Homeless no more!
Coming soon to a corner near you: Boomers in boxes
April 27, 2006
by Alan Bisbort
The Valley Advocate, Easthampton, MA
The Connecticut Forum recently hosted Thomas Friedman and
Malcolm Gladwell, who are to ideas what Richard Simmons is to
exercise. Each has a shtick--the former is the Earth-is-Flat
guy, the latter, Mr. Tipping Point--and most of what they
write amounts to pipedreaming. They are America's wishful
thinkers. That their books linger on bestseller lists shows
how desperate we are for pat answers in our dark times.
Take homelessness. Gladwell recently wrote a piece for New
Yorker ("Million Dollar Murray") in which he
"solves" the homeless problem. He posits that if we
could just do something about the worst 10 percent cases, the
problem would respond to bureaucratic TLC. The top 10 percent
are the chronically homeless, the ones who regularly visit
the ERs and detox units. His case in point is Murray Bass, a
vodka-guzzling drunk in Reno, the sort of guy you see
snoozing inside a cardboard box. Murray is Gladwell's
"Flat Earth," his metaphor for the thesis that he's
absolutely certain is correct.
Never mind that Murray could be any sap who lost it at Reno's
casinos, whose wife left, job outsourced, who inhaled Agent
Orange in Vietnam or that weird virus in the Persian Gulf
War. Someone, you might say, who's reached his tipping point.
And Reno is the perfect symbolic lens through which to
examine Murray: America as one big wheel of chance. Murray is
potentially anywhere, but most cities keep Murray out of
sight. About the only time you hear of Murray is when he
freezes to death or his clothing is set ablaze by drunken
frat boys or former interrogators at Abu Ghraib.
Gladwell says homelessness "doesn't have a normal
distribution." The top 10 percent are chronically
homeless, the next 10 percent are "episodic"
system-users, many mentally ill or disabled. He types,
"When we think about homelessness as a social
problem--the people sleeping on the sidewalk, aggressively
panhandling, lying drunk in doorways, huddled on subway
grates and under bridges--it's this group that we have in
mind."
Mr. Tipping Point says the "good news" (his words)
is that homelessness is a matter of a few hard cases, because
when a problem is that concentrated "you can wrap your
arms around it and think about solving it." The bad news
"is that those few hard cases are hard." Whew. Glad
we solved that, because if we relied on the GOP--which now
owns all three branches of government--to address the
problem, the solution would be the final one. Bush's Johnny
on the Spot is Philip Mangano, who shares Gladwell's outlook
on the "problem." To be fair, Mangano seems like a
decent guy, but he and Gladwell are wearing rose-colored
glasses.
They both undercut their thesis by two bizarre omissions:
nearly one million people along the Gulf Coast were, in one
fell Katrina swoop, rendered homeless due largely to
government incompetence. Nearly a year later, they still
don't have their homes back. He also ignores obvious stats
like these: Family incomes have dropped 2.3 percent since
2001, according to the Federal Reserve. Also, more than 25
million Americans turned to the nation's food banks, soup
kitchens and shelters for meals last year, up 9 percent from
2001. Of those seeking food, 9 million were kids, 3 million
senior citizens. Nearly half of those who needed handouts had
full-time jobs.
And, it will get worse, as gas prices hit $4/gallon, credit
card debt sinks household after household, medical bills pile
up and the Boomers get to retirement age only to learn that
Bush's political base--the Upper One Percent--have stolen
their nest eggs. No elder hostels and cruises for you! If the
bubble bursts on their IRAs or the GOP privatizes Social
Security, bingo, they'll be on the street beside Murray. One
helluva tipping point.
At least they'll have time to read Friedman's and Gladwell's
latest bestsellers: The Earth is Fat: Living High on the
Dumpster Hog and Tipping Pint: A Guide to Cheap,
Highly Fortified Wines