Volunteers will: 1) contact reporters covering housing and homelessness issues; 2) help develop an organizers tool kit and presentation; and 3) distribute updated report to relevant organizations and policy makers.

We are looking for volunteers that have:

*A commitment to social justice.
*Experience doing media work.
*Strong interest in affordable housing, human rights, and public education.
*A professional style appropriate for working with reporters, staff, and policy makers.
*Enthusiasm, discipline, independence, and assertiveness.
*Ability to meet with staff at San Francisco office.

If you’re interested, contact Michael Callahan-Kapoor at 415-621-2533.

The 2010 Update focuses public attention back on the #1 reason for this housing mess: the Federal Government’s divestment in affordable housing programs and deregulation of the housing market. Most importantly, it helps people understand these complex issues and provides a framework for turning this situation around.

Download the update here!

In the next few weeks WRAP will be releasing a set of housing demands and launching our housing rights campaign. Stay tuned! If you or your organization is interested in joining or learning more about the campaign, call Paul or Michael at 415-621-2533.

And please, support our work by donating now!

To order hard copies of the update, send a check payable to:

Western Regional Advocacy Project
2940 16th St., Suite 200-2
San Francisco, CA 94103

1 Report = $10
10+ = $8/each
50+ = $5/each

UN Plaza
7th & Market
San Francisco, CA
June 4, 2010 - 5:30 pm

Click here for flyer in English.
Click here for flyer in Spanish.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Preamble:
“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,”

Article 25
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Councilmember Alarcon has introduced a motion for a one-year moratorium on any rent increases in rent-stabilized buildings in Los Angeles.  This moratorium needs to move forward VERY quickly or it could get lost in the city’s budget process.  Landlords are already calling Councilmembers and weighing in against it.

But, there are more tenants and tenant supporters than there are landlords – so they need to hear from us now!  Please make your own calls and ask colleagues, members, neighbors and others to make calls between today and Friday, April 30th.  Be sure to specifically tell the Councilmembers if you live or work in their district – but call them any or all as an LA resident.

We are asking for at least 2 calls from each person in the next week:

FIRST and most urgent: Call Councilmember Herb Wesson who is Chair of the Housing and Community Economic Development Committee (HCED).  Strongly urge him to schedule the moratorium proposed by Councilman Alarcon to freeze rent increases for rent controlled units from July 2010 – June 2011. We want him to schedule it on the HCED agenda on or before May 5th.  We also need to urge his support for the final policy.  The motion was introduced in City Council and is now waiting to be heard in his committee.  If Wesson does not put it on the agenda, it can’t be drafted.

District 10, Herb Wesson, 213-473-7010

Sample script if needed – My name is___________  and I am with (organization name) and  a resident of the City of Los Angeles (tell him specifically if you also live in his district).  I am calling to ask that Councilmember Wesson put the moratorium preventing rent increases on the agenda for the next HCED meeting.  I want him to know this issue has to be on the agenda by May 5th or it won’t be enacted in time to prevent rent increases this year.  I also would like to know if Councilman Wesson plans to vote in favor of the moratorium (and if he does not support it, why not?)

SECONDLY:  Please call the councilmember that represents your neighborhood and/or the area your organization works in.  Below are organizations who already volunteered to make calls in specific council districts – we need to cover as many councilmembers as possible, so take on as many districts as makes sense.

OUR GOAL IS THAT EACH COUNCILMEMBER RECEIVE AT LEAST 500 CALLS OVER THE NEXT WEEK.  We are urging each of these councilmembers to support the moratorium because renters simply can’t take any more increases during these tough economic times.

Sample script if needed – My name is___________ and I am with (organization name) and I am a resident of the district.  I am calling to ask that Councilmember_________ vote in favor of the moratorium on rent increases for rent controlled units.  The moratorium is only for one year. We are ONLY seeking a temporary break on our annual rent increases.  Tenants are faced with reduction in wages and increases in utilities and transportation costs.  These savings will help us cover other basic necessities to survive.  Can we count on the Councilmember’s support?

For these councilmembers, make calls and urge them to support the moratorium (commitments to date listed):

District 1, Ed Reyes, 213-473-7001
District 2, Paul Krekorian, 213-473-7002
District 4, Tom LaBonge, 213-473-7004
District 5, Paul Koretz, 213-473-7005
District 6, Tony Cardenas, 213-473-7006
District 9, Jan Perry, 213-473-7009
District 11, Bill Rosendahl, 213-473-7011
District 13, Eric Garcetti, 213-473-7013
District 14, Jose Huizar, 213-473-7014
District 15, Janice Hahn, 213-473-7015

LASTLY:  don’t forget to call Councilmember Alarcon and thank him for introducing the motion and tell him you support it!

District 7, Richard Alarcon, 213-473-7007

Stay tuned for more information – a LOT more action will be needed to achieve this crucial victory.

Contact Becky Dennison at Los Angeles Community Action Network if you have any questions:

BeckyD@cangress.org or 213-228-0048

Timeline for Thursday, April 29th:
Noon- Sidewalks Are For Everyone! Rally & Parade (Meet @ Sisters, 133 NW 6th Ave, corner of NW 6th and Davis)
1:30 pm- Sign up to testify at Council meeting (City Hall, 1221 SW 4th Ave)
2 pm- Pack Council Chambers to say no to Sidewalk Management Ordinance!

Sisters Of The Road has been involved in the struggle to keep laws like “Sit-Lie” and the new “Sidewalk Management Ordinance” off the books. Unfortunately, these laws, while often well intentioned, are typically used to target people experiencing homelessness and extreme poverty who have no where else to go. The new Sidewalk Management Ordinance will separate sidewalks downtown and in the Lloyd District into zones. The area closest to walls and shelter will be limited to movement and business activities. If someone needs to sit or lie on the sidewalk, they will be forced to do so in the area of the sidewalk closest to traffic, which is potentially very dangerous because of cars and pollution.  If people do not sit in this area of the sidewalk, they will face being cited and fined.

Portland is a beautiful city that is worth celebrating no matter our socioeconomic status! Sisters and our community will continue working to make Portland a place where all of our basic needs are met. We think it is important to celebrate and struggle at the same time, in order to sustain our movements!

Thursday before the City Council Hearing on Sidewalk Management, we will meet at Sisters for a short rally and then have a Sidewalk Parade to celebrate sidewalks being for all of us! We will circle though old town on the sidewalks with signs, balloons and music spreading our message and gathering others. Then we will head to City Hall to sign up to testify against the Sidewalk Management Ordinance. Sign ups start at 1:30 pm and it will be so important that people both housed and houseless speak to the inequities in this law! The hearing starts at 2 pm and we plan to pack the Council chambers! Please join us!

Click here for Sisters’ position statement on the Sidewalk Management Ordinance.

If you would like to testify on Thursday and would like to talk about framing you message, or if you have any other questions about Thursday’s events, feel free to call Chani @ 503.222.5694 x 25 or chani@sistersoftheroad.org

We know that many of you will be at Coalition for a Livable Future’s 2010 Regional Livability Summit that is happening this same day.  If you are not able to take part in this important summit, please join us Thursday as another way to promote healthy communities for all!

I was once one of those homeless people in San Francisco. Kicked out of my shelter in the early morning, before anything was open. The options were to try to muster the energy, after a night of likely very light sleep, to wander about aimlessly for a few hours, or to sit in a park and hope not to get kicked out. Even job searching locations didn’t open until hours after we were sent out onto the streets.

I would often watch the sun rise from a park that was near my shelter. I tried to look like what I assumed a non-homeless person would look like, despite my exhaustion and, well, my homelessness. I always watched who was about, and hoped that I would not be cited or thrown out.

Often I would walk a few more blocks over to City Hall, where I held a volunteer appointed official position, as a teenage adviser to the then Mayor and Board of Supervisors. I would wait for the first city workers to show up, and then would wander about trying to be useful, or debating policies with those crafting legislation about lives like mine.

Mayor Newsom was then a Supervisor, and my homeless teen self and he would often get into policy discussions. We picked up those discussions, years later, after I had worked my way from homelessness to Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Mayor Newsom was a guest speaker, and Harvard thought it would be fun to have me introduce him. By this point society, and Harvard, had come to view me as someone of measure enough to take the stage to introduce the man who now proposes a law that would have criminalized that teenage kid he used to debate with.

I still often find some cause or another to sit on a sidewalk in San Francisco. Now, no longer homeless, and with a fancy education, I would be a lot less likely to be fined under the new law. Had the law been implemented when I was younger and homeless, being cited twice for having nowhere to go would have given me a criminal record. Had San Francisco’s increased criminalization of the homeless been implemented earlier, my ability to get through that time and end up in the most privileged school in the world could have been hindered by my sitting in a park, or on a sidewalk, before I had anywhere else to go.

Writing this blog post is a bit of a déjà vu. A few years ago, the Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Journal at Harvard asked that I write about my experience of being homeless in San Francisco, and to partner that story with a legal analysis of a recent case in Los Angeles, where a court found as cruel and unusual punishment a law that made it illegal for the homeless to lie on the streets at night, even when all the shelter beds were full.

As I wrote then, and as we see again now, society can have serious cognitive dissonance around homelessness, with what I termed as “The Myth of Choice.” The Myth of Choice is the belief that the homeless should just chose to not be homeless, or to not have homeless problems like having no where to go, and so we criminalize those realities rather than dealing with them through actual solutions.

Criminalizing the inherent experiences of the homeless further tightens the cycles of poverty and makes it even harder to escape such a reality. Just merely being homeless changes how the world views you. I worked with children my entire life. While homeless, if I sat on the steps of a school nearby my shelter the police would be called, as I was seen as a threat. If I were homeless and this ordinance were law, that’s one more situation that could have led to my arrest.

The proposals of such laws are often used as political maneuvers. It should be noted that Mayor Newsom first ran for that office while running on a belief that the homeless would spend any cash on drugs and alcohol, rather than laundry or bus fare. Alas, he is again running for a new office, and the existence of the homeless is again being symbolically targeted, rather than dealt with through true solutions like supportive and transitional housing, job training and creation and educational opportunities.

I lucked out when I was on the streets. Those mornings when I fearfully sat in the park, the city had less ability to arrest me for such actions. I escaped poverty without first getting a criminal record for just having nowhere to sit. I was able to get a good education and lead a life of service where I now have platforms, like the Huffington Post, to call attention to what are poor attempts at public policy. Mayor Newsom’s proposed Sit/Lie Ordinance is a false attempt at a solution. The City of San Francisco deserves better. All of those who believe in city streets that serve citizens, and also believe that the homeless shouldn’t be criminalized just for their existence, should support the efforts of those opposing this ordinance.

By Tanene Allison
Source: Huffington Post

So I’m thinking of establishing a new game show for policy makers who determine the federal poverty line called “Are You Smarter than a Five Year Old.” To their credit, new leadership at the U.S. Commerce Department has begun the process of revising the poverty standard, established 50 years ago, which cut off millions of America’s poor from needed support.

Simply put, the existing standard was based on a calculation of multiplying the cost of food by three and then adding cost of living increases over time. When food was the principal expense for families, it worked. But in the past 20 years or more, the real costs of survival for poor families shifted to include housing, clothing, and utilities. Whether a family is at or below the poverty line - currently about $18,300 for a family of three - has enormous significance in terms of their eligibility for everything from food stamps to Medicaid to welfare. The failure to adjust the rate to reflect the new realities of 2010 have left many, particularly the working poor, steadily losing ground.

There can’t be any question that the reason the poverty line hasn’t been adjusted has more to do with politics, race, and power than any objective investigation of actual costs. It is no accident that the original measure was created during the Johnson administration at the very height of the war on poverty. The image of the dysfunctional welfare poor has dominated the political discourse almost to the present. In that discussion, the main focus has been on reducing rather than increasing access to benefits.

I don’t think it’s any accident that the Obama administration, under the leadership of Undersecretary of Commerce Dr. Rebecca Blank, is finally reopening the question of how we should calculate poverty in the United States. This follows a new measurement of poverty calculated by Mark K. Levitan, director of poverty research for the Center for Economic Opportunity. The new federal poverty rates will be released next year. There can’t be any question that the depth of the current recession has changed certain political fundamentals even if we all haven’t realized it yet.

In periods of relatively low unemployment, say 5 percent, arguments that we should do everything to incentivize individuals to take any job they can get rather than receive public benefits resonated with all sorts of constituencies across the political spectrum. This was made even easier by the total lack of political power of the welfare poor. We may now be looking back with fondness at 5 percent unemployment for a long time to come. A significant number of economists are suggesting very high levels of unemployment - exceeding 7 percent - through 2015. For those of us looking for political stability in the nation, that spells trouble because for those with college and high level skills the economic recovery should be relatively swift, but for those without them, of all races, it will be grim.

In a recent article by Robert Reich in the Wall Street Journal (4/12/10), Reich alluded to the fact that in the current recession those with college degrees have only a 5 percent unemployment rate, while it is 10.5 percent for those with only a high school education and 15.6 percent for those with less than high school.

What does this have to do with calculating the poverty line? In my view, we have to prepare for a future where a very large number of Americans - not just those in urban areas or of color - are going to be part of the long term unemployed. It’s essential to provide some adequate safety net for these individuals as we go through what’s going to be a major setback for many Americans who saw a way into the middle class as their right, even if they lacked education. I see their growing anger and desperation as a major threat to civil society. We should join the Commerce Secretary in getting ready for a very different economic and political landscape even as the recession abates for the well-educated. Forget the notion of giveaways to welfare queens and welcome safety net supports to the bitter and chronically unemployed and underemployed members of formerly blue collar America.

By David R. Jones, Esq.

Source: Huffington Post

Lennar, the Redevelopment Agency, and Mayor Gavin Newsom argued that 50 percent affordability would doom the project. But to win the support of the San Francisco Labor Council, the San Francisco Organizing Project (SFOP), and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Lennar agreed to increase the number of affordable units from the 25 percent it proposed up to 32 percent of the total, along with guarantees of using local union members in the construction.

But in its first residential project under that plan, revealed on Tuesday at the Redevelopment Agency, it proposes building 88 market rate ownership units at the shipyard’s Parcel A, with only 13 are set aside for families earning less than 80 percent of the Bayview’s Area Median Income. That’s less than even the 15 percent required of most projects in San Francisco, and less than half what the company promised San Francisco voters.

Sup. Chris Daly authored Prop. F and warned at the time that Lennar couldn’t be trusted. “It’s not surprising, but it is unfortunate,” Daly said of Lennar’s opening residential project. “They should either live up to their promises or we should kick them out of town.”

Michael Cohen, director of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, told us that Lennar was never supposed to build all 32 percent affordable housing units, even though that seemed to be its promise. The developer is only required to build the usual 15 percent of housing units as affordable under the city’s inclusionary housing law. The remaining 20 percent is to be built by the city partnered with an affordable housing developer.

“They take land that is dedicated to affordable housing and give it to the city and the city partners with affordable housing developers,” said Cohen. “Their job is to give land back, improved, to the Redevelopment Agency. That is explicitly what has always been contemplated—they are doing exactly what they’re supposed to.”

The term for this practice is “land dedication” and according to Cohen, Mission Bay and Treasure Island are examples of its success. When we asked whether this technique would slow down the construction of the redevelopment’s affordable housing, Cohen said all the affordable units are supposed to be built at roughly the same time as the market rate units.

But Daly notes that this is land that the city gave Lennar, and that it was cleaned up with money that the city secured from the federal government. And now the city needs to use its scarce affordable housing funds to build the units that Lennar promised. “It’s all really sad, and a good reason why we should have passed Prop. F,” Daly said.

Though the Community Benefits Agreement claims to guarantee more affordable housing, the truth is that only 15 percent of those affordable units will be rentals for individuals making less than 60 percent of the Area Median Income. The rest of the “affordable” units will be for-sale homes for individuals earning up to 160 percent of the Area Median Income. That’s about $130,000 per year—in Bayview-Hunters Point.

“This will be the smallest affordable housing component in any urban renewal area in San Francisco history,” said Calvin Welch, program director of the San Francisco Information Clearing House. Welch, who considers Mission Bay a successful development, thinks quite the opposite of Lennar’s redevelopment at the Hunters Point Shipyard. “Half of all tax increment financing is supposed to be set aside for affordable housing. This deal puts the tax increment dollars into the stadium” that the city wants at the shipyard site to build to try to keep the 49ers in town.

And according to Welch, the Community Benefits Agreement does not hold the weight of the Disposition and Development Agreement, adding that Lennar could violate it at any point and would only suffer a lawsuit but would not be terminated. But labor officials still say they’re hopeful that ultimately Lennar will meet its obligations.

“We have a binding legal written agreement and there’s no reason to change that. In order to get support for Prop G, we said 32 percent affordable housing and millions of dollars in workforce development,” said Tim Paulson, director of the San Francisco Labor Council. According to Paulson, the amount of affordable housing in the Community Benefits Agreement is the largest extracted from a for profit developer in United States history. “If there’s any change to that, we’ll be surprised and we’ll take action.”

“There’s going to be provisions that much of that will be union jobs,” said Paulson, adding that the Labor Council represents about 100,000 workers in District 10. “A lot of our workers who work in the city can’t afford to live in the city.” Lennar promises to provide 8,000 jobs.

Alicia Schwartz, organizer with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), feels that the Community Benefits Agreement, dated May 30, 2008—one month before last June’s Prop G and F election— compromised the community’s need for 50 percent affordable housing and derailed Prop F.

“From our analysis, the reasons Prop. F was defeated were because a month before, those groups held a press conference and then had a campaign against Prop F,” said Schwartz. Indeed, the agreement contains a “support obligation” which required organizations involved to vote Yes on Prop G, send pre-written letters of support for the project to all parties dictated by the developer, and speak publicly at various hearings. In addition, the agreement stated that “each lead organization shall publicly oppose any efforts by public or private individuals or organizations or governmental bodies to require greater commitments for the provision of community benefits related to affordable housing, workforce development programs…”

“We don’t think that Community Benefits Agreements are the appropriate models to use,” said Schwartz. “We have seen them contribute to gentrification all over the country. We have questions and concerns about the terms in the agreement and we don’t think Lennar will comply.”

But even if Lennar sticks with the agreement’s 32 percent affordable housing component, the question remains of what is truly affordable, particularly for a community with over 50 percent unemployment and an Area Median Income of about $40,000, compared to the citywide AMI of $65,000. The majority of residents in the Bayview make under $15,000 a year.

“In a community like Bayview where 80 percent cannot afford the new houses and San Francisco has an affordable housing crisis, are we doing enough to meet our need for affordable housing? And in the last remaining African American neighborhood in the city?” asked Schwartz. The San Francisco Out Migration Task Force study found that since 1990, San Francisco’s African American population has decreased by over 25 percent.

“We have a particular developer that has shown complete disregard for the community, resulting in 9 months of toxic bombardment,” said Schwartz, referring to Lennar’s public health and safety violations when the company stirred up asbestos in the soil next door to schools and homes during the preparation of Parcel A for condominium construction.

“It’s a perfectly reasonable question, but it’s unlikely Lennar will respond to the Bay Guardian. They don’t trust the Bay Guardian,” said Lance Ignon of Sitrick and Co—the public relations firm handling communications between Lennar and the public—when the Guardian asked him about the affordable housing requirement.

As Ignon said, “They’re under no obligation to any newspaper to comment.”

By Deia de Brito
Source: San Francisco Bay Guardian Politics Blog

The power of the our original Report came from the directness of its message — that starting in 1978, contemporary mass homelessness was created by draconian cutbacks and near elimination of the federal government’s commitment to building, maintaining, and subsidizing affordable housing.

WRAP has used the Report to hammer the point home: We need to recommit sizable federal funds to affordable housing programs; only then will we be able to end homelessness.

The updated Report due out in May summarizes the chapters from the original report and updates all the charts.  It includes new sections on families, immigrants, and criminalization, as well as analysis of new legislation and programs.

Most importantly, it moves beyond a sharp critique of what’s wrong to recommendations of what can be done to win back affordable housing programs.

A movement is building in this country to reaffirm that housing, food, health care, education and jobs are rights and not privileges.  They are the foundation of the public good.  WRAP’s Without Housing update is our way of keeping our eyes on the prize.

The Perception of Public Safety

Perceptions of public safety vary drastically. A tourist or shopper’s basic understanding of safety will probably clash with that of a person who can’t rub two dimes together.  How you perceive public safety will depend on where you stand in society.

As the gap between the wealthy and poor grows, public displays of extreme poverty and suffering have become commonplace. This disturbing reality brings to the fore competing needs for public safety:  whose rights should be protected by the state?

Our growing divide is a recipe for social instability and conflict. The current proliferation of “nuisance crime laws,” private security, and surveillance cameras in public spaces resurrect a long-standing tradition in the United States of using punitive police measures to deal with poor and “unwanted” people.   Like Jim Crow and Anti-Okie Laws, “nuisance crime laws” are encoded with racism and classism.

Does the litany of “nuisance crime laws” forbidding camping, loitering, trespassing, blocking the sidewalk and panhandling make society safer or would we do better to focus our attention and resources on the vast inequality riveting our country?

Public Safety and the Neoliberal State

The recession has hit the poorest the hardest. According to the Center for Labor Market Studies, in the fourth quarter of 2009, households with incomes over $150,000 had an unemployment rate of 3.2%, whereas households with incomes under $12,499 had an unemployment rate of 30.8%. United for a Fair Economy reported that roughly 3.4 million families experienced foreclosure in 2009 and that almost 60% of mortgage defaults were caused by unemployment. African Americans and Latinos have experienced the brunt of the recession’s unemployment and home equity loss.

Meanwhile, local and state governments across the country are eliminating programs, privatizing parks and other municipal services, raising tuitions, putting government workers on furloughs or reducing hours to curb budget deficits that in many States are now in the billions of dollars.  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “At least 45 states plus the District of Columbia have reduced services since the recession began.”

The Obama Administration has interrupted some of the neoliberal social policies of the previous four administrations, most notably with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Nonetheless, we are still reaping the misfortune of 30 years of neoliberal cutbacks to the safety net, cutbacks that have created huge structural gaps in the housing and labor markets.

As the economy and safety net unravel in the recession, public spaces have become a battleground for which perspective of public safety will win out. People from the top-earning households don’t feel safe or comfortable in the presence of all the poor people on our streets and all the poor people on the streets don’t feel safe or comfortable in the presence of all the police officers and security guards.

“Nuisance Crime Laws” Limit Public Safety

“Nuisance crime laws” separate public safety from social welfare and equity at a time when a broader systemic effort is necessary to address the crises in housing, employment, education, and health care. Poverty is not an individual choice or lifestyle.  Resting on a bench or even sleeping in a doorway are not problem behaviors, nor are they criminal acts.  They are survival activities.

According to Homes Not Handcuffs, a report released in 2009 by the National Law Center on Poverty and Homelessness that surveys the criminalization of homelessness in 235 cities: 33% prohibit camping, 30% prohibit sitting/lying, 47% prohibit loitering, and 47% prohibit begging in certain areas of the city.

The messaging is clear:  If your city is seen as tolerant of poor people in public spaces, tourists will stay away, families won’t come downtown to shop, small businesses will go under, tax revenue will go down, budget deficits will increase, and more services will be cut, precipitating a downward, irreversible spiral into financial ruin.

This messaging has worked well with the mainstream media and local legislative bodies looking for “action now” solutions. It suggests a clear cause and provides a specific answer. The cause is “those people” and the answer is to get rid of them for “the greater good.” After all, it’s much easier to find someone to blame and pound the message home till it becomes its own reality than it is to address an economic system that is increasingly producing inequality and poverty.

A Place of Greater Public Safety

The fear, nervousness, and desperation are very real, but policing the crisis will not fix the fundamental problem. We are at a crossroads in many ways. We need real solutions and they do exist. Economic human rights models that include a right to housing, education and treatment, a job with a living wage will prove much more effective in the long run. When pressed, people on all sides of this issue seem to agree on this point. Yet, advocates for “nuisance crime laws” keep crowding out other voices by saying that we need “action now!” They argue that one more law will give them the “tools” to make everything better.

Taking “action now” to address homelessness has meant needing even more “action” tomorrow. If we as a country had initially diagnosed the real causes of emerging homelessness in the early 1980s – the disappearance of affordable housing – instead of seeing it as a temporary crisis for dysfunctional people, the divisiveness, hostility and anger that surrounds today’s frenzy to add more and more laws that keep moving homeless people from public view would be virtually non-existent.