The Homeless Crises
Nearly every city in America has to deal with homelessness at some level. Yes, there are people who prefer to be homeless. I met a twenty-something this month who hates the idea of paying rent so much that that he chooses to be homeless. He can afford to pay rent and have a permanent address, but he chooses not to.
In January of 2020, I met a software developer who was homeless. He had a 4-year college degree computer science degree from Texas A&M. He followed the American 'go to college & get a 8-5 job' script. How in the world did he find himself homeless? From a poor family, his new found wealth after college casted him into the spend cycle that quickly exceeded his income. He still had student loans, but took on more debt to consume like he never had the ability to do before (this sounds like the poor who win the lottery only to file bankruptcy years later). Today, he finds himself in 'economic purgatory' earns too much to qualify for low-income housing, yet his credit score is so bad that no landlord will approve his application. Does financial illiteracy lead to homelessness? When you are poor, there's less of a buffer between you and the streets.
And then there are the mentally ill and drug addicted lost souls. But I'm starting to see that they are in fact the minority, yet create a stereotype of homelessness that simply is untrue for the vast majority of the homeless.
The majority of the homeless are working people that the system is currently rigged against. My friend who volunteers at CAPSLO met a homeless woman working two jobs!
I propose a solution to the homeless crises might look like this...
The Peace Corps has an annual budget of nearly $400/million. We send volunteers to foreign countries to help their people. Why not deploy them in our own country to help the people in need? I know you can't just give people money. In fact, it might be the generosity of services that are attracting homeless to cities like Oahu and Portland to begin with.
I contend that we enlist the Peace Corps to teach the homeless how to avoid the infliction of being homeless. You know the old saying "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."
We don't need a 'Space Force' we need a 'Home Force'
If the Peace Corps needs to stick to their original mission, than why not create a new entity similar to the Peace Corps? We are spending $2 Billon on a 'Space Force' in the next 5 years. Don't you think that amount of money could solve the homeless crises? I bet it would only cost a fraction of that and solve the problem in far less time. Something seems very wrong with humanity that we are prioritizing a 'space force' over helping our own people who desperately need solutions right now.
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