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The Most Miserable Cities

Detroit is ranked #1 in the Forbes Misery Measure according to the article “America’s Most Miserable Cities.”

Forbes, which created a Misery Measure for the study, included factors like unemployment, taxes, weather, pollution sites, commute times, and crime to rank America’s most miserable places. New York City was surprisingly fourth on the list, thanks to amazingly high taxes and housing costs, and Philadelphia ranked fifth.

According to the article:

The biggest surprise on our list is Charlotte, N.C., which is ranked ninth. Charlotte has undergone tremendous economic growth the past decade, while the population has soared 32%. But the current picture isn’t as bright. Employment growth has not kept up with population growth, meaning unemployment rates are up more than 50% compared with 10 years ago. Charlotte scored in the bottom half of all six categories we examined. It scored the worst on violent crime, ranking 140th.

Source: America’s Most Miserable Cities

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First “green” homeless shelter built from ground up

The New York Times has reported on the near completion of Crossroads, a 125 resident homeless shelter in East Oakland, California that, “may be the only ‘green’ homeless shelter built from the ground up.”

According to the article “A Shelter Is Built Green, to Heal Inside and Out” it has, “a solar-paneled roof, hydronic heating, artful but practical ceiling fans, nontoxic paint, windows that can be opened to let in fresh air, and desks and bureaus made from pressed wheat.”

This $11 million building shows it’s possible to construct low-income housing that surpasses the private market in innovation and design.

Source: A Shelter Is Built Green, to Heal Inside and Out

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Cities making life even harder for the poor

Cities across the country are passing ordinances that could put panhandlers in jail. According to a USA Today article, “Cities crack down on panhandling”:

Cities have enacted laws targeting the homeless for two decades, including bans on sleeping outdoors or loitering. In the past few years, the focus has turned to panhandling restrictions, said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

Cities are criminalizing the poor in an effort to revitalize their downtowns. Since manufacturing jobs have mostly left America, cities must rely on the service sector and tourism to boost their economies, therefore elevating their interest in hiding the poor and homeless. This puts the poor in a doubly bad situation–first you lose your manufacturing job, then your considered criminal.

So rather than criminalizing the poor–aren’t their lives hard enough?–we should give them housing. Yes, GIVE. I’ve written about this before, and I’ll say it again. It’s cheaper to house the homeless than it is to put them in shelters or send them to jail.

So as the coldest month of the year creeps closer, I’m going to start cataloging all the stories I can find on KnowledgePlex, and other sources, about cities trying to stop low-income housing, or panhandling, or giving out food in public. In the end, I’ll list my findings of shitty things cities are doing to criminalize the poor during the coldest month of the year.

In my view, this is a national war on the poor that’s going under-reported. Let’s see what we can do to put urban issues into the national focus.