Portland, Oregon is a beautiful city with a large homeless population.
Just My Opinion:
HOMELESS HELPING THE HOMELESS
By Jennifer Troy
More Homeless Communities
Tiny house communities established by charitable agencies and social welfare groups for the homeless are sprouting up nationwide. The primary concern is getting people off the streets and into a safe place. A big step. But then what?
Still Lost
What happens now that food, shelter and a safe haven to sleep at night have been given to these people? Is there any real expectation that any of them will re-enter the 5 day-a-week work world? Will they be able to move on into non-subsidized housing? Is there a place in society for them to return to? Even though they are off the streets they may still lack social, physical and monetary resources to keep themselves off the streets in the future. These people have been lost and need help reintegrating back into the normal world. Training and/or re-training is needed. Learning how to compete for jobs, interviewing techniques, correct language use, clean and presentable dress. All these skills need to be learned, before self-sufficiency can be achieved. Without such training the risk is more damaged self-esteem and failure.
Reality Bite
As I see it, what needs to happen within these communities is a mirroring of what life is like for everyone else working their way through this crazy thing called life. Not just three hots and a cot. But, a safe place to relearn, or learn for the first time, the skills needed to function and be self-sufficient in American society. A place where they can be given a “trial run”, before facing the world again.
Bucking Trends
In many ways this runs counter to current trends. Many seem to think all we as a society need to do is offer subsidized housing forever to the chronically homeless. I believe that these people can do more and be more than we are asking of them. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” Chinese quotation. Let’s give them more than a bed, let’s give them an opportunity. Let’s teach them how to fish. This is where the idea of the homeless helping the homeless comes from.
What a Concept.
Okidoki uses recycled material to make stylish grocery bags & other products
Who is better equipped to understand and help the homeless than the homeless? But how, you may wonder, could it be possible? I believe it is possible. By recycling materials from local billboards into stylish, practical, and most importantly, quality crafted products. Carriers and storage containers of all sorts from pails and lawn bags to wine slings, hampers and tablet totes, rain coats and jackets. Products can be fashioned with company logos or any chosen design, for that matter. You see grocery bags featuring McDonald’s Golden Arches, lunch sacs wrapped in Little Caesar’s logos and hampers memorializing the Clydesdale horses of Anheuser Busch.
NewSolutions
NewSolutions is a Portland, Oregon based manufacturing company. NewSolutions is best known for its product label, Okidoki. Okidoki debuted a line of products in March 2018 at local farmers markets and street fairs. The company has attracted the attention of almost every environmentally and socially aware organization in Portland including the City Commissioner, Human Services Department, and the public. NewSolutions stated mission is to generate work for those unable to obtain employment. The company wants to offer work opportunities for the homeless in the new tiny home communities being built around Oregon.
Reusable Bags
The Okidoki products are durable, waterproof, lightweight and washable, a perfect solution for a homeless person to keep their belongings dry and compartmentalized. And who better to make them than the homeless people being sheltered in the tiny house camps? NewSolutions has already set up the Kenton Women’s Village, in North Portland, with industrial machines, materials and 24/7 coaching to teach them how to create these unique products and the opportunity to sell them.
Piece Work
Production sewers are paid for each piece they complete to specifications. Additionally they are paid for any new designs they create which further the development of NewSolutions. Two current residents of Kenton Women’s Village are each on their way to a home of their own. They are the beneficiaries of “on the job” training. They can earn money while they learn and when they leave the village they have a skill that will support them.
Move On
Creating self-sufficient independent people should be the goal. As soon as a person is trained and earning a living they can move out of the community and make space for someone else in need. There should be movement not stagnation. Work is the answer. Such work projects allow a person to move from the subsidized tiny house to independent housing.
Familiar to Me
Pardon me for using NewSolutions as the sole example throughout this article. The reason I am using NewSolutions as an example of how work and the benefits created by work can be used to benefit the whole community is because of my working knowledge of their program. I have worked with them and understand their mission. Other companies and other training platforms can be substituted for NewStolutions.
Homeless Helping the Homeless
“Homeless Care Packs” takes it full circle
It seems to me that it would make sense to plan for a work pod within each of these tiny home communities. Residents are able to take on contract jobs of their own with their new skills and can practice in their spare time making “Homeless Care Packs” for people still living on the streets. Get it? The homeless helping the homeless.
Care Packs-SOS Packs
These “Homeless Care Packs” or “S.O.S. packs” consist of a backpack loaded with a tarp, an easy assemble one-man tent, a blanket, and a pouch for toiletries. All products are washable, reusable and waterproof. Instead of sending money to charities with no clue about where it really is going, a donor can buy a “Homeless Care Pack” for an individual; which in turn would buy the materials and pay compensation to a tiny home resident who can then create that “Homeless Care Pack” for someone still on the street. This plan would include everyone from the conglomerates supplying the billboards, to the donors, to the communities of homeless people in subsidized housing that are sewing the care packs to the end recipients; the homeless still on the streets.
Win, Win
It can be a win-win for everyone
It’s a win-win. What I like is that nobody is giving without receiving and nobody gets a free ride. Everyone is working towards a common goal of equality and acceptance. I believe with all my heart that it is imperative that we include a next step in the homeless solution model.
Mentally Ill Component
Since the closing of the nation’s psychiatric wards and what I see as an increasing leniency on crime, many of the homeless are addicts, criminals or mentally ill. This is a combustible combination. Desperation often leads to desperate measures. Because in the end it is survival of the fittest, and there are no rules when someone is under the gun.
The Way I See It
I see storm clouds on the horizon if the homeless are not handled with caution, these communities have the power to unite against the society they now fear and distrust. There is power in numbers and hatred festers if not extinguished or redirected. I feel there is a danger of an uprising if things continue as they are. People need redress. It should be clear that the country is better off giving the homeless a path to a productive life. It is more than just put a roof over someone’s head. It’s about recovering lives and making those lives contributors to the greater society. That’s why I believe work must be part of the recovery and return to society.
The 8 Part NewSolutions Vision
1.) Large billboard companies recycle finished advertisements to NewSolutions
2.) New Solutions gives them to the Kenton Women’s Village, along with other homeless communities who have opted for a work annex, where the residents clean, cut and sew them into fashionable and useful bags and other products to sell at farmers markets, street fairs, garden centers, grocery markets.
3.) With the incorporation of work annexes, (workshop pods) providing all the tools, machines and education of these products, the residents would be able to learn a trade, make money doing it and not have to feel the extra pressures of interviewing for jobs in a world they were estranged from. It would give them the ability to work anywhere from home, as well as create their own clientele.
4.) These bags and other products are all recycled and recyclable as well as reusable. Progress being these recycled bags generating work for the homeless on their way to independence.
5.) Generating on-going interest in the Okidoki bags and other products is needed to keep the seamstresses supplied with work. To boost sales we give away samples at local markets with information about how much good people can do socially and environmentally by opting for “progress”
6.) New Seasons , Whole Foods and Green Zebra all proudly state their dedication to their customers so if their customers are in favor of the reusable bags, they change their entire bagging system over to the reusable ones created by the work pods incorporated in the tiny house villages.
7.) The introduction of the “Homeless Care Bags” to the Okidoki product line would give the communities more work. The public is more apt to buy into the products when they understand that a homeless person has made the product they’ve just bought to help another homeless person.
8.) Fund raising is on-going to build more communities and get more people off the streets. I think we should make it a priority to provide workshops in each tiny house community.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I feel this has a very good chance of doing away with the existing animosity between the homeless and the housed… Between the elite and the downtrodden… Between the division and angst among our fellow travelers leading to a more united existence. Everybody wins and nobody loses. Nobody gives without benefiting, and nobody gets a free ride.
Calamity Politics
**www.calamitypolitics.com is based in the greater Portland, Oregon area. As such, Pacific Northwest issues are a constant focus of our concern. It seems to us at Calamity that most local issues can be translated into national issues. Jennifer Troy in her article, “Homeless Helping The Homeless”, takes direct aim at problems she sees in the approach many well-intended organizations are making when dealing with the homeless. Jennifer thinks there is a better way to help the homeless and the recently homeless. Jennifer’s opinions are her own and are not a reflection of the opinions of the publisher of www.calamitypolitics.com. D. S. Mitchell
