Marksist, writing "Pledge to Help the Homeless" in dailykos on Sunday, January 9, 2011, wrote:
Did you know that on any given night in Los Angeles County that two out of every three homeless people sleep on the streets? And that 7,000 veterans are homeless? That an additional 7,000 homeless people are youth, age 24 or younger?
Data is power... and these are staggering numbers. Numbers that tell us that more attention, brain power, stakeholder collaboration and resources need to be brought forward in LA County, statewide and nationally.
Here in Venezuela,homelessness has been a problem for over a hundred years. With the recent floods and landslides, 130,000 more people have joined the homeless. But, under the Chavez administration, we can see what can be accomplished when the needed attention, brain power, funding and other resources are brought to bear on solving the problem.
The Venezuelan daily newspaper, Correo del Orinoco, print edition, reports today that in his Sunday television program, Alo Presidente, of yesterday, President Hugo Chavez addressed his proposed new law to assist the government in solving the problem. Citing to the draft, he read:
This crisis suffered by the people is a consequence of the capitalist model [of production] which has exploited and excluded the people for the last hundred years and which has now been aggravated by the terrible rains which have caused bad conditions in our neighborhoods and generated anguish and suffering for millions of Venezuelans.
Yesterday, President Hugo Chavez presented his draft law to assure rapid assistance to the homeless and landless in Venezuela. Using the enabling law powers granted to him by Venezuela’s National Assembly, Chavez intends to solve the long standing housing crisis, made more urgent by recent heavy rains which added 130,000 people to the thousands without adequate homes, by a massive government project to build hundreds of thousands of new homes for those who lack them. Millions of dollars (in Bolivars, the national currency), have been budgeted for new housing.
To effect this project, the government has begun to expropriate portions of the huge land holdings, called Latifundio, held by a handful of elite families, much of which is not being used productively. Some of the land will be put into government production, while others will be given to cooperatives to farm or to the workers and landless, still others will be used for large scale housing developments.
As part of this effort, un-used land owned by the country’s largest beer company, Empresas Polar, and formerly used as a beer distribution center, has been nationalized and will be turned into 129 apartments for those who lost their homes in the recent floods.
Polar, one of the biggest companies in Venezuela, objected to the expropriation, for which they will be paid by the government, claiming that they were now using the plant to store free food for distribution to children by its charitable children’s nutrition center located next to the subject property. However, when government officials inspected the plant, they discovered that 60% of the goods stored there consisted of beer, not food stuffs.
Commenting on the results of the inspection, President Chavez stated that:
Those that are poisoning the society with alcohol are hiding behind a mask. They are disguising themselves as a center to help children because they are counting on them being possible consumers of beer.
And
Now, in place of a center for distribution of poison to the ghettos, we will construct a building that the people themselves will have, thanks to the fact that the power, once held by the capitalist bourgeoisie, is being returned to the people.
Thanks to the fraudulent mortgages sold by U.S. bankers and the massive unemployment, which the Wall Street fraudsters have caused, millions of Americans in the U.S. have lost their jobs, and been evicted from their homes. Many of these homes stand empty and unmaintained, thus reducing the value of neighboring homes, blighting communities both physically and financially.
Would that the U.S. government would expropriate these empty homes, restore them to livability, and sell or lease them to the millions who are homeless or forced to bunk with family or friends.
Community groups could be formed to force such expropriations, restore the homes, and organize their sale or rent, thus removing the blight of homelessness and empty homes in their communities.
We have to return power to our people. Forming community organizations to do so is one way to start. But that would be socialist, one might say. Yes, socialism is communities working together to improve life for themselves and for everyone else. That is what we need to create in place of our capitalist economic system which puts corporate profits above the needs and aspirations of human beings.
Marksist asks for your help in Los Angeles by joining as a census-taker:
We don't need to accept that homeless is unsolvable in LA or nationally! So please register to volunteer today for the 2011 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. We don't need to accept that homeless is unsolvable in LA or nationally! So please register to volunteer today for the 2011 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count.