Reply #403: 1. Use your position to initiate

[Hannah Bell]

honest public discussion of the problem & its history.

2. Organize your clients, supporters & donors to lobby for subsidized housing, higher wages, etc.

3. Link to other agencies to form a national coalition with some political muscle.

4. Publicize all attempts to move "the problem" to areas where it's less visible, to destroy current public housing, or to cut back funding. Go into the budget & look at the numbers. 200 billion for Iraq? 200,000 units of new construction vacant thanks to the mortgage meltdown - that would house 1/4 of the homeless, & that's just NEW construction. Publicize the absolute CYNICISM of initiating 10-year plans to end homelessness while cutting funding.

5. Use your national coalition to hold public forums across the nation to publicize the issues & get ordinary people involved.

6. Link your effort to other working class issues like wages, offshoring, & the lack of real citizens input into public policy, or indeed, the lack of real information citizens can easily access.

7. Take a page from MLK & start a "poor peoples' campaign".