Handout Charity with Wayne State University Connection

You gotta love when the suburban charities advertise their activities in Midtown online.  It makes it so much easier for us to keep track of them and monitor what piles of cast-offs and garbage they are leaving.  It makes it so much easier for the police department to prosecute litterbugs.

Any activity on the corner of Mack Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Third Avenue which draws folks away from getting real, professional, advanced social services at responsible neighborhood charities is a problem.

PBJ Outreach Inc in Plymouth is actively recruiting volunteers to hit Detroit's feel-good-about-yourself-and-then-leave crossroads every Saturday morning from 8:00-10:00 am.  They're registered as a charity with the State of Michigan, so if their activities should leave any mess we have an address to which the DPD can send a ticket.  And to think they're bringing kids as young as seven years old to that corner!

PBJ Outreach, if you really want to make a difference, open up a homeless shelter out there on North Territorial in Plymouth and take Detroit's homeless there Satuday mornings so they can see what all they're missing out on;  otherwise, please let our licensed and trained professional non-profit welfare service agencies take care of our down and out.

Wayne State University, please know that we don't appreciate WSU's ProjectVolunteer endorsing this kind of activity anywhere in Midtown.

Wayne State's Project Volunteer may provide volunteer opportunities for students at excellent non-profits like The Greening of Detroit and Habitat For Humanity, but they shouldn't be encouraging sammich distribution in the lot at MLK & Third or anywhere else off-campus in 48201, because Wayne State University certainly wouldn't tolerate this activity on their campus.

"... You Let No Stranger Wait Outside Your Door ..."



San Francisco Examiner editorial calls out some candidates for mayor for not having any plans to deal with homelessness in the city.  Editorial notes that among their homeless population there are 20 homeless people who have cost the city "$2.3 million in repeated ambulance and emergency care as well as detox and psychiatric services."

 

The candidate on the list who stood out -- I know nothing else about him, but I like how he thinks:

 

Tony Hall advocates replacing what he calls “nonprofit homeless industry providers” that are “scamming the system” with “organizations whose business is charity, not welfare.”

Tell it like it is, Tony!   Welfare, not charity!  Not the other way around!

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2011/08/vicious-cycle-chronic-homelessness-must-end#ixzz1Wfl9lgrt

 

And keep checking back here where we will continue document charities-gone-wild and other activities that lure homeless people away from the resources they so desperately need.  We will continue to keep you updated on affairs in Cass Park and Midtown, goings-on at CAYMC, and things you can do to give people facing hard times a hand up instead of a handout.

 

Wonder if Detroit has ever even tallied how much we have spent on medical, psych, and detox bills for our chronically homeless, money that could have been saved if the homeless in Midtown could have made it to the charities that best serve them instead of getting sidetracked by sideshows in Cass Park.  Call your councilmembers and mayor to find out how much it's costing our city.  Just don't bother calling Kwame Kenyatta's office -- he must have had a helluva week after Diane Bukowski's article came out.

 

Charity Gaming

A classic, "Chaser's War" talks giving and gambling:

Buckets of Cash

City of Detroit accumulated deficit:  $194,900,000.00

Detroit Public Schools deficit:   $327,000,000.00

The tax revenue generated from cramming 50,000 people into 5 acres:  ?

Money raised for charities by this year's event or 2009's event:  ?

I thought for sure the good people who opened their hearts and emptied their wallets and pantries would have learned by now how much money was raised, how many food donations were collected.  I thought for sure Forgotten Harvest could have tallied up by now how many pounds of food they got -- after throwing out the expired or damaged ones, if any -- and given us a ballpark dollar amount on the donations.  I thought for sure the event organizers would be let event-attenders know by now how much cash was collected in those plastic buckets for the ten charities who were to "directly" benefit from the event. 

Maybe my Googler ain't working today, but it's still coming up with no results for "money raised by Kem concert." 

Please Tell Me Pretend Homelessness is not the Next Big Thing

I mentioned yesterday the Street Retreats offered by a West Bloomfield charity.  And now news that four members of a church in Franklin, Indiana (and a dog) are living in a van "without the comforts of home ... outside the Franklin Walmart."

"[T]hey hope their experiment in homelessness will help those whose struggles last more than a week."

Getting your kicks slumming it outside a Walmart will in some way help those who are chronically homeless?   

For-Profit Business on Government Property

The Department of Veterans Affairs gives Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Tumbleweed Charter Buses, and Sodexho the boot after the VA was accused of misusing the property, putting "commercial interests ahead of housing homeless vets." 

What the Homeless Need is Twitter?

On "The Michael Eric Dyson Show," Dyson interviews Mark Horvath about teaching homeless people how to use social media.  Horvath's YouTube introduction to tweeting away homelessness:

If it is possible to get the homeless population phones that have a foursquare app that can't be turned off, it would be easier to find them when the next Census count comes around.  Heck, they could even check their friends into places.  Heck, one day one might become the "Mayor" of Detroit.  I see the homeless chatting away on cell phones in the park all the time; whether or not these phones are functioning I just don't know.  If only there were "an app for that," think of how greater the homeless population's chances of finding permanent housing would be.

On the flip side, when the hot-dogs-and-bibles truck-and-trailer shows roll into town from the far reaches of the Detroit metropolitan area and beyond, the feel-good-about-yourself-and-then-leave groups might Tweet where the chuckwagon is going to be parked and draw the homeless out of the responsible shelters trying so hard to find housing and services for them.

Maybe the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition could look into enTwittering Detroit's homeless?