Too Many Homeless and Migrants Makes for Strange Bedfellows

 

 

Homeless Services Limited Shrinking Accountability

 

Tilex and Spray Bathroom Cleaner Handy Weapon

Thank to the Biden Administration with its gates wide open for all-migrants rushing into the United States, "Houston, we have a great problem!" 

Not only is New York facing a deficit and possible bankruptcy accommodating the migrants, but so are other sanctuary cities. All citizens living in the city nowadays must keep an eye for the migrants who have no place to go during the day. They might be seen standing at a street corner or near a street lamp, sort of dazed, staring at passerbys. Others look as if they are in the process of assimilating, but not if every two steps they need to check their Google Map with special instructions in Spanish.

They are squeezing out the homeless shelter populations in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Denver, and elsewhere because there are special monies for housing the migrants, providing them welfare assistance, and even dedicated funds from the United Nations International Organization for Migration. 

According to the Center for Immigration Studies:

"Above all else, the UN investments in migration support activities this year now matter because they may well have just become the central linchpin in a new, unconventional White House border management plan to essentially “legalize” hundreds of thousands of immigrants annually before they can attempt illegal crossings so that they can instead be escorted into the country through official ports of entry, with pre-approval, as CIS reported here in November."

Granted that a few hundred dollars per migrant is not a lot, considering the rising costs of living inside the USA; nevertheless, put together the packages, including housing incentives probably also by the federal government and special programs, such as Welcome Corps, team up to provide new refugees a pathway to citizenship. 

What this means still is that local facilities, such as schools, playgrounds, parks, nursing homes, auxiliary buildings on campuses, and other facilities may still end up being used to house the overflow of migrants. This is already happening in New York, and including kicking seniors out of the nursing home for making room for migrants. A recent story by MSN reports that one nursing home on Staten Island has kicked out Korean War and World War II vets to make way for housing illegal migrants.

To understand the federal funding system one must also contextualize with regard to the cartels involved in offering tit-for-tat deals. There are articles about migrants wearing special wrist bands identifying their sponsor or cartel smuggler group; typically their contract might include serving as a drug-mule, as a future sweathouse laborer, as a promised for sexworker, as illegal grow farm labor. 

If one serves inside the working class whether in schools, hospitals, construction, or other pipeline industries, there is something akin to a "don't ask, don't tell" sort of authoritarianism that can slowly allowing the cartels to take over certain industries, then certain governments, then states, just like in various states in Mexico, in Central America, and in Columbia. 

Meanwhile, Washington community residents living in permanent supportive housing or surviving on HUD vouchers are being systematically disabused of their rights and privileges. This is seen in a variety of subtle changes in the homeless community advocacy processes. For instance, Washington Legal Clinic used to travel to various homeless supportive services communities, such as Miriam's Kitchen, StreetSense, N Street Village, etc, but ever since Covid-19 lockdowns, they have stopped. 

There is every reason to believe that in a government shutdown or under austerity measures, the McKinney-Vento Act may be at-risk. Here is what the US ICH has as a warning as of October 4, 2023 on the main webpage:

"In the potential absence of federal appropriations, neither USICH nor USICH.gov would be operational. Read more about our shutdown guidelines."

Too many social workers and federal employees at the trough to ensure that the homelessness dollars are sponged off and to belittle homeless and low-income residents so that there is no Robin Hood or Mitch Snyder hero/heroine rising up to help found independent homeless community shelters. 

Today any symptom of that kind of independent-mindedness is often targeted by staffspersons inside national charitable programs. NGOs, such as Catholic Charities, hire many staff who come from underprivileged backgrounds, and who often receive a lot of training on the job to compensate for the lack of a college degree. They become, pretty much, checklist sort of employees, who only see things in black vs white thinking. 

That in turn tends to create a sort of menagerie environment in which even organized crime can make its way into the setting. At the very least, it tends to exacerbate friction because the staff don't view the residents as individuals on their own, rather as a class that can be stigmatized based on income. If you were a good Catholic before living at Catholic Charities, it can make your faith very trying. But of course, just think of the obstacles that all nuns and seminarians face today.

Anyway no wonder there are men who just don't want to live in any kind of shelter system, which unfortunately, can place them at extreme risk from the elements, let alone reduce their chances of finding a Housing First placement. There is one such fellow now who still lives at McPherson Square, even though all the homeless were evacuated from the park eight months ago. 

This fellow has clung onto his sidewalk home tenaciously. It doesn't even look like a home---more like a vendor's street cart---which explains how he has managed to pass for such. However his face and his general condition says it all. I thought he was quite obstinate, but now, I realize that maybe he has something credible to be worried about in DC's men's shelters, with their returnees and toughs who often target nonblacks or anyone "different."

This dude likes to talk politics, but truth is that he is now worried about being chased out of the park. So his blog now has that as a featured talking point on the mainpage of CleanHonestGov.com. The Park Police want to contain Daniel Kingery's independence, keep him inside a shoebox for a room, or a prison-bunker for a bed. They always hate bloggers and independent journalists the most; even the best of the alt-journalists are often the worst hypocrites.

Anyway either that or there is the rush of authoritarian empowerment after the January 6th show trials, with some of these insurrectionists now sentenced to serving decades, yes decades, in jail for serious crimes that never happened. No one was hurt, no one was kidnapped, no one was really even threatened, but the lesson being that former President Trump and his ilk must be taught a lesson.

I am not sure what party Daniel might belong to, but often, the Republican Party gives lower-middle class white people something to hope for. Maybe they think that Happy Days might return again, although for sure the days of Archie Bunker are long gone. A shred of hope is something that all homeless and low-income disabled older people desire, yet certain types of social workers don't even want to offer them the tiniest scrap.

There is the rub where Permanent Supportive Housing and Transitional Housing goes. Even if the rules and the civil rights code state no discrimination based on income or house-address, it happens an awful lot inside Washington, D.C. It happens outside of D.C. too. As soon as some healthcare worker figures out that I am only low-income, and it might even be my relative working as a doctor, they no longer address me in a polite, civil manner.

And here at Catholic Charities, there is also ageism to consider. Yes, the Pope and a whole lot of cardinals can live a very respectable life with people bowing and stooping to kiss their hands. But for nuns, they are lucky if they can get their medical bills paid. For some low-income pensioner caught inside the Catholic Charities system, and it doesn't matter what your educational level is, just like being placed in a nursing home, you are just as useful as a wooden pallet.

Why do I say that? Because you can assert yourself blue in the face, and the staff assume the most lackadaisical atttitude, lie to your face practically, and blow you off while snorting with laughter and derision behind your back. If you are being bullied, the official policy is that there is zero tolerance.

The real policy is that bullying is used to weaponize the staff's authority as an extension of their power. We have a gal here who has terrorized the second floor of the group home for women for the past two years, and she is getting worse, not better. All of us have complained about her---that is at least ten women on this floor, and at least four women on the other floors, but the staff let her stay here.

I asked the director about this after I was recently forced to file an anti-stalking order (it should have been a civil protection order but at least it is something). The director assured me, "I've tried to get her out, but it's a decision that is being made higher up." She has used that line before, the very same line, with another very troublesome resident (who is still here).

You know why I don't believe it, even if I kept mum while she asserted that repeatedly? Because it is the staff here who decide who is admitted here. They decide among themselves directly, yet they cannot evict someone because "someone higher up is making a decision"? That's just an excuse!

This predatorial housing inmate is a monster. She wears a black trenchcoat 24/7 with the hood up, dark sunglasses, black leotards, and black boots. She dresses like that 24/7 even inside the house. She verbally and physically harasses other women on this floor. (I suspected she is transgender and still have my doubts). Being at least 6 feet in height, she uses her height to her advantage including obstructing the doorway into the bathroom or pushing a cabinet against the door to keep it shut. (For some reason no locks on any bathroom doors here).

She also chases after residents outside the house, yelling racial epithets at them, screaming and cursing at them, even if they never talk to her. I wanted to show her some niceness, but she doesn't really see anyone here as a human being. She starts launching her verbal and then physical attack as soon as she sees the person (object) period. She is clever enough to fake it with the staff, of course.

In her room, she screams for hours, literally hours, at a time, using foul vulgar language about this resident, that resident, this staffperson, that person, etc, even though everything she says is based on her imaginings of that person having done or wishing to do something to her.

I have recommended over and over again that she needs counseling, she needs anger-management training, she can be counseled outside the house, and her medications should be regulated. But again, all of this is seemingly ignored.

Recently she SPAT on an older white female resident who lives here. Again this older resident, who I've known for at least four years, would not harm a fly. Yet she accosted this older woman and began haranguing her about being a disgusting white person, and then spat on her. She also has attacked me (an Asian-American) verbally, and recently used a bathroom cleaner spray to spray on my face.

You know what one staffsperson did when she heard this? Sort of laugh or smirk. She thought it was funny! Then when I told her it was not funny, that she is a menace for the house, she said exactly the same thing: "Well it is a decision being made from higher up." And again, she laughed or smirked!

Higher up? Try lower down---it must be Satan who is advising them to keep bullies around and allow them to act so sadistically. If she had done that to the STAFF, then of course, a whole different story, right? She would instantly be gone.

But we are just residents, so we don't have the same kind of human rights anymore. And that attitude has been adopted by other agencies or institutions socially influenced by the power, might, and dollars of Catholic Charities. Even the court might be persuaded based on labels to view me as a "lesser person" or as "living in a group home of disabled women" or "lower income" or just stereotyping the very same way that I often hear the staff do, and the Catholic Church parishioners do, that "this is a house of mad women."

Great. So they have to keep the self-confirming prophecy by allowing and encouraging this monster-demonically possessed woman to stay here. She is demonically possessed if she can rave evil things about people and think such bad thoughts and give vent to that screaming in rage for hours at time. She is a bad person for her vile intimidation of other residents on this floor, calling them names, spooking them so bad that they dare not use this restroom on this side of the floor even though she maniacally pretends to do my cleaning chore for me, acting as if I can never do as good a job as her.

I have very sad doubts that the Anti-Stalking order will have much effect. It won't encourage Elle to apologize. The staff never make her apologize about how inconsiderate and abusive she is. The staff don't seem to mind that they support such mixed messages about the mission of this home which is for women who are disabled and recovering from abuse. They don't care if they are derelict in their duty and responsibility to protect or provide a safe place. They certainly are not operating in good faith.

And the court, which is too close to this shelter, and we all know how powerful the church lobbyists are in this community, will even probably try to trivialize my complaint even if I present evidence and have witnesses.

This, too, is the state of America today, where because of so many poor people, the present poor Americans can be conveniently shoved aside to make room for those "paid for by the cartels." That is why the staff sort of leers, and sneers, and scoffs. But it can be for other reasons as well. People who are in the human trafficking business are trained to adopt a cruel and callous attitude.

Think about the slave trade in Africa that took place for hundreds of years or more before the white man ever arrived there. You have to have that kind of mindset of keeping another human being in a cage as a commodity, even a unit of trade, and the keepers are often sexually-trafficked type human beings themselves. They are completely desensitized and the more they are desensitized and callous, the better their chances for moving up.

So yes, the women here are no better than cargo being held in a vessel on their way to Kingdom Come. In fact, as I mentioned before, we even have relatives who maltreat my other relatives sort of like this. They view older relatives as past their prime and therefore the only time they communicate is when they want a favor. They stomp on poor relations and force them to work like indentured servants. Yet come Christmas or the holidays, they are the first to appear in all their finery and fake generosity.

This is exactly why so many people are no longer even planning to vote. I was figuring out whether if my older friend, if he were living today, who he would vote for. Recently I am convinced he would stay at home. Even my parent told me she did not even vote the last election. I am having a very hard time believing that any change can come from any politician be they red, blue, green, or independent. We are going to harvest the bad fruit from the rotten seed that we are allowing to flourish.

Even while attending the professional webinars that I am allowed to sign up for because of my advanced credentials, the staff here, and the doctor there, are totally oblivious. All they would rather see is a walking dead person, a zombie, so they can rush me to the Death Ward when no one is watching.

No wonder Catholicism is a dying religion.

Housing Project Ever-Repair A/C Service

Base of Air Conditioner lacks Evaporative Water Collection Pan

                     

        Every year for the past five years during the summer the same thing happens at this community group home: the air conditioner (A/C) begins to leak water and there is water damage in various parts of the house, but especially downstairs in the dining room, sometimes for weeks at a time. 

        The staff coordinator calls the A/C service van and usually the repair person goes up to the floor above where the A/C closet is, and he does the same thing. He takes the dry-vaccuum and hoses the water out from the base of the air conditioner. As seen above the air conditioner does have evaporative coils and it causes moisture to collect, quite a bit of it evidently, and it is supposed to feed from the white PVC drain pipe to a vertical collection pipe into a system that drains out of the house.

        But as this resident has learned (from being curious over the years about the ever-leaking A/C and appreciating the inconvenience), the A/C should have a secondary collection system of some type as most do, with another evaporative collection pan at the base and including an overflow drain to the vertical drainage collection system. 

        Well it doesn't. As pictured above, when the bottom grate is removed it is just a padded insulated box that feeds directly into the rest of the duct system. But because of the inefficiency of the collection system directly below the evaporative coils in the A/C, there is so much water that the box bottom becomes saturated (although the insulation does have minimal waterproofing) and the overflow carries out into the duct systems towards various rooms. 

   Replaced the air filter, but the box bottom does not drain

            To add insult to injury the repair person retorted to this resident that she was not qualified to comment or make suggestions, since she was not a certified technician, as he stood there and did the usual thing: use the dry-vacuum to hose it out, sometimes for an hour at least. Little did he know that the resident had done the same thing the night before at least twice because of the rapidly filling pool. Neither he nor the staff recognized this resident's efforts of course. (They would rather consult their organizational attorney to find out how to keep the residents underinformed, keep them at bay, minimize their concerns, send them warning letters, or even try to evict them). 

        He asked and berated, "Do you have an Air-conditioner Certification? No! You don't! And anybody can post a video on YouTube! It's hardly credible! You don't know anything! That standing water is there for recirculation! Everything is supposed to go back to recirculation!"

        "So if everything is supposed to go back for recirculation, why are the ducts leaking and the ceiling of the dining room leaking?" the resident asked.

        The A/C ever-repair person fumed at me and looked like he was going to explode! Of course, such an obese heavy-set man might even have a heart-attack from such hard cross-questioning! 

        "You don't know anything! That water is meant to recirculate!"

        Okay, I think, sure we have atmospheric climate air recirculation. It's just all perfectly normal!

Usually this is just the start of the leak in the dining room

          So while this A/C guy is gaslighting me, assuring that I know absolutely nothing about his business, which is every year to come to suck dry the saturated base of the A/C a few times a month, and then the organization can send out its maintenance crew to patch up and repaint the ceiling, the staff are giving me the cold shoulder. It is because I wrote them an email sharing my concern that the box needs a metal collection pan and a drainage pipe to the vertical PVC collection pipe. It's a relatively simple fix, I assured them. So the next business morning (the leak began on the weekend), staff were in meeting all morning, and too busy to travel upstairs, and deliberately tried to brush off this resident repeatedly. They think it will legally embroil them if they visit the A/C closet with a resident!

        In fact any kind of collection system would do, even a PVC lined box with a horizontal drain pipe would do. Those evaporation coil pans at the base of almost every air conditioner and boiler have a function, which is to catch and drain emergency overflow, even if the thermostat malfunctions. 

This is the main weepage pipe from the evaporative coil inside the A/C

        Honestly, I don't expect that the staff in the house have anything civil to respond to me, but if anything, will do what they usually do, which is expect us to not talk, while they figuratively sweep the problem under the rug. Seriously, there was a kitchen graywater leak under the sink (kitchen drain) for over a year, and it had grown worse over that time period, when finally this resident took everything out from underneath the sink cabinet, placed water collection bins, and alerted the staff. It took a couple more months till it was finally fixed. In the meantime, this resident drained the bucket every day, up to several times a day. Some other residents helped, but prior to this, the area under the sink, the plywood undercabinet was left wet, moist, and rotting. (This resident would have addressed the matter sooner, but there were some very aggressive and abusive residents who would chase her out of the kitchen). (You would never believe that the staff also use this very same kitchen daily to fix their lunch!)

        This is why to staff's chagrin, the resident always addresses the email to the permanent supportive housing director as well. Since that director is on vacation, the staff don't need to direct their sincere civil attention to the problem until she returns, and hopefully decides that ever-repair is not the same as a full-solution. And of course maybe the staff are worried that it is this resident wanting to play drama-queen, or making it about personality-contest. Rest assured. There are other residents with renumerative starring roles here, calling 9-1-1 about imaginary invasions of the house. 

        No, this is about having a permanent source of mold spreading from the base of the A/C duct box to the rest of the duct system. Think Legionnaire's disease, for starters. Even the filter starts molding prematurely and that mold does spread easily through the duct system into every single room.

Musty moldy filter and dirty water collect directly underneath the A/C unit

          Again, this resident is reminded of the jeers of the A/C person or innuendos, "You are not paid to do anything here, I am! You have no authority here! We can't do anything without additional money!"

           Exactly! Jesus was not paid to do his type of ministry either, nor his apostles. We are not charging God for the air we breathe, the water we drink, even if the capitalists of the world are hoping to eventually make that chargeable monetarily as well. There is no renumeration for my volunteer work here or in the garden or anywhere this resident may be in sharing of free useful good information. 

        In the meantime, the resident wants to thank the new innovative systems in development around the world. While the urban AI version can feel invasive, the system of social-credit and points earned for volunteer work used by the People's Republic of China should be an option for poor people here in the United States. Think about coupons and how they are used for discounted groceries or dining out. Wouldn't that be nice to rack up some free points to use for travel or car rental?

            And insofar as being able to hold accountable, investigate, communicate, disclose, express, Google has also been extremely helpful. All these A/C experts sharing their expertise are not sharing in order to cheat home-owners or discourage them from taking care of their unit or disempowering them from developing DIY fixes for a leaky unit. In fact, on the contrary, they usually have so much business in the summer that they are hoping that customers can learn to pinpoint the problem better. Some of them are even sharing theory and not just practice, such as GrayFurnaceMan, HVAC School, and Skill Builder. Because of the CEUs this resident has to undertake for civil engineering recertification, she is always alert to these sorts of websites. And this is even before we dig into GoogleScholar or GoogleBooks and check out the free chapters on pro-environmental climate-protective presidential hopefuls. These are the types of publishers who have a noble-cast of character in this world, and who are not here on earth to merely manipulate people and things for their own materialist gain. 

        In the past, a long time ago, this resident had a best friend who took her on a journey to Portugual where we visited a great number of ancient churches. Once at dusk we came upon a service in process and my friend happened to glance up at the ceiling and noticed a crack in the vaulted ceiling. It was a spreading type of crack, but he wouldn't wait. Instead, he whisked us out of the church in a hurry. At the time, I sort of chuckled about the rush, but actually today, it is a sobering reminder of when one is in an endangered sect within the church. There is a church nearby and it would seem as if all Catholic churches are the same, however, this one is always under semi-renovation. It used to not be so, then it became so after the ascencion of a new vicar. The painting is never finished, the stations of the cross are alway partly covered, the statues are always being moved about, the talk is always of what else needs to be paid for, and once one thing is done, something else must be fixed. Most people do not attend church to be forced to notice such matters, but indeed it is the case here. That was this resident's impression, a church with a cracked ceiling, so to speak. And so there, the parishioners will be more worried about their pocketbook, a sermon about the distant past, a funneling to not ask pertinent questions about relevant matters, but to be willing to absorb as gospel truth the weight of the pastor's viewpoints. No wonder pride and arrogance is such a problem today, when people so hypocritically are encouraged to base their authority solely on materialism, title, and figurative glory. 

        Anyway, it does no good to raise the issue about the Ever-Repair A/C drainage problem, as the staff always presume that what they will do is invariably correct and does not need resident input. If we do provide input, there is likely to be no feedback, and if anything, even a backlash. And if they do not undertake that, they will even use residents to backlash at another resident. When the ceiling leaks and the A/C is not working, they do not even necessarily respond to anything at all that you say, depending on "how preoccupied they are" and especially if you are just Asian-American. So there is a very high bar being established and encouraged over anything this resident says or suggests, irregardless.

        But again, we have new role models, and while they look like happy stars in public, such as Kim Iversen, or Choeshow, or Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., we know that they still take guff from the worshippers of Baal and Moloch. Always notice how the security tries to hang in the vicinity so that the camera catches their leering gaze, the sneer on their face, the mockery in their treatment of political candidates. They even do that to politicians that anyone might vote for who are "in the mainstream." That is the contemporary attitude which we must deal with, and do so with grace, if at all possible----the soldiers of Empire at the base of the crucifix ready to take down your robe and divvy it up.

"This A/C unit has a special name called 'Bait Me'." The staff will not accompany the resident to look in the A/C closet but will sit in the office and wait for the A/C Ever-Repair to show up...

"Just sit back and wait and let them fix it," resident says...And this is the typical saga of much of public housing and why they eventually go under is how their staff people are paid to "just follow the rules." This is why some people believe that DHA is in cahoots with HUD to help run down the housing so more properties 'go to market.' Short-term gain is exactly all that some bureaucrats care about!