Why ending homelessness isn’t as simple as just getting a job, and why homeless people have a hard time getting jobs? There are many assumptions about homeless people. Perhaps the most common is that they are too lazy to work. Having almost been there myself in 1991, because of medical issues and having worked with many others in the same situation for years, I have to say that for the vast majority of homeless people the assumption that they are lazy is dead wrong and your elected officials know it in this city.
But many won’t defend them. I used to work one full- and two part-time jobs, a total of three jobs, until I got sick. It happened again a second time (almost lost my home years later) when the government made a big mistake and declared me dead because my Social Security number was recorded as someone else’s, off by one number.
Why it’s hard to deal with being homeless. Most employers require addresses. This is a lose-lose situation: People can’t get a place to live until they get a job, but can’t get a job until they get a place to live.
Many jobs require transportation. That can be a huge obstacle to getting to work. For some, an automobile is a home-on-wheels, (I’ve seen 30 families last winter live in their vehicles) but many don’t have even that. Many jobs require that applicants have dependable transportation. Sometimes this can be a bus, but if work hours are irregular and begin before buses start running or after they have stopped, it means owning your own vehicle. Not having a car or money to pay for a bus fare means you can’t get to work.
Working at Home Depot in Hooksett, I require transportation. It costs me $120 monthly, but I’m not allowed to claim the expense because I don’t own the car, even though they know I must pay someone to get me to and from work daily. It’s crazy.
Many Homeless People Have Criminal Records.
The criminal records are often a result of their homelessness and sometimes, their only crime was not having a place to sleep. Just look at our city parks. Our city officials pulled people from their tents without finding them any other shelter and did not clean up the mess in many places. So where were they supposed to go? Of course they went Downtown, as our elected officials took away the only home they knew.
The BMA has not adequately addressed this crisis. Homelessness is often a crime in the city of Manchester and it shouldn’t be. In many cities in America, the state of being homeless is inherently illegal, so getting a criminal record is inevitable if one has nowhere to live in those areas. While some people on the street do commit crimes, sometimes their only crime is being without a place to sleep or to find a place to go to an indoor bathroom. Did you know that the city parks public bathrooms paid for by the taxpayers are no longer available to all citizens of Manchester?
In 2018 the BMA created a segregated bathroom at Veterans Park with two portables covered by a shed, where the parks public bathrooms are closed to certain populations of the Queen City.
(Let’s not forget the fact that the BoMA closed Veterans Park public bathrooms six years ago and still we as a city have not resolved that issue other than for them to create a segregated indoor heated and outdoor portables covered by a shed. Within 50 feet of each other are two working sets of bathrooms… One for the haves and the other for the have nots – without heat in the winter months. As unforgiving as that is, we treat our pets better. It’s a double standard.
That is so wrong because it’s not true at all.
Now the BoMA is at it again, instead of helping them they are writing up another senseless ordinance to make it illegal to be homeless and making it a crime within our city. Another homeless ordinance being written will make it illegal to camp within the city except for those they may give a permit too. It’s all about money and less services rendered to its citizens.
It often doesn’t take long for the homeless to get criminal records without doing anything wrong. Charges for loitering, trespassing, unauthorized camping, or for falling asleep in a place not designated as a residence are common.
Some of the elected officials already call all the homeless variance as if it’s a bad word because only the homeless commit crimes, drug sales, and violence in our city, according to them.
When we as a city start treating humans worse than we treat our pets, then how can you expect respect or work toward results of solving our city problems? (One can be arrested for mistreating our pets, but not how we treat people suffering homelessness.) The BoMA has turned a $56,000 repair estimate into a nearly $200,000 budget to repair our public bathrooms downtown in the park two years later.
They created this crisis, now’s the time to fix it.
They claim homelessness is the source of most crime. They are wrong and it doesn’t reflect their opinions in the crimes recorded by our own MPD. That is so wrong, because it’s not true at all.
Addiction (and the Assumption of Addiction) Is an Obstacle to Employment.Addiction might play a part. Addictions prevent them from looking for work and from getting hired at times, but not always. (It depends how out of control your addiction is.) Many employers assume the homeless citizens are all addicts because here in Manchester that’s what some elected officials want you to believe is true. They are not! But it’s not damn close JKL and you are not doing anyone a favor as an Alderman-at-Large spreading such misinformation for your political gains to get re-elected.
Money Alone Isn’t Enough to Rent an Apartment! That’s right, money alone is not enough to rent most apartments. To get into most apartment complexes in the United States, applicants must have a good credit score, good references, and have a job at which they earn at least three times as much as the monthly rent. (Manchester is no different…)
How much money do you need to make to rent an apartment?
While a person might be able to afford to rent an apartment working a minimum wage job by sticking to a very strict budget, still, most apartment complexes will not rent to them knowing that there are other bills needed to pay to survive. Like food – medical – electricity – vehicle – cable – phone – heat and other necessary living expenses. A very modest one-bedroom apartment might have cost only $600 a month in the year 2000, but in today’s housing costs with an average increase of 5 percent per year, the average one-bedroom apartment goes for $1,200 those who rent it must now earn at least between $1,952 to $3,600 a month in most cases. If you rent a two or three-bedroom you can add another $200 to $300 more in rent. That takes the income needed two rent a 2 or 3 Bedroom apartment between $2,150 to $4,200 or $2,250 to $4,500 depending on monthly bills.
Homeless Employment Statistics
Here in Manchester, New Hampshire a person needs to earn at least a minimum wage of $12.20 per hour or more to rent a one bedroom or $13.45 for a 2 BR and $14.10 for a 3 BM to even be considered as an acceptable applicant for the apartment.
I recently tried to help a family of five to fill out paperwork to move into a low-income apartment complex and the requirement on their paperwork read that the rent must not exceed 30 percent of the applicants’ combined income. So their $700 a month of income does not pay for the apartment which requires them to earn at least $2,350 per month to be allowed to rent it, (and that was an affordable low-income housing program.) So they slept in their vehicle since June, so they can at least afford food for the five of them (the two parents and three children.) There are at least 30 other families this past winter that were living in their vehicles with similar situations.
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