Music From A Homeless Shelter:
This is one of the first movies I ever made. I made it on my laptop using Photoshop and Garageband software while living iat the Westside homeless veterans shelter in Inglewood, CA. It is a song about all the (sometimes funny, sometimes creepy) restrictions and mandatory activities required of the veteran to live at this federally funded nonprofit corporate warehouse for our military veterans.
Westside is run by U.S. Vets, INC, which has other homeless shelter business entities in Hawaii, Houston, Nevada, Washington and 8 or 9 other locations. U.S. Vets IS one of the better homeless shelter businesses in the biz (the 'biz' being receiving government grants in the form of per diems (the government pays $29 per head-per-bed) AND THEN charging the homeless person rent).
I think the worst shelter I was in was a church shelter in Redondo Beach. It was a converted garage with lice-embedded WWI army cots on a dirt floor in an aromatic 15 x 15 clapboard room that housed 10 or 15 bums elbow to elbow. They made us shower with a low-pressure garden hose, mop floors or do other kitchen duty and ACTUALLY sing for our supper. Ahyup, sing for our supper ... at the "I'm-a-lousy-bum" sermon church meetings.
As with most homeless shelters, they kicked you out early every morning and made you requalify for entrance every evening. After a certain period, this shelter expected the bum to sign up for Camp Hell, a gaggle of log cabins out in the Los Angeles National Forest where bums had to chop wood all day for their supper.
This is what made Camp Hi N Dry (Westside) one of the better shelters. All they wanted you to do (besides the myriad of meetings and community service to pay for the crime of homelessness) was stay sober and get a job in 90 days (or get the hell out in 30 minutes if caught drinking or shirking!).
PATH (People Assisting The Homeless) is another corporate entity in the shelter business. They make the bum work and hold his money from him for a year. Other shelters have chain gangs (they contract labor out their bums).
Westside wasn't so bad, but you've got to be an Ironweed like me to be able to stay there very long (I was there 2 years). It's no Club Med, believe me! It's hard and often degrading, but whatcha gonna do? Go back to living in a refrigerator box on Los Angeles Street or sleeping in the back seat of an old Buick Electra?
They've got veterans from Vietnam to Iraq there. All kinds and branches: Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. A lot of them are there because America ( fat, lazy, government bureaucrats ) failed them when they came back from serving their country. Westside is where a veteran goes AFTER living on the street a while.
I have fond memories of that stalag.
This is one of the first movies I ever made. I made it on my laptop using Photoshop and Garageband software while living iat the Westside homeless veterans shelter in Inglewood, CA. It is a song about all the (sometimes funny, sometimes creepy) restrictions and mandatory activities required of the veteran to live at this federally funded nonprofit corporate warehouse for our military veterans.
Westside is run by U.S. Vets, INC, which has other homeless shelter business entities in Hawaii, Houston, Nevada, Washington and 8 or 9 other locations. U.S. Vets IS one of the better homeless shelter businesses in the biz (the 'biz' being receiving government grants in the form of per diems (the government pays $29 per head-per-bed) AND THEN charging the homeless person rent).
I think the worst shelter I was in was a church shelter in Redondo Beach. It was a converted garage with lice-embedded WWI army cots on a dirt floor in an aromatic 15 x 15 clapboard room that housed 10 or 15 bums elbow to elbow. They made us shower with a low-pressure garden hose, mop floors or do other kitchen duty and ACTUALLY sing for our supper. Ahyup, sing for our supper ... at the "I'm-a-lousy-bum" sermon church meetings.
As with most homeless shelters, they kicked you out early every morning and made you requalify for entrance every evening. After a certain period, this shelter expected the bum to sign up for Camp Hell, a gaggle of log cabins out in the Los Angeles National Forest where bums had to chop wood all day for their supper.
This is what made Camp Hi N Dry (Westside) one of the better shelters. All they wanted you to do (besides the myriad of meetings and community service to pay for the crime of homelessness) was stay sober and get a job in 90 days (or get the hell out in 30 minutes if caught drinking or shirking!).
PATH (People Assisting The Homeless) is another corporate entity in the shelter business. They make the bum work and hold his money from him for a year. Other shelters have chain gangs (they contract labor out their bums).
Westside wasn't so bad, but you've got to be an Ironweed like me to be able to stay there very long (I was there 2 years). It's no Club Med, believe me! It's hard and often degrading, but whatcha gonna do? Go back to living in a refrigerator box on Los Angeles Street or sleeping in the back seat of an old Buick Electra?
They've got veterans from Vietnam to Iraq there. All kinds and branches: Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. A lot of them are there because America ( fat, lazy, government bureaucrats ) failed them when they came back from serving their country. Westside is where a veteran goes AFTER living on the street a while.
I have fond memories of that stalag.
