Democracy got taxed on April 15th: for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia (2025)

April 16, 2025 by Leave a Comment

 

Democracy got taxed on April 15th: for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia (2025)

Democracy got taxed on April 15th;
Nobody in the Oval Office flinched.
The lawyers weren’t litigious;
They simply ignored The Supreme Court.

And, the billionaires were the only ones who purchased stocks.

Lady Liberty’s lips were painted red;

Planes and choppers crashed and burned.

While the Tech-bros purchased crypto through a Trump owned Bitcoin firm.

Christian Nationalist cried out: “no more room in this inn”;
You’re taking all the good White Jobs with your brown and dusky skin;

Because irony isn’t dead now; it’s just broken — and it limps;
A candidate for Her own disability act.

Because, Democracy got taxed on April 15th.

And, the tariffs:
Well — they made world markets plunge.
While a capricious mind and DOGE cuts losses;
Augmented markets we’d expunged.”

On Liberation day we attacked both allies and global trade.
Losing both principle and interest;
From the tiny piles we’d made.

The sound of no dollars clapping.
Dollars merging with the void;

“Awwwwwww; just relax and play it cool”;
The talking heads said, annoyed.

Savings merging with the void like mindful devout Buddhist
With the price of groceries still rising — ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Show us our investment balances before we saw the face of Trump.

While billionaires still made millions;
In an old fashioned pump and dump.

‘Cause insider trading is a Presidential stock tip.

When Democracy got taxed on April 15th.

We all got distracted from an immigrants plight;

A working and beleaguered family man.
A sheet metal apprentice trying to make a stand.
No convictions on the books in his adoptive Motherland.

Before being kidnapped to a foreign prison;
Whisked away;
And out of sight.

While a felon in The White House who got his due process;
Attacks guardians of justice;
Revenge on America’s best;

Extra judicial convictions and paperwork mistakes.

“We’ll facilitate his travel if Bukelele understands”

The world’s coolest dictator — he may just have a plan;

About: administrative errors.
And; to the Republic for which we stand.

He’s 44 and opinionated
And, not Zelensky bland.
He dresses like a club promoter,
And is perfectly beach tanned

But — oopsie — it’s a difficult flight from El Salvador to here.

Now that Democracy got taxed on April 15th.

Fire bombs are flying in a Pennsylvania Governor’s mansion;
Because Democracy is taxed about to break from the reaction;
To laws and words stretched to their limits — what makes this night different from the rest?

Facilitate.

Effectuate.

Equivocate.

DETONATE!

The Death Angel passed over Shapiro although Cody did his best!

As Democracy got taxed on April 15th

“We are not monsters
We’re just doing what we’re told”
Say the jackbooted uniformed Golems before they turn on us
(U-S).

“Awwwwwww, It’s just all Radical woke propaganda parading as the news;
Misinterpreting our methods and how our nation moves.”

We are slowly ceding our human rights
Until we’ll have no more rights to lose.
Until addition becomes subtraction;
And we have no right to choose

Freedom to learn;

And, not freedom from learning;

Will they soon come for me?

Now that Democracy is burning!

Forever wars against elite institutions.

Whitewashed history.

Legislative prostitution.

While sycophantic toadies with their forced laughter and praise
Hump the American flag with contradictions;
Their Hoi Oligoi actions raise.

Ben the knee to an iron bank and an iron throne
Bend over like Stormy Daniels and suffer a MAGA mushroom bone!

Bend to kiss the ass of an Orange Nero with Caligula inspired impulses.

As He plays Monopoly with the GDP;

And we, like Atlas, bear the losses.

From America First;

To America alone;

American Exceptionalism

Except the Social safety net

Hasn’t figured out how to catch us

Because it hasn’t been funded yet.

Retirement age or older must it be our greatest fear;
That the safety net won’t catch us if it’s not in good repair.

We who believe in freedom will not rest;

Or, go back to the 18th century to rule the 21st

As Democracy gets taxed on April 15th.

As Democracy gets taxed on April 15th.

As Democracy gets taxed on April 15th.

 

 

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

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Sung to the tune of the Theme from M.A.S.H. (Suicide is Painless): With apologies to Alfred E. Neumann and Mad Magazine

March 30, 2025 by 1 Comment

Sung to the tune of the Theme from M.A.S.H. (Suicide is Painless): With apologies to Alfred E. Neumann and Mad Magazine

I don’t want to be primaried
Out spent by Elon can’t you see
Displaced by people fighting me
Who have unlimited money 

Cowardice is contagious
It brings on no good changes
And I can be a toady if I please

Who needs representative democracy
Let’s have trickle down autocracy
Eliminate bureaucracy
That serves people like you and me.

Cowardice is contagious
It brings on no good changes
And I can be a toady if I please

I’ll act just like a nematode
No spine or backbone as you know
Just burrow through the mud and slime
Get reelected bide my time.

Cowardice is contagious
It brings on no good changes
And I can be a toady if I please

No matter if it kills democracy.

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

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A Good Fucking Start: For James Baldwin and the Contradictions He Was Forced to Live

March 24, 2025 by Leave a Comment

A Good Fucking Start: For James Baldwin and the Contradictions He Was Forced to Live

“I want what you want.
I want to be left alone…”

This is probably the most powerful thing James Baldwin ever said
Because it speaks to an “everyday”
Where “nothing much happens”;
And, “everything is possible”.

It’s 2025, and there still hasn’t been a day like that in America for Black people.

People tell me that there has been progress and hope

But, it’s the hope that kills us.

Hope is not a strategy.

We are still crossing the Edmond Pettis Bridge;
Not safely reaching the other side.

And, that bridge is still named after a Klansman.

I want a day when Jackie Robinson isn’t deleted.

Or, the Tuskegee Airmen and Elenor Roosevelt aren’t a blow to the status quo.

Celebrate Ira Hayes — hands clutching a flag while under fire at Iwo Jima.

And, Native American Code Talkers who performed the healing ritual: “Where the Two Met Their Father”

So, that they could return home safely from World War 2

Celebrate Japanese heroes who were the real Mr. Miyagis.

While little Mr. Sulus languished in American concentration camps.

While some of their dogged brothers on the other side refused to surrender and fought WW2 until 1974

Shout out to Ononda, hero of Japan;
Who proves to us how difficult it is,
To just surrender;
And, let it go.

Celebrate the masculinity of Black soldiers who liberated concentration death camps.

And, recognize their efforts to bring that virility home from Europe
how it fueled the birth of the Civil Rights movement.

How it helped lead to the creation of a Jewish homeland
Black Dominoes falling against Middle Eastern dice
On a World Backgammon Board

Ebony reverberations!

I want Neo-apartheid: the sequel
And New Jim Crows
To be recognized at home and abroad

I reckon the 50,000 —and rising—dead in Palestine bring us back again to a cyclic return of blatant segregations.

States formed exclusively on ideology must first drive out the Undesirable
Other.

And, criminals must be deported without due process.

I’m looking at you MAGAmerica with your gerrymandered voting districts
And voter suppression laws.

I want that to be well known and taught in history classes — the violence that led to non-violence.

And, I don’t want my history to be deleted from text books published in Texas.

I want people to remember that Patton requested the Black tankers.

That men who flew the Flying Fortress requested the Red Tails to escort them on their suicidal missions to fight Nazis.

Nazis that seem to be rising again here in America;
Along with hooded and masked assistant tyrants who terrorize Americans

Only to be mass pardoned.

I want to walk into a store and not have people come up to me and ask me to help them find a sweater.

‘Cause I don’t work at the fuckin’ store; I’m shopping too.

And, I want cabs to stop for me.

I don’t want the Enola Gay stricken from American History because of the word “gay”.

And, I want James Baldwin
Langston Hughes
Billy Porter
Billy Holiday
Jackie “Moms” Mabley
And so many others to be recognized for what they contributed to American culture.

Who and what they choose to kiss behind closed doors is their own goddamn business.

Take your hands off women’s wombs
Especially when
Menstruation
Female orgasm
Fertile mucus
Embryo implantation
And, menopause
Are still mysteries to you.

That’s what Baldwin meant when he said “I want to be left alone,

Just like you”.

I want to see subaltern lives in textbooks;
Because we are the history of the everyday.

And, I don’t need Taylor Sheridan to explain me or my Native Brothers and sisters to me.

We were Sheriff Bass Reeves
And, Buffalo soldiers
And, cowboys
And, calvary men
Before he was a gleam in his daddy’s eye.
Way back before John Dutton was a MAGA masturbation fantasy.

And, I don’t want to be a sidenote in a Francis Ford Coppola movie either.

And if you have stayed with me this far and seen the contradictions inherent in this poem;

Well.

Life is deeply ambiguous.

And “#COMPLICATED”!

This is NOT a DEI poem;
It’s an American and World History poem.

Is that all I want?

No.

But it’s a good fucking start.

 

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit 1: Marc St. Gil, “Jesus Christ Hope of the World” / Smithsonian National Museum of American History)

(Image Credit 2: Edward Ruscha, “HOPE” / Tate Gallery)

 

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Three haiku

March 20, 2025 by Leave a Comment

 

Three Haiku

The new colossus
Must be returned to its home
Until we act right

You brazen Lady
Oxidized sea green with age
Broken promises

Emma Lazarus
The tired, the hungry, and poor
Yesterday’s sweet dream

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image credit: Constant (Constant A. Nieuwenhuys, “After Us, Liberty” / Tate Modern)

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To universities “choosing to stay neutral”, despise, abhor, and spew out all neutralities!

March 11, 2025 by Leave a Comment

 

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu

According to a headline in today’s New York Times, “More Universities Are Choosing to Stay Neutral on the Biggest Issues”. According to the report, “148 colleges had adopted “institutional neutrality” policies by the end of 2024”. There is no neutrality here, there is, at best, compromising of values foundational to the liberal arts. In the immortal words of Rastaman, played by Amiri Baraka in the film Bulworth, universities have chosen to be ghosts in a time when we need spirits.

Neutrality: not taking sides in a controversy, dispute, disagreement, impartial, unbiased. Neutrality: In relation to war or armed conflict: not assisting, or actively taking the side of, any belligerent party, state, etc.; remaining inactive in relation to belligerent powers. Neutrality: Not belonging to or controlled by any belligerent party, state, etc.; belonging to a power which remains inactive during hostilities; exempted or excluded from the sphere of warlike operations.

Universities who “choose to stay neutral” have chosen sides, and not only in the matter of Palestine and Israel. They have chosen to be the property of major donors. They have chosen to forsake inquiry, debate, difficulty for … for what? Survival? As what? As ghosts of their former selves. They have chosen the elephant, and the mouse will not thank them.

In the twentieth century, thinker after thinker decried the claim of neutrality in periods of crisis, especially those of mounting state violence. Desmond Tutu stands in a crowd of righteous survivors and martyrs who faced injustice and oppression and warned against the neutral stand. In the seventeenth century, Robert Herrick wrote Neutrality Loathsome.

Neutrality Loathsome

God will have all, or none; serve Him, or fall
Down before Baal, Bel, or Belial:
Either be hot, or cold: God doth despise,
Abhorre, and spew out all Neutralities.

From Herrick in the 1600s to the Rastaman today and beyond, spew out all neutralities! You can’t be no ghost! Be a spirit!

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

 

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The New Delhi railway “stampede” was a planned massacre of women and children

February 21, 2025 by Leave a Comment

 

      “how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster”
W.H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts“

“The stampede at New Delhi Railway station on February 15 that resulted in 18 deaths and left many injured was caused by a lethal combination of factors.” Of the 18 deaths reported thus far, 14 were women. Once again, there was no stampede, but there were many deaths, mostly women and then children. The purported cause will be disputed or determined, but what will not be examined is the gender composition of the mass of the dead. No one will ask, “Why did 14 women die that day, in that way?” In order to find the causes, the cause, of this disaster, it’s important to name it correctly. There was no stampede. There was a massacre of women and children … again.

Stampede is a relatively new word, and it seems to be North American. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was coined early in the 1800s, Cowboys in the United States borrowed the Spanish word, estampido, which means crash, explosion, or report of a firearm, and estampida, which means a stampede of cattle or horses. It was an early example of transnational vaquero cowboy culture. The word didn’t come from Spain, it came from Mexico. Stampede, or stompado, was a “sudden rush and flight of a body of panic-stricken cattle” or horses. Later, stampede came to mean a “sudden or unreasoning rush or flight of persons in a body or mass”.

“At its inception, stampede meant a thundering herd, powerful, dangerous. Today, when referring to people, it means a mass of people in flight who are threat mostly to themselves. At the beginning, stampede was virile, masculine, big roaring animals and big riding cowboys. People stampeding was panic. In fact, the word in Spanish for the phenomenon of people rushing as a crowd and crushing one another in the process is precisely pánico. Panic. Sudden, wild, unreasoning, excessive, at a loss and out of control. And what is the term for mass panic?  Hysteria, the women’s condition: “Women being much more liable than men to this disorder, it was originally thought to be due to a disturbance of the uterus and its functions”.  Hysteric: “belonging to the womb, suffering in the womb”.

What began as an articulation of masculinity, the enraged capacity to destroy all in its path, became the embodiment of womanhood, the helpless implosion of self. What began as a roar became a whimper. When you read that a group was in a stampede, know this. It is not a neutral word. It is a gender, and the gender is woman. Know this as well. There was no “stampede” in India. There was a massacre of women and children in a space and place of human construction.

The report concerning this week’s event concludes: “At least 30 people were killed in a stampede at the six-week festival last month after tens of millions of Hindus gathered to take a dip in sacred river waters.” This is how everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster, a glancing mention, a wisp of concern, an erasure of women and children, and it’s done. All that remains are the ghosts.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, ” Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” / Royal Museum of Fine Arts)

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For it is a mournful truth that devastation is incomparably an easier work than production

February 6, 2025 by Leave a Comment

 

The abandonment of all principle of right enables the soul to choose and act upon a principle of wrong, and to subordinate to this one principle all the various vices of human nature. For it is a mournful truth, that as devastation is incomparably an easier work than production, so may all its means and instruments be more easily arranged into a scheme and system.

                                                                                    Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In the early 1980s, faced with the ravages of Thatcherism and Reaganism, and the cruelty of the early phases of neoliberalism with its austerity, its newly attired but same old same old war on the poor and working masses and classes, Raymond Williams set out to gather and explain keywords, to layout the intersection of culture, society, vocabulary and power. As Williams explained, “I called these words Keywords in two connected senses: they are significant, binding words in certain activities and their interpretation; they are significant, indicative words in certain forms of thought.” Every period produces its own keywords, though the words themselves are often very familiar, just as every period is produced by its own keywords. You can recognize a period by things people say that they didn’t say before. Listening to, watching, and reading news reports, especially interviews, a keyword of the present moment is devastation.

Well over a hundred years before Williams’ Keywords, from June 1809 to March 1810, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a weekly series of essays, called The Friend. In Essay XVI, Coleridge sets out to understand the implications of people in power choosing evil and renaming it good: “The abandonment of all principle of right enables the soul to choose and act upon a principle of wrong, and to subordinate to this one principle all the various vices of human nature. For it is a mournful truth, that as devastation is incomparably an easier work than production, so may all its means and instruments be more easily arranged into a scheme and system.”

Coleridge chose to emphasize “principle of right” and “principle of wrong.” He looked out a world of abandonment and devastation and understood the ease with which all human vices could be brought together into a scheme and system that insisted on its morality, while demonstrating, day in and day out, the mournful truth that devastation is incomparably an easier work than production. Sound familiar? It should.

Mournful truths are not inevitable truths. They are not destiny. They are choices, made collectively and individually. When faced with a scheme and system whose very core is devastation rather than production, we must remember to cherish those who refuse to abandon all principle of right, whose souls continue to choose and act upon a principle of right. In a world where ruling classes and masses insist on the sanctity of their mournful truths, people will do as they are doing, as they have always done. Mourn for the moment, and fight like hell for the living! You gotta be a spirit! Can’t be no ghost!

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Gordon Bennett, “Possession Island” / Tate)

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Eviction Watch: Who builds the city up each time? A (construction) worker reads history

January 9, 2025 by Leave a Comment

 

“And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up?”
Bertolt Brecht, A Worker Reads History

In 1936, Bertolt Brecht asked, “Who built the city up each time?” A recent report brings this question roaring back. According to Cities Where Construction Workers Would Have To Work the Longest Hours To Afford a Home, conducted by Construction Coverage, nationally, a construction worker would have to work 54 hours a week to afford the mortgage on a median priced home. Needless to say, that picture changes drastically, depending on where one goes. For example, Virginia construction workers have to work 66 hours a week to afford a median priced home in the area in which they work. According to the study, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria is even worse. Construction workers have to work 80 hours a week to afford a median priced home. Virginia is the 13th most unaffordable state for construction workers. Washington – Arlington – Alexandria is the tenth most unaffordable metro area, but only by a hair. The fifth through the eleventh most unaffordable metro areas are pretty much clustered together, from 84 to 80 hours a week.

As the study notes, “The construction industry is facing a major worker shortage. Associated Builders and Contractors—a national construction industry trade association—estimates that the industry will require an additional 454,000 new workers on top of normal hiring to meet the booming demand in 2025. However, despite the substantial need for more construction professionals, elevated home prices and an inadequate homebuilding pace are making it difficult for construction workers to afford to purchase a home in the cities where they work.”

Where did the masons go?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Terry Gentile, Design for a Textile, Construction Workers / Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum)

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Eviction Watch: In the warehouse of evictions, our “need” for misery and torture

January 7, 2025 by Leave a Comment

 

 “And she had learned from experience that Need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty.”
Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

2025 began as 2024 ended, skyrocketing eviction filings, soaring evictions, mounting homelessness amid calls from many quarters to “address homelessness” by evicting the unhoused from their encampments, from their homes, however temporary, all in the name of some purported need. Consider two stories, one from the United Kingdom last year, one from Canada this year, days apart.

Jack is twelve years old and lives in Liverpool. His family was given a Section 21, or “no-fault”, eviction notice. The family was given two months to move, sixty days to find a place they could afford. There was no such place, and so they were moved into a hotel space, one room, two beds, a kettle. That’s it. As Jack explains, “It was just tiny, horrible, it wasn’t very suitable for children and all you could basically do was just watch TV or go to sleep. It’s just misery. … It was just like a game trying to get past a level, it was just day after day after day, a struggle.”

According to the housing organization Shelter, every day, day in day out, around 500 private rental households receive a Section 21 eviction notice. This year the number of so-called no-fault eviction filings broke all records. As one tenant explained, “I paid my rent every month, but I had no rights.” This is what “no fault” eviction means: no rights and misery, especially for children.

Across the ocean, in Hamilton, Canada, the new year began with this account: “Beverly Hoadley never thought she’d have to move out of her Hamilton apartment of over 50 years. But now facing a possible eviction, the 87-year-old says she’s afraid she’ll soon have no choice but to leave her beloved home. `It’s pretty awful,” Hoadley told CBC Hamilton a week before Christmas. `I’m not sleeping at night. It’s torture.’”

Beverly Hoadley and her now deceased husband moved into her apartment in 1970. At the time, the rent was $137 a month, for a one-bedroom apartment. Half a century later, she’s paying $820 a month. Although she’s on a fixed income, as are many residents in the building, she says it’s manageable. Or it was, until new owners, ironically named Endless Property Holdings, bought the building in September and promptly sent eviction notices to everyone, claiming they had to renovate the building. Tenants and allies are organizing to oppose the eviction. As one resident, also on fixed income, explained, “I feel terrible. I have nowhere to go.” The median rent for a one-bedroom in Hamilton is $1650 a month. While that’s a 3% decrease over the previous year, rents are rapidly rising once again. When people say they have nowhere to go, they have nowhere to go.

The landlord, Endless Property Holdings, say they need to renovate. The building has gone through recent renovations, the residents offered to accommodate any further renovations. The landlord rejected all claims and offers. Why is 12-year-old Jack subjected to misery, why is 87-year-old Beverly Hoadley subjected to torture? Landlord “need”. Year’s end, year’s beginning, children, elders, misery, torture. Need is a warehouse the accommodates a considerable amount of cruelty.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: John Bell, The Reward of Cruelty / Metropolitan Museum of Art)

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“Our worsening national affordable housing crisis” caused record levels of homelessness

December 28, 2024 by Leave a Comment

A sign collected in the Georgetown area of Washington, DC by a Smithsonian employee.

This week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research released its 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report. The report takes a one-day image of homelessness on a day in January 2024, a so-called Point-in-Time, or PIT, count. The picture is predictably grim. From 2023’s count to this one, homelessness rose by 18%. The report opens: “The number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2024 was the highest ever recorded. A total of 771,480 people – or about 23 of every 10,000 people in the United States – experienced homelessness in an emergency shelter, safe haven, transitional housing program, or in unsheltered locations across the country. Several factors likely contributed to this historically high number. Our worsening national affordable housing crisis, rising inflation, stagnating wages among middle- and lower-income households, and the persisting effects of systemic racism have stretched homelessness services systems to their limits.” Additional factors include “public health crises, natural disasters that displaced people from their homes, rising numbers of people immigrating to the U.S., and the end to homelessness prevention programs put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the end of the expanded child tax credit.” Top of the list of causes is “our worsening national affordable housing crisis”. Remember that: “our worsening national affordable housing crisis” is the first element contributing to historic levels of homelessness. The lack of affordable housing, not a putative “surge of asylum seekers”.

News media headlines, such as The New York Times, “Migrants and End of Covid Restrictions Fuel Jump in U.S. Homelessness” and Bloomberg, “Migrant Crisis Pushed US Homelessness to Record High in 2024”, would have you believe that migrants, asylum seekers, refugees caused homelessness in the United States. Some news outlets actually got the story right. NPR, for example, explained, “To explain this rise, HUD officials and others point, above all, to the skyrocketing rents that we’ve seen in the past few years. They also cite the recent increase in migrants coming to the U.S. without a place to live, especially migrant families, and extreme weather disasters, for example, the fire in Maui last year.” CBS News reported, “Homelessness in the U.S. jumped 18.1% this year, hitting a record level, with the dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in some regions of the country.” Again, the reason people are homeless is because they can’t find a place to live. Nowhere to go, and, often, no one to help.

To return to the HUD report, the Point-in-Time count also found that nearly all populations reached record levels. People in families with children had the largest single year increase in homelessness. Nearly 150,000 children experienced homelessness on a single night in 2024, reflecting a 33% increase over 2023. Between 2023 and 2024, as an age group, children experienced the largest increase in homelessness. About 20% of those 55 or older were homeless on the night of the point-in-time count. “Nearly half of adults aged 55 or older (46%) were experiencing unsheltered homelessness in places not meant for human habitation.”The only population to report a continued decline in homelessness are veterans? Want to know why? “These declines are the result of targeted and sustained funding to reduce veteran homelessness.”

It’s not a pretty picture, and no one thought it would be, but it needs to be reported accurately. Yes, late in 2023 and into early 2024, there was a marked increase in the numbers of people entering the United States seeking asylum. In 2023, there was also a record number of people forced to abandon their homes due to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, fires and other so-called “natural disasters.” Additionally, there was a record number of people 55 years or older being evicted. In various parts of the country, eviction filings reached historic levels. Some might say there was a “surge” in eviction filings. Who or what is behind that surge? Many argue that the unprecedented entry of corporate landlords and hedge funds into the rental market has been a key factor, given that corporate landlords tend to be serial eviction filers, often making up more than half the eviction filings in any given jurisdiction.

The stories we tell, the stories we are told, matter. In a period of rising xenophobic violence, we don’t need stories that misreport the impact of migrants on the social fabric. Migrants did not cause historic levels in homelessness. “Our worsening national affordable housing crisis” did: skyrocketing rents, fewer homes for sale or rent, mounting eviction filing and eviction rates, and a general acceptance of “nowhere to go” as a facet of “return to normal”. It’s time, it’s way past time, to tell a better story, one of targeted and sustained funding to reduce homelessness.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of American History)

 

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