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:: Saturday, September 10, 2005 ::
Help Those Katrina Homeless to Help Themselves
Want to help Katrina Homeless? Here is how you can help them cost effectively and massively; yes, one person can help dozens of homeless families to move off homelessness quickly, and government agencies or charity organizations can help hundreds of thousands easily.
The tip is very simple: Help those Katrina homeless to help themselves. When I was working at Goldman Sachs, every morning before work, there were dozens of homeless waiting for me at the Bowling Green Park at Broadway. I gave them sleeping bags, chocolate bars, weather reports, subway pass, clothes ...etc, and more importantly, I gave them some emergency cash assistance from a few dollars to a few hundreds. Many homeless, with my support, were able to go home with bus money, able to find a job with money to buy clothes to interview, able to reunify with their relatives with phone card money, able to go to detox with subway and train money ...etc. Most of the homeless came to gathering in the early morning eventually find their way out of street.
So, at Federal level, how would these hundreds of thousands of de facto homeless caused by Katrina be helped move off homelessness quickly, cost effectively and massively? You have to help them to help themselves. Please note: NOT you help them to move off homelessness, but you give them some seed resources to let them reconnect with their friends or families to move themselves off homelessness by themselves.
Here is a list of things I would give them and why based on my years of hands on experience:
1. Emergency Cash Assistance. If I were government agencies, I would have banks to ship tons of "cash" to Katrina impacted area and each victim given, say, one week need of cash. Why cash? Anyone with hands on experience helping homeless, especially homeless living outdoors, would know that most homeless has NO bank account. Many who had but became homeless and got stuck in foreign city due to wallet lost, no ID's, no atm card. So, cash is the immediate means to empower homeless. Why small amount enough for one week? It is like paycheck, and one week is long enough for many to find other help, and small amount to avoid being robbed.
2. Prepaid Cell Phones. With a cell phone, people can easily stay contacted and communicate with their friends and relatives and stay safe. Homeless can use it to find jobs or rentals, and more importantly stayed connected.
3. Greyhound or Train Pass. Knowing that people when at difficult time will normally seeking help from their families or close friends, once they have contacted whoever willing to help them, they need transportation to move over. With the amount of money to provide Greyhound or Train Pass to Katrina Homeless, the government not only helping them to find their own viable support, yet inject huge amount to help Greyhound and Train operation which often has deficit.
4. Provide Cash Assistant to Hosting Families. Knowing it is much more cost effective to have hosting families using their spared rooms than renting an apartment, it should be encouraged; however, enthusiastic whether friends or relatives families hosting Katrina homeless people would definitely be impacted financially. Therefore, provide cash assistance to hosting families is very important. e.g. I was able to move Chris at OH off homeless quickly due to the fact his friend has spare room but tie with cash, and willing to rent out a room for $25 a week.
5. Provide Cash Allowance to buy a Car. In this country, without car is like without leg. For each Katrina homeless families who need car, you want to provide some cash help to buy a car. Tracy gave Chris $200 to buy a used Geo Prism 90 and that gave Chris viable vision of moving off homelessness immediately.
6. Create a Private Yahoo Support Group for each Katrina Homeless. With this wonderful and powerful, yet free, Internet tool, one can cost effectively create one private support group for each Katrina Homeless individual or family, and invite their friends or family or colleagues to join remotely with email address, and continue to support these hundreds of thousands of unfortunated people. I have managed hundreds of such private support groups and am the only computer expert with hands on experience using Yahoo Group to successfully help hundreds of homeless concurrently nationwide. I know it works great and cost effectively and can save our governments, Federal, State or Local, and homeless agencies or even individual lots of resources and time and mental burden.
With above tips, we empower the Katrina Homeless to help themselves move off homelessness quickly and continue to move up.
If you do not have money or resource to help Katrina Homeless individual or families, you can still help them a lot by sending this Homeless Solutions to everyone you know and all your family members, friends or colleagues would be learning how to help Katrina Homeless or even general homeless very cost effectively.
:: Mr Cheng 11:41 PM [+] ::
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