
Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life - cgtyoder
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/invisible-child/
======
daeken
Homelessness is something I've been thinking a lot about lately and all I keep
coming back to is: I want to help, but I have absolutely no idea how I can do
so. In the short term, volunteering at soup kitchens and things along those
lines is always a help, but it feels like a bad ROI; I don't mean that I get
little out of it (on the contrary, it certainly makes me feel good to do
volunteer work), but that there must be a way to make my efforts go further.

I used to volunteer at a clubhouse for the mentally ill, a place where people
could get food, play pool, take classes on computer skills, find employment,
etc. My efforts were relatively small, but due to the fantastic management of
the place, everything I did was magnified; fixing an old PC meant another 20
people might've been able to learn the skills they needed to find a job. It's
been many years since then, but it's what I hold up as a good example of the
sort of lever you can use in volunteering, and I just don't see an analogue
for helping the homeless.

What am I missing? How can I help?

~~~
qeorge
Find a local organization that helps the homeless, and offer yourself as free
IT help for a full day (or three).

You may not be an IT guy, but you are computer savvy. You'll be invaluable for
jobs like:

    
    
        - cleaning crapware off computers
        - removing spyware/viruses and installing antivirus
        - fixing email issues
        - networking printers
        - answering questions about Excel, Word, and so forth
    

By helping this way, you'll improve the productivity of the organization
drastically, which will have a real impact you can feel good about. Best off,
your contribution will act as a multiplier, lasting well beyond the initial
time you'll put in.

\--

If you're more able to giving money than time, please visit and consider
donating to
[http://greensborohousingcoalition.com](http://greensborohousingcoalition.com)
\- this is a non-profit in Greensboro, NC, which does amazing work both in
preventing homelessness and making sure that safe housing is available for
low-income families.

My stepmother is the director of this organization, and I can speak to her and
the GHC staff's incredible hard work and dedication. They manage to run at
only a 15% overhead, which is truly incredible. Your money _will_ have an
impact here.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Volunteering as an IT support guy is still terrible ROI for most people here.

Volunteer work in general is mostly about spending some of your time to get a
good feeling for yourself, and advertising the charities in question.
Basically everyone who haves a profession of any kind gets the best ROI in
charity for their time by working, and donating the money earned doing so.
This is abstract and feels less like helping people, but if your purpose
really is to help and not purchasing happiness for yourself, it's what you
should do.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
And they take my money to ... pay someone for IT support?

Homelessness is a complex problem but if you want to help that child, the
second best bet is to help her parents. Help with whatever problems they have,
help with overcoming racial bias, mental illness, drug addiction, poor cv,
whatever.

The first best bet is of course to pay for her scholarship to a boarding
school. which rather stuffs her baby sister. Complicated.

------
olegious
If all the poverty statistics in this article are accurate, in about 10 years
we can expect to see a reversal of the decline in US violent crime that's been
happening since the 90s.

What can be done- what is the right mix of social policy and tough love?
Clearly homeless drug users shouldn't have 8 kids- but how can this be
prevented? Should we take away children from all homeless or drug addict
parents as soon as they're born? How do other civilized countries handle this
situation?

It makes me sick that I pay around 40% in state and federal taxes and social
security (not that much lower than Western European countries) yet there is
still so much poverty and poverty related issues in our country.

~~~
minikites
Minor nitpick, you almost certainly don't pay 40% in taxes, that's not how tax
brackets work:
[http://i.imgur.com/ZYWWn28.gif](http://i.imgur.com/ZYWWn28.gif) and
[http://i.imgur.com/gogxtbv.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/gogxtbv.jpg)

And I think the solution is raise the minimum wage and set a long term plan
for a sort of guaranteed minimum income / negative income tax. Throwing money
at the problem is literally the best way to solve it:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/how-
to-c...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/how-to-cut-the-
poverty-rate-in-half-its-easy/280971/)

~~~
aestra
Minor nitpick, the parent said they pay 40% in _state and federal taxes and
social security_ and you quoted only federal taxes (looks like the last graph
includes Social Security)

I still don't know how much the parent pays in taxes, but that didn't include
state tax, either income, property, or sales tax.

~~~
minikites
What state has a ~20% effective tax rate? I don't see any marginal tax rates
that even come close: [http://taxes.about.com/od/statetaxes/a/highest-state-
income-...](http://taxes.about.com/od/statetaxes/a/highest-state-income-tax-
rates.htm)

I'm obviously estimating, but when I look at which is more likely, someone
misunderstanding tax brackets, or someone paying an insane amount of property
tax in a state that doesn't exist, the first choice seems more likely.

~~~
aestra
I didn't say or even imply any did. I said "minor nitpick."

I said "I still don't know how much the parent pays in taxes."

The GP might be counting all their payroll deductions as kinda a "tax"
depending on how you look at it. It doesn't matter, I just pointed out you
didn't include state taxes.

------
downandout
This article is really sad and quick to blame NYC's outgoing mayor for all of
the problems, but suggests absolutely no solutions. The only actionable piece
of data in it is that 50% of the city is below the poverty line, which
suggests that anyone that doesn't need to be in NYC should never go there.
Numbers like that foretell an uprising against those that are not poor, either
by the citizens themselves through violence, or by the city government through
punitive laws and taxes.

I now feel very sorry for Dasani, and am more sure than ever that I won't be
spending time in New York. If that was the point of the article, then well
done.

~~~
Shivetya
oh I am sure the NYT will devote endless pages the next couple of years to
blaming all the woes of NYC on him, use it as an excuse for why the new guy
can't fit it all fast, and so and so on.

The question most New Yorker's should be asking is, how do the people who run
this facility (Audburn) have jobs? How do the people the report to allow it to
happen and if they do, they why are they employed? Having been around some big
city "care" its really simply, the bigger the government the less it has to
care and the more people that slip through the cracks. Too many programs
competing for the same dollars, too many programs with their own rules they
barely serve anyone, too many programs for those who need help they have to
spend an inordinate amount of time applying to each.

I am quite sure the living conditions don't help the outlook of her parents
and in part keeps them down looking for releases. Yet for all the billions
spent to take care of the poor it makes you wonder, where is it all going?

~~~
yardie
If you've ever tried to use or know anything about government grants you'll
find out that 50% of your time and grant money will be spent making sure you
are complying with spending grant money.

Usually there will be some outrage over a small sum of money being used
inappropriately. Benzes for welfare queens for example. The politicians will
do something about it by putting in more checks. A few scammers will work the
system. More checks are put in place. Ad infinitum. A few years later 50-80%
of the budget to help the poor has gone into making sure they use the aid for
what we deem appropriate.

------
FedRegister
"Nearly a quarter of Dasani’s childhood has unfolded at Auburn, where she
shares a 520-square-foot room with her parents and seven siblings."

Okay, not to victim blame, but eight children when her parents can't even
support themselves?

~~~
wffurr
Those children didn't ask to be born. But now they are. So what do we do about
it? Or how would you go about stopping them from being born?

Open that door and you get a whole world of ugly answers and precious few good
and/or socially acceptable answers.

~~~
siculars
Hmm, I dunno. How did China implement their One Child policy?

edit: s/Chile/Child

~~~
makomk
China use forcible sterilization programs, which is one of those ugly and
socially unacceptable answers, for good reason. (The US had a similar program.
To give you some idea of how well it worked, the case that decided the
constitutionality, Buck vs Bell, involved a woman who was considered mentally
feeble due to being black, poor, and getting pregnant at 17. Turns out the
last one was most likely due to her being raped by a member of her more
respectable foster family, who committed her to an institution to cover it up.
The whole thing was deeply fucked from the very outset.)

~~~
brazzy
Forcible sterilization is not a substantial factor in enforcing the policy in
China - it's enforced through fines and exclusion from all kinds of benefits.

------
beat
What matters to me in Dasani's story, and what should matter to many of us, is
how difficult it is for children with real talent and ambition to escape their
circumstances. Think about the temptations that must be in front of her -
sure, her mind and her strength and her beauty could eventually lift her out
of poverty, but they could also make her a phenomenally successful drug dealer
or thief. Or frustration could drive her to wasting her mind with drugs, or
committing small stupid crimes that put her in the revolving door of prisons.

I grew up poor, although not as poor as her. I know how frustrating and
difficult it is for talented, ambitious children. I got lucky, but there were
so many ways it could have gone wrong, and nearly did.

But here's what worries me, and should worry lots of people. Call it
arrogance, but I firmly believe real progress in our society is made by those
top few percent with both the talent and ambition to do something new,
something dangerous and important. Most people either can't or won't. So when
society wastes one of them in the ghetto, it hurts all of us.

------
kingkawn
Bloomberg's legacy will be, more than bike lanes or 311, the sweeping of
poverty beneath the rug during his 12 years of power.

------
crazy1van
Poverty is incredibly sad, and I understand the desire to want to take some
direct action to fight it. And of course, if you want to volunteer your time,
you certainly can and I'm sure people will be grateful.

However, for those with in demand, high value skills like people HN, I suggest
you focus your time on using those skills effectively. You can do more good by
just earning more income and donating money to good charities than donating
your time.

To illustrate this point, consider this extreme case -- what if a young Steve
Jobs had poured extra energy into serving soup at a local church to the
homeless and had not gotten Apple off the ground? Yes, he would directly help
hungry people. However, he has created so much wealth by forming Apple that
not only does he have far more money that he could give away, but he's also
created an entire company of employees with more wealth that they could also
choose to give to charity.

~~~
warfangle
>far more money that he could give away

Especially when it came to his illegitimate children. As much as I dislike
Microsoft, Gates has done a billion times more for the poverty-stricken than
Jobs ever did. Please do not hold Jobs up as some epitome of philanthropy. He
was absolutely not, at least publicly.

------
danmaz74
"almost half of New Yorkers living near or below the poverty line" This really
looks crazy to me.

~~~
gadders
Probably because it will be on a measure of relative, rather than absolute,
poverty which can be defined to be whatever people would like it to be.

~~~
danielweber
New York subsidizes housing for the poor. A histogram of income in Manhattan
is a bathtub curve, with a bunch of poor people that are being encouraged to
live there, essentially none in the middle, and then a whole lot of people
above 100K.

------
vinhboy
"Poor people would be empowered, the mayor argued, and homelessness would
decline"

Does anyone know of other places in the US that has taken this approach to
poverty and what the results are? I am genuinely interested in understanding
how "empowering the poor" works in the US. I know there are several reported
successes with micro-lending to the poor in other countries, but I wonder if
such go-getter mentality exists in the American society.

------
themodelplumber
I'm familiar with some similar situations here in California. Families where
codependency somehow pulls everyone together despite struggling under the yoke
of alcoholism, mental illness, early pregnancies, physical and sexual abuse by
various in-laws and other distant relatives, etc. You can pull the children
away from the parents, but all of the teaching remains and the children go on
to slide into the same situations. Those who get out of the cycle (which
actually happens more often than I expected) seem to need every resource that
their communities provide, just to stay afloat.

The author of the article seems upset at the city government for their finger-
wagging approach toward forcing the homeless along some path to success, and I
would just add that when winter comes around and people still aren't moving up
your ramp to success, it's time to err on the side of charity.

~~~
douglasback
It's probably worth noting that the New York Times has, since 1912, run a fund
called The Neediest Cases, which raises money for social welfare agencies
throughout New York City. Though it seems like this particular article isn't
part of the series, the paper runs pieces daily that tell similar stories of
those in need throughout the months of November, December, and January.

[http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/newyorkandregion/neediest...](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/newyorkandregion/neediestcases/index.html)

------
mschuster91
We Europeans have our own troubles with homelessness and beggars (currently
esp. German cities with Romanian and Bulgarian beggars), but well, we at least
crack down on insecure housing.

Something like the mentioned shelter in the article would not survive a single
day under inspection. If a landlord would rent (or let people live in) such a
house, he would immediately 1) have all people taken out by government and 2)
find himself in jail or with hefty fines. I wonder why NYC let this shelter
open despite dozens upon dozens of complaints!

~~~
amerika_blog
Why are there so many Romanians and Bulgarians in Germany? Seems a weird
choice to make. I mean, Germany's a lovely place, but why a mass exodus to
there? "It's Tuesday, let's move to Germany."

~~~
mschuster91
We're the first rich country when they move to the east (from a
Romania/Bulgaria POV) - and Germany is the last of Europe to have a reputation
for being financially stable, providing social/healthcare coverage and not
being overly racist.

France/Great Britain, in contrast, are not very favorable target countries:
France has a strong nationalist/right-wing extremist political movement (Le
Pen's Front National), and Great Britain, while rich, is not covered by
Schengen agreement and excepted from a lot of EU regulations - so it's both
difficult to get into, and stay in.

~~~
amerika_blog
I didn't know this. Thanks for elaborating. I always enjoyed Germany, but I
liked France too.

~~~
mschuster91
If you're interested in learning a bit more about this topic and want to learn
about the lifes of those immigrants, read:

1) [http://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/arbeiterstrich-in-
muench...](http://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/arbeiterstrich-in-muenchen-
scheissegal-ich-mache-alles-1.1487608)

2) [http://www.tz.de/muenchen/stadt/aufstand-geschaeftsleute-
geg...](http://www.tz.de/muenchen/stadt/aufstand-geschaeftsleute-gegen-
arbeiter-strich-bahnhofsviertel-tz-3077856.html)

3)
[http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeiterstrich](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeiterstrich)

4) [http://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/inhalt.im-
hauptbahnhofvi...](http://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/inhalt.im-
hauptbahnhofviertel-arbeiterstrich-die-kreuzung-der-
armut.0825ef04-2d33-45b3-b573-17103a9fe0c1.html)

5)
[http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/tid-34337/armutszuwanderun...](http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/tid-34337/armutszuwanderung-
in-muenchen-der-arbeiterstrich-schaedigt-unser-geschaeft-doch-woher-kommen-
diese-maenner-_aid_1140045.html)

These all deal with the situation in Munich, but it's the same in Berlin,
Cologne, Dusseldorf, Hamburg and other German cities.

------
callum85
29,388 words. Serious question: has anyone read the whole thing?

~~~
humanrebar
I'm surprised there isn't more innovation in the media regarding reporting on
complex issues.

To truly describe complex issues, readers need the ability to both get a high-
level view of the story and drill down to details and smaller narratives at
times. Along those lines, I'm not sure why primary source material (raw
transcripts of interviews, unpublished photos, links to source material)
aren't included in even short reports by default.

In my mind, complex stories should be reported in a format similar to a small,
mostly self-contained wiki where more details are linked or hidden by default.

The lack of innovation here surprises me because the news media is starving
for reasons for people to consume their content. Involved, wiki-style
reporting would be very hard to rip off.

------
nicolethenerd
This hits incredibly close to home - I work in Brooklyn, very close to
Dasani's school, and also teach computer science (through
[http://www.tealsk12.org/](http://www.tealsk12.org/)) at a school nearby. Many
of the locations in the article are familiar to me - and it breaks my heart to
see that kids who are basically in my neighborhood are living like this.

I would've loved for the article to have been followed up with a "here's how
you can help" \- it seems to me that the best thing I can probably do for kids
like Dasani is donate money, but where and to who? A quick scan of Givewell
didn't turn up any great leads for charities helping out with homelessness in
the NYC area - does anybody know of any?

------
auctiontheory
A good time to repost this wonderful article about a little girl living on the
edge of a trash dump: [http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-
thinkers/all/](http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/all/)

So much talent shows up in unexpected places, but in a bifurcated America (or
Mexico) it has to fight too hard to make itself seen.

------
niels_olson
The pictures are interesting: they have stuff. What they lack is
infrastructure and maintenance. Major items: deteriorating walls, decaying
mattresses, a sink in the middle of a room, where's the bathtub? Where's
anything near that sink?

------
zcarter
A story about the benefits of fiber optic cable over investment is often used
to dismiss the harm caused by the late nineties internet bubble.

What do we have to show for our recent hosting bubble?

~~~
treeface
The simple answer would be that a greater supply of homes means more people
can afford homes in the long run (assuming relatively low population growth).
But that is hugely dependent on which states/cities/neighborhoods you're
talking about. The section of the world that this article is discussing
apparently never gentrified like some of the neighborhoods surrounding it.
Things tend to be different in highly urbanized cities like NYC vs. relatively
open areas like the Inland Empire.

------
known
To alleviate
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_poverty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_poverty)
every
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_world](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_world)
nation Currency should be pegged to
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opec](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opec)
Oil for 4 years till
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma)
is resolved.

------
lewaldman
Open site, speakers start to produce sound, close site!

------
goggles99
As much as I think that people should be free and hate the government telling
people what to do, I sometimes wonder if a situation like this can only be
prevented or alleviated by force.

Why do people like this keep having more and more kids (a freedom)? Birth
control is free for them. Why doesn't this family move to a more affordable
state or city (a freedom)? Why don't they move somewhere where they can find
jobs (a freedom)? I don't care if their jobs are picking fruit or mopping
floors, Illegal aliens live better than this. Why do they blow all their money
as soon as they get it (a freedom)? They live rent free and make 33,000 in
combined income. This is like the after tax incomes of someone making 40k+ a
year. This is more money than my single income in-laws have (after they pay
their taxes and the mortgage bill) with their 6 children and they are not
living in poverty. They have a minivan, they go on vacations to Disney Land.
Their kids have clean new looking clothes. They Are not malnourished or un-
bathed. They suffer none of the plights that the family in this article do.
Why? It is about choices.

I almost want the government to (I don't want to say it but) force people who
have proven that they will never do the right thing to do just that.

I actually don't really want this loss of freedoms. There is a better way, but
will it ever happen? How can you re-instill good standards and moral values in
a selfish and morally bankrupt generation? Religious conviction used to fill
the role of prompting parents to do the right thing, but now it is heavily
watered down and in many cases gone altogether. Ever since good standards and
moral values stopped being passed down from the majority of fathers and
mothers (who rarely divorced back then by the way) things have been and will
continue to get worse. Eventually things will get so bad that it will come
down to people (like this family) losing their freedom (in essence a partial
return to slavery) If they want to continue living off the government.

I was just thinking about the efforts in government to make minimum wage
$10/hr nationally. Well now why would these parents go out and get jobs making
$10/hr? they would have no more income than they get from welfare today. Plus
now they have to go work 40hrs per week? Do you really thing that they would
do this?

Mike Rowe was on CNN recently saying that there are over 100k job openings
currently. Most of them are labor jobs that people just don't want (they are
actually hard work imagine that). Many of them start at 40k per year yet still
no one wants them. Well why would they? they get an equivalent of that much
right now for doing nothing.

This country is in a downward spiral. This family is only a symptom of it.

~~~
ohwp
I agree. A selfish society forgets it's collective responsibility.

These 'parents' can't even look after themselves. But why would they listen to
a government who is also grabbing what they can?

You can't change these problems by force. I think this can only be changed
from bottom to top. People around this family could learn them how to take
care.

------
amerika_blog
"She then wipes down the family’s small refrigerator, stuffed with lukewarm
milk, Tropicana grape juice and containers of leftover Chinese."

Eating out is a great way to stay poor.

~~~
daeken
There are two things that make eating out the most viable option for a whole
meal when you're poor:

The first is that when you have a refrigerator that's sub-par and don't have a
freezer, you have to buy the smallest quantities of anything perishable; that
means it's expensive as hell. There are things like rice that you can buy in
bulk, but if you're in a place with bugs and rodents (like they are), you're
screwed on that too, generally.

The second is that if you're in a homeless shelter, you can't cook. At most,
you can make a sandwich, but that goes back to point #1.

Eating out isn't a convenience for them; it's survival.

~~~
amerika_blog
This is nonsense.

Refrigerators are easily found used for under $100 (just like the flat screen
TV from someone else's example here).

Eating out, at a minimum, is 2-3x ingredient cost.

Besides, you're reading way more into my comment than was intended. Its
substance was:

"To save money, don't eat out."

You're projecting.

~~~
scarmig
I'm curious: if you found another engineer who was in a messy codebase doing
something something seemingly crazy, would you 1) assume they're an idiot or
2) reserve judgment until you know more?

I would hope 2). Because here's the thing: we can't extricate ourselves from
our history, and the people closest to the problem have a lot more information
about it than those moralizing from afar. There's a bunch of questions you
don't bother to ask yourself:

Was the container of Chinese food actually purchased or found? Who knows.
Probably, but the parents don't seem to make a habit of it: the daughter makes
her siblings PB&Js. And is it a crazy expense? Also who knows, but buying a
couple containers of cooked white rice in NYC isn't going to be crazy
expensive.

Are there nearby grocery stores to buy actual food? Maybe, but more likely the
nearest places will be liquor stores selling shitty food for outrageous
prices.

Does the facility they're in provide the means to cook raw ingredients?
Probably not.

Is the electricity supplied consistent enough to trust having more than a
single meal in the fridge? Who knows.

And perhaps the biggest thing: do the parents have the capability to plan to
cook and to succeed in that endeavor? You might say that "these people deserve
to suffer if they can't manage to cook rice and beans," but here's the thing:
maybe they can't. Maybe they never picked up that skill, maybe drugs have
destroyed their capabilities for planning more than a minute ahead. But
regardless, they can't.

In tech, we recognize that we have to build systems out of potentially faulty
components. But when we're building a society, there's a strain of thought
saying that you shouldn't design for fault, because if a component is faulty,
it deserves to be dumped into a garbage bin.

That's perverse.

~~~
amerika_blog
You're having a mental failure here:

"I'm curious: if you found another engineer who was in a messy codebase doing
something something seemingly crazy, would you 1) assume they're an idiot or
2) reserve judgment until you know more?"

I might say:

"Having a messy codebase is a way to keep having bugs."

That's analogous to my original statement.

~~~
tinco
It's also as helpful and insightful as your original statement.

~~~
amerika_blog
My original statement is quite helpful, if you're trying to get yourself out
of a financial hole. Restaurant eating is savagely expensive. I learned that
the first time I had to loop a paycheck. It's not complete advice, meaning
that not eating at restaurants alone won't lift you from poverty, but getting
into the restaurant habit is a good way to stay broke.

~~~
arthulia
I am not sure you understand just how poor they are.

"In a good month, their combined efforts can bring in a few hundred dollars."

They are in a situation where _they cannot afford to save money_ in most
conventional ways.

Spending $100 on a fridge that they can't properly use (because they can't
cook in a shelter) isn't a wise appropriation of a significant portion of
their monthly income.

~~~
amerika_blog
And spending $100 on Chinese food, instead of $40 on non-perishables, is?

~~~
arthulia
I really doubt they're eating that well.

