And not to piss on the Occupy Seattle folks, okay maybe a little, but they are mostly newly poor while long term poor folks have it much worse.

Housing is a human right. Full stop. When we leave it to charity to fix the sucking black hole that is our lack of a safety net, then we end up with people camping in front of the Gates Foundation and being ignored.

The Gates Foundation has done good work, there are 100,000 fewer AIDS cases in Africa because of that work, and according to the Gates Foundation there are 1400 affordable homes for local families because of their donations. But it ain’t enough and it can never be enough. The only reason the Gates Foundation has all that money to give is because of fucked up tax policies that benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.