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Pamela Comstock Proposes "Smart Solutions for Shoppers" as a Way to End Homelessness
A study session on homelessness was held by the Santa Cruz City Council on April 30, 2013. When given a chance to speak at the end of the session, new council member Pamela Comstock explained that funding for homeless services comes from increasing the tax base, and that to help the homeless, the council should focus on "smart solutions for shoppers."
Comstock's remarks came at the end of the study session when council members themselves were summing up and sharing their own thoughts about homelessness in the area.
Comstock said:
"All of the suggestions I heard tonight involve funding, and I want to talk to you about root causes of funding. The best way for the city to continue to provide funding is to have a vibrant business community. Our tax base is our greatest asset and has to be part of the solution. We need to find a way to address the bad behavior that is sending our residents to other cities to shop. How about smart solutions for shoppers? [There are] smart solutions for everything else. Tonight many of the speakers spoke about how to improve the quality of life for the approximately 2700 homeless people. I think it is time to take a broad look at the needs of the entire community. All 60,000 of our residents deserve a better quality of life."
Comstock made a play on words when she spoke about "the root causes of funding," substituting the word "funding" for "homelessness," which was a phrase used during the evening, and a common phrase when discussing homelessness, "the root causes of homelessness."
She also made a play on words with regards to the phrase "smart solutions for shoppers," which was derived from the title of an organization of individuals working to end homelessness locally, "Smart Solutions to Homelessness Santa Cruz County."
From the Smart Solutions to Homelessness website:
Our Mission is to reduce and end homelessness in Santa Cruz County.
Goals:
Create broader and more diverse community engagement on homelessness.
Develop better communication & coordination among those concerned about these issues.
Improve understanding of the realities of homelessness in Santa Cruz County
Share information about proven, successful models and solutions working in other communities including some that are taking shape in Santa Cruz County.
Develop a shared vision for change and agreed upon action steps.
Form an ongoing community leadership group to carry the work forward on shaping policies to address homelessness
Smart Solutions to Homelessness Santa Cruz County
http://www.smartsolutionstohomelessness.org/
To see the entire four hour video (high quality) of the homeless study session:
http://sire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/mtgviewer.aspx?meetid=495&doctype=AGENDA
Comstock said:
"All of the suggestions I heard tonight involve funding, and I want to talk to you about root causes of funding. The best way for the city to continue to provide funding is to have a vibrant business community. Our tax base is our greatest asset and has to be part of the solution. We need to find a way to address the bad behavior that is sending our residents to other cities to shop. How about smart solutions for shoppers? [There are] smart solutions for everything else. Tonight many of the speakers spoke about how to improve the quality of life for the approximately 2700 homeless people. I think it is time to take a broad look at the needs of the entire community. All 60,000 of our residents deserve a better quality of life."
Comstock made a play on words when she spoke about "the root causes of funding," substituting the word "funding" for "homelessness," which was a phrase used during the evening, and a common phrase when discussing homelessness, "the root causes of homelessness."
She also made a play on words with regards to the phrase "smart solutions for shoppers," which was derived from the title of an organization of individuals working to end homelessness locally, "Smart Solutions to Homelessness Santa Cruz County."
From the Smart Solutions to Homelessness website:
Our Mission is to reduce and end homelessness in Santa Cruz County.
Goals:
Create broader and more diverse community engagement on homelessness.
Develop better communication & coordination among those concerned about these issues.
Improve understanding of the realities of homelessness in Santa Cruz County
Share information about proven, successful models and solutions working in other communities including some that are taking shape in Santa Cruz County.
Develop a shared vision for change and agreed upon action steps.
Form an ongoing community leadership group to carry the work forward on shaping policies to address homelessness
Smart Solutions to Homelessness Santa Cruz County
http://www.smartsolutionstohomelessness.org/
To see the entire four hour video (high quality) of the homeless study session:
http://sire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/mtgviewer.aspx?meetid=495&doctype=AGENDA
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The basic problem is that folks have no legal place to sleep.
This problem creates many other problems and is the root for some very serious issues that the council and our community must contend with.
The conditions of homelessness exacerbates the problems of homelessness.
Want to see a real solution to this problem??
Please watch the Santa Cruz Sanctuary Camp video presentation below.
This problem creates many other problems and is the root for some very serious issues that the council and our community must contend with.
The conditions of homelessness exacerbates the problems of homelessness.
Want to see a real solution to this problem??
Please watch the Santa Cruz Sanctuary Camp video presentation below.
For more information:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBWhgjXrKaY
Great ideas can come from any quarter. I choose to listen to "solutions" offered by the homeless people I know and meet at political meetings I attend, not necessarily to persons who have been elected to office by a (mostly) reactionary town, or the bureaucrats who are paid great salaries to "end homelessness."
I ask myself, "What are you doing to create connections with people? What are you doing to organize a better response to poverty and drug addiction, alcoholism, and the rest of the personal problems that people are driven to by how they feel in response to the world we live in?"
Who can I work with? I try to work with everyone, but it is difficult to do. I have my own ideas, and that may be a liability, especially when one is expected to stay "on message" in a group.
But I have resolved to challenge myself, and I challenge everyone to make the world a better place, individually and collectively.
I ask myself, "What are you doing to create connections with people? What are you doing to organize a better response to poverty and drug addiction, alcoholism, and the rest of the personal problems that people are driven to by how they feel in response to the world we live in?"
Who can I work with? I try to work with everyone, but it is difficult to do. I have my own ideas, and that may be a liability, especially when one is expected to stay "on message" in a group.
But I have resolved to challenge myself, and I challenge everyone to make the world a better place, individually and collectively.
"I think it is time to take a broad look at the needs of the entire community. All 60,000 of our residents deserve a better quality of life."
She's using Weasel Words. I CAN'T imagine she has one moment's thought about Santa Cruz' displaced except how to drive them out of town to the benefit of her friends in the property development industry.
Does that census include the homeless as citizens "of the entire community"?
Let's do a quick check.
The organization she ascribes to is pretty exclusionary. They want to see your FarceBook page before they let you into their private 'group'...
...and thanks to a recent 'viral video' showing alleged 'abuse' of an alleged 'camper' by some people called 'the clean team', TBSC, an avocation of Comstock's as one of it's founders, has been able to 'distance itself' in local media from the notion that they DON'T have the whole community including the homeless in mind.
They lie about their 'kinder and gentler' TBSC
Pamela Comstock is a Weasel.
"Never clinch a deal in a room with a Chandelier" ~~Harvey Mackay, business consultant, motivational speaker and author on believing the "Clean Team Abuse Video" & Magallanes 'interview work in favor of homeless ACTivists
"Believe 50% of what you read and nothing that you see" ~~Abbie Hoffman comments on the same.
She's using Weasel Words. I CAN'T imagine she has one moment's thought about Santa Cruz' displaced except how to drive them out of town to the benefit of her friends in the property development industry.
Does that census include the homeless as citizens "of the entire community"?
Let's do a quick check.
The organization she ascribes to is pretty exclusionary. They want to see your FarceBook page before they let you into their private 'group'...
...and thanks to a recent 'viral video' showing alleged 'abuse' of an alleged 'camper' by some people called 'the clean team', TBSC, an avocation of Comstock's as one of it's founders, has been able to 'distance itself' in local media from the notion that they DON'T have the whole community including the homeless in mind.
They lie about their 'kinder and gentler' TBSC
Pamela Comstock is a Weasel.
"Never clinch a deal in a room with a Chandelier" ~~Harvey Mackay, business consultant, motivational speaker and author on believing the "Clean Team Abuse Video" & Magallanes 'interview work in favor of homeless ACTivists
"Believe 50% of what you read and nothing that you see" ~~Abbie Hoffman comments on the same.
Thanx RazorRay for your usual penetrating analysis of our local politicians' doublespeak. Your deconstruction of Pamela Comstock's disingenuous speech was spot on.
Why is our tax base only retail and tourism businesses whom the City Council are beholden to? None of them provide living wage jobs. What Comstock failed to mention is every (upper) middle income Santa Cruz family earns their wages over the hill in Silicon Valley because there are few, if any, living wage jobs in Santa Cruz. Even our police officers commute up to 4 hours to work in Santa Cruz, because they can't afford to live here.
We have a housing crisis of epic proportions, created by successive City Councils. We have a living wage jobs crisis of epic proportions, created by successive City Councils. This talk about *shopping* in Santa Cruz is just an excuse for running out poor and homeless folk. Why isn't Comstock talking about housing and a sustainable living wage jobs base?
Like the other council members, Comstock has got hers. She and her cohorts on the Council don't care about 95% of the folk living in Santa Cruz. She cares about her rich business friends, but not us.
Comstock is a serpent who speaks with a forked tongue. Like Hoffman said, don't trust anything these politicians say — they are fork tongued devils.
Why is our tax base only retail and tourism businesses whom the City Council are beholden to? None of them provide living wage jobs. What Comstock failed to mention is every (upper) middle income Santa Cruz family earns their wages over the hill in Silicon Valley because there are few, if any, living wage jobs in Santa Cruz. Even our police officers commute up to 4 hours to work in Santa Cruz, because they can't afford to live here.
We have a housing crisis of epic proportions, created by successive City Councils. We have a living wage jobs crisis of epic proportions, created by successive City Councils. This talk about *shopping* in Santa Cruz is just an excuse for running out poor and homeless folk. Why isn't Comstock talking about housing and a sustainable living wage jobs base?
Like the other council members, Comstock has got hers. She and her cohorts on the Council don't care about 95% of the folk living in Santa Cruz. She cares about her rich business friends, but not us.
Comstock is a serpent who speaks with a forked tongue. Like Hoffman said, don't trust anything these politicians say — they are fork tongued devils.
John Colby: "Why is our tax base only retail and tourism businesses whom the City Council are beholden to? None of them provide living wage jobs."
Because according to the city (I heard this myself at a council meeting) the reason Santa Cruz Muni Bonds get a better rating than many California cities at this time is due to... According to Moodys' a "flexible labor market".
That means cheap disposable labor who gives about as much of a fuck about their job as the job gives a fuck about them. College students typically. That cheap disposable labor has the net effect of better loans to the city.
The city uses the less expensive loans to build citizen-unwanted stadiums for bush-league basketball teams and hire First Alarm Guards... (snigger)
Further, the losses to Santa Cruz general revenue every year from service workers with an 'I don't give a fuck' attitude could be calculated. But no one will. They'll simply find scapegoats for their economic 'muddling through'.
The homeless, 'druggies', wireless users tying up all the seats in OVERPRICED LEASE coffee shops where the owners are forced to force people out the door just to 'make the nut'. Just never try to imply that the people running the Santa Cruz Show are half-educated stupid greedy people without any interest at all in the overall health of their community.
I still think declaring an economic emergency and capping the number of students employed in the city at some per-capita in relation to local youth employed would be a start. The housing market too. The UC Regents and property owners have conspired to jack up local prices by building slum housing at UCSC which inspires the students to move into town, where they can rent a better slum.
None of this would initially give locals a living wage or reasonably priced housing suited for the wages earned in the area, but otoh young people DO like to pack-up and live in groups so, initially, the lack of good wages and less expensive housing wouldn't be particularly hurtful to them and give the city time to PLAN for jobs for their own residents that DO pay enough to live here.
Because according to the city (I heard this myself at a council meeting) the reason Santa Cruz Muni Bonds get a better rating than many California cities at this time is due to... According to Moodys' a "flexible labor market".
That means cheap disposable labor who gives about as much of a fuck about their job as the job gives a fuck about them. College students typically. That cheap disposable labor has the net effect of better loans to the city.
The city uses the less expensive loans to build citizen-unwanted stadiums for bush-league basketball teams and hire First Alarm Guards... (snigger)
Further, the losses to Santa Cruz general revenue every year from service workers with an 'I don't give a fuck' attitude could be calculated. But no one will. They'll simply find scapegoats for their economic 'muddling through'.
The homeless, 'druggies', wireless users tying up all the seats in OVERPRICED LEASE coffee shops where the owners are forced to force people out the door just to 'make the nut'. Just never try to imply that the people running the Santa Cruz Show are half-educated stupid greedy people without any interest at all in the overall health of their community.
I still think declaring an economic emergency and capping the number of students employed in the city at some per-capita in relation to local youth employed would be a start. The housing market too. The UC Regents and property owners have conspired to jack up local prices by building slum housing at UCSC which inspires the students to move into town, where they can rent a better slum.
None of this would initially give locals a living wage or reasonably priced housing suited for the wages earned in the area, but otoh young people DO like to pack-up and live in groups so, initially, the lack of good wages and less expensive housing wouldn't be particularly hurtful to them and give the city time to PLAN for jobs for their own residents that DO pay enough to live here.
RazerRay: are you saying that local politicians are in bed with Wall Street financiers? Does it go that deep?
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