Nowhere To Lay Your Head

Care not Cash
It is not my friend
No Cash, No Care, No House
No where to lay your head
Care for the Homeless?

Just who is the homeless, just us?
Houseless Americans
We come in all shapes, colors, sizes, and ages!

"When the rains come, where will we go?" Tears of sorrow and powerlessness poured from the eyes of PNN's Shelter Observer. Now, for most folk that wouldn't be so strange, but for this fierce, currently houseless African Descendent woman who is a poverty scholar and survivor of a lifetime of race and class oppression, those tears were wrong on so many levels.

"Since Care Not Cash they are making it impossible for folks on SSI who stay in shelters to get a bed, they make us go through so many hoops, and go so many places that elderly women and men like me can't possibly do them. Meanwhile, they are reserving the beds for people on Welfare and most of the time beds just go empty." As she spoke haltingly, I cringed with fury.

As readers of PNN and the Bayview will know, the poverty journalists and media organizers at PNN/POOR fought with every nerve left in our body to halt the racist classist legislation known as Care Not Cash. The legislation created as Mayor Gavin Newsom's mayoral platform reduced the welfare checks of Welfare recipients from the already meager amount of $279 to just $59 per month, which is straight-up theft for the GA recipients, seeing as noone gets free money. All GA recipients who aren't disabled have to work for their cash grant so now they are earning less than minimum wage and their money is being taken from their checks to pay for the shelter beds. All of this resulting in the frightening result that we all predicted which is that folks on SSI or working poor folks who aren't on any government subsidy don't have access to any seven day beds at all, and even for one day beds it's so much work that most people give up and stay on the streets.

We are not just, Bag Ladies, and Men
We are not just people pushing a buggy filled with their belongings
We are not just faceless people, panhandling, with a cup stuck out
We are people in America, sleeping out doors
Rain or Shine, disabled, displaced teens, the elderly, ex-convicts,
Unemployed, mothers with children

"Well we will fight back," I consoled her with the sounds of resistance , but in my heart I, too, felt dejected and weary. Newsom's master plan is just another in a nation-wide trend of mayors backed by big business dollars begining with New York's Rudy Giuiliani who launched the shelter-as-jail system - that hooks your bed in with unpaid labor, forcing residents to do a daily piss test, kicking you out on the street with one infraction and leaving you with only one option; the other shelter for poor folks - the county jail .

In God we Trust!
Because we can’t rely on “Care not Cash
We can’t rely on the Shelter System
Bed today none tomorrow.
To our sorrow, running here, running there
No beds, just confusion, empty beds lay wasted
While long lines form

"they used to give folks a sandwich if they weren't able to find a meal that day - those are no longer provided, but now due to these new rules, you can't even get to your dinner," When I called DHS to get a quote about the sandwich, I was told that that was no longer possible with the new budget cuts.

She continued, "and just like we were worried about, the only solution they give you when you try to fight back is that maybe you, the elder, should be put in another "place" if you can't do the hoops, i.e., an old people's home."

The fog is settling in as we finally trek, to our “slot”
Lights out Nine o/clock
We barely lay down, we its l5 minutes, up and at it again!
Something to eat and a place to sleep
Seven days a week!