To be homeless is cruel and unjust punishment for the economic and/or mental condition of the poor, working poor and especially the displaced. Imagine, gentrification has caused displacement throughout the USA.
The subprime loan scam exacerbated the situation by displacing those ripped off by global and Wall Street investors.
In East Oakland, 40% of the single family homes are owned by Wall Street. The East Oakland Black community has been replaced by whites, Latinos and others. In West Oakland the black community has been replaced by whites who cannot afford to live in San Francisco. Pseudo liberal whites displace the blacks then put Black Lives Matter signs in their windows.
Everywhere you look in Oakland there are homeless encampments, mostly occupied by blacks.
As per solution, we say the homeless should occupy any new housing development and claim eminent domain in the name of Jesus and racial equity.
There must be a Union of the homeless organized to advocate for the human right to be housed with persons given the life estate, thus ending homelessness overnight.
Tiny houses can be made permanent rather than transitional.
Under the life estate, the houses cannot be sold, leased or transferred. Even shipping containers can be modified for the displaced and put on space under the land trust and life estate.
Mental Health issues, drug abuse, partner violence should be addressed with peer group sessions utilizing the harm reduction model.
With a restructuring or destruction of the capitalist economic model, the displaced will gradually advance from wretchedness and despair, but not without a redistribution of the wealth acquired from capital accumulated in slavery and wage slavery in America and globally. By what right do the 1% own wealth equal to the 99%? Share the wealth rather than parade as Lord's of human labor and natural resources.
It is indeed cruel and unjust punishment to exist without food clothing and shelter. Imagine some dogs are better fed and live in dog houses while people suffer the elements in tents and cardboard boxes. How long can this go on before revolution is full blown?
Look around the world and see the Danger Zone that the blind man Ray Charles sang about! Or listen to the Lou Rawls version of Tobacco Road.
--MARVIN X
12/18/19