Poor People? NIMBY!

Just when you thought that we had framed the debate on poverty in America . . . when millions who previously hadn't acknowledged the extent of the problem are forced to see the Katrina Aftermath . . . when House Dems stop HUGE cuts to Food Stamps . . . the powers that be find a brand new way oppress, as noted in today's Worcester, MA Telegram and Gazette

A Washington, D.C., mental health legal advocacy group says the recommendations of the Mayor's Social Service Task Force would violate federal law if they were adopted.

Below the fold for how the Worcester Government treats homeless like toxic waste . . .

Today Worcester residents found out the Worcester Social Services Task Force is  looking to bend regulations concerning the citing of facilities for indigent mentally ill residents.
I am the first to admit that providing support for mentally ill homeless persons is not an easy thing to do, either in terms of professional dedication, community support, or economics.  I applaud those whom have choosen to undertake this very important endevor for the benefit of all.
However, I assume that a homelessness task force is in the same category that I outlined above, not an establishment tool to form, as I would call them, "crazy-homeless ghettos."
From the T&G article (requires subscription):

The Bazelon analysis, dated Oct. 25, said the task force's recommendations would make many of the voluntary practices of the nonprofits mandatory in accordance with state Executive Office of Health and Human Services regulations. "The notification and `public process' called for in the report may actually undermine Worcester officials' legal obligation to give people with disabilities an equal opportunity to live where they choose." That is because public hearings often provide forums for neighbors' anger and fears, exposing prospective group home residents to "invasive public scrutiny (which) heavily influences the local officials charged with granting or denying permits," the analysis states.

Information such as that released in the Bazelon report is discouraging, but I can't decide in what way it is truly discouraging.  
There is the possibility that MSM simply picks up on stories like this one that have the implication, that I find real from my experience as an organizer, of conflict and underhanded attempts to placate the powerful while maintaining an egalitiarian "task force" facade.  Then there is the above mentioned possibility that populations really do have the NIMBY reflex for the less fortunate, that they treat their fellow citizens in the same way we treat toxic waste.  
I hope its the MSM's fault.  Can we please just continue to blame the media?

•  As Not For Whom . . .

  It's true that, at least in my lifetime, poverty in America on the scale experienced by the poor in Third World countries has been pretty limited.  It's true, also, that as recently as 1920, perhaps 80% of the American population were, by our contemporary standards, "poor" or something like it.

  But for most of my lifetime -- I am 55 -- it has seemed to me that, by and large, roughly 80 percent of the inhabitants of the USA could have tolerably comfortable lives by observing the "rules of the game."  OK housing, a tolerably mediocre dose of education and healthcare, a job, no need to eat dogfood in one's old age, or to live beneath the bridges.

  Of the 20% at the bottom, many if not most were rural, or rural people displaced to cities that proved to overwhelm them, or immigrants, or persons laboring under the yoke of our history of slavery, massacre and removal to reservations, or mental illness.

  I think the plan is that if you divvy up the Merkan population into quintiles, 5 groups, 1-2% of the top quintile is gonna rule everything, the remainder of the top 20% is to be pretty well-off, and the incomes and living standards of the second and third quintiles are to be reduced to roughly those now experienced by the fourth quintile.  So you'll have 20% in deep shit, 60% struggling sufficiently that they will be preoccupied with economic survival and little interested in politics, and just 20% or so to provide competent, well-educated lackeys to enable the 2% to keep everybody else in their place.

  I make a six-figure income, but feel by no means secure.  I feel a real class war is well underway, and that most of us are pretending that it concerns us chiefly in moral terms, but isn't likely to really hurt us, that the piggies are gorging so avidly at the trough.

  Soon, I suspect, nearly all of us will see that the plan is that we will be beaten down, hard, and even those of us who hang on to some of what was seen as the middle-class birthright in the 1970s will be living very, very precariously.

  by proudtinfoilhat on Mon Nov 14, 2005 at 04:54:21 PM PDT

•  wow

  I agree with your class war comment, but do not have the life experience you have to back it up.  Nor have I ever had such an eloquent expression attached to my own diary.  Thanks proudtinfoilhat!

  by Taunger on Mon Nov 14, 2005 at 06:14:28 PM PDT