Fuck Washington, Especially Seattle

So my problems when I was young, growing up in western Washington (mostly Covington), I had no support from anyone. My mother was psychologically abusing me, even the teachers knew something was wrong but back then no one thought psychological abuse was a thing.

So instead of getting me the help I needed, they would just punish me for my odd behavior. I had no one to turn to, being trans and atheist for as long as I could remember.

In school I avoided the popular kids, even though they often wanted me to hang out with them. Most of the time I was far more happy with cats, dogs, pretty much any other species by my own.

After turning 18 I was lost, no aim, no goals, because I didn't even know who or what I was. All I could do was strive to survive, and that I did well.

I picked up a set of skills, which would better serve some super secret agent in a fictional movie than any real human. After having helped many people and a lot of cats, I was diagnosed with disability and locked into a system that does what it can to keep you there, no matter who is in charge.

The only thing I could look forward to was that one day I could get some surgery and feel happy about my body. Then a medical doctor who was a bastard in Virginia Mason decided to lie and remove my hopes of getting that surgery by having me declared suicidal just because I disagreed with him on something unrelated.

So now I had only one thing to live for, a single cat who I would raise from a kitten and have for their entire life. A cat who I could say "I remember when he/she was so tiny."

That cat was going to be Rhodey, a wonderful black cat with a shady past who got really lucky. Healthy and happy, friendly to everyone, and I was forgetting all my problems focusing on taking care of him and his sister.

I looked so forward to the next twenty years, I probably won't live much longer after that because of a few health related problems and the mistake of smoking tobacco. But at least when I died I would be happy to have had this one thing.

Then, only a year after I had brought him home, our home was flooded and Compass Housing Alliance did not follow through with the repairs, forcing us to live with mold, no kitchen, and exposed insulation. Rhodey lost two pounds in about six months, scared I took him to the vet.

Everything seemed okay, and the vet assumed it was his teeth. I took that diagnosis because it was something I could directly help with.

Brushing his teeth regularly, I hoped he would regain the lost weight and start growing again. But he didn't, though he didn't seem to lose anymore weight.

A few years later, last year in fact, I took him to renew his vaccines and have him checked on. I was correct, he had not gained weight, so they did a full blood work on him.

It was expensive, but I was desperate now, I was worried, tense, scared. A few days later I got the email back, everything looked perfect, as in perfectly healthy, as in what I was doing was great for him, except ...

That except was kidney disease, when I read it I felt numb, fear, rage, hatred, washing over me, all at once. It was obvious who was responsible for it, a disease caused by environmental toxins, a thing which he was only exposed to during the time of the flooding.

Seattle had taken the last two things I loved from me. This vampiric city that masquerades as "environmentally friendly" and a place for equality.

Seattle, the city where everyone will tell you they care about you, as long as you don't rock the boat. Seattle and Compass Housing Authority, the people that claims to be animal friendly while complaining about the extra strong urine small caused by a cat who suffers because they poisoned him.

The last good employee for Seattle Housing Authority, the one who demanded that Compass Housing Alliance actually finish the repairs for the flooding that was caused by a drunk who passed out, retired the same day he did that wonderful thing. The last person who cared about the poor, the needy, the ones truly in danger, retired with one last loving act, though too late, I will always remember that he was the last good person in the Seattle government, perhaps in all of western Washington, perhaps in the entire country of the USA.

Why Agencies Are Bad For Non-Profit Organizations

A non-profit's income should be very near zero, of course this is after administrative costs. For housing this is a very challenging point to get, maintenance alone can bring an apartment complex into the red and devastating failures caused by lacking maintenance can drop that even more, not to mention actual damages done by the residents.

There are many issues residents will face that will cause damage to units, often without intent from the resident but by the very nature of the medical problem. Let's take the example of surgery, a very common occurrence for vulnerable members of society.

The wounds caused by surgery will take time healing, during this time blood will be likely to come from the wound. This blood will get onto lots of surfaces, which inevitably cause stains which cannot be cleaned up.

Often surgeries will add even more challenges, and more sources of refuse which will inevitably cause damage. Now a good organization will have a manager on site for the majority of the week, and said manager would know what was going on at all times even when not on site.

All residents would know who said manager is as well as have multiple ways in which to contact this manager. Transparency would be nearly complete, communication lines would never be blocked or severed without notice, and whenever an issue arose it would be well documented and taken care of without anyone getting put out or harmed.

A management agency is a for profit business, they want their employees to move their company into the green as much as possible, and there is no obligation for them to take a profit loss even if they are hired by a non-profit organization. So they make promises to reduce costs, and you hire them for that.

Well now the costs include their administration, the business owners, share holders, CEO, etc. As well as their employees, all of them.

So how do they "cut costs"? They reduce the number of hours the manager is on site, and it's reduced to an insane amount.

Given a typical business, you will want a management staff or team on duty for at least 2 more hours per day than the business is in operation. An apartment is, essentially, a business that is open for 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

That's 168 hours per week, which is the same as saying 168 hours work that needs to be done. Apartments are a laid back business, often the manager is only necessary for about half that amount of actual work, however to accomplish that they must be on call and ready to show up at the property every hour of every day.

Agencies do not accommodate that cheaply, for the typical landlord they can increase rent a bit to help pay for better services and most renters are more than happy to accommodate that increase. But for public housing, non-profit, such a method is not viable nor supported by the state.

So the management agency will reduce the number of hours a manager is on site to level which forces these managers to accomplish at least 80 hours work in about 2 hours. This saves the agency plenty of money, they are in the green because of the contract, but the organization which has hired them is suddenly dealing with major damage caused by neglect, tenants being unable to contact a manager when necessary, and a manager who often sells off the organization's property to cut even more corners.

The agency will stay in the green, earning a profit as that is what they are suppose to be doing, while the non-profit organization is in the red so much that they face having to declare bankruptcy. Regular maintenance is so vital to an apartment building, even if something as simple as pipe inspections are neglected can result in massive flooding damage which cascades into neighboring units all the way to the ground floor.

A simple pipe leak, which would be detected and repaired with simple inspections, can explode into millions of USD in expensive repairs. Without a reliable manager on site capable of ensuring such inspections occur unhindered, the massive damage becomes inevitable.

Ultimately not only are the residents made to suffer what is essentially a slum, the organization begins to collapse under all that debt, and the end result is more people back on the streets with nowhere to live. This is what we are seeing happen in real time at Compass Housing Alliance, and the management agency is pushing the blame onto the residents to add insult to injury.

Seattle Housing Authority is unwilling to step in to correct this, the city turns a blind eye to this volatile situation, and Compass is trying to pretend they still have everything under control when they clearly do not. If we want to fix homelessness, this is one of those practices that needs to end as it does not help anyone involved.

Homelessness Isn't the Problem, Society Is

Often a misconception of homeless and poor people permeates our culture. Today that misconception is the notion that they're all junkies, drug addicts.

Ironically, the misconception is spread by real junkies, in their offices or on radio, even on television. This is because they don't want you to notice that they're using your tax dollars to pay for their drug habit and vacations at rehab centers.

While there are some junkies who are on the streets, most have homes and jobs, many are politicians, and some pretend to be homeless for sympathy. However, the vast majority of the poor begging for money on the street are no addicted to any substance at all.

There are many legitimate reasons for someone to be unable to access help, such as a mental disorder, discrimination for being GLBT, and even caring for a best friend who is not allowed in the shelters or homes. That latter is a problem caused by the hatred for life common in our society.

Most people are too wealthy to be at risk of being in such a position, they wrongfully believe they are middle class or the oppressed. Unless you have had to live on a diet of noodle soup, food bank handouts, or garbage for an extended time, you are rich.

If you have never been one paycheck away from losing everything, then you have never been poor. If you have never used rocks for pillows, you have never been desperate.

Homeless people are those who's families have discarded them for all the wrong reasons, who had so called friends betray them when they needed it most. These are the people society hates for no good reason, or they were used up by society then dumped.

Homeless people are the ones you mock to mask your inadequacies, the scapegoats of the weaker humans. They are the ones you point your fingers at to distract other from your horrible flaws.

The homeless are the people you use to justify not caring, there are just too many to help so you'll just pop into a bar instead. They are the people you need to kick when they're down so you don't have to face the mistakes you made in your life.

The needy are the ones you can blame for all your mistakes when they don't work out, they are the leeches in your twisted mind. The homeless are the demons hiding under your beds, corrupting your children so you don't have to admit what a horrible parent you are.

The needy are the ones you can blame for your own laziness, they won't get a job so you shouldn't have to work for your money. They are the people who corrode the government even though they have no power to affect it.

Those who starve suffer so that you don't have to, feeding your sadistic need to see someone worse off than you. They are the other people, the ones who don't matter, they are your modern slaves.

The Bums And Their Wars

Military, a necessary evil that is becoming obsolete. Currently the least amount of war is present in our world than ever before, taking into account population and resource inequality.

Yet there are those calking for more war while the majority of us love the idea of a world without it. Profit, the driving force of why they want war, it's not legitimate profit though.

A legitimate business caters to the individual consumers, their success or failure and profits depend on the value and demand of their products. War is not this, war generates profits from compulsory customers through the financial collective called the government.

Thus war is just welfare for those who don't need any. I hear and read of many people complaining about the poor and needy who collect a pittance from the government here, costing a small fraction of the taxes collect by the government.

Often the poor and needy are called lazy, I get it, they sit around in offices all day gossiping about who fucked who or playing games on the company's internet connection … wait a minute, that's the upper class I just described. Okay, those lazy poor people, always going on shopping trips in their limos paid for by taxes to pay thousands of dollars of taxes on a single outfit for a fundraiser to convince the politicians to give them more money … wait, those are the warmongers in Congress.

The laziest thing I see poor people do qualifies as a job, standing on a street corner in freezing or scorching weather asking for a sandwich. Middle class does this as well, though they enter businesses and beg for food in the form of a job.

So who are the lazy scumbags draining our taxes? You tell me.

The Year Nears It's End - Summary Of Observations

One trend I still see, which started back in the late nineties of bulky and overpriced cellphones, is the notion that homeless people with smartphones means they are wasting taxpayer dollars. When it started it was almost understandable, cellphones were expensive, but when thinking clearly it begs the question: how else would a homeless person get a phone call for a job?

The problem is in the thinking that homeless people are inherently lazy, or unwilling to work at all. This is a stereotype started by the media, if you have been paying attention then you know the media is controlled by the wealthiest people, the very people who pay no taxes at all and collect welfare masked as "subsidies."

In the eighties, and most of the nineties, the media controlled all the information, they literally controlled how society thought. Today they still control the majority, who are delusionally ignorant, but are slowly losing their poisonous influence in information. This is thanks to the internet.

So now they still decry poor people, in other words the very people who listen and obey the media, owning anything beyond old technology. Anyone with half a brain knows why this is a very stupid stereotype, anyone who has had to pull themselves out of the gutter knows why this is a dangerous one.

First, again I ask, without a phone of any sort how are homeless and poor people going to get calls for jobs? A homeless person has to have a mobile phone, they don't have a home for the cables required for a landline!

The poor person is forced to run through appointments, almost daily, just to keep their home and feed themselves, spending little time at home as it is, then if they are going to interviews they have less time at home. Most often they cannot afford a car, so they have to walk or take the bus, both are very time consuming. Essentially, being poor is a full tine job which pays less than liveable wages and has zero chance of promotions.

Okay, that was the basic logic of the situation, and now the part that shows why media, Republicans, inbred hillbillies, and most religious people, are total idiots. The numbers.

I had a landline with internet access, internet is now required to apply for most jobs today, so it is as essential as a phone, perhaps more so as many businesses worth their name allow for email communication. The total I was paying, when I finally got fed up with the ever increasing cost, was almost 80 USD.

I found offers online for unlimited data, voice, and the nearly obsolete text, starting at 30 USD per month, prepaid. You could pay for that with change from your couch, but what about the phones, those must be expensive, right?

Wrong, so very wrong. The prices of technology have been effect by a very rare phenomenon, and inversion of value. Due to the false nostalgia and novelty of the old phones, I have seen phones that were considered junk in the 80s on sale, yes on sale, for 100+ USD. Most poor people cannot afford that, without saving up for a few months, even today.

The inversion effect made modern technology cheaper, smartphones for 100 USD were comparable to desktop computers costing 500 USD, and many times you could sign up for service and get the phone for free, or in small payments. My smartphone, I got to see if I wanted to even bother with the transition, cost me 15 USD and was delivered in three days at no additional charge.

My smartphone is not top of the line, but it's only last year's model so it's not an antique yet either. My unlimited plan is 55 USD for 2gb at 4g and the rest at 2g per month, that includes taxes.

Now let all that sink in a moment, wireless is becoming more affordable than the landlines for one important reason, one that neither the Democrats nor Republicans like. Lack of regulation and a huge amount of competition is keeping wireless services at prices everyone can afford, and allow homeless people a chance to drag themselves out of the gutters they have been swept to by a society which cares only about appearances.

The so called conservatives in the USA often say too much regulation stifles competition, which is correct, but then they vote for the ban (ie regulation) happy Republicans. Republicans are not conservatives, they are right wing liberals, they prefer government control based on an archaic ideology.

Democrats are becoming more conservative these days, as they vote against many bans, though a single party government is a bad idea. The problem is that there is no opposition, the third parties are often too specialized to be viable replacements for the Republicans, and we cannot afford to keep the Republicans any longer.

Personally, this seems almost orchestrated, in the same manner that the media was controlling information before the internet. What scares me is: if this is orchestrated then the very people who are openly pulling the string of the Republican puppets are the ones who want people to vote Democrat.

To close, the ignorance enforced by religion has allowed our society to be manipulated so easily as to make everything appear to be a conspiracy, even the mundane things like the price of a cup of coffee. But when you are in a mudslide, you have little choice but to grasp the nearest root and cling to it in hopes of not being washed away again.