by Travis

  Fun fact: In order to be eligible to work in the U.S. you have to be able to satisfy the I-9 requirements, which include identification paperwork that can not be expired. This is an incredible challenge for many facing homelessness, and a huge obstacle to getting back into the work orce. Especially, for those who due to theft, loss, or simply to the chaos that being homeless brings, do not have self identifying documentation.

A Colorado ID requires:
    -You must provide identification documents to prove full legal name, date of birth, identity and lawful presence in the United States.  
    -You must provide proof of your Social Security number.
   -You must provide proof of your current Colorado address.

    If you stay in a homeless shelter they will give you a letter for the mailing address, if you stay in that shelter, which in itself can be a challenge due to anxiety, crowding, restrictions, etc. That covers an address, though the shelters are not great for actually getting mail.
    Identification documents would have to be a photo ID (can be VA, Military, DOC, etc.) or a US birth certificate. Of course, if you had a photo ID, you could have used them from the start, but in this example we assume they do not.
    If you don't have proof of your SSN, you will need to get a new SS card, for which you need proof of your identity and U.S. citizenship. Again, this requires a copy of your birth certificate or a passport. Once you have that item, you need to visit the Social Security Administration  and request a replacement copy.
    A U.S. Birth Certificate requires:
This can be hard to obtain if you were born outside of the state of Colorado because you need to first call or visit online the vital records department of the state you were born in, be able to provide enough information to find the record, and pay the fee that ranges from $5 to $25 for a copy to be mailed to you. By the way, mailing it to you can be pretty damn unreliable if your only mailing address is a homeless shelter.

So... in order to legally work, if lacking identification, the steps are:

    1.Access state of birth vital records, somehow pay ($5-$25) for a copy of your birth certificate. Wait to have it mailed to you. Hope that you get it from the shelter before they return or dispose of the mail (done usually once a week).

    2. Use the U.S. birth certificate to go to the Social Security Administration office and request a replacement card. They will give you a temporary receipt valid for 30 days and mail you the actual card. Generally no fee for this replacement card though limited to 3 in a year or 10 in your lifetime.

    3. Then, armed with your new SSA receipt or card, a letter from the homeless shelter to use to verify your address, and your birth certificate, you can go to the DMV and attempt to get your ID. The fee will be $11.50. They will again issue you a temporary ID and mail the permanent one to your mailing address. Again, hope you get your mail before it's returned, otherwise you get to do this process over again when your temporary ID expires in 30 days.

    Finally, after however long this process takes, you can use those items to successfully fill out that required paperwork.
    So, understand that sometimes, people can't just "get whatever job will hire them" because once you are in this daunting position, the steps to recover from it can seem to be stacked against you at every turn.
     Before we think someone is lazy, think about this process and realize that some people didn't even read this far before giving up, let alone having to push through this ordeal in order to be able to work at all.

OK, maybe this fact wasn't fun after all. 

    Some of my disturbing thoughts about what the world is now, and what the world was back in the beginning.  Not much has changed.  
    There are people who are very selfish, rude, self-centered, greedy and then you have people who think that they are better than everyone else because they have a lot of money, expensive homes and cars. People who have jobs and homes, among other things, can't see beyond what they have to realize that they are no different than the people who are on the streets trying to survive, but who get stuck because the people above won't take the time to get to know the people on the streets.
    Every person you see living on the streets has a story to tell.  Yes, I agree, some people on the streets should not have to be on the streets:

          Elderly people
          The handicapped
             (people with walkers and wheelchairs)
          Women and children
          People with mental health issues
   
    I have traveled to different states throughout my years and have seen and heard different stories from a lot of people on the streets. If you have never lived on the streets and experienced the stress and frustration of not being able to get around to places that feed, give out clothes, hygiene, showers, or finding a safe place to lay your head without being harrased by police. Officers asking people to move, off and on, all night deprive the homeless of a good rest so they can go to or find work. People end up too tired, can't get to work on time and risk getting fired.      
    So who is the biggest problem here? You have the right to live. You have the right to be.  You have these rights regardless of money, health, social status or class.  You have these things, man, woman or child.  These rights can never be taken away from you; they can only be infringed.  When someone violates your rights, remember, it is not your fault.

Here are 7 reasons why homeless choose to be homeless:
   1. Safety
    2. Personal Belongings
    3. Pets
    4. Health Hazard
    5. Control
    6. Privacy
    7. Required Religion

Still not convinced?
.
The next time you see a homeless person sleeping on the streets ask them yourself.  When someone violates your rights, remember, it is not your fault. You were wronged...

by Natalie Taffield, The Banshee

“Oh, um. Okay, well. I just don’t know what I can do for you.”
“What’s wrong with you? What happened to you?”
“Is there someplace else you can go?”
For nearly a decade, I have repeatedly heard these and a million other ignorant comments and questions fielded to my clients that are experiencing homelessness. Granted, over the years I have learned that I cannot expect people to understand what it feels like for those that experience homelessness, what homelessness really is, or why it is an issue that warrants our collective empathy.
Homelessness is an incredibly complicated social issue. It is utterly misunderstood, poorly depicted and completely stigmatized in our culture. It is not surprising that most people are not only clueless but also unaware and ill-informed. Though most days I feel that there is still much to learn, here is my attempt to put into words what it feels like (or so I’m told) to experience homelessness.
To experience homelessness is to experience loss. It is the loss of a job, a home, a marriage, a child, a pet. It is the loss of stability, good health, a sane mind. It is the loss of control over an addiction. It is the loss of ability to provide for yourself or your family. It is the loss of friends, of privacy, of shelter, of comfort. It is the absolute loss of hope, the loss of self, and the loss of dignity, self-worth, and pride. It is the loss of all that makes us feel most human._To experience homelessness is to experience loss every second of every day, yet the struggle to simply survive is so unrelenting there is no time to grieve.
To experience homelessness is to experience worry. It is to worry about where to sleep, what the weather will bring, when law enforcement will hassle you, and if your belongings will get stolen in the night. It is to worry about the invasive and aggressive voices in your head and when they might stop telling you to kill yourself. It is to worry about getting stabbed, beaten and/or raped on the streets. It is to worry about where you can find a little something to help you sleep, where your next meal will come from, or how you will pay for the trespassing ticket you are sure to be issued. It is to worry about finding a private enough place to relieve yourself. It is to worry that you may never, ever be able to get off the streets. To experience homelessness is to experience worry every second of every day, yet the struggle to simply survive is so unrelenting there is no time to unwind.
To experience homelessness is to experience dehumanization. It is to watch the disapproving eyes of passersby who refuse to make eye contact with you. It is to feel lesser, insignificant, inhuman. It is to ask for help and be ignored. It is to experience verbal and physical abuse. It is to have your individuality disregarded, your value as a human diminished. It is to elicit abhorrence, disgust and exasperation from others instead of compassion and empathy._To experience homelessness is to experience dehumanization every second of every day, yet the struggle to simply survive is so unrelenting there is no time to feel human.
To experience homelessness is to struggle with insufferable moral choices. It is to question whether the values that you have always held will serve you in the animalistic and dangerous world of the streets. It is to abandon long-held ideals and standards to meet more basic, more primal, more pressing needs. It is to become someone entirely new, not out of desire but out of a necessity that those who have not experienced homelessness cannot even begin to understand. To experience homelessness is to struggle with insufferable moral choices every second of every day, yet the struggle to simply survive is so unrelenting there is no time for choice.
To experience homelessness is to see a perspective not afforded to most. It is to learn that the most valuable piece of our humanity is our connection to others. It is to know the true value of functioning collectively and asking for support. It is to be loyal to and protective of those around us. It is to reach deep within the oldest part of our brains and deepest part of our souls to find the skills, the resources, the courage and the strength to survive. To experience homelessness is to gain this profound perspective every second of every day, yet to express this perspective is fruitless because if you are experiencing homelessness, no one is listening to you.

by The Urban Outdoorsman

    Once upon a time, in city or town just like yours, there lived an addict. You might be the addict...
    You see, all addictions are taught, and learned from our elders and friends at the earliest of our memories. We watch them and mimic those we thought were powerful and all wise.  It's a monkey-see-monkey-do kind of world. We all learn by example.
    As the individual grows, he/she finds other, more interesting people places and things that will divide their short attention spans. Their focus will change and so will their addictions as well as their friends and idols. Everything they will do, will change and so will their addictions as well as their friends and idols.  Everything they will do, will be driven for the approval of others, but especially for themselves.
   They jump from one addiction to another in their life-long quest to define just exactly who “they” are. Most will find more than one thing they are addicted to. They will have a few, or worse, several things to struggle around at one time or another.  
    It's not just about juggling all of the little addictions though, it’s about which addictions are going to drive them and how hard the drive will be. Almost every addiction will drive the person to the point where it will start to consume them to the core and they will start to neglect things that once used to be important to them. Things like family, friends, and work. Sometimes this consuming drive will make them omit or forget to shower or wear clean clothes. They will pawn or sell personal and cherished items in an attempt to “fix” the addiction.
     People who become “addicted” lose their thought processes. They basically forget how to think rationally because the mindset is in the mode of acquire and use. I know of a lady who sold her cozy vacation house in Colorado, just to buy another more expensive Rolls Royce to add to her collection.
    However, it's not the addict's fault. The fault belongs to the addiction. It's just like the smelly, unkempt drunks and addicts begging for spare change to get that bottle of booze or hit of dope.
    You see, they have mortgaged their soul for the addiction in their mind. Usually for those who find themselves at the end of the rope they made from their addictions. Death is the usual way out for them.
    Every single thing that takes control of your life, thought process, and ideals is an addiction!! Whether it be God, Satan, saving trees or whales, or buying that rare coin that your collection just can't do without. All are addictions. So the next time somebody irritates, or makes you mad because they're doing something insane cut them some slack, remember they are not in charge, their addiction is.  :)     

The Urban Outdoorsman.

Wester Regional Advocacy Project Staff/ Coral
July 21, 2016

    Researched in collaboration with the 9 WRAP members: Denver Homeless Out Loud, Los Angeles Community Action Network, St. Mary’s Center, Street Spirit, San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee, Street Roots, Sisters of the Road and Right2Survive. www.wraphhome.org
    It is easy to forget that homelessness was supposed to be temporary. As homeless states of emergency continue to pop up all over the U.S,  as ten-year plans to end homelessness continue to expire and get renamed and as evictions and displacement and the numbers of community members living on the streets continue to increase; homelessness becomes more and more entrenched as a permanent phenomenon.
    Neoliberalism, which started in the 1980s in the U.S., is the current phase of capitalism. Neoliberal policies decimated federal public housing funding and created the contemporary homeless problem. It also has shifted our entire material reality by privatizing formerly public goods including public space, housing, and healthcare, expanding the prison system and criminalizing social behaviors, destroying the welfare state and centralizing wealth for a small few while increasing poverty for most, amongst other hugely influential shifts.
    Instead of addressing the structural reasons, rooted in neoliberalism, that have been forcing people out onto the streets for the past 30 years and fighting to end homelessness entirely, the political discourse has continued to focus on how to manage the increasing population. These management tools include using police to criminalize people for existing in public, creating a multi-billion dollar industry to “help” homeless people and continually cooking up new non-solution solutions to end homelessness.
    In the rush to appear to be doing something about the “homeless problem,” politicians often funnel large amounts of money into projects that do little or nothing to change the material conditions of the lives of homeless people, or are simply harmful. While the intention to be helpful is great, the end result of being deceitful to the broader public and wasting millions and millions of dollars on these solutions is not. Many of the non-solution solutions listed in this article have positive sides that make some people’s lives easier. Although this is great, it does not make it an actual solution towards ending homelessness. The solutions that are most helpful to homeless people actually come from homeless people themselves, foster self-determination for everyone, stress the need for housing and do not involve the police at any step of the project.
    Because WRAP is a coalition of nine organizations working for poor and homeless people’s rights across cities in three different states, we often come in contact with these non-solution solutions. At times we engage with the non-solution solutions that are shortsighted but helpful to a small number of people but we never engage with the solutions that are directly harmful to people living on the streets. In general, we tend to be critical of all these non-solution solutions because we strive for alternatives that actually address the needs of homeless people and move towards systematically eliminating the possibility that anyone would be forced to become homeless.  

An abridged list of WRAP’s “favorite” non-solution solutions to ensure that the status quo remains:

    1) Criminalizing Existence – County Jails and State Prisons Instead of Housing
The favorite go-to response from cities across the country is to force homeless people out of public space by criminalizing basic life-sustaining activities in public space (sitting, lying, sleeping, resting, eating, etc.).  Homeless people are told to move along, ticketed and/or arrested with the goal of removing them from public space.
Under the guise of working for the public good, city politicians are quick to jump on criminalizing everything they possible can. This means criminalizing people for camping when they have nowhere else to protect themselves from the elements.  It also means criminalizing people possessing “camping paraphernalia” with the intent to use.
      Under the guise of public health, cities and police departments are sweeping encampments and displacing people from the place where they live and the community they live with. Often these sweeps involve confiscation of people’s property claiming that it is “garbage.” Other strategies include closing public restrooms, turning off public water sources and denying people the right to wash themselves or their things.  More restrictions on how many belongings homeless people can have include limiting belongings to two square feet or making it illegal to store property in public space.
      Under the guise of public safety, poor and homeless people are funneled into local county jails and state prisons. Most often this happens because people are given bench warrants for accruing many fines for existing while poor in public. Others are locked up in county jails for simply not having the money to pay bail. This creates a sense of safety for wealthy people but is a direct threat to poor people’s safety, as jails and prisons are deeply unsafe for everyone inside.
      All of these strategies for criminalizing homeless people’s existence are meant to make it harder for people with wealth to see homelessness. They do nothing to give people access to housing, to services that people want or to self-determination. In fact, criminalizing existence entrenches people in poverty and creates more and more obstacles for people trying to get off the streets.

    2) Collaborating with Business Improvement Districts – Gentrifying Cities One Neighborhood at a Time
Another solution that excites the minds of business and property owners is to collaborate with the police through Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) to “address homelessness” and gentrify neighborhoods. While it seems obvious that business owners, property owners, police and BIDs are not in an appropriate place to say what homeless people need, this does not stop them from doing so and doing so very loudly.
Business Improvement Districts are the gentrification station. They are deeply non-democratic public-private entities. BIDs were created to give an opportunity for business owners to charge additional fees to property owners in a specific area to supplement parking infrastructure and lighting maintenance.  Nowadays, BIDs charge additional fees to a specific area to fund sanitation services, private security, more police and many anti-homeless initiatives. All of these BID services are meant to make business districts more appealing to wealthy gentrifiers at the expense of the lives of long-term low-income residents and homeless neighbors.
BIDs are known to help solve the “homeless problem” by hiring poor and homeless people as security guards to police other poor and homeless people. They engage in lobbying and public policy in favor of new criminalization efforts and lobby against homeless people fighting criminalization. Sometimes they fund homeless services but this is largely to maintain some amount of control over what those services can do. They also participate in, collaborate with and often initiate sweeps of homeless encampments in addition to supporting the enforcement of anti-homeless ordinances including panhandling, vagrancy, and anti-transient ordinances.

    3) City-Sanctioned Encampments That Deny Self-Determination – An Innovative Idea in Surveillance and Policing
Of course, one of the most obvious non-solution solutions is the shelter system. Shelters were created and were effective as an emergency option for people on the streets. They were never intended to be used as a long-term solution to give people shelter.  Shelters were also absolutely never meant to become a permanent tier of housing because they are not housing. The shelter system is also not a viable or safe solution for many homeless people but that does not stop politicians from promoting them as if they are a real solution.

    An innovative idea, that has been circulating for years but has recently seen a re-investment, is the idea of creating city-sanctioned encampment shelters. These initiatives create legal encampments in large abandoned areas – usually far away from city centers -- that are run by the city or a non-profit and function like outdoor shelters. This is different from encampments that have gained legal exemption from cities but are run by and for their residents and don’t involve criminalizing, surveilling or policing people.
    The formation of encampments does not represent an end to homelessness.  Rather they are an indication of a critical need to create more effective local systems for responding to homelessness. Official strategies should focus on connecting people to permanent long-term housing solutions and not creating and operating city-run encampments. At the very least, official strategies should honor the creative ways that homeless people are housing themselves and their communities, such as building tiny homes and other structures, in response to the lack of housing.
    People sleeping in encampments are diverse and interventions must address a range of needs, challenges, and goals. The forced dispersal of encampments is not an appropriate solution though city-sanctioned encampments have been used as a justification for increased police and sweeps of homeless camps by entrenching the idea of non-city sanctioned encampments as an illegal public safety/health concern. This forces the constant packing up and moving of elders, disabled, and physically injured individuals sleeping in encampments while ignoring reasons why people would choose a non-city sanctioned encampment over a city-sanctioned one. A person’s refusal to enter a city-sanctioned encampment can also be used to justify the criminalization and/or arrest of that person.
    Homeless people who live in encampments use many strategies to keep themselves and their community safe. One of these strategies involves petitioning the city for code waivers, exemptions, or pushing for them to simply ignore that the encampments exist. These solutions are useful so long as they are not used by cities to pitt homeless people against each other by naming some people’s encampments legal while others as illegal. They are also helpful as long as they do not increase the criminalization of these communities. Cities should not be congratulated for doing this most basic work of allowing people to sleep and rest without being criminalized but should be celebrated when they invest in long-term housing that meets the needs of homeless people in their neighborhoods.

   4) Homeless Courts – Using the Criminal Legal System to Fight Problems Created by the Criminal Legal System
As was mentioned earlier, criminalization is not a solution to homelessness. In response to this, there is commonly a push for other criminal legal approaches to address homelessness, like homeless courts. The criminal legal system exacerbates problems for homeless people in all of its iterations and should not be used as a solution.
Homeless courts were created as a way to address homeless issues outside of the regular court system. These courts were created, similar to mental health courts, because the “regular” court systems has become overwhelmed with status crime offenses.
    Homeless courts do not lessen or change the quality of life charges that homeless people are facing. They do create a special court to address the so-called crimes of engaging in basic life-sustaining activities while homeless. Homeless courts further institutionalize homelessness and entrench homelessness in the criminal legal system. These courts do help people access housing services. but only if they have pleaded guilty. Pleading guilty also often forces people into services that they may not want or need including drug treatment, case management and other services.
People should not need to be arrested to access services. People should not be arrested for quality of life crimes. Quality of life crimes are violent, racist, classist and should not exist. The criminal legal system is a violent system based on racism, classism and other oppression and cannot properly address homelessness.

    5) Outreach – A Great Way To Beef Up Your Grant Proposal
      Perhaps the most overused non-solution solution to homelessness is outreach. Outreach can actually be a useful tool in gathering information and creating a connection between people. There are plenty of ways that people are doing outreach that supports real solutions towards ending homelessness. At its best, outreach provides food, blankets, medical supplies, harm reduction materials, access to showers, and cop-watching to people living on the streets. Unfortunately, much of this type of outreach has been criminalized and de-funded.
    Outreach can also be used to perpetuate the myth that people are in the streets and other public spaces because they don’t know where to go for help or are just too dysfunctional to get there. Local, state and federal governments, BID’s, health departments, police and community organizations all conduct street outreach.  At its worst, this outreach is done to “look good,” as a media stunt, to aid in displacing people from encampments with threats of police sweeps or simply to justify increases to funding for organizations coordinating the outreach.
    Often, outreach is a practice of futility. When all the service provider's, treatment centers and housing have massive waitlists, doing outreach to tell people that there is nothing available for them besides a waitlist is not particularly helpful. While new innovative outreach programs pop up periodically in cities and towns all over the U.S. with different uniforms, different people and different names – the end result of nothing changing for homeless people remains the same.  

    6) Case Management, Life-Skills Training and the Homeless Industrial Complex
      An entire industry has been created to “help” homeless people over the past 30 years. This special arm of the non-profit industrial complex is created to come up with new best practices, new experts and new projects to funnel money into. Nowadays, most homeless service providers are required to include case management and life-skills training. While these services are helpful for some, for most they do nothing at all or are directly harmful.
Case managers are assigned to homeless people to provide emotional support and help link people with services that they need. As mentioned earlier, the most helpful services like long-term permanent housing are consistently unavailable. While politicians claim that homeless people are service resistant, the reality is that most services are homeless people resistant by offering nothing particularly helpful.
    Life-skills trainings are given at many of these service provision nonprofits. These trainings are often mandatory and include literacy, numeracy, budgeting, keeping appointments, contacting services, dealing with bills, interpersonal communication, dealing with disputes, self-confidence, building social network skills, etc. While these trainings on how to better participate in capitalism are helpful to some, many find this to be a deeply condescending and harmful practice.
The thing that homeless people need most is a home. Homeless people often have very little in common with each other besides not having a permanent house to live in. Unless the life-skills trainings are about building housing and non-profits are purchasing land for people to put these houses – they are going to continue to be mostly irrelevant.

    7) Navigation Centers, Coordinated Entry Systems, Vulnerability Indexes – The Many Ways to Link Homeless People Up with Housing That Doesn’t Exist
      Under neoliberalism, there are many names for the same thing to make it seem like the idea is new and/or useful. These solutions are the least harmful of all solutions on this list. However, they are included because of how much money they waste on being marginally helpful and mostly useless.
There is a push for new Navigation Centers across the Bay Area in California. Navigation Centers are large centers where homeless people can come to be “navigated” to services in the city. This $3 million solution is meant to create a one-stop shop where people can access all of the services in the city at one place without having to figure out where all of the services are and what they do on their own. This is not a bad idea. Services in large urban cities can be overwhelming and complicated to navigate.
    The problem with the Navigation Center model is that it is not particularly successful in linking homeless people with long-term permanent housing because there is no housing to be linked up with. In San Francisco, there is a small number of temporary shelter beds for people in the Navigation Center. The majority of people who access the Navigation Center receive temporary housing, a bus ticket out of town or they are pushed back onto the streets.
    A similar project in Los Angeles called the Coordinated Entry System (CES) attempts to bring services together in one place for homeless people to access. The CES involves extensive outreach and recruitment of homeless people. Unfortunately, similar to San Francisco, these methods are not particularly helpful because there is no housing to coordinate and make accessible to people living on the streets. The CES measures their success by how many 1,000s of people are on waitlists for housing. It can take years for people to have any movement on those wait lists.
In Sacramento, the Common Cents program is also a project to coordinate services. Common Cents is specifically interested in addressing the needs of homeless people at the highest risk of premature death. They use a vulnerability index to assess severity of need for housing.
    While prioritizing people in the most dire need is a great approach, the reality is that there is not enough housing for even those people. There are over 1,000 people on the waiting list because there is no housing available. This approach also does not address the fact that living on the streets creates a high risk for premature death for all people. People need adequate housing in order to survive. Housing is a human right and everyone in this country, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, should have access to housing that they can afford.
    All of these solutions, almost identical to each other in different cities in the West Coast, merely bring together the services that exist. The problem is that there is not enough housing. These solutions will continue to not address the needs of people living on the streets until there is actually enough housing built in these cities.
 
    Homelessness will end when everyone has a house to live in and can access their basic needs like eating, sleeping, resting, using the bathroom and having contact with other humans. This is not an idealistic and unattainable goal. There is enough money in this country to ensure that everyone has a house. After all, we have no problem funding home ownership for wealthier people and we have no problem building luxury condos in urban cities across the U.S. that are only accessible to the most wealthy. Ending homelessness is a problem of political will and not economics.
    We cannot continue to allow these non-solution solutions to pop up in cities across the U.S. We need housing and we need it now. Homelessness has been a crisis for 30 years. People living on the streets all over the U.S. are experiencing premature death at disturbingly high rates for lacking access to the most basic human things. Poor communities are under attack. The time to be bold and invest in a world where we can all thrive is now.
    The first step is incredibly simple: build housing for every person to live in and abandon the non-solution solutions immediately.

by Billie Bramhall

    As I write this article I can think of many needed protests besides this mysterious “Homeless Industrial Complex”: the passage of the Camping Ban ordinance three years ago that makes it illegal for anyone (read homeless people) to sleep or rest in Public Places in Denver, the police who issued 36 tickets last night to homeless people catching a little much-needed sleep for trespassing and breaking the curfew ban, the banks and mortgage companies that caused a recession that put thousands out for work, the mortgage companies that foreclosed on hundreds of low income people and took their homes, that government that refuses to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour, the Downtown Denver Partnership for trying to make homeless people invisible downtown instead of helping them with housing and shelter, etc.
    I appreciate the hard work that dozens of church groups, working people, veterans' organizations, mental health groups, non-profit organizations (yes and local gov't as well) are doing to provide shelter, food and most importantly housing to thousands of homeless people without shelter every day and every night. Are these groups perfect? No. Do they do their very best? Yes. Do they sometimes make mistakes and not do enough? Yes. I strongly advocate more and better services for the thousands of homeless people in Colorado. I advocate more and more varied shelter opportunities than a bed in a dormitory at night or a comfortable chair in a shelter for the day. For those on the streets, I advocate for more comfortable places to stay during the long days. I advocate for more unlocked bathrooms and rest stops where homeless people can use bathroom facilities, clean themselves up and take care of their appearance while they look for job training, education and employment. I advocate a room with a door with a lock and key where they can keep themselves and their belongings safe and clean. And of course the most important of all, really low cost housing that lets them turn their lives around and join the housed in Denver.
    These desires are shared by all of us who are working with and for the homeless people.  Let's together push harder on our city councils and state legislature to bring this about – and quickly, because with all our prosperity and astounding development, cities are also experiencing a disaster for their lower income and especially homeless people.

by Debbie Brady

    Denver’s Mayor Michael Hancock has declared war on the homeless citizens of Denver. He has not publicly declared this war, but the results are obvious. He has tasked his Deputy Chief of Staff Evan Dryer with sweeping the streets of unhoused citizens. This is a safe policy politically because no one wants to look at homeless folks living on their sidewalks.
    But what happens to these folks when they are swept away. Do they just disappear?  No. They go somewhere else and then the police end up chasing them from one end of the city to the other.
    What has been accomplished here is we have poor people getting chased all over the city and cops wasting their time as real criminals run rampant in the city. Is this what we are paying our hard-earned tax dollars for? Not me. I would like to see some real solutions. No sooner has his honor cleaned up one street and made a grand appearance to the citizens in that neighborhood than he starts getting reports of another neighborhood getting flooded with the folks he just swept away. Must be frustrating. I feel sorry for the poor guy. You would think he would start looking at pursuing some other way to deal with the problem. You would think. But no, politicians have pretty much a one track mind. All they can concentrate on, most of the time, is money and votes.
    One definition of insanity, which I subscribe to, has been attributed to Einstein but that is unproven. It says that if a person keeps doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, that person is insane. By that guideline, in my opinion, most of our government is insane. But that’s just me.  
    So what’s a guy to do, if the people don’t want his services, don’t want to be bent, stapled and mutilated into his tidy system? Punt. Keep on doing what you know doesn’t work and pass the whole problem on to your successor. That is what has been happening since and even before John Stapleton, mayor and grand poobah of the KKK, made his mark in the 19th century. Insanity.  
    There are alternatives, of course, but getting the ear of the powers that be can be very difficult, especially if these alternatives are espoused by the people most affected by the problem: the street people. These are those folks most affected by the so-called problem and also the people with the least input when the subject is discussed, mostly in board rooms and fancy restaurants by the politicians and the tycoons who control them.
    “Nothing about us, without us” they ask. Is that so hard to understand? Who do you know that wants their whole life decided in the 57th floor conference room of some glass and steel tower? Not me.

​
January 29th , 2016 Back in Texas

Imagine a shelter without churches, you could go to this shelter and have full constitutional rights, regardless of creed.  Back in Texas, no less a dreamer than Ross Perot imagined something like this. The good businessmen of Dallas agreed.  No more will we pawn of the welfare clause of our constitution to the churches when it come to the poorest of our poor.  
    No longer will our homeless be prey to the church staffers, devil's soldiers from god, an elite trained crew of the minions determined to cram the name of Jesus down your throat. Who abuse and humiliate the weakest among them.  No longer would the fearful, sunburned, dehydrated, frightened homeless person covered with ant bites be greeted with shame from God on high for the conditions of his skin!  Back in Texas, Ross Perot had a better idea -
build a shelter where the homeless could face a compassionate, professional with a code of ethics to follow.  There would be effective recourse constitutionally guaranteed fairness that the churched could never provide. 
Well, Hallelujah, god dog, we thought! We danced in the streets, except for one little thing.  You had to prove you were homeless.  So dig this, here's what they did. You show up shivering, like a mother-lover (it’s a wet cold in texas) and to prove you're homeless. 

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Next Edition of Back in Texas:
    Will cover 20 years of false diagnosis and abuse in Texas Mental Health care system, costing our taxpayers $100,000 for nothing. Beta at Stout clinic says insane.
Future Columns of Back in Texas:
    May cover Chief David Brown - an 80% drop in police brutality complaints.  But with death threat from cop unions all over the nation.  Bad cops are angry and quitting.  
    911 reforms: cussing 911 operators on tape and getting away with it.  Zoo calls
    Who knows maybe a Klan rally back in ‘87 where I was congratulated by a Republican judge in front of a black prosecutor and communist attorney for throwing horse shit on the Klan accidentally hitting a pig.  

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So you are crowded onto a bus
Sleet pouring through an open roof
To a chained in jail 8 freezing bumpy miles away where you have to listen to 20 minutes of catholic shit followed by 20 minutes or protestant shit, followed by 20 minutes of evangelical shit.  
Shivering coughing
January in Texas, swine flu
Everyone sick 
Everyone captive 
This was supposed to be a government run shelter.  
Where the fuck are we?
Herded into 
Gulping fast
Almost nothing to eat. 
Hurries, shoved deeper into the bowels of the churched dungeon
Down a dark hallway. 
Scared and scared to show it.  
Black, white, brown, together
All strangers
Angry at catholics
Protestants 
Evangelicals 
Gay and straight
Together homeless
Take off your clothes
You are locked in.
Put your clothes in that locker 
Move it! 
Move it!
40 men. 
8 showers
(slippery, wet and exciting contact unavoidable) 
Move it.
Move it. 
Coughing and scared
They hand you a robe and say shut up 
Mother-fucker lights out.  They bus you back in the morning, but don't give you the slip to prove you’re homeless. 
Ross Perot, this is Michael up in Denver.  How much blood has flowed down the drains at the union gospel mission on Irving Blvd.  
 
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Informal Note
    At senior support services will and Leonard grabbed at a phone, are heard on 911 telling me to hang up. Threatening to cut off the phone. Cornered me, couldn't let me out of their office.
          ALL FOR CALLING 911!    
The police come and I asked them to investigate esp the 911 tape of the 911 call to prove that I had been intimidated and that the 911 operator sided w/ those trying to grab the phone from me violently! Julie Romero knows what happened. I wanted a guy who had threatened to kill me for supporting Sanders to say it again proudly on my phone.
    But he never really wanted to kill me. The 911 operator got caught siding with people grabbing at my phone I told them don’t touch me.
Mike

===============================================

​    What we really need in this country is to socialize the real estate market.  This is an international problem faced by all wealthy nations. Under regulated capitalism, the real estate sector can not provide its products in an efficient manner because the contradictions of capitalism prevent free or fair market housing.  
    The ideal capitalist model cannot be achieved by a capitalist real estate market.  Why not? The answer is simpler than you think.  To create false value, inflated value, in the housing market, greedy capitalists employ a variety of measures, but one of the most important is to put a bottom on the housing market.  An artificial bottom to the housing market atop of which the great builders construct their house of cards.   
    While conservatives gripe about taxes the far bigger rip off and far bigger input to the U.S systems comes from false value accruing to the already wealthy is to wrest control of the home-ownership investment scam which is killing capitalism as we knew it and leaving us with perot-trump fascism.  Obamacare delayed the socializing of medicine, but it was a start.  
    Tiny homes, more intelligent housing codes that admit substandard and save lives (at least in cold cities like Denver) and all that will chip away at the false floor that lifts all home values, rents, cost of living, misery and inefficiency in a competitive world… dig? But that's just the beginning, when we pull out the rug the house of cards tumbles down and then we live affordably on the ruins of a stupid housing scam.
    Tel Aviv, in one of the most conservative right-wing nations on Earth. 
    Homeless people have the answers.  Always have.  Roommates, tiny homes, squatting, sharing, living and breathing and trying to pull the (false) bottom out of the real estate market.  All the homeless efforts at alternatives are met with restrictive laws, police brutality, unchecked homeless staffer brutality and the like.  
    When a shelter staffer causes such sick insecurity on the part of the homeless, it helps put a bottom on the housing market.  People will either camp out, die or lose toes because if the churches let shelters be a nice place to stay, it would take the bottom out of the housing market.  Just as surely as allowing tiny homes, urban camping, sub standardized dwellings if they are better-than nothing…. Dig? 
    If churches trained staffers to be more “christ like” people might opt out of the real estate market.  BUT the real estate market and our contributions are, for capitalists, the dues we must pay to be part of society.  No bums allowed, it would screw up the housing scam.  Socialize housing.  The only way we can reduce rampant inefficiency caused by mortgage and rent.  Renters pay the home owning sector whose home values climb artificially.  It like getting money in the mail.  Oh, and especially in Denver.  Cool move.  Be so hip and cool, people flock here, get high and pay whatever they have to to live in a cool place.  SO all the cool people who have lived, worked, and toked here for years can no longer afford to live in their own home town! 
    Let’s not blame the pot industry.  That's going nationwide and soon the pressure will be off the front-line states in the “drug” war.  But the problem with jacked up home prices won’t fade so easily. 
Prohibitive home prices brought half a million protestors to the streets. 

By JC

    Build a shelter where the homeless could face a compassionate, professional with a code of ethics to follow.  There would be effective recourse constitutionally guaranteed fairness that the churched could never provide. 
    Well, Hallelujah, god dog, we thought! We danced in the streets, except for one little thing.  You had to prove you were homeless.  So dig this, here's what they did. You show up shivering, like a mother-lover (it’s a wet cold in texas) and to prove you're homeless.


January 29th , 2016 Back in Texas

    Im some a shelter without churches, you could go to this shelter and have full constitutional rights.  Regardless of creed.  Back in Texas, no less a dreamer than Ross Perot imagined something like this.  The good businessmen of Dallas agreed.  No more will we pawn of the welfare clause of our constitution to the churches when it come to the poorest of our poor.  
    No wonder will our homeless be prey to the church staffers, devil's soldiers from god, an elite trained crew of the minions determined to cram the name of Jesus down your throat.  Who abused humiliate the weakest among them.  No longer- would the fearful, sunburned, dehydrated, frightened homeless person covered with ant bites be greeted with shame from God on high fo the conditions of his skin!  Back in Texas, Ross 
    He a nice place to stay, it would take the bottom out of the housing market.  Just as surely as allowing tiny homes, urban camping, sub standardized dwellings if they are better-than nothing…. Dig? 
    If churches trained staffers to be more “christ like” people might opt out of the real estate market.  BUT the real estate market and our contributions are, for capitalists, the dues we must pay to be part of society.  No bums allowed, it would screw up the housing scam.  Socialize housing.  The only way we can reduce rampant inefficiency caused by mortgage and rent.  Renters pay the homeowning sector whose home values climb artificially.  It like getting money in the mail.  Oh, and especially in Denver.  Cool move.  Be so hip and cool, people flock here, get high and pay whatever they have to to live in a cool place.  SO all the cool people who have lived, worked, and toked here for years can no longer afford to live in their own home town! 
    Let’s not blame the pot industry.  That's going nationwide and soon the pressure will be off the front-line states in the “drug” war.  But the problem with jacked up home prices won’t fade so easily.  
    Prohibitive home prices brought half a million protestors to the streets 
(can't read next line cut off) 
Tel Aviv, in one of the most conservative right-wing nations on Earth. 
    Homeless people have the answers.  Always have.  Roommates, tiny homes, squatting, sharing, living and breathing and trying to pull the (false) bottom out of the real estate market.  All the homeless efforts at alternatives are met with restrictive laws, police brutality, unchecked homeless staffer brutality and the like.  
    When a shelter staffer causes such sick insecurity on the part of the homeless, it helps put a bottom on the housing market.  People will either camp out, die or lose toes because if the churches let shelters (missing)
False value accruing to the already wealthy is to wrest control of the home-ownership investment scam which is killing capitalism as we knew it and leaving us with perot-trump fascism.  
Obamacare delayed the socializing of medicine, but it was a start.  
    Tiny homes, more intelligent housing codes that admit substandard and save lives (at least in cold cities like Denver) and all that will chip away at the false floor that lifts all home values, rents, cost of living, misery and inefficiency in a competitive world… dig? But that's just the beginning, when we pull out the rug the house of cards tumbles down and then we live affordably on the (missing) stupid housing scam.  
    What we really need in this country is to socialize the real estate market.  This is an international problem faced by all wealthy nations. Under regulated capitalism, the real estate sector can not provide its products in an efficient manner because the contradictions of capitalism prevent free or fair market housing.  
    The ideal capitalist model cannot be achieved by a capitalist real estate market.  Why not? 
    The answer is simpler than you think.  To create false value, inflated value, in the housing market, greedy capitalists employ a variety of measures, but one of the most important is to put a bottom of the housing market.  An artificial bottom to the housing market atop of which the great builders construct their house of cards.   
    While conservatives gripe about taxes the far bigger rip off and far bigger input to the U.S systems comes form 

​by Lance Cheslock

​  I’m  concerned about the epidemic of ordinances being passed across our country that aim to criminalize panhandling.  
    All across the nation, communities are passing laws that prohibit, restrict, or even require licenses for beggars or panhandlers.  Merchants are worried that nearby beggars will discourage tourism and deter their customer base.  Pedestrians are turned off or even threatened by the approach of a beggar. Parents worry about the safety risks posed to their children.  Now, my own community is considering an array of restrictions for beggars.
I feel uncomfortable at times when I encounter a panhandler.  At the end of one hard work week I went to the video store to rent a movie for my family.  Nearby a gentleman I did not recognize was begging for money.  I inwardly resented the intrusion into my peaceful evening’s journey, after a long week at La Puente.  
    After thinking about it, I realized that encountering a beggar makes me feel guilty about my own wealth and privilege in a world where so many are struggling to survive. Not a welcome thought when I’m trying to relax at the end of my day!  
What seems forgotten in all of this is that begging is often an act of desperation.  Many beggars view it is their last resort.  The roots of begging are tied to inescapable poverty and destitution.   The act of begging starts out as a horrific indignity.
    “The poor will be with us always,” we are told, and begging for alms is a sacred and universal practice as old as humanity itself.  Being poor is not a crime.  And asking for help should likewise not be criminalized.  Our society’s safety net is frail and tenuous for people who hit hard times.  Sometimes, the final safety net for someone is simply begging for help.  I cringe when I think that a person’s basic last resort is being taken away.
    Alan lives out in the country in an old mobile home, and works odd jobs to try to support his wife and kids.   They are a proud family, with Christian values.  Alan tries everything in his power to find work, but sometimes work is not forthcoming.  Near the end of a day, Alan wants to bring something home to feed his family.  He will sit for a couple of hours near Walmart, and hold a sign which says “Will work for food.”  
    I’ve talked to Alan on many occasions.  He knows he can have a meal at La Puente.   He and his family often stop by when they are in town.  He simply hopes his sign‘s message will bring him a few dollars, perhaps the opportunity to earn money, or a gift of some food.  I asked him what he does with the money he receives from panhandling.  Alan commented that he may buy food, or he may get some gas so he can use his truck to get to a job, or sometimes get medicine or other needs for his family.  “I spend it the same way I would spend a paycheck.”  Alan does not drink or smoke, a concern of pragmatic philanthropists.  When he’s at the very end of his resources, begging is his final resort.  
    When I talk to someone about my concern with the welfare and rights of beggars, the conversation usually turns to stories about all the “unworthy” folks that are pleading for help.  There’s the panhandler that was aggressive or abusive, the one that used the money to support their addiction, or the one who was not really that needy and used the ruse of being “poor” as a way to make a lot of money off of panhandling.  No doubt, many of these stories are true.
    Yet it seems that once someone has read about or experienced one “unworthy beggar” story, it becomes sufficient evidence to solidify the justification to never give to another beggar, so as not to be taken advantage of.   
    All this contributes to society’s critical regard towards beggars.  The undeserving panhandlers, in effect, are stealing from those who have no choice but to beg.  They are abusing the safety net meant for others, thereby cheating those with the greatest need.  Furthermore, their actions instill a cynicism in the hearts of those who might otherwise give.
    In Baghdad, a tribal leader named Laila owned a beautiful Arabian horse.  A tribesman from a neighboring village named Omar was eager to buy the horse.  He offered many camels in exchange for it, but Laila would not part with the animal.  This so angered Omar that he decided to get the horse by trickery.
Knowing that Laila would ride his horse along a certain road, he lay down beside the road disguised as a beggar who was very ill.  Now Laila was a kindhearted man so when he saw the beggar he felt sorry for him, dismounted and offered to carry him to an inn.
    “Alas!” cried the beggar, “I have been without food for days and do not have the energy to rise.”  So Laila tenderly lifted the man onto his horse, meaning to mount after him.  No sooner was the disguised beggar in the saddle than he galloped away with Laila giving chase on foot, shouting to him to stop.  After Omar had put a safe distance between his pursuer and himself, he stopped and turned around.  
   “You have stolen my horse,” shouted Laila.  “I have one request to make of you.”
   “What is it?”  Omar shouted back.
   “That you tell no one how you came into possession of the horse.”
   “Why not?”
    “Because some day a man who is really ill may be lying be the roadside and, if your trick is known, people will pass him by and fail to help him.”                       Anthony DeMello         
    Helping someone in need is a spiritual act.  
The intent of giving to a beggar is to practice compassion.
As uncomfortable as it may be, perhaps it is important to have reminders that there are people suffering in our midst, even if we are unable or unwilling to help them.  It provides an opportunity for compassion to take root and grow in a society so terribly afraid of being taken advantage of.
To see someone begging should stir up the question,” Why is there poverty?”  When considered thoughtfully, the reasons for poverty are enormously complex, encompassing culture, education, birthrights, genetics, situational circumstances, personal choices, and much, much more.  The victims of poverty usually only have a limited perspective on how they arrived in their state.  Desperation can cloud logic and understanding.  And if a desperate person is not allowed to beg to meet his need, then will he turn to something more desperate?
    The late Fiorello LaGuardia, the longtime New York mayor for whom the airport was named, first served as a police judge.  And there came before his court one day a sad-eyed man accused of stealing a loaf of bread. The man said he'd had to steal; his family had nothing to eat.
    And LaGuardia said:  The law made no allowances for that; the man would have to pay a $10 fine.
  But then LaGuardia fined every person in the courtroom 50 cents "for living in a city where a man has to steal in order to feed his family."
   When the fines were collected, there was enough to pay the defendant’s fine...with some change left over for the next few loaves.
The next time you encounter a beggar, if you want to help and have a dollar, consider it a spiritual exercise. Practice compassion. If you have nothing to give, don’t avert your eyes, but offer a smile or a hello.  Beggars can feel they are invisible in a sea of people. And if you don’t want to help, just say no.  Given that I’m a panhandler of sorts for La Puente, please know that it won’t be taken personally!
    Lance Cheslock is executive director of La Puente, a major nonprofit organization providing shelter, food, clothing and other services to people experiencing poverty and homelessness in Alamosa and the San Luis Valley, CO.