JULY 13, 2018, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Homeless solution comes from all
The homeless are fast becom-
ing one of the major challenges for
public services across the nation
and here in Marion County. There
is an array of programs, shelters and
campaigns here and throughout the
United States to address the issue.
Public offi cials and private sector
organizations work to
fi nd solutions that so far
has proven unsolvable.
Marion County does
not have the visual evi-
dence of its homeless that
major cities face. In some
of America’s largest cities
one will fi nd block af-
ter block fi lled with tent
communities of the homeless. It is
disconcerting at the least. The pub-
lic cries out “Do something!”
People are homeless for different
reasons be they economic, men-
tal health issues, problems with il-
licit drugs, shattering of the family
unit or any kind of support system.
Understanding that basic truth of
the homeless makes the cry to do
something less clear. Do what? By
whom?
While creating programs, devis-
ing shelters and compiling reports,
the municipalities and organizatons
invovled need also to come up with
suggestions for what Joe Public can
do to help. As a generous nation our
people always ask “What can I do?”
If all that is needed by the organi-
zations addressing the homeless is-
sue is fi nancial support, they need
to megaphone that need and lay out
how contributions will be used.
Everyone and every industry
can have a hand in alleviating the
homeless issue. For some it may
be a fi nancial donation to a char-
ity that is hosting a shelter or a food
kitchen or medical care for those on
the street. Those things satisfy the
daily needs of people but they don’t
come close to fi nding a home for
those who want one.
Finding affordable housing has
become diffi cult for those without
a constant history of being a renter
or those who are un- or under-
employed. The strong residential
real estate market weighs heavy on
apartments and other multi-family
housing options. Benefi ting from
market-led supply and demand,
owners of multi-family residenc-
es are in the driver’s seat when it
comes to setting rates. That’s called
the free market system and should
not be disrupted, but there are solu-
tions.
Cities, counties and the state can
draft legislation to provide attractive
incentives for owners of buildings
to convert space into low-income
housing. Attractive incentives can
include tax breaks as well as waiv-
ing and discounting of permitting
fees. Any incentives should be good
enough to make any property own-
er to seriously consider them. The
alternative for a property owner is
to let market forces reward them.
Housing for those now homeless
should not be free. Those who re-
ceive housing need to compensate
for it either by paying low monthly
rents or with a signed contact to
help maintain the resi-
dence.
Homelessness is a cru-
el way to live. How does
society aid those who
fi nd themselves without
a home due to domestic
violence, drugs or men-
tal health issues? Rather
than look to govern-
ment to address and solve the prob-
lem, society needs to ask itself what
they are willing to do, if anything,
to help those who need a hand up
rather than a hand out. Regard-
less of what solution one consid-
ers there is money required. Some
in the private sector may question
why their tax dollars are going for
those who decide to live outdoors.
That is a simplistic question; given
a choice, wouldn’t everyone rather
have a home to live in?
Most people would agree that
a government’s primary role is to
protect its people and keep them
safe. Protecting people against the
ravages of homelessness is no less
important than maintaining the de-
fense of the nation from outsiders.
Government can’t help those who
don’t want help but it can certainly
be in the corner of those who seek
a hand up.
These are vulnerable people liv-
ing in our parks and on our side-
walks. Unless we, the people, col-
lectively decide to privatize the
homeless, we must rely on our pub-
lic offi cials to do the right thing and
allocate enough money for those
most in need. As a people we don’t
have the training to counsel some-
one with mental health issues, that
has to come from the experts. The
same goes for those people fi ghting
addiction and who are homeless.
There is a certain skill set that the
average person does not have and
we turn to the professionals.
What we, as a society have, is em-
pathy. Understanding, acceptance,
respect and amity offered by us will
go a long way to let those who are
homeless through no fault of their
own know they are not alone. The
homeless are not invisible and we
shouldn’t treat them as such.
With an economy that is boom-
ing there certainly are jobs available
to those unemployed homeless. We
have to have the will to help ad-
dress the problem so it is no longer
a black mark on society. Ask society
to lend a hand for its own benefi t as
well as the homeless and society will
answer affi rmatively.
—LAZ
our
opinion
‘Bad’ jobs don’t have to be that way
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
So many policy proposals aimed at
reducing economic inequality empha-
size moving disadvantaged people into
higher-paying, higher-skilled jobs,
typically with more access
to education and training.
We do need to invest far
more in expanding oppor-
tunity for fellow citizens
who have lost all hope for
advancement, but there
is a fl aw in this thinking,
as Steven Dawson argues
in Make Bad Jobs Better, a
compendium of his recent work pub-
lished earlier this year by the Pinker-
ton Foundation. If we defi ne success
“solely as securing a middle-class job,”
he writes, “then we will limit our-
selves to helping only a narrow seg-
ment of low-income workers improve
their lives.”
Dawson focuses on the tens of mil-
lions of Americans who do very nec-
essary work in our society and receive
little reward for their efforts. He chal-
lenges the idea that “bad jobs” are des-
tined to be bad forever, and that little
can be done to enhance them.
Consider that we mourn the de-
cline of auto, steel and other manufac-
turing jobs that were seen in the past
as at least as “bad” as the retail and ser-
vice occupations of the new American
working class. It took unions working
to raise pay and benefi ts and social
legislation limiting hours and protect-
ing worker safety to make old econo-
my blue-collar jobs “good.”
The lesson is that what constitutes
good work is a matter of social and po-
litical decision-making—and choices
by employers to see their workers as
assets and not merely as costs.
Dawson is a pioneer in doing what
he recommends. At the Paraprofes-
sional Healthcare Institute, he helped
create employee-owned cooperatives
of home health care workers, thereby
converting what were once poorly
paid jobs into pathways to indepen-
dence, entrepreneurship
and respect.
Dawson is scathing
about the way our em-
ployment markets treat
large numbers of very
hard-working people. “A
bad job is not simply the
absence of a good job,” he
writes. “A bad job destabi-
lizes the individual, her family and the
community. A bad job not only fails
to pay enough for decent food and
shelter for a worker’s family, it can risk
her health, disrupt any chance for a
predictable family life, undermine her
dignity, and deny her voice within the
workplace.”
He notes that “the occupations that
employ the largest numbers of low-
income youth and adult workers ...
experienced higher than average real
wage declines” in the years after the
Great Recession. The pay drops were
especially large for workers in retail,
personal care and food preparation.
For many who fi nd themselves at
the bottom of the economy, the bane
of their lives is instability: wage theft,
part-time work, seasonal work, vari-
able hours, and unpredictable sched-
ules—the problem of “not knowing
when you will be called to show up to
your next part-time shift.” Low-wage
jobs are also among the least safe.
Public policy has a role to play
in making jobs better, starting with
higher minimum wages, income sup-
plements such as the Earned Income
Tax Credit, universal family leave
and health coverage for everyone. We
should be building on the Affordable
tho
opinion
of othors
Care Act, not gutting it.
And many low-income jobs are
supported indirectly by government
money (Medicaid especially), so pub-
lic programs should be consciously
geared not just to providing essential
services but also to offering platforms
for the improvement of work life it-
self, for enriched training, and for
more worker voice. These can, in turn,
raise the standard of the services.
Dawson looks as well to private-
sector employers as part of the solu-
tion. Especially when labor markets
are tight, employers have an interest
in satisfi ed, engaged and well-trained
workers who welcome responsibility.
This is one reason why the Federal
Reserve should be wary of steps that
would increase unemployment.
In another useful paper, “Restore
the Promise of Work,” Dawson joins
the Aspen Institute’s Maureen Con-
way to call for lifting up “high-road
employers” who “offer concrete ex-
amples of how good jobs can be ben-
efi cial to all.” Tax policy can encour-
age high-road practices, and Conway
and Dawson note that when govern-
ments contract for private-sector ser-
vices, job quality should be part of the
negotiations.
We should not allow the melodra-
mas of the Trump presidency to over-
shadow the problems we need to solve
or distract us from the reforms and in-
novations that could change the lives
of a great many struggling people.
Dawson writes that “fear and inse-
curity will remain, and deepen, unless
having a job once again means secur-
ing stability, dignity and self-worth for
ourselves and our families.” When it
comes to job quality, we need to get
to work.
(Washington Post Writors Group)
Buehler’s not an education candidate
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Knute Buehler is the Republican
candidate for governor of Oregon.
He has announced as his highest
priority to lead Oregon schools
from the nation’s bottom fi ve to the
top fi ve in fi ve years. Oregon gover-
nors serve four-year terms. So why
is he not committed to four years?
Buehler has spoken and written
on his subject of high-
est interest because, he
says, “Oregon politicians
have failed to do what
is necessary to improve
the quality and fund-
ing of our K-12 public
schools.” While he fur-
ther writes that “good
things” are happening in
our schools every day, “too many
schools have been left out and be-
hind.” For just one of the many
problems is the number who fail to
graduate. He must not be aware of
the huge disparities between dis-
tricts throughout the state and their
divergent delivery abilities.
Buehler has served two terms in
the Oregon House of Representa-
tives. Why during his two terms
did we not hear anything from him
about his interest to reform Oregon
education K-12? Since he’s an or-
thopedic surgeon who was trained,
as most of them are, in part at least,
by tax-supported institutions, then
why is he not, in his mid-50s, serv-
ing the medical needs of the Cen-
tral Oregon area in which he chose
to reside? Since he says his goal as
a state leader is education reform,
why did he spin his wheels trying
to secure the Secretary of State job?
After all, its focused on audits and
elections?
Oregon has proven time and
again that the voting citizens in this
state are, with some exceptions in
wealthy school districts, only able
and willing to fi nancially support
at the very minimal level or will-
ing to support public education
at all. Buehler says he can increase
the general fund budget for public
schools an average of 15 percent per
year or a whooping 75
percent during his plan.
He says he’ll get the $1.2
billion he needs by taking
it from public pensions
and that health insurance
that supports Oregon’s
poorest citizens. As his
GOP colleagues in the
Oregon House and Sen-
ate are so fond of chortling: “That’ll
happen when pigs fl y!”
He says he will see to it that the
money he can take away from retired
public employees and cutbacks and
costs associated with health insur-
ance will bring into existence per-
formance-based classrooms. Hope
he will soon explain the specifi cs
of what he knows about perfor-
mance-based classrooms and how
successfully or not this re-staging of
schools will deal with this reform,
its pitfalls and challenges.
Buehler throws around such
concepts as “critical, evidence-based
profi ciency standards” as though all
a governor must do is announce
his intentions in tradition-bound
schools and they’ll transform like
magic into a new order of things.
This candidate’s interests sound so
very similar to a man who got to be
governor, John Kitzhaber, another
medical doctor who sounded seri-
ous in his desire to reform Oregon
education and then walked away
gono
h.
mcintyro
from it by hiring a big name from
the East to lead his plan for reform.
Buehler references the 180-day
school year in Washington state as a
model for Oregon’s 165-day year to
emulate. What is known is that for
years Washington citizens have been
more interested in public educa-
tion at all levels by investing in and
modernizing its public schools and
universities. Oregon’s residents do
not send its representatives to Salem
with a plan to fund education at any
level. To the contrary, the represen-
tatives arrive at Oregon’s capitol, es-
pecially from GOP-dominate areas,
with the order to cut, cut, cut ev-
erywhere and public education kin-
dergarten through graduate school
has suffered accordingly.
This writer is not impressed by
Governor Kate Brown’s interests
or efforts to improve public edu-
cation. However, knowing what’s
known about Knute Buehler does
not reassure that he is going to turn
any corner in public education. He
and his wife are among Oregon’s
wealthiest residents who, with their
million dollar incomes from pro-
fessional services, are also involved
in 14 other business activities all of
which are in business to make mon-
ey not perform charitable, volun-
teer, or public services. They appear
to be people who solely seek wealth
accumulation and the related power
to wield it.
(Gono H. McIntyro sharos his
opinion wookly in tho Koizortimos.)
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