Right 2 Survive Pdx

  Its an exciting time for r2s,and a great time to be involved in our organization.We are making great strides in our efforts to imporve the lives of the homeless and rescently housed.The endeavers we are incompassing  will reach many and spread to more.Some of the projects in the fire are already to be implimented.The walks under the bridges are giving more insight to whats needed. Ways we can be of assistance is to have a phone tree when a situation accurs.Such as the brutial attacts and the resent post to evict from under the bridges and arrests.Blankets and personal care items are always needed. However if we can find a way to document some of the harrassments we will have a stronger leg to stand on.               

Also, we need poeple to go to city hall and speak on these issues. We have strong voices and have the right to be heard.Remember we put these people in office.They are no better than we are.Our fearless leader does most of this himself,but he should have people in the session with him to show there are many with the same oppinions.Many who want action to improve the community.I understand Wade and Leo were there today and had the usual bobble head response.they hear but are not listening.By going to committee meeting and hearings we are enabled to bring more informed ideas to our meetings.      

Though suggestions we have the potential to create actions,campaigns if we utilize them wisely.We are a skilled and intelligent group.All of us have unique talents and backgrounds that can be put into use.One may come from an upper class background,while one of us may have struggled all their life.Some of us never finished schooling while some have higher educations,etc.Uniqueness and diversity is what gives us our building blocks for our success.Diverse opinions are highly valued within our organization,don’t be afraid to speak your ideas. You are valued!      

Now on a lighter note. I am so pleased to hear about and see the newsletter taking off.We as an organization can use this as a tool in fundraising as well as keeping ourselves informed.The ones who took the initiative to get the letter up and running,Thank You!Even though I’m miles away @ the moment I’m still informed.   

“Squat The Musical” I hear that writing for the first scene is now under way.there is so much great buzz going on around efforts of all invovled.We have a very creative group full of talents on all areas.From thespians to tech support this will be a real successful production.I feel (know) this,cause I believe in each and every one of us.This is a concept that hasn’t been used yet.To expose the housing situation and show the struggles of daily live for the unhoused, we are going to rehumanize those of us still out here trying to carve out an existance.The need for affordable housing and the ill treatment imposed on us do to the many issues that brought us to the squat. Have we found a place for the performance? Keep us posted.

As for fundraising,Here is a suggestion.A letter writing campaign.Included in the short proposal a copy of the newsletter showing the works of the organization.

In a month or so we will be in the valintines day, then Easter season followed by mother’s day. Locations for tables and/or booths to do our grassroots fundraising need to be located. We need to put a shout out for anyone willing to assist us in our efforts to generate funds for r2s.We can do this!      

 Also we need to start a grant campaign. Anyone who knows of an oppertunity,site,or organization we can approach in our efforts to generate funds to continue our work in the community would be greatly appriciated.Suggestions are needed.We have many skills perhaps we can try for some grants based on our individual talents.Others based on the organization as a whole and what we want to accomplish. Anyone who has the ability to write a proposal or suggestion should bring this up @ our next meeting.

I have so much more I want to say,however I have rambled on enough for now. I feel the excitment in the air and wish I was there physically partaking in the activities.There is so much ideas and such strong personalities flowing through r2s right now. I want us to keep up the momentium!This is a fantastic chapter in all our lives and that of r2s.Great things are going to happen for us I know this.We are believers and people of action onward and upward we strive. I’ll end as I usually do remember there is power in numbers.    Power To The People….Let’s not beg for our Rights,Take them!…….Roar,Remember You have a Voice!                                                                

One Love

Lisa Fay

Member Right 2 Survive

Upcoming events:

1/6/11 – 5pm – Location TBA
Meeting for SQUAT – the musical.  Come share your talents.  We have just begun writing the script, and we can plug you into the process whether you have theater experience or not!

Every 2nd and 4th Thursday, R2S meets.  We’ve been meeting at Sisters of the Road from 5 til 7pm.  We are working on a number of items, including overturning the camping ban, creating our own media, fundraising, sharing skills, & more!!!

Friday, January 14th – R2s and the Jericho movement will collaborate on a presentation concerning social and political prisoners.  Speakers include Kent Ford and Ibrahim Mubarak.  6pm at Sisters of the Road.

IMBY – IN MY BACKYARD, an on-going campaign to open up space for people to stay, whether it’s a spot to pitch a tent in your backyard, a couch to surf, a basement, an rv, a garage, a cob house, or a guest room.  Help R2s members gain stability by offering a safe place to stay while we work toward self support.  Contact r2spdx@gmail.com if you can help!

As many of you know the homeless and those of us color have been targets of the police for quite sometime.Tony a R2S member and active part of our community,was racially profiled while smoking on a street corner downtown on Nov.16th 2010.He was away from the bus stop. The whites under the bus stop were not stopped or addressed about there actions on direct violation of the no smoking policy.As of today there hasn’t been any tickets issued. He is still sitting in Inverness where his public defender has made only one attempt to contact him.What a system we have! My praise to the public defenders office for there total lack of interest and there ability to communicate to those in custody.I really have to toot your horn,my hats off to you!

December 8, 2010

It has long been the standard practice in medical testing: Give drug treatment to one group while another, the control group, goes without.

Now, New York City is applying the same methodology to assess one of its programs to prevent homelessness. Half of the test subjects — people who are behind on rent and in danger of being evicted — are being denied assistance from the program for two years, with researchers tracking them to see if they end up homeless. The city’s Department of Homeless Services said the study was necessary to determine whether the $23 million program, called Homebase, helped the people for whom it was intended.

Homebase, begun in 2004, offers job training, counseling services and emergency money to help people stay in their homes. But some public officials and legal aid groups have denounced the study as unethical and cruel, and have called on the city to stop the study and to grant help to all the test subjects who had been denied assistance.

“They should immediately stop this experiment,” said the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer. “The city shouldn’t be making guinea pigs out of its most vulnerable.” As controversial as the experiment has become, New York City is among a number of governments, philanthropies and research groups turning to so-called randomized controlled trials to evaluate social welfare programs.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development recently started an 18-month study in 10 cities and counties to track up to 3,000 families who land in homeless shelters. Families will be randomly assigned to programs that put them in homes, give them housing subsidies or allow them to stay in shelters. The goal, a HUD spokesman, Brian Sullivan, said, is to find out which approach most effectively ushered people into permanent homes.

Such trials, while not new, are becoming especially popular in developing countries. In India, for example, researchers using a controlled trial found that installing cameras in classrooms reduced teacher absenteeism at rural schools. Children given deworming treatment in Kenya ended up having better attendance at school and growing taller.

“It’s a very effective way to find out what works and what doesn’t,” said Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has advanced the testing of social programs in the third world. “Everybody, every country, has a limited budget and wants to find out what programs are effective.”

The New York study involves monitoring 400 households that sought Homebase help between June and August. Two hundred were given the program’s services, and 200 were not. Those denied help by Homebase were given the names of other agencies — among them H.R.A. Job Centers, Housing Court Answers and Eviction Intervention Services — from which they could seek assistance. Advocates for the homeless said they were puzzled about why the trial was necessary, since the city proclaimed the Homebase program as “highly successful” in the September 2010 Mayor’s Management Report, saying that over 90 percent of families that received help from Homebase did not end up in homeless shelters.

One critic of the trial, Councilwoman Annabel Palma, is holding a General Welfare Committee hearing about the program on Thursday. “I don’t think homeless people in our time, or in any time, should be treated like lab rats,” Ms. Palma said. But Seth Diamond, commissioner of the Homeless Services Department, said that just because 90 percent of the families helped by Homebase stayed out of shelters did not mean it was Homebase that kept families in their homes. People who sought out Homebase might be resourceful to begin with, he said, and adept at patching together various means of housing help. The department, Mr. Diamond added, had to cut $20 million from its budget in November, and federal stimulus money for Homebase will end in July 2012. “This is about putting emotions aside,” he said. “When you’re making decisions about millions of dollars and thousands of people’s lives, you have to do this on data, and that is what this is about.”

The department is paying $577,000 for the study, which is being administered by the City University of New York along with the research firm Abt Associates, based in Cambridge, Mass. The firm’s institutional review board concluded that the study was ethical for several reasons, said Mary Maguire, a spokeswoman for Abt: because it was not an entitlement, meaning it was not available to everyone; because it could not serve all of the people who applied for it; and because the control group had access to other services. The firm also believed, she said, that such tests offered the “most compelling evidence” about how well a program worked. Dennis P. Culhane, a professor of social welfare policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the New York test was particularly valuable because there was widespread doubt about whether eviction-prevention programs really worked. “There’s no doubt you can find poor people in need, but there’s no evidence that people who get this program’s help would end up homeless without it,” said Professor Culhane, who is working as a consultant on both the New York and HUD studies. Professor Culhane added that people were routinely denied Homebase help anyway, and that the study was merely reorganizing who ended up in that pool.

According to the city, 5,500 households receive full Homebase help each year, and an additional 1,500 are denied case management and rental assistance because money runs out. Still, legal aid lawyers in New York said that apart from their opposition to the study’s ethics, its timing was troubling because nowadays, there were fewer resources to go around. Ian Davie, a lawyer with Legal Services NYC in the Bronx, said Homebase was often a family’s last resort before eviction. One of his clients, Angie Almodovar, 27, a single mother who is pregnant with her third child, ended up in the study group denied Homebase assistance. “I wanted to cry, honestly speaking,” Ms. Almodovar said. “Homebase at the time was my only hope.” Ms. Almodovar said she was told when she sought help from Homebase that in order to apply, she had to enter a lottery that could result in her being denied assistance. She said she signed a letter indicating she understood. Five minutes after a caseworker typed her information into a computer, she learned she would not receive assistance from the program. With Mr. Davie’s help, she cobbled together money from the Coalition for the Homeless and a public-assistance grant to stay in her apartment.

But Mr. Davie wondered what would become of those less able to navigate the system. “She was the person who didn’t fall through the cracks,” Mr. Davie said of Ms. Almodovar. “It’s the people who don’t have assistance that are the ones we really worry about.”

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The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France, The Red Lily, 1894