Wyoming Winds Index/Archives
Opportunity for Publication
from David Pointer
Hello.
I am currently accepting submissions by mail for an upcoming domestic violence anthology.
The book will be a fund raiser for domestic shelters in middle Tennessee. It will be published by "Published By Westview, Inc."
Writers may send work until July 31, 2010. Poets may send 1-5 poems. Photos are being accepted. The photos should be inspirational or humorus in some way. The poems may be themed such as victimization, sexual abuse survival, or in support of the project such as family humor, court poems, client advocate poems or whatever the writer may come up with.
Also accepting a few essays and plays.
Thank you.
Writers may email for more information.
Sincerely,
David S. Pointer
803 West Main Street Apt. M
Murfreesboro, TN 37129
table of contents
Housing Tops Calls to 211
Lindsay Toler
Snohomish Country Tribune
EVERETT - A call to 211 can get residents in touch with countless social services across Snohomish County, but for the cities of Everett, Snohomish, Monroe and Mukilteo, the major needs are the same: Finding or affording shelter for their families.
For all four cities, three of the top four reasons residents called 211 were for help with utility, rent or mortgage payments and emergency shelter.
Bill Brackin, who has been running the social services hot line for 23 years, says that need is largely due to “extra pressure” from the economy.
Of those who call, 80 percent are women, 70 percent are low-income or experienced a recent tragedy, like a fire at their home, and 82 percent are referred by a social services agency like United Way or Volunteers of America, who run the 211 program.
“When you have something that has changed your life unexpectedly and you don’t know where to start looking, we’re the ones you call,” Brackin said.
> Everett
In Snohomish County’s largest city, more than 22,000 people called 211 for help in 2009.
Almost 40 percent of calls were from residents looking for housing assistance, including utilities, rent and mortgage payments and emergency shelter.
“When they start asking for utility assistance, you know they are close to losing their house,” Brackin said.
During past recessions, the numbers show a steady progression in major needs. First, families need assistance with paying for utilities. Then, they call for help paying rent or mortgage payments. Last, they call for emergency shelter.
It’s too early to say if this cycle is happening now, Brackin said, but the large numbers of families asking for help with housing indicate families are struggling to find or stay in homes.
Snohomish
Calls asking for legal help jumped countywide last year, especially in Snohomish, where legal help was the fifth most common reason for calling 211.
Most families asked about bankruptcy or mortgage foreclosure, which ties back to housing assistance needs, Brackin said.
Six percent of the 1,600 callers from Snohomish also asked for help finding low-cost housing.
Monroe
The top need for the 1,075 callers in Monroe was emergency shelter.
“There is no doubt there is nowhere near enough shelter beds in our community,” Brackin said.
Shelters provide transitional housing, meaning clients are expected to eventually find a way to move out and give the bed to another person in need.
“But if they can’t get a job because there are no job openings, they are stuck,” Brackin said. No turnover means no new beds for an increasing population of temporarily homeless residents.
“They don’t have any place to go,” Brackin said.
Mukilteo
In Mukilteo, a suburban town with a reputation for high property values and low property taxes, 20 percent of the 500 people who called asked for help with assistance with rent or mortgages.
Brackin said 2009 was a particularly big year for food banks. Finding food or a food bank was the fifth most popular reasons for calls in Mukilteo.
Food banks across the county struggled last year, especially during the holidays. Over the last two years, the number of requests for holiday food baskets tripled and the requests for help with holiday gifts doubled, Brackin said.
“I think that is a direct reflection of the economy,” Brackin said.
table of contents
Getting Things Done
Ron Murdock
Maybe I am getting to jaded or cynical in my advancing years but the rhetoric I hear from the policy makers and social do gooders hasn't changed much over the years. The name of the cause changes but every time they open up their mouths it sounds the same. I wonder how they keep from tripping over each other or tying themselves up in bureaucratic red tape in their efforts to micro manage everything. Every time they take to the streets, form a committee, hold endless meetings or create a website, I think of the cost and time involved that could have been spent actually accomplishing something. Maybe something is getting done but at a more long windy way than what is necessary. But I keep saying to myself here we go again.
Now well intentioned as they are and thankfully they do what they do but I wonder how much of what they do is imploding into a black hole. I have to question just where policy makers and do gooders are going with the plans or just trying out some form of social experiment on us Great Unwashed.
I've heard enough of the self righteous blah talk form those who think they're above the rest of us. There are times I have to keep the dry heaves at bay or go into a commentary that resembles a George Carlin stand up comedy act. Maybe then taxpayers would get their tax dollars worth of it. While I'm on the topic of money, how much good work is getting done as opposed to just spending whatever money recieved in a budget?
Anyone can say what they want about helping the poor but are they giving the poor a hand up in life or are they just enabling the poor to maintain the same level of existence?
> How do street people and/or the homeless living on the fringes help build a better community if they're not given alternative solutions to replace whaat they are doing? I hate seeing and hearing about people getting beaten up, killed or contracting some form of illness. So how are these being effectively dealt with to find long term solutions?
I've been told too many times over the years that a new beginning is about to happen. Yet the same old same old just keeps on happening. It's time to get things done.
table of contents
Free Housing Deals for Salvation Army Officers Create Image Problem
Telegram.com
Worcester Massachusetts
Contributing to this report were Joe Bergantino, Maggie Mulvihill and interns Sydney Lupkin, Sarah Favot and Jamie Lutz of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University, and Andrea LePain of New England Cable News Network. Contact Thomas Caywood at tcaywood@telegram.com. Contact Shaun Sutner at ssutner@telegram.com
Salvation Army Majs. Michael J. and Carol Ann Copeland, who run the charity's thrift store and adult rehabilitation center in Worcester, this summer moved into an upscale, two-story colonial home on a quiet street in Holden.
The handsome and spacious suburban house, built in 1996, boasts four bedrooms, 2-1/2 bathrooms and amenities such as hardwood floors, crown molding and wainscoting in the dining room.
And the Salvation Army pays for it all — even the furniture and utility bills.
Amid the worst recession in decades, and at a time when the charity was struggling to cope with rising need and expenses that outstripped donations, the Salvation Army of Massachusetts Inc. sold an older, modest raised ranch in Paxton for $215,000 and upgraded to the larger and newer Holden colonial at a cost of $350,000.
The charity also owns two homes in Auburn, including one that cost $349,900 in 2004, to house its other local officers: Majs. Thomas and Bessie Babbitt and Capts. Juan and Glenys Urbaez.
Over the past decade, the Salvation Army of Massachusetts has paid at least $4 million for homes in some of the state's most desirable communities for its top officers, according to a review conducted by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University and the Telegram & Gazette. Those purchases include an $800,000 colonial in Needham, the home of state commander Maj. William Bode, and a nearly $500,000 house in Bridgewater.
Salvation Army officials stress that officers are paid only modest salaries and that the residential real estate purchases are made with money from unrestricted gifts and bequests donated to the charity, not from the coins and small bills dropped into the Salvation Army's iconic red kettles during the holidays.
But some local donors and national advocates for charitable transparency and accountability question the propriety of sinking millions of dollars in donations, whatever the source, into pricey suburban homes for managers.
“They could plow that money into homeless shelters, into food banks, into facilities that really serve the poor,” said Pablo S. Eisenberg, visiting fellow at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute.
“What troubles me the most about this is that, in times of great need by poor people, you have expenditures on properties and on housing that could be more moderate,” Mr. Eisenberg said.
But Worcester lawyer Michael P. Angelini, a member of the Salvation Army's state board of advisers, noted that compensation, including housing, for officer couples such as the Copelands runs about $70,000 to $75,000 a year.
“You compare that to other charities, and it's way, way lower. The Salvation Army takes care of their housing and pays them modestly. That's their model,” Mr. Angelini said. “The culture is they provide nice housing for these people.”
Mr. Copeland defends the specific purchase of the Holden home, which he found and recommended to the Salvation Army office in New York that greenlighted the transaction, saying the $350,000 colonial was the only suitable house he could find in a good school district after more than a year of looking. The major said that city schools are not acceptable for the children of Salvation Army officers.
He said the Salvation Army's Paxton house where he and his wife lived for nearly five years needed many costly repairs to fix a leaky basement and other problems, and wasn't worth keeping. Although his three children are grown, Mr. Copeland said the replacement house had to have four bedrooms and be located in a top school district, in case any future Salvation Army officer to hold his position and live in the house has children.
Salvation Army officers are transferred about every three years on average, but the Copelands have been assigned to Worcester for more than five years, and the couple they replaced had served here for 16 years.
The $350,000 price tag on the Holden home was $110,000 more than the median home price in the town at the time of the purchase, according to the real estate data tracking firm The Warren Group.
Mr. Copeland acknowledged that the Salvation Army initially had hoped to spend much less on a new house for him and his wife.
“They said, ‘OK, let's try this range.' And we'd look and look, but they didn't meet some of the criteria,” Mr. Copeland said of the houses he viewed. He added that he would then have to go back to his bosses in New York and ask that the price range be increased. “We did that repeatedly,” he explained.
The end result was that the Copelands, whose three children are grown and living on their own, ended up moving into a 3,828-square-foot home, including a two-car garage and unfinished basement.
The purchase appears to violate the Salvation Army's own rules for the size of homes it buys. Col. James Reynolds, the secretary for business and administration in the charity's Eastern Territory, said residential purchases are limited to 3,000 square feet, including garages and basements.
Maj. Bode, the district commander for the Salvation Army in Massachusetts, lives in a Needham home built in 2005 and now assessed at $899,000, real estate records show.
The Salvation Army bought the four-bedroom house on a quarter-acre in 2007, shortly after he was appointed to the charity's top position in the state. Two other homes owned by the Salvation Army were sold to pay for the Needham house, Mr. Bode said.
“I think it's an investment that allows us to provide for Salvation Army families who are doing service. We're not throwing money away,” he said.
Mr. Copeland, an ordained minister, which is the case with all Salvation Army officers, runs the 115-bed adult rehabilitation center on Cambridge Street in Worcester. The center's $5 million annual budget is funded by sales from the attached thrift store.
“You work with people who are very troubled for many hours a week. You need a place where you can kind of get away from things, recoup. So when you come back you're renewed and refreshed,” Mr. Copeland said. “Because of some of the people we deal with, often we're not sure of their backgrounds. We certainly don't want to be so accessible that somebody shows up on our front door in the middle of the night.”
William T. Breault, chairman of the Main South Alliance for Public Safety, has worked with the Salvation Army officials on projects over the years. In recent years, he has criticized the group for not adequately policing the behavior of some of its clients, such as public drinking, drug use and fighting.
Mr. Breault said he respects the Salvation Army and doesn't begrudge its officers their suburban respite.
“But we are here, and we live here and stay here in the community,” he said. “We don't have the luxury, at least the majority of us don't, to go to Paxton or Holden to get the kind of rest we need and deserve.”
Crystal Gighittiant, a certified nursing assistant from Worcester interviewed after she dropped a few coins in the plastic Salvation Army kettle outside a city supermarket a few days before Christmas, said she would have kept her money had she known that top Salvation Army officials are put up in upscale homes far from the shelters and soup kitchens they run in urban neighborhoods.
Ms. Gighittiant and other donors were shown photos of the upscale Holden home where the Copelands live.
“That's disgusting. He looks like he's getting more than he needs,” Ms. Gighittiant said. “There's too many homeless people out there for them to be living so large.”
Another kettle donor, Sally Gabriella of Shrewsbury, said she was comfortable giving to the Salvation Army because the homes for officers were paid for from a separate capital fund.
“I'm happy with how my dollars are being used,” she said.
The Salvation Army reports that 83 cents of every dollar dropped into a kettle or donated during the holiday fundraiser goes to direct services, with the rest paying for administration and other expenses. That's considered a good ratio by charity watchdog groups, which advise people to think twice about donating to any charity that spends less than 75 cents per $1 in donations on services.
But not all of the Salvation Army of Massachusetts' fundraisers are so efficient. In 2009, for example, the charity hired the Arizona-based telemarketing firm MDS Communications Corp. to solicit contributions over the phone. The firm raised $10,536 in the Salvation Army's name, but kept all but $618 as its fee, according to a state Attorney General's office report.
In that case, less than 6 cents of every dollar raised went to direct services, such as running a food pantry and meal service at the charity's Main Street center.
In 2008, MDS raised $383,224 in donations for the Salvation Army of Massachusetts and kept $161,411 of the money as its fee, according to a report from the Attorney General's office. That works out to less than 60 cents per $1 raised going to direct services, well below the 75-cent benchmark advocated by most charity watchdog groups.
As for the charity's inventory of upscale homes in the suburbs, nonprofit and charity observers warn that a public perception of Salvation Army officers ensconced in fancy homes way beyond the means of most of the people who donate could undermine the organization's fundraising efforts.
“Money that goes for homes, is money that could go for low-income or needy people,” said Georgetown University's Mr. Eisenberg.
Mr. Eisenberg and Gary R. Snyder, who publishes a newsletter called “Nonprofit Imperative,” which tracks waste and mismanagement among nonprofits, said the distinction the Salvation Army is drawing between bequests that go into the capital fund and other donations that go into operational expenses is largely an artificial one.
“Why, if you get all these donations, isn't it going to the people who need it?” Mr. Snyder said. “Why is it going to a house?”
table of contents
Random Thoughts 12
Ron Murdock:
An egg farmers life is no yolk. In fact it can leave a person hard boiled, thier emotions fried, finances scrambled and turn thier attitudes over hard...
How many people live in caves of dimmed and distorted perceptions?...
How many of us confuse the truth with their opinions?...
I was talking to a buddy of mine on a sub zero day in Saskatoon a few years ago.
We saw a young man who was wearing a toque and mittens. Other than that he just wore a T-shirt and shorts.
We shook our heads on the odd clothing arrangement...
You do realize that a watched pot boils in the same time period as a unwatched one...
Occasionally I've been told to grab a chair when I arrive where I'm going. I'll do no such thing but I will politely sit there and enjoy my time eating, drinking or talking while being there...
Instead of thinking of hurry up I've got things to do, how about slowing down and enjoy the moment...
One thing I can't stand is people telling me or others what is good for us or what we're interested or not interested in...
One things I learned in life is to be interested and be interesting...
A person who knows a little about a lot is more interesting than a person who thinks they know everything...
Stephen Wright once said the human gene pool needs a lifeguard but it's too shallow of a pool to warrant one...
It's been said that a little white lie never hurt anyone. I beg to differ on three points.
One is that it is a way of telling someone what they want to hear.
Secondly it's a way of avoiding the truth. One the third front, lies of any kind erodes relationships and ends them...
How many people just see things instead of looking at them or just hear noise instead of really listening to what is around them?...
How many people live totally in illusion yet how few of us actually seek knowledge?...
I saw a sign in a store I frequent that reads "eat here and get gas."
One can read this one of two ways. One is that they are at a gas station with a resturant attached or they get gas from the food...
The same store had another sign that read "Dicks Deli", stuff yourself with our sausage." What could that mean?...
I wondering what would happen if a person tore off a "please do not remove tag" from a mattress or other item.
Is there a special branch of a law enforcement agency that arrests them?...
If a blind man can say "I see", can a deaf man hand signal "I hear you."...
How often is arrogance mistaken for confidence and how often is fear mistaken for being in a comfort zone?...
How much of what we do and say is to get people to like and respect us?...
I've wondered for years if Coca-Cola and Pepsi have the same board of directors or corporate ownership...
How many Canadians have noticed how Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harpur's eyes seem to have no life to them.
I've compared them to eyes of a dead fish...
I was in the 7/11 in Creston last summer when I noticed a remarkable difference in clothing styles between two groups of women.
One group was from the Shambalah Music Festival who were quite scantily clad. A good gust of wind would have blown their clothes off.
The other group was from the Mormon religion at the Bountiful polygamy sect just south of Creston.
The women from there were fully dressed, the only exposed skin was their hands and faces.
table of contents
Seven Hundred Killed from Hypothermia Annually in United States
National Coalition for the Homeless
The National Coalition for the Homeless has just released its report, Winter Homeless Services: Bringing Our Neighbors in from the Cold, to raise awareness of the dangers and often fatal consequences of hypothermia on people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. The full report is now available here.
Seven-hundred people experiencing or at-risk of homelessness are killed from hypothermia annually in the United States. Forty-four percent of the nation’s homeless are unsheltered. From the urban streets of our populated cities to the remote back-country of rural America, hypothermia - or subnormal temperature in the body - remains a leading, critical and preventable cause of injury and death among those experiencing or at-risk of homelessness.
NCH maintains that knowledge, networking and temporary seasonal shelter and outreach are three of the most important elements to an effective regional or local approach to the reduction and prevention of exposure and hypothermia.
This report is a snapshot of winter homeless services nationwide. NCH staff has gathered information for this report from forty states and the District of Columbia, representing urban, suburban and rural communities. NCH interviewed state and local coalitions, health care providers, and shelter operators in order to gain the best and broadest possible understanding of cold weather services available through these direct service providers and first responders. There is general consensus among public health officials, medical professionals and service providers that to reduce the incidence of hypothermia nationwide, local communities should implement effective and timely strategies to address the needs of vulnerable populations, including creating temporary homeless shelters and extending the hours of operation for existing shelters.
The National Coalition for the Homeless will soon be releasing a full report on Tent Cities. Keep an eye out at www.nationalhomeless.org
table of contents
table of contents
Wyoming Winds
is published by the Wyoming Coalition for the Homeless
907 Logan Avenue
Cheyenne, WY 82001-5247
phone: 307-634-8499
fax: 307-634-9089
email: wch@vcn.com
Views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the Wyoming Coalition for the Homeless, its staff or board.
Editor: Virginia Sellner.
Copyrights revert back to the author upon publication.
WCH is a 501(c)(3) non-profit agency depending upon the community for funding.
© 2010.
**In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.**
table of contents
![[VolunteerMatch - Where Volunteering Begins.]](http://www.volunteermatch.org/images/2.0/new_logo.gif){kind=logo}
