Section 515 rural affordable housing units were built, but from 1986-2005 the average yearly production was 8170, a 74 percent reduction (chart 2).
• In 1987 the federal government responded to the growing crisis of homelessness with the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, but McKinney funding has never been more than $1.4 billion (chart 3).

McKinney homeless assistance programs have increasingly become a “catch-all” system for people who once were provided for by other mainstream federal government programs. Without Housing documents this trend regarding cuts to HUD and USDA, but it also holds true for domestic violence victims who used to depend on Department of Justice funding, for veterans who depended on the VA for housing and treatment, and for disabled people who depended on HHS funded residential and community-based treatment programs.

The original intent of McKinney to provide funding for communities “facing an immediate and unprecedented crisis due to the lack of shelter for a growing number of people” has become unrealistic because the federal government continues to create homelessness with cuts to legitimate housing and treatment programs.

There are approximately 470 Continuum of Care Boards and more than 290 “Ten-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness” Councils across America, with over 400 10 year plans. Many communities have both, and all are competing for a share of the same $1.4 billion of McKinney funding.

The most surprising aspect of mass homelessness is not that it was created by cuts to affordable housing. It is that the federal government spends more on housing subsidies today than it ever has, but these subsidies overwhelmingly benefit the private housing sector. Federal tax expenditures on home ownership in 2005 were $122 billion, while total HUD outlays were $31 billion – a difference of $91 billion (charts 7 and 8).

Recommendations:

WRAP – along with hundreds of other groups – wants the funding of federal affordable housing programs restored to comparable 1978 levels. We all share this goal, and these recommendations are presented to you as steps needed to get us there.

1) Include affordable housing development as part of any economic stimulus proposal.

2) Reject all current and future proposals to reduce funding for affordable housing, and prioritize access to housing for the poorest among us.

3) Ensure that funding cuts to federal mainstream programs don’t push more people into homelessness; local homeless planning boards should monitor the effects of these federal cuts and report on them in their McKinney applications. McKinney assistance should not be considered a catchall for beneficiaries of other programs after those programs have been cut.

4) Consider the full scope of federal housing subsidies and take action to balance the disparity between housing subsidies for wealthy people and for poor people. We refer you to: the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform report, Simple, Fair, and Pro-Growth (2005); National Low Income Housing Coalition’s report, Changing Priorities: The Federal Budget and Housing Assistance 1976 – 2005 (2004); and the report of the Bipartisan Millennial Housing Commission, Meeting Our Nation’s Housing Challenges (2002). These reports have specific and consistent recommendations about this issue.

5) Ensure that the more than 688,000 homeless children in our public school systems are fully integrated with their housed peers, are provided support to succeed in school, and have homes in which to grow and thrive.

6) Monitor HUD’s use of regulatory language and NOFAs that reprioritize and change the legislative intent of homeless assistance funding, and hold the Secretary of HUD accountable.

McKinney-Vento homeless assistance funding is a vital program for addressing the immediate suffering of homeless people, but if we – as a nation – want to end homelessness, we must do much more.

John Ballard

I decided to do something from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, and decided upon John Ballard, a poem about how God is love, but first, you have to love. Setting something from Spoon River to music is inspired by Richard Buckner's The Hill, a brilliant album if ever there was. He can make the free verse work against the music while he sings. I'm not that smart or talented, so this is more of a spoken word thing over a dirty guitar.

John Ballard
In the lust of my strength
I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me:
I might as well have cursed the stars.
In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute
And I cursed God for my suffering;
Still He paid no attention to me;
He left me alone, as He had always done.
I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple.
Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me:
Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him.
One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet
And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God,
So I tried to make friends with him;
But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet.
Now I was very close to the secret,
For I really could make friends with the bouquet
By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet
And so I was creeping upon the secret, but —

Nothing Is Meaningless

I dropped by Nickelsville today hoping to get Aaron Stephen Beaucage reading Nothing Is Meaningless, the spoken word piece he did at the Nickelsville benefit last month, on video. Needless to say, things worked out. He recited the thing from memory, fast. Apparently he's been practicing. Sadly, slam poets and social critics are notoriously underappreciated and underpaid. Afterwards, we went back to his car so he could write down his email adress. As the sidepanel of the white Dodge van slid open, there was his computer and printer sitting on a makeshift desk. His car was a lot cleaner than mine, and he lives in his. What's my excuse?

Proof I'm A Red

Here I am at last month's Real Change fundraising breakfast. I was saying something about the importance of protest politics, and how people need to stir shit up if anything's ever going to change, when suddenly, my fist, seemingly of it's own volition, rose unexpectedly into the air in front of 450 friends and friends of friends. The fist reached its ten o'clock apogee before I became self-conscious and stopped, thus falling short of the full on Panther-style noon position. I'm sure that, had I pushed past that moment of doubt and extended my fist high into the air, the crowd would have lept to to their feet and ran to the nearest barricade. My friend Revel caught the brief moment, but the photo was a bit blurred. Ever resourceful, she made it black and white and added a slight grain effect to get that endearing 70's radical FBI telephoto lens effect. It makes me laugh.

Bad Art Rohrschock

A friend recently sent me to the 50 Worst Album Covers of all time site. They're bad. Personally, I'd like to see this contest reopened as an American Idol meets Antiques Roadshow kind of reality TV show, complete with Where Are They Now segment. I chose the one in ten that made me laugh out loud in ways that others might find disconcerting. Apparently, I have a very dark sense of humor.

Timmy Webelo

It's been roughly five years since I gave up on reading ancient Greek. The girls came along, something had to give, and teaching myself an arcane and dead language seemed like a good place to start. Last night I pulled my workbooks off the library shelf, and this was tucked into Reading Greek. It's one of the very few photos I have of myself as a kid. This was around fifth or sixth grade. I hated both the Cub and the Boy Scouts and would not graduate past Tenderfoot. The Pinewood Derby meant nothing to me but misery and shame. I was ADD and sucked at getting merit badges. Walking around door to door selling tickets to the big annual scout fair at the Sioux Falls arena was not my idea of a good time. And my chief memory of meetings in Mr. Dickens' basement den involve hormonal boys chasing each other around for wedgies. But here I am, model Webelo, featured in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. I'm guessing this is from 1971.

Brenden Foster Made It Simple.

Yesterday my blog had 1,333 visitors. It was a bizarre spike. I'm usually more like 200. Brenden Foster, the homeless-supporting dying eleven year-old with leukemia, died. There was a resurgence of international media attention, and my blog entry on Brenden, now considerably further down on the Google listing, caught just part of the wave.




I was going to write about Brenden and the dozens of comments on the blog (most of which were disturbingly similar), but was saved from the task by this letter, sent to Real Change by one Michael Trepp, a man I don't know from Adam. Michael gets it. Lot's of people get it. It's kind of obvious when you think about it.

A couple of weeks ago I emailed Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata. I informed him that I thought that Mayor Nickels primary failure, concerning the homeless of Seattle, was one of attitude. I told Licata that I did not expect Nickels (or the rest of Seattle government) to have all the answers or to provide all of the solutions.

I had noticed, that when a hard fall rain is about to hit Seattle, Mayor Nickels (via a spokesperson on the tv news) has no problem asking the people of Seattle for help. He had asked us to make sure our storm drains are clear, because its a job that is much too big for city government to handle on its own. I told Licata that I had never seen our Mayor make a similar effort on behalf of the homeless. I had never seen Nickels come before the local tv news audience, asking the people of Seattle, to do what we can to help. The residents of Nickelsville have a more first hand experience, in that, Mayor Nickels could have done something positive to help them establish a permanent (but hopefully not eternal), well run, community supported shantytown (in the model of Portland's Dignity Village), within the Seattle city limits. Instead Nickels chose to harass them and chase them from location to location. He might have earned a name change had he done something to help, but instead, the Nickelsville name stands as a shameful reminder of his initial actions towards this homeless community.

Now, anyone paying attention knows, that Nickels is not entirely responsible for the economic hard times facing the people of Seattle - there is a nationwide increase in hard times and in homelessness. We've had one of the most sorry excuses ever for a president during the past eight years, and there has been a huge vacuum of any real leadership in congress as well. However, when a problem/challenge like Nickelsville comes along, a good leader should, like a good doctor, first do no harm. Then that person would, seeing the immensity of the problem, ask for help from anyone and everyone that he/she could ask, knowing that he/she could never do it on his/her own.

In the case of Nickelsville, Mayor Nickels did not do this. But a young child did. A few days ago there was a KOMO TV News story about eleven year old Brenden Foster, who was moved by the plight facing the people of Nickelsville. Brenden is dying of leukemia, but he is still full of compassion for others, including those who have no place to call home. Because Brendan himself is unable to go and help care for the homeless of Nickelsville, he has asked all of us to do it for him. A dying child succeeds where Mayor Nickels fails. Not in answers or in achievement, but in attitude and effort.

I Am Dwight Frye

As part of my ongoing campaign to drive away every regular reader of this blog forever, I've recorded yet another version of Alice Cooper's Ballad of Dwight Frye, a song that has fascinated me since childhood. This one uses a live performance effect on the rhythm and vocals track and something called "British Invasion" on the lead. I get lost for awhile and just go with it. As a result, it's more than eight minutes long. This is how I amuse myself. It beats the shit out of bad tv. Alice fans will appreciate the clip below of The Man, in top form back in the 70s.

Wednesday's Pink

I think I've posted three previous recordings of this song, but I can't stop. If I play this a hundred more times, it'll eventually have some kind of Pink Floyd peak experience, where the laser lights go off in my head and I finally get what's on the dark side of the moon. When you've liked a song since you were fifteen, you kind of get inside the thing. Another seven minute song. Guess I wasn't in a hurry. Since I got so lucky with yesterday's image by googling "blue art," today I tried "pink art" and about 7 pages in got this.

Tuesday's Blues

These blues actually started Sunday, but today they were done. I recorded them, added a lead, and blew my own mind. I think I'm just going to retire and become a rock god. I don't know shit about music theory, but that cool melody on the rhythm is all about the pinky, man. Tonight I played two leads against it and used the second one all the way through except about the last twenty seconds. I did that better the first time. It kind of builds. Seven minutes and twenty seconds, and it just keeps picking up steam, getting better. Rocking harder. The ending sucks. I just stop.

Art Warfare

I don't know why, but "Man Tries To Pay Bill With Spider Drawing" really does it for me.

C.R. Douglas Gets It

C.R. Douglas at Seattle Inside/Out has been following the sweeps issue for a long time, and he's getting a little pissed off. Early last summer he made me giddy by pressing then Human Services Director Patricia McInturff on where homeless people are supposed to go until she started to twitch. More recently, During Douglas' monthly Ask the Mayor show, Nickels claimed that the people staying at Nickelsville were all political activists who had homes to which they could return. Douglas was obviously taken aback by the Mayor's claim. One expects politicians to distort and lie, but this was way beyond the pale and seems to have put Douglas over the edge. This week's edition of Seattle Inside/Out is his answer.

Douglas goes out on the street to show how bad things are, and then brings Human Services Director Alan Painter, Committee to End Homelessness in King County ED Bill Block, Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness ED Alison Eisinger, and Operation NightWatch Director Rick Reynolds into the studio to get some answers. On a scale of 1-10 this show is an 11.

As Painter recites the city talking points in response to Douglas' questions, he looks as though he might be seated on a tack. It's a painful display. Douglas wanted SKCCH Director Alison Eisinger to just flat out say she supports Nickelsville as a solution, but for whatever reason, she couldn't go there. This left it up to Rick Reynolds, who admirably rises to the occasion by humanizing the problem and calling for something better. "Why do we continue to have persistent tenting situations if the need is being met? … It's a band-aid, but how many of us have never needed a band-aid?" He is riveting. Even Bill Block goes a little off the plantation, but not dangerously so. He mostly sticks to his talking points.

The Mayor's script is seriously lacking in credibility. Maybe it's time to try something else.

I Like Pink Live

I Like Pink, loose and very blue. Q Cafe Nickelsville Benefit, Nov. 15, 2008. Performance recorded by Mr. Doug McKeehan

Have Mercy Live

I can't really quite believe I pulled this off in front of an audience. I forgot the bridge and didn't repeat the first two verses at the end, but it's just as well. My fifteen minute set ended at 14:30. Q Cafe, Nickelsville Benefit, Nov. 15, 2008

Dancing Barefoot Live

Revel and I opened the set with this. I started out kind of nervous, but lost myself in the song midway through and recovered. Q Cafe Nickelsville Benefit, Nov. 15, 2008

Rising Waters

I attended a secret meeting on homelessness last Friday. Many members of the inner cabal were in attendance. I didn't even have to crash the thing. The press was not invited, as there were delicate matters under discussion. How screwed are homeless people? Who is screwing them? And so forth.

Therefore, I can only discuss this meeting by cloaking the proceedings in extreme allegory. I have chosen the river babies trope, which has the metaphorical happiness of being infinitely extendable. The following events may or may not have occurred.

It was noon, and the Kingdom smelled of portabello paninis. The Juridical Commission on Criblessness was in Seattle to review the local plight of the Riverbabies. Gathered with the Commission were many of the leading advocates and caretakers for the Riverbabies. Or of the Riverbabies, as was now the preferred term.

Riverbabynessness — from the early days, when just a few people were pulling babies out of the stream, all the way through to the large well-lit open rooms, which played Brahms while babies laid teeny toe to adorable head throughout the vast facility — had continued to grow. There still wasn't enough room. The babies were coming faster than anyone knew how to handle. Families First, once the goal for all babies, was now the fate of maybe one in ten. Many of these were speaking in complete sentences before finally joining a family. Most people simply didn't have the additional means to help, and those who did mostly didn't like babies.

The Kingdom was overextended and badly managed. The Skypeople, about 1% of the realm, reveled in vast piles of gold while the Invisibles, the bottom 15% or so, lived in conditions of utter misery. For most of the kingdom, life was filled with worry and risk.

The Riverbabies were now overflowing the banks and getting lodged out in the weeds. These were called the Outliers. There was the incident where a gang of youths used one as a soccer ball. A brief public outcry occurred, and then everyone stopped caring again. Most people had become very accustomed to the Riverbabies, to the point of hardly noticing them. The Outliers and the Riverbabies were outwardly indistinguishable. It was their surroundings that made the difference. An indoor Riverbaby was legal. An outdoor Riverbaby was not.

The King's Riverbaby sweeps had been in the press a lot lately, and the King himself was increasingly forced to defend his policies. It didn't help that he had grown more swollen with each passing day of regal tenancy. His neck poured up over his collar in angry waves of exfoliated pink flesh, rising into a doughy ball of obscenely pouty lips, flapping jowls, and bulbous nose. The King's tiny flat gray eyes swam in small seas of bright pink nestled against the fleshy shores of his brow. They alternated between frightened and bored as they darted about, often finally fixing in a defiant glare that still seemed somehow dead. The expensive haircut strangely accentuated the oddness of the King's bullet-shaped head, which resembled a slug fired into a block of wood and retrieved as evidence.

A recent Riverbaby Uprising had drawn much attention to the King's edict, and people were once again beginning to notice the Problem, as it was commonly called. After all, the waters were continually rising. Some would walk to the banks nearly everyday, commenting nervously to one another on how the depths had just claimed some new point of interest. A fence post. A field. A parked car. An unlucky cow.

Various squires of the King, both loyal and disloyal, were there before the Commission, as were the key shysters and proles, and, of course, the star baby tenders, allies, and agitators. Discussion was mostly polite. They nibbled on inexpensively catered sandwiches and drank urns of coffee with their brownie triangles. A few of the villagers didn't seem to know why they were there. Some of the more loquacious tenders prattled on about the details of tendenceship, oblivious to the waters that would soon swamp their feeble efforts.

The core facts regarding the Riverbaby sweeps were read. Upbeat assurances of progress on the Problem were offered by the Top Tender. Many tenders still adhered to a Riverbaby creed based upon a belief in the Number Ten. The Top Tender was the chief local exponent of this belief system which had swept the Kingdom hence and hither.

One of the agitators asked the Top Tender why the Outliers were of such little regard to Ten Worshippers. The Top Tender replied that while individual Ten Worshippers might have their own opinions, his belief system had no democratic process that allowed for resolution of differences or airing of controversy. This may anger some of the Ten Worshippers, he wordlessly implied, and gravely fracture the Tendence Coalition, which, sadly, was failing miserably in its meticulously meretricious yet metrically misleading goals. Eventually, the Top Tender remembered that the Tendence Coalition had set a standard for the King based on the King's standard, and boldly announced his bright thought, assured that those assembled would thricely applaud and dance a jig. None did.

A Juridical Commissioner noted — once many of the inner cabal scurried to other appointments and the others had resorted to chatting semi-furtively among themselves — that this was the way of the Ten Worshippers in most Kingdoms. The Outliers make the SkyPeople uncomfortable, and are thereby the enemy of the King, for the King is of the Skypeople and not of the rest of us. Ten Worshippers are often loath to offend the King. For the King is mighty, and holds their fate within his pudgy yet powerful hands.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

Sigh. Another night up til 1:30 or 2:00. I'm so screwed. This song, however, keeps evolving. Over the past week, as I prepared to play live, it became an obsession. I love the slide up to hit the harmonics on the way down and that little slide back up. It seems like there's around 300 ways that can happen, and each one surprises me just a little. I added some American Clean effect to the guitar and suddenly I sound like Billy Bragg meets Gang of Four. Put the live simulation reverb on the vocals and — bang — I'm kind of an emo punk act. I can't think really of who the vocals remind me of. Me, I guess.

Nickelsville: The Musical

Here's a slide show/movie with song accompaniment that Revel made for Saturday's Nickelsville Benefit at Q Cafe. Contributors include Tajuan Treamalle, Richard White, Revel, Patricia Gray, Alex Becker, and others. The event raised more than $2,500 for the cause. Kudos to Dustin Cross for organizing a fine event.

Dancing Barefoot

Last night I played in front of "people" for the first time in about twenty years. When I did it then, I sucked. That was a Street Magazine party, organized as a talent show. I made up some Devo-ish thing about art school people. They were an easy target. People dug it, and some guy asked me to play his cafe. I had one song I was good at at, and a handful of others that sucked. I declined.

Last night Revel and I did Dancing Barefoot in front of maybe 125 people at the Nickelsville Benefit. Then I did a fast, hard Have Mercy, which I managed not to tremendously fuck up (I'm prone to forgetting lyrics), and closed with a loose and hammy I Like Pink.

It was cool to have a sound guy giving me some reverb and making it sound nice. I've gotten very comfortable in front of audiences as a speaker, but performing as an artist is different. You're much more exposed. You kind of have to let go for it to work. When it works, you feel very high and very focused. I do, anyway.

Doing Dancing Barefoot in a christian setting brought out more of its god stuff for us. It's about intense love, connection, ecstasy, God, the universe, redemption. The big stuff.

The version posted here is hot. Revel and I did four takes on this song today, thinking that maybe after more practice and new strings on the guitar we'd get something good. None were better than the first, done at 9 am the morning after we learned it. I added a little reverb and a lead track tonight, and, well, it's pretty damn good. Really. Put on some headphones and listen.

Do You Think You Can Tell?

I've been playing a bit compulsively lately and revisited this one tonight. The voice kind of gives away a few times, but overall, it's a nice, slow, take on a song that never stops being relevant. Wish You Were Here got burned into my brain during a time when a bong and an 8-track tape deck were standard automotive equipment. Someday I'll get ambitious and learn the slidey high part that's missing.