Charging Rent to Homeless

Principessa

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Charging Rent to Homeless

Princess Seyborn and her daughter live in a New York City public shelter where they are now being asked to pay rent. Imagine you’re a single mother. You’re living in a homeless shelter making barely enough at your job as a day care worker to feed your daughter and pay the bills. Now what would you do if that shelter suddenly told you in order to stay you had to pay rent? This is the reality for Princess Seyborn and hundreds of other working homeless families in New York City. The city is starting to charge working homeless families like Seyborn to stay in the city’s publicly run shelters. Seyborn now has to pay $345 dollars a month in rent. “I tried to explain it on my best behalf,” Seyborn said. “I don’t have it and all I’m getting is pens and paper in my face saying sign here and sign here, and I refuse to sign.”


The policy is based on a 1997 state law, which requires shelter residents with jobs to use a portion of their earnings to pay rent. The amount varies according to family size and which shelter is being used. So why is the city implementing the law now? One reason could have to do with the results of a 2007 state audit. The city was required to pay back $2.4 million in housing aid that should have been supplemented by working homeless families. The city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, defended the policy saying, “Everybody else is doing it, and we’re told we have to do it, so we’re going to do it.”
If everybody was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge would he jump too. :irked: :mad: This is how the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.
 
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pym

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It's hard to disagree with you here....it is very expensive to live in a city apartment, i do not think it can be done on minimum wage. A shelter should be a safe haven for people to get back on there feet. How long any city can host any one individual is another question. Charity is in very short supply right now.....i would know. I belong to a charitable organization.....even pancake breakfast attendance's are way down....
What really concerns me most is the meals on wheels programs, they are alot of senior citizens ONLY meals. That program has been very hard hit for lack of donations Nation wide as of late. A very good organization to offer patronage. Dunno NJ....all i can say is, I care.
 
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Principessa

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As I'm sure you are aware Pym, the minimum wage is impossible to live off. It may have been the minimum wage you could live on in 1936 but it's not now.

Heck, in NJ minimum wage is $7.15 an hour. If you work a 40 hour week that's just $14,872 a year . . . before taxes! :yikes: Since the average iBR/1BA in NJ is about $800 a month it's safe to say one cannot even exist on the state minimum wage there. :frown1::mad: Unfortunately it's lower than that in many states across the country. No wonder so many people are homeless. :frown1:
 

SilverTrain

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Ssshhhh. Careful or you'll draw the righteous ire of that proud cadre of folks whose mission in life is to loudly and regularly condemn those members of our society who walk around with their hands out, intentionally "not working" and living in squalor so that rich people's tax payments are allocated to welfare queens and the like.

What's next? Meals on Wheels for $2.99 a head? Of course, they'd better come with a market-tie-in toy, or the Happy Meal will defeat Meals on Wheels easily.
 

D_Ivan Analitch

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Ssshhhh. Careful or you'll draw the righteous ire of that proud cadre of folks whose mission in life is to loudly and regularly condemn those members of our society who walk around with their hands out, intentionally "not working" and living in squalor so that rich people's tax payments are allocated to welfare queens and the like.

What's next? Meals on Wheels for $2.99 a head? Of course, they'd better come with a market-tie-in toy, or the Happy Meal will defeat Meals on Wheels easily.

1) the government is charging rent because they cannot manage money responsibly.

2) meals on wheels is a charitable organization run by mostly volunteers because they actually care about who they are helping.

Don't bring meals on wheels into the government's mess.
 

SilverTrain

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1) the government is charging rent because they cannot manage money responsibly.

2) meals on wheels is a charitable organization run by mostly volunteers because they actually care about who they are helping.

Don't bring meals on wheels into the government's mess.

Pym mentioned meals on wheels a few posts previously. I was dovetailing on to that.

But thanks for policing the thread.
 

B_starinvestor

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can a few of the homeless people with jobs possibly get together and share an apt to cut costs; like every other person in America when finances are tight?

Do they need to have luxurious accomodations and so forth? You could get 4 people into an apt for $800/mth; that splits out to $200 per month per person.

Why doesn't she look into Section 8 housing?
 

lucky8

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4 people living in a one bedroom apartment...right.

...as a college student that's been living on a fixed income through savings bonds for the last 5 years, I can genuinely relate to the problem of wages vs prices. When I first started college, my fixed income was more than enough to pay rent, utilities, miscellaneous bills, and groceries each month. I work for my spending money. However, over the last 2 1/2 years, food prices and utilities have all increased by about 20-30%. I still have the same fixed income through my savings bonds, and still have the same utilities I did 5 years ago (in fact, I don't even have to pay for gas and water anymore), and proportionally, my rent has increased about 15% over the years...yet my wages have remained the same. What this translates to is me having to use 30% of my spending money to cover rent, utilities, and groceries each month, expenses that were more than covered 5 years ago under my fixed income. This isn't really much of a concern for me, but it demonstrates what is happening to our country. Our money is worth less, we have to pay more for everything (thank you OPEC), yet wages remain pretty much unchanged from what they have been since I was in high school. A real shit storm is brewing with lower class individuals and those on fixed incomes, and really nothing is being done about it.

...just wait until they cancel SS and medicare (which I strongly advocate doing as soon as possible) America's mass Ponzi schemes are all going to faulter sooner rather than later, and when that happens, it will show the world just how broke our country really is
 

B_VinylBoy

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can a few of the homeless people with jobs possibly get together and share an apt to cut costs; like every other person in America when finances are tight?

Do they need to have luxurious accomodations and so forth? You could get 4 people into an apt for $800/mth; that splits out to $200 per month per person.

Why doesn't she look into Section 8 housing?

Section 8 have waiting lists that go on for years. Plus, it prioritizes people who already have children for obvious reason. Also, what do you consider a "luxury" apartment at only $800/month? And where are they so I can go look at one?
 

lucky8

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Also, what do you consider a "luxury" apartment at only $800/month? And where are they so I can go look at one?

Move to Kansas...$800 will get you a very respectable 1 bedroom here. People on the coasts are crazy. Back in high school we took a fam vacation to san diego and rented a house on the boardwalk...the house was about the size of my one bedroom apartment, yet if we wanted to buy it, it would have cost more than my parent's 6,200 square foot house here in kansas...ridiculous doesn't even come close
 

B_VinylBoy

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Move to Kansas...$800 will get you a very respectable 1 bedroom here. People on the coasts are crazy. Back in high school we took a fam vacation to san diego and rented a house on the boardwalk...the house was about the size of my one bedroom apartment, yet if we wanted to buy it, it would have cost more than my parent's 6,200 square foot house here in kansas...ridiculous doesn't even come close

Hmmmmm.. Kansas? Give up beaches to live in Tornado Alley? Not sure if I'd want to do that. :biggrin1:

I do agree that the prices of Real Estate and renting apartments in cities like New York, Boston, San Francisco and others are just ridiculous. Every time I go back home, I visit some of my friends in the suburbs and see these huge houses that I would love to live in. My partner and I live in a one bedroom condo in New York for the same price as others have two story houses with 4 bedrooms, multiple baths, front & back yards, the white picket fence, etc... But we're only walking distance to Times Square, the theatre, museums and all other sources of diverse culture. Plus night clubs. Yes, I like shaking my booty to Techno. But I digress...

Part of me wants the big house, but I'm also a dedicated city boy growing up in Boston and now living in the Big Apple. I know a part of me would be crushed if I completely abandoned the city life just to have a bigger home. What to do, what to do?
 
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Wyldgusechaz

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Hmmmmm.. Kansas? Give up beaches to live in Tornado Alley? Not sure if I'd want to do that. :biggrin1:

I do agree that the prices of Real Estate and renting apartments in cities like New York, Boston, San Francisco and others are just ridiculous. Every time I go back home, I visit some of my friends in the suburbs and see these huge houses that I would love to live in. My partner and I live in a one bedroom condo in New York for the same price as others have two story houses with 4 bedrooms, multiple baths, front & back yards, the white picket fence, etc... But we're only walking distance to Times Square, the theatre, museums and all other sources of diverse culture. Plus night clubs. Yes, I like shaking my booty to Techno. But I digress...

Part of me wants the big house, but I'm also a dedicated city boy growing up in Boston and now living in the Big Apple. I know a part of me would be crushed if I completely abandoned the city life just to have a bigger home. What to do, what to do?

In California, people used to say you got paid in sunshine dollars, meaning you got to enjoy the sun even tho you were paying insane rents. The rays were in lieu of real money.

VB you are getting paid in *nightlife* dollars.