I have a room for rent right now that I can't rent out. Even when I advertise I don't get callers. It is for $250 a month in a place with low incomes. I would even lower the price a bit for a clean, sober, hard-working single woman.

Landlords who are slumlords should be prosecuted. However, there are so many social ills that you have to put up with and so many laws that screw the landlord, and I was one for most of my adult life that modest income people are driven out because you will be ruined, as I was, by bad tenants. You will often get good ones in, and they have these dufus sons or brothers they will sneak in and the good tenants will leave. I could tell you many stories. I only have my house now and rent out two rooms in it and I am scared to death to advertise for fear of who I will get. So there need to be provisions for the mentally handicapped people, and there need to be high security situations for the violent people and also their victims. There also needs to be some straightening out of the sordid social mess that we have now. It can be done. That is the first step, believing it can be done. Part of the problem is women and the creepy men syndrome. Oh but he loves me when he isn't drinking and bashing my head in. Oh but he wouldn't do that when he is molesting my 12 year old daughter. Oh but I have to let my meth addicted son live with me and steal from my neighbors to support his habit....

There is way more to poverty than a lack of money...what causes what? It doesn't matter. It all causes more. There are places to break the cycle. One is the drug situation. One is the creepy men situation. One is the out of wedlock children situation.... straighten out one thing and lots more fall into place.

A shortage of clothing, bedding, furniture, cars....can be taken care of in America where we have surplus of all of that..not good ways of distributing used goods but we are getting there with freecycle etc. We are going down the wrong road in a lot of pathological ways though and will reap the whirlwind....mg