In my current job it becomes more and more apparent to me that the work I do is only helping to “stop the bleeding” of many of the people receiving aid. The concept of homelessness as something we can cure is entirely misleading. I believe the effort to end homelessness in 10 years is noble, but it will never catch those on the edge of poverty, living pay check to pay check. These people are right on the edge of falling into homelessness, one minor medical bill or illness from losing a job and all their money. Sure we can provide them a home, give them aid, but they always will be struggling if we don’t make fundamental changes to our society. The reason is that homelessness is not the real problem; it’s a symptom of some fundamental issues that even those battling homelessness don’t seem to want to take on. That is because in large part it is political, and calls for challenging ourselves to make some fundamental shifts in our thinking as Americans. Non-profits can’t afford to go down this road, as they risk alienating donors, foundations, and government funding sources. Given how much competition there is for the non-profit buck, there is no room to challenge the way things are. I believe there are several major areas that need to be addressed to actually give people a chance.
The first is obvious. It’s adequate, affordable health care that is available to all individuals. The current candidates don’t even talk along this line. They talk about tax breaks and more money available to us to pay for rising costs. What we need is policies that limit profits with any business associated with medical costs. We need to stop rising costs in all medical areas. We need to make it less costly for doctors to practice medicine by reserving malpractice for true negligence. We need to encourage doctors to work in low income areas by giving relief of their medical loans if they do service in these areas. Health care fundamentally needs to be viewed as a right, not as a commodity. We should be embarrassed as a nation that with all our wealth, we allow people to live in a state of physical and mental illness when we have the means to fix it.
The second thing we need to change as a nation is our concept of minimum wage. We should devise a way that people get extra money if working at livable wage. Perhaps we need a sliding scale for businesses depending on their size and ability to pay. For example we should determine a livable wage of $9. If a business is large enough to support this, they should pay it, but if they can’t we need to determine the minimum wage a business can afford. For instance if a business can afford $7 per hour, we should pay the individual through the government an additional $2 an hour to give them a reasonable hourly rate. What unfortunately occurs is that often, between day care (another thing we need to change) and fuel costs, it is easier for someone to try and pull government and aid money than work. This costs us so much more that $2 or even $5 an hour. This would also give neighborhood businesses a chance to compete against the Wal-Marts of the world but equalizing the cost of wages based on the profitability and size of the company.
Just these two things alone would keep many people living a better life, with more money in their pocket to keep them better fed, to pay energy bills, to help their children with education. There are many other things we could do. The problem is that this all feels a bit like socialism, and perhaps it tends that way. But our government has more than once bailed out businesses. What about bailing out our own people? And of course those of us who are fortunate enough to make a good income may have to look at our own lives differently. We may need to pay more taxes, or at least become involved enough in our politics to try and change the way money we give to our government is allocated. So how do we start friends? Let me hear your ideas.
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