I’m James McGinley, a near-65-year-old human rights catalyst focused on the issues of housing and employment for the poor and/or homeless in D.C., stopping the genocide of our sisters and brothers of color in Palestine, and trying to get Bernie Sanders elected in the hopes of getting some of America back for the non-wealthy 80 percent of us. Maybe you’ve seen me in D.C. in the large green solar bike-car.
Residing in D.C. these last 10 years my time has been spent trying to stop the bombing of Iran, to stop global warming, and to stop my stage 4 cancer, numerous times on near-death hunger strikes. Most of my D.C. years I’ve been homeless so that every waking breath, every resource, could be devoted to my causes, and for the last three years starting with my cancer treatment I lived at the CCNV shelter.
The 30 years prior to D.C. my life was quite different. With an MBA at Syracuse University in 1977, I leapt into the burgeoning computer industry specializing in enterprise-wide Information Systems, and leading business turnarounds and startups. Much of my work was designing and implementing comprehensive Information Systems involving many disparate partners, organizations, suppliers, and complex components.
With this background I now attend meeting after meeting in D.C. with folks working to get the region’s homeless people housed and employed. Week after week I am amazed at and deeply grateful for the passion, competence, excellence, cooperation and collaboration that I see among the folks in practically all of these meetings. With almost no exceptions can I think of a diverse team more likely to succeed at their part of making homelessness in D.C. brief, rare, and non-recurring as called for in the excellent Homeward DC plan. This is an effort we can all be very very very proud of, and very grateful for.
But there are elephants hovering around the perimeter of all of these meetings, efforts, and committed folks, that unless we name them and face them citywide and region-wide we will find ourselves in 2020, 2025… far from solving the homeless problem. If these elephants are mere figments of my imagination I have not yet found anyone to tell me so. Like the elephants, I’m all ears.
These elephants are not just D.C. problems. They are nationwide, decades in the making. None of them are the fault of anyone currently serving in the private or public sector. And they can’t be solved by any one entity or individual.
1. Massive shortfall in affordable housing. The Washington Post reported in May that our region has 250,000 households spending 50 percent or more on their housing, and another hundred thousand households will be in that position in the near future.
2. Massive shortfall in jobs for those with less than a college degree.
3. Housing wage in D.C. that is way out of reach for all but few of the homeless and or poor. Thank goodness the City Council with great courage and decency just voted a $15 minimum wage by 2020. But the housing wage in DC is $28.50 today, and climbing.
4. Lack of a regional, funded commission, with a vision and plan, responsible to solve 1, 2 and 3, or at least keep a comprehensive, integrated, up-to- date spotlight on this vast system’s challenge.
It is near impossible for D.C., or Virginia, or Maryland to tackle these elephants alone. It is a regional challenge and needs a regional approach. I mean, imagine a vast commercial corporation. Imagine that there is no integrated vision, plan, that each department, each division, each group works independently without the benefit of an integrated information system, let alone strategic forecasting looking at short, medium and long-term risks and opportunities. It is absolutely certain to fail, after wasting untold resources and mangling untold lives, right?
I could not be more pleased with what I see going on in the meetings. I dearly wish I could leave it there. But my ultimate loyalty is to the homeless and/or poor in D.C. and the region. Unless we name, face and deal with these elephants now, the homeless and needy will still be trampled.
I will be devoting what little abilities and resources I have to try and be a catalyst for this to be avoided. I’m praying to find others way ahead of me in managing these four issues, alongside of whom I can learn and work. It is not that I prefer trying to tackle these elephants alone. But as the biggest threats to our neediest I will have to try and herd these elephants until they are under control. Yes, I’ll probably be trampled, too.
James McGinley is a volunteer writer for Street Sense.
