[KFCF Friends] 12th Annual Homelessness Marathon

[KFCF Subscribers & Friends list]

KFCF will be broadcasting the 12th Annual Homeless Marathon this coming
Monday night.

This Marathon is NOT a fund raiser, but is to raise awareness of the issues
of homelessness.

Attached is a flyer that can be printed out and given to people who should
hear the broadcast.

The broadcast will begin on Feb 23rd at 4 PM and run until 6 AM the next
morning.

Many of you might remember that KFCF hosted the Homelessness Marathon
broadcast on 2007 and it brought the issue of homelessness in the Central
Valley to the forefront and there was extensive media coverage.  KFCF has
continued to  broadcast programs dealing with issues involving the homeless
population in our area and Mike Rhodes has produced a number of excellent
programs on the issues and will be producing a series of short pieces on
issues in our area that will be played on KFCF at the top of each hour
during the broadcast. Below you will find more information on the broadcast,
including a tentative schedule of planned topics, and a note from Jeremy,
the producer and host of the Marathon.

Rychard Withers - Executive Director
Fresno Free College Foundation / KFCF-FM
PO Box 4364 ●  Fresno, CA 93744
(559)233-2221

The 12th Annual Homelessness Marathon will originate from Pass Christian,
Mississippi. The broadcast will start at 4 p.m., Pacific time, on Monday,
February 23rd and end at 6 a.m., Pacific time, on Tuesday, February 24,
2009. Pass Christian is next door to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waveland%2C_Mississippi> Waveland, MS, which
the  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Corps_of_Engineers>
Army Corps of Engineers officially designates as the " <http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Ground_zero> Ground Zero," where
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina> Hurricane Katrina came
ashore. We call it the "other" Ground Zero, because it's the one that didn't
get the attention (or the multi-trillion dollar response) that was given to
the Ground Zero in  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City> New York.

Pass Christian was less affected than Waveland, losing a mere 100% of its
public buildings, 100% of its businesses and 80% of its homes. Though the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Coast_of_the_United_States> Gulf Coast is
probably only about 20% rebuilt and there is a drastic shortage of
affordable housing, the state and Federal governments will soon remove the
remaining temporary trailers and cottages. Thousands of desperately poor
elderly and disabled people and single parent families with young children
are about to be thrown on the streets with nowhere to go.



As Jeremy Alderson, the host of the National Homelessness Marathon writes:





In a matter of weeks, thousands of people who survived Hurricane Katrina
and, in some cases, the formaldehyde-contaminated FEMA trailers, are about
to be evicted from their housing and made homeless all over again.  Worse
yet, these are primarily elderly and disabled people as well as single
parent families with young children.  Still worse, if that's even possible,
this low intensity crime against humanity isn't being perpetrated by cruel
landlords but by government on all levels.  I will give you the background.



Everything you need to know about the Federal post-Katrina relief effort
along the Gulf Coast can be summed up in the three answers I received to
this question:  "What has Phil Mangano's role been?"  Mangano, often
referred to as Bush's "Homelessness Czar," is the director of the U.S.

Interagency Council on Homelessness.  If anyone should have been helping the
people of the Gulf Coast, it's him.  The storm sure made enough people
homeless.



I interviewed Mangano once on the air.  He said, "I often don't feel like a
czar, I often feel like a mendicant beggar going around the country and in
Washington to ensure that homeless people have what they need." "What we're
attempting to do," he further explained, "is to create the political will so
that no American is without a home."  Of course, no one man can end
homelessness alone, but it's good to know that someone who's a cross between
Joan of Arc and St. Francis of Assisi is heading up the Bush Administration
effort.



The Interagency Council's big push is to get communities to adopt
10-year-plans to end chronic homelessness.  The plans have surely done some
good for those on the receiving end of the dough, but Katrina mocks the
pretension that they are paths to ending homelessness.  How can anyone tell
how many homeless there will be in 10 years, when one storm can make
hundreds of thousands of people homeless overnight?"  In fact, there's not a
projected end even to existing homelessness under the ten-year plans, not in
ten years, not ever.  So what would Phil Mangano do when confronted with a
sudden, screaming need for housing that contradicts his own preachments, and
a need that arises innocently at that?  If getting clopped by the worst
natural disaster in American history doesn't make you deserving, what does?



I went down to the Gulf Coast to do advance work for the Homelessness
Marathon, an annual 14-hour overnight live national radio broadcast (now tv
too), focusing on homelessness and poverty in America.  We originate from a
different city each year.  Next February 23rd, for our 12th broadcast, we're
going to originate from Pass Christian, Mississippi.

That's right next door to Waveland, which the Army Corps of Engineers has
officially designated the "Ground Zero" where Katrina came ashore.  We'll be
describing our broadcast as coming from the "other" Ground Zero, the one
that didn't get so much attention.



People down there will tell you that New Orleans made it through the storm,
and that the catastrophic failure of the levees was largely a man-made
disaster, whereas the devastation on the rest of the Gulf Coast was done
directly by Katrina.  Pass Christian was less affected than Waveland.  It
lost a reported 100% of its public buildings and 100% of its businesses but
only 80% of its homes.



The Marathon's producer, Abby Harmon, and I expected to hear from the
survivors a long-term tale of too-little-help.  We did hear that, but we
heard about some bright spots, too, like the volunteers who, everyone
agrees, have been responsible for most of the recovery effort, proving both
a right-wing and a left-wing point. As the right wing says, if the
government does little, the people will do amazing things.  But as the left
wing says, without the help of their own government, the people can't do
nearly enough.  A common estimate is that the Mississippi Gulf Coast is only
about 20% rebuilt, maybe a little more.



What we didn't expect to find was a short-term crisis.  In the coming five
months, advocates expect to see a new wave of post-Katrina homelessness.
You may be sure the people of the Gulf Coast want to be saved by the stroke
of a pen more than they want to be evicted at the stroke of midnight.  You
may be sure that they will want the Obama Administration to change the Bush
Administration policies that are putting them out of their homes.



These are the simple facts:



- Thousands of people in Mississippi remain in temporary housing.

Starting in January, the leases will start to expire on MEMA cottages (MEMA
is Mississippi's FEMA).  According to MEMA spokesperson Jeff Rent, there are
2810 of these in the "lower six," Mississippi counties that were blasted by
Katrina.

Most have multiple bedrooms and, presumably, hold multiple dwellers, though
no one seems to have done a census of them.  MEMA actually wants these
temporary domiciles to stay put, but local governments want them removed.
In some cases this may be in order to keep promises written into the
covenants of wealthy neighborhoods.  In some cases, it may be to protect the
tax base so as not to have the burden of too many poor, as one local county
official explicitly stated (undoubtedly, some kind of Federal guarantee
would solve this problem).

      Some residents may find a way to stay in their cottages by moving them
to new locations or by permanentizing them with concrete foundations or
whatever.  MEMA says it is working to help all of the cottage dwellers, but
a low-end expectation would be that only around seven percent will be able
to keep their cottages.  The icing on the cake is that on March 1st, the
"Special Use Circumstances" permits that allowed for the placement of FEMA
trailers will expire. There are an additional 3211 of those.



- Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour diverted $600 million slated for
housing to repairing and expanding the port at Gulfport, which received only
an estimated $50 million in damage, and that was covered by insurance.  An
editorial in the New York Times called this diversion "the shame of

Mississippi."   Twelve members of the House, including Maxine Waters and
Barney

Frank, tried and failed to insert language into an appropriations bill to
bar the diversion.  They noted that Mississippi has "only devoted 55% of its
[Community Block Development Grant] funds for direct housing recovery," and
that "the State has frequently sought and received waivers of the low- and
moderate-income requirement." Nonetheless, the Bush Administration's regime
at HUD approved the diversion.



- There is not nearly enough existing affordable housing to house the

vast majority of the still-displaced survivors.   For example, Hancock

County, where Waveland is located, has more than 450 remaining trailers
alone but only an estimated 312 rental units.  Of those, only 60 are
classified as "affordable" because they can be obtained for a rent of
$800/month, but most of the people facing eviction from trailers and
cottages have incomes in the $400-$600/month range, often from social
security.



- Some new housing is being built but the reconstruction is going very
slowly for many reasons, including new building codes (especially in the
"Velocity Zone"), higher insurance premiums, a shortage of capital and
outstanding law suits with commercial insurers who refused to pay
Katrina-related claims.



The bottom line is that there is not a chance in the world that enough
affordable housing can be built in time to replace more than a fraction of
the temporary housing that is about to be withdrawn, and the math is
devastating.  If, of the roughly 6000 temporary units, as many as one-third
stay in use or are replaced by permanent housing, and, on average, the
remaining 4000 units house only two people, that still makes for 8000 mostly
children, elderly, disabled, and frantic mothers being tossed out like
garbage.  The actual number will probably be much greater.



Fortunately, Phil Mangano's Interagency Council on Homelessness -- which
includes, among others, such Washington lightweights as the secretaries of
Defense, Energy, HUD, Transportation and Interior -- is tasked with seeing
that Americans are housed.  If anyone should help the Katrina survivors by
czaring it up and getting in the faces of the big boys on his council, it
should be Phil.  If anyone should be going around like a mendicant beggar,
seeking funds for the poor Katrina folks, it should be Phil.  So it's only
right to wonder what Phil Mangano, the Bush Administration's mouthpiece on
homelessness, has been doing to meet the needs of the Katrina Survivors in
the lower six.



This is who I asked:



- Kathleen Johnson.  Kathleen is a native Australian who has been in this
country for more than thirty years.  She has worked on Katrina relief since
the storm, supervising a team of case managers who are currently working
under a FEMA grant but many of whom worked for free before it came through.
She has her fingers in more pies than one of Sweeney Todd's victims, doing
everything she knows to push the recovery process along, and she does it,
she says, without pay.  She sleeps in primitive conditions she doesn't want
discussed because they're "luxurious"

compared to the makeshift shelters where many Katrina survivors remain (some
of them never had temporary housing to get evicted from).  She insists, "I
haven't wanted for anything," but in truth, she recently was unable to go
back to Australia for her mother's death and funeral.

She looks tired too much of the time.



- Keith Burton.  Keith is a long-time journalist.  His on-line newspaper,
the Gulf Coast News ( <http://www.gulfcoastnews.com/>
http://www.gulfcoastnews.com), has become a widely-read chronicle of the
recovery effort.  He describes himself as a Conservative Republican, but he
condemns what we're living under now as "Corporate Feudalism."  In 1969, he
says, after Hurricane Camille, the military came right in and cleaned up,
but that after Katrina, because of the way government services have been
privatized, it was all a matter of negotiating contracts that would be
implemented at a snail's pace without accountability.



- Al Showers.  Al is a good example of why we have to retool the format we
have used for eleven years on our broadcast, because there will be no way to
divide our guests between those whose testimony is subjective and objective.
As the Hancock County reporter for WLOX-TV, a profitable ABC affiliate in
Biloxi, Al is a great source of objective information, but he is also
someone who has had his share of subjective experiences.

Among them was a long night as the only TV reporter to stay in the local
Emergency Operations Center when Katrina hit.  Things got so dicey that they
made a list and magic markered numbers on their hands in case they drowned,
so their bodies could be identified.  Al was number 34.



Why ask these three people about Phil Mangano?  I am sure that they'll tell
you that in the big scheme of things they're not important, but I think they
are.  They are as knowledgeable and committed as they could be and, beyond
that, they each exemplify the limitless humanity Katrina unleashed even
while it swept away human lives.  Unfortunately, something too often happens
to that humanity as soon as it gets a government position.  When I asked
these three people about Phil Mangano's role, they all said the same

thing:  "Who's Phil Mangano?"  Heckuva job, Phil.



What has happened to the Katrina survivors poses many questions that have no
small bearing on the future of our country.  Is this how we will treat the
victims of future natural disasters?  Is this how we will treat the victims
of the current foreclosure crisis?  How come guilty people on Wall Street
were allowed to drive away with buckets of cash while innocent Katrina
survivors are going to be thrown on the streets with next to nothing?
Should the new administration take a new approach (yes) and, if so, what
should it be?



Those questions are for another time, and we'll sure be asking them on our
broadcast.  What is imperative now is that there are just weeks to get the
evictions stopped.



Sincerely,





Jeremy Weir Alderson

Director, Homelessness Marathon

 <http://www.homelessnessmarathon.org/> http://www.homelessnessmarathon.org





12th ANNUAL HOMELESSNESS MARATHON -- BROADCAST SCHEDULE

KFCF -FM - 88.1 MHz  Fresno



 Feb 23

 HOUR 1

4-5 PM

First: Welcome from “Nobody.”

Second:  A Panel of Soon-To-Be-Homeless Evictees from the Mississippi Gulf
Coast


HOUR 2

5-6 PM


  Short

Fresno Update: Homeless Dumping


Long

A Double Testimony Hour with special testimonies from Reilly Morse, an
attorney with the Mississippi Center for Justice and Keith Burton, editor of
the Gulf Coast News, Rev. Elijah Mitchell on health care,  and a discussion
on foreclosures with Ohio Rep. Marci Captor.


HOUR 3

6-7 PM.

Short

Fresno Update:  McDonalds in Madera


Long

TBA


HOUR 4

7--8 pm

Short


               Fresno Update: JoAnna and Cynthia


Long

“What Does It Mean To ‘Help The Homeless?’”  Co-hosts Dennis Culhane,
Professor of Social Policy, U. of Penn and  Jeremy Rosen, Director of the
National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness.  Special Guest:
WLOX-TV reporter Al Showers.


HOUR 5

8 pm- 9 pm.

Short


                   Fresno Update: Sleeping Bag Project


Long

“What’s Happening to the Youth?” Co-hosts Terry Latham, director of Hope
Haven, a shelter for abused and neglected children,” and youth minister,
Rene Soule.


HOUR 6

9 pm-10 pm

Short


                   Fresno Update : Keil


Long

Things You Can't Say On The Radio:  Does Cuba Handle Hurricanes Better?
Randy Poindexter, with the U.S. - Cuba Hurricane Conference.


HOUR 7

10pm-11pm

Short

“Fresno Update:  Food Not Bombs


Long


                        “What Can The Rest of America Learn From The Gulf
Coast?”  Open Mic Hour


                        with guest host Bryan Rutkosky, morning host on WQRZ
radio, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.


HOUR 8

11P-12Mid.

Short


                        Fresno Update: Frank Culetta in Merced


Long

A Double Testimony Hour.   Rev. Alex Lydell of H.O.P.E. Ministries in
Washington Parish, Louisiana; Brice Phillips, founder of WQRZ (and a
nationally recognized hero of Katrina), and Mike Rhodes, editor of the
Community Alliance Newspaper in Fresno, California.


HOUR 9

Feb 24

12-1 AM

Short

“The Jungle - In Seattle”


Long

“Why We Agitate.”  Cheri Honkala, director of the Poor People’s Economic
Human Rights Campaign, and Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional
Advocacy Project and a board member of the Homelessness Marathon.


HOUR 10

1-2 AM

Short


                   “Increasing Foreclosures Lead to Increasing Homelessness
in Boston”


Long

“Solutions:  Squatting?  Tent Cities? --  Are These Viable Options” Guest
Hosts, Abby Harmon, Homelessness Marathon Producer, and Michael Alderson,
Homelessness Marathon Technical Director.


HOUR 11

2-3 AM

Short

“Feeding Yourself And Others From Dumpsters”


Long

“What the Gulf Coast is Facing” Co-hosts:  Roberta Avila, Director of the
Interfaith Disaster Task Force.  Kathleen Johnson, Director of Hancock
County Katrina Relief


HOUR 12 3-4 AM.

Short


               “Nickelsville”


Long

Open Mic Hour


HOUR 13

4-5 AM

Short


               “Getting LBGT Youth Off the Street”


Long


                        A Double Testimony Hour, featuring special
testimonies from Mary Townsend, director


                        of El Pueblo, Thao Vu, director of Boat People SOS,
Forrest Eubank, With The


                        Mississippi Veterans Advocacy Council.


Hour 14

5-6 AM

Short


                   “Trouble In Denver”


Long

A Panel of People Losing Their Homes on the Alabama Gulf Coast



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