To Some Working Poor In India, Home Is A Parking Lot

Read carefully you in the USA, the way the government, and our leaders, not to mention the banks, and employment, or more to the point unemployment, are going this could easily be us in the future. In fact there are already millions of homeless in this country with more every day. Read and see where the 99% are headed if things don't change.

By TIM SULLIVAN 
Associated Press

Link to Original Article 

NEW DELHI (AP) — There is almost no movement in the pre-dawn cold, when the winter fog sits low over the old city and the only light comes from distant street lamps. The parking lot is silent, except for the occasional hacking cough.

So it takes a while to realize there are nearly 100 people in the square of dirt on the edge of the cotton-sellers' district in the Indian capital. All are asleep in handmade wooden cots jammed one against the other. Dozens more people sleep around a battered empty fountain nearby.
In a few hours, workers will haul away the cots and Meena Bazaar Park No. 2 will fill with cars. By 9 a.m. the overnight community will have disappeared. Its residents will carry their meager possessions in plastic shopping bags until nightfall, when the lot once again will turn into a makeshift outdoor motel.
This is home. Some stay for one night. Others remain for decades, raising children who in turn raise their own children here.
For thousands of people struggling at the bottom of India's working class, this bleak vision and the handful of places like it scattered across New Delhi are 60-cent-a-night refuges.
Every day, thousands of new residents arrive in this constantly growing city, part of a nationwide wave of urbanization bringing tens of millions of migrants from India's poorest states. In New Delhi, most of the new arrivals go into the city's sprawling slums, or into the maze of crumbling concrete neighborhoods where rents are cheap.
But many come here. Even a tin shanty can cost upward of $75 a month in New Delhi, an amount that would take many of the parking lot's residents weeks to earn. Few of them hold regular jobs, or earn more than $4 a day.
Then there are the identity documents that police demand in regular sweeps through the slums. Anyone without proper paperwork, whether an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh or an Indian with excessively tattered documents, faces constant demands for bribes.
The police rarely bother with Meena Bazaar Park No. 2, a place so cheap it largely operates off the legal radar.
The people asleep in the parking lot are day laborers, professional beggars and itinerant peddlers who sell costume jewelry from vinyl suitcases. They are rural dreamers looking for better lives, illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and small-town boys who fled their homes after falling in love with the wrong girls. There are pious Muslims and once-proud men stumbling into opium addiction.
While most residents are men, there are also babies and old people and a litter of puppies huddled in one man's blanket. They warm up by burning piles of garbage, and the stench of charred plastic clings to their clothes.
"I need this place," said Satpal Singh, a 24-year-old who earns $3 a day as a waiter during the city's tumultuous wedding season. "Where am I going to find a house in this city?"
The son of a tenant farmer, Singh came to New Delhi 10 years ago because he couldn't find work in his home village, in a poverty-ravaged area about 100 miles (160 kilometers) away. Like many residents, he spends part of the year in New Delhi, working when he can, and goes back to his home village when the jobs trail off.
If the parking lot doesn't seem much like a home, Singh insisted it's not that bad. "I've been here for a long time, so I'm used to it," he said. Plus: "For just 30 rupees (60 cents) a night I even get a blanket."
It was a cold morning, and Singh spoke with just his head poking out from beneath a thick, cotton quilt. He was strangely oblivious to the cigarette smoke drifting from under the quilt at the foot of the cot.
Eventually, another man's head appeared, the hair greasy and mussed, and a cheap cigarette held between his lips.
It was Mohammed Rasheed, also 24. The two longtime friends share an easy camaraderie, as well as a bed on the coldest nights. It keeps them warmer, and cuts the cost to just 30 cents a person.
It's how things work in the community of migrants.
"I know these people," Singh said, nodding toward the beds around him. "We eat food together. We sleep here together. We know each others' stories."
But few people would choose to live here if they had another choice, particularly the families. Parents have to take young children with them to work, often leaving them to play on construction sites or in alleyways. If there is no money for school, children are often sent to work before they even reach adolescence.
"This is not a place for a family," said Mohammad Muzaffar, who came to the parking lot 15 or 20 years ago — he's not sure how long it's been — and is now raising two toddlers there with his wife, Reshma. But Muzaffar, who works as a wedding-season waiter and a rickshaw driver, has no identity papers. He sees no way to get his family into an apartment.
"We are poor people," Reshma said, explaining why their children will grow up there. "We don't have anything."
No one seems to know how long these outdoor motels have been around. Many of the city's housing advocates do not even know they exist, given the way they disappear after daybreak.
But their need is essential.
With India's surging economy drawing ever more rural residents to its cities, the country's housing shortage has become critical.
A 2010 study by the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that India then faced a shortage of 25 million urban households, a number that could leap to 38 million by 2030. More than 8 million people — or about half of New Delhi's 16.7 million people — are believed to live in slums.
"There isn't a mechanism to house the people who are coming," Ajit Mohan, one of the report's authors, said in an interview. "You have to plan for something like this five, 10 or 15 years in advance, and that's not going on."
Government officials, he said, "haven't embraced affordable housing as something they have to deliver."
So places like the Meena Bazaar camp have sprung up to feed the demand.
In summer, thousands of people crowd New Delhi's outdoor motels. In winter — New Delhi winters get surprisingly cold for such a hot climate, with temperatures sometimes falling to just above freezing — the crowds thin out as people return to their home villages or find warmer places to sleep.
Eventually, the lucky find better places to live. But no matter how many people move out, there are always more ready to move in

For America's "99ers," jobs crisis is hard to escape

Found this article on Yahoo, about two ladies who are among the millions of AMERICAN's who have run out of unemployment benefits and are just hanging on by the skin of their teeth. These are women who worked, and earned, and supported their country, and now through no fault of their own, have been abandoned by the very system they supported for their whole lives, and but for help from relatives, friends, or drawing on savings or the declining value of their homes they would find themselves living in a box or a homeless shelter.
This is not right, yet now the government see's fit to take even these meager benefits away, putting more AMERICAN's out of their homes. It's bad enough that the government is responsible for these AMERICAN's being out of work, but to add insult to injury to all of us, "our leaders" president, congress, senate, and who knows who else, those that raise their own pay, have million dollar pensions and benefits, now say that the meager dollars we all get when our jobs are eliminated by circumstances created by them, or by the corporations and banks that they our "leaders" answer to, are "ENTITLEMENTS."
This is not only unemployment benefits but also social security and medicare. They are entititlements that our "leaders," and even regular people say, SHOULD BE REDUCED or even eliminated!!  I say bullSHIT!!  These are not entitlements and should not be reduced. I, and every person that's worked, unlike our "leaders", have paid for unemployment, social security, medicare, etc., through taxes, and paycheck withdrawals.  I say something we paid good money for is not an entitlement.
If the government needs money, they say they do, but you'd never know it, by all the gifts of multi trillion dollar subsidies and the pay raises they give themselves and their minions, they should cut spending. Stop the wars, bring the military back, reduce the military, etc, cut spending on all the millions of things nobody needs, that just put money in the pockets, or gain re-election of our "leaders."  Anyway on to the article.   Link to the Article


On Thursday July 7, 2011, 3:07 pm EDT



By Alexandra Alper

Unemployed operations manager Mary Kay Coyne
 unfurls a U.S. flag on the front porch of her residence
 in Sewell, New Jersey, July 7, 2011.
REUTERS/Tim Shaffer

SEWELL, New Jersey (Reuters) - Mary Kay Coyne has just filed what she says is her 1,862nd job application since being thrown out of work three years ago.  She is one of millions of Americans whose unemployment benefits have expired -- after 99 weeks in many states -- as the United States suffers its highest level of long-term unemployment since 1948.
Coyne had to move in with a friend after benefit payments ran out last year. Now she gets by on Medicaid -- U.S. health insurance for the poor -- and food stamps, contributing what little she can to her friend's household costs.
"You're 56-years old and you feel like you are sitting on a big pile of nothing," said Coyne, who spends about four hours a day sending out resumes.
"For the better part of a year, I have something sitting on my chest. It's not a medical condition. It is that pressure of 'Is this going to end, when is this going to end?'"
Unlike in much of Europe, the safety net of the U.S. welfare system times out for the long-term unemployed. The federal government and many states have provided extra help for those caught up in the worst labor market in decades but the U.S. debt crisis rules out further extension of the programs.
Coyne is typical of many middle-class Americans now struggling to get by.
She used to earn $70,000 a year as an administrative assistant until her firm began to downsize and left Coyne among the growing number of Americans struggling to live on unemployment benefits, and eventually on minimal food aid.
Now Washington is considering cuts to social welfare programs to shrink a swelling budget deficit.
It may not only be Americans like Coyne who feel the pain. Some economists say the cuts could make it even harder to shrink long-term unemployment that damages the wider economy by dampening consumer demand and lowering output.
In 2010, an estimated 3.9 million unemployed Americans exhausted unemployment benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group that campaigns for lower-wage workers.
More than 14 percent of the U.S. unemployed have been out of a job for 99 weeks, or longer.
The Labor Department’s report on Friday showed that the unemployment rate climbed to a six-month high of 9.2 percent in June.
Many so-called "99ers" subsist on social services like food stamps and Medicaid, programs now in danger of deep cuts demanded by many Republicans in Congress in exchange for allowing the federal government to go deeper into debt.
"An increase in demand for social services is what you would expect in a downturn of this magnitude and so the fact that they are cutting the social safety net is quite perplexing," said Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "We've just never seen (long-term unemployment) at these levels, period."
Forty six percent of those looking for work have been jobless for six months or more and the average length of job searches that eventually result in a hiring has doubled to 10 weeks between 2007 and 2010.


NO MORE SHOPPING TRIPS


Cindy Paoletti had no idea she would still be unemployed more than three years after being laid off by JPMorgan Chase.
The 59-year-old accountant -- who volunteered to be laid off to care for her dying father --- now survives on loans borrowed against the falling value of her home, Medicaid and food stamps.
"By the end of the month we are down to practically nothing in the house," she says.
The $200 in food aid she now receives each month goes furthest when spent on frozen vegetables and potatoes.
That's a far cry from Paoletti's lifestyle as a 23-year veteran at JPMorgan.
Although on a modest annual salary of $34,000, Paoletti went shopping, dined out with friends, smoked cigarettes and traveled each year to visit friends around the country.
That all changed after her severance package ran out.
"I stay home all the time," says Paoletti, who has given up smoking to save money and has found new ways of spending her spare time. "I work in the yard or play with the dog."
Paoletti says she has all but given up finding a job.
"I just got so discouraged," she said. "You apply for jobs online and you get an email the same day saying this job is no longer available."
The long-term unemployed have a tougher time than others landing a job. In 2010, someone unemployed for less than five weeks was three times more likely to get a job than someone unemployed for 27 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.


DEMAND SURGES FOR FOOD STAMPS

Just as the United States prepares to tighten its belt and deal with its fiscal crisis, demand for key aid programs has never been higher.
The number of Americans signed up for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) -- which provides food stamps -- has reached its highest level since it began in 1939. One in seven Americans now receive aid from the program.
Medicaid enrollment as of 2010 surpassed 68.2 million, its highest level in the program's history.
Cuts to these programs now seem inevitable as states struggle to plug budget gaps and lawmakers on Capital Hill turn their attention to the budget deficit.
The White House has reportedly agreed to $100 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next 10 years. Some House Republicans want cuts of more than seven times that amount.
Last week, federal stimulus programs providing billions of dollars for state Medicaid programs ran out.
The cuts are piling on the pressure for the long-term unemployed.
Coyne -- who has a chronic thyroid condition -- received notice last month that her New Jersey Medicaid benefits would be cut by $25. That means she will have to skip some doctor visits because she cannot afford to cut down on her medication.
But Coyne worries most about losing her food stamps.
"That would be the kick in the mouth I could not take," she said. "To have to depend on someone completely who is not related to me, that would make me feel awful."
Cuts to the program are being negotiated in Washington. A Republican version of the U.S. budget for 2012 would cut $127 billion -- about 20 percent -- from food stamps over 10 years.
Unemployment benefits are under pressure too. Two federal programs are set to expire in January though unemployed workers receiving emergency benefits may be eligible to draw checks through May.
There are some signs the number of people stuck in long-term unemployment may be easing from its historic highs.
The total number of people on the last available phase of jobless benefits and those exhausting them each month is falling. Economists say seasonal factors may be causing some of the decline.
Stories like Coyne's and Paoletti's make some economists question whether now is the time to cut benefits. Persistently high unemployment should spur more spending to aid the jobless and prop up consumer demand, they say.
Other economists argue the existing benefit system is overly generous and makes Americans too dependent on social services that are untenable at a time of skyrocketing debt.
"The government is not here to ensure whatever standard of living you're at, that you're not going to go below that," said James Sherk, a labor economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "That is just not the purpose of the safety net."
He says the benefit system is flawed because it provides support to the wealthy unemployed who could support themselves for a while without a job. Sherk says the labor market is still too weak to eliminate the federal unemployment extensions. He recommends cutting them to around 70 weeks total.
Coyne hopes government support is only a temporary fix. She keeps applying for jobs despite the hundreds of rejections and tries to keep alive her hopes that she can one day return to work and pay her friend a fair share of their living costs.
"I can curl up on the sofa and cry and pretend that it is going to get better but it is not going to go better unless I make it better."