Corporate greed causes more homelessness than fentanyl does | Opinion

Data shows that most homeless addicts turned to drugs after hitting the streets. Living on a sidewalk, filthy, thirsty and starving is brutal. Escape through drugs is survival for many.

Corporations are huge contributors to homelessness. I was days from my first year anniversary at the national restaurant chain I was working for until now. My sales numbers were great, I never came in late or called off a shift. I had a pocket full of atta boy cards for customer compliments and outstanding numbers. I had won three of the daily sales contests in the previous two weeks, and I am famous for my fierce work ethic.

I have worked 5 or 6 shifts a week for a year and barely made it due to high housing costs. Then I open my schedule app and I have three days and a DBD (Down Business Day. We are expected to show up on those days but if there isn’t enough business I’ll be sent home.) I was scheduled for four days the following week.

Like millions of Americans, I don’t have savings and no way I can make it on three or four shifts a week. They gave me no notice to get another job or find resources before we crash and burn onto a Lexington, Kentucky sidewalk, where being homeless is a crime, and they ain’t playin.

I went to talk to my boss about my schedule. I asked her what I had done to have my hours cut in half. “Oh it isn’t anything you did or we would have been talking.” “You just hired four people and gave them my shifts. Why?” “They aren’t your shifts,” she said. “We have some people leaving and it’s just for the good of the company.”

I was speechless. So I’m not part of the company? My survival is not factored into the equation? If I financially crash and can’t raise our rent, due on Monday, we are now breaking the law and in danger of entering the for profit criminal justice system. We will lose what’s left of what we own, as well as owing fines and having a record — for the good of the company.

This is corporate America. When they say “company” they mean the stockholders. I was just a number on a spreadsheet — employee #159.

Sadly, that corporation is circling the drain towards bankruptcy with 58,000 employees in danger of also having their job go away in the loading of an app.

Blaming Fentanyl makes people feel better about criminalizing homelessness, but it punishes victims of abuse, corporate greed and natural disasters, as well as the mentally ill.

We’ve had flooding and tornadoes in Kentucky in the past months, and businesses closing in several industries. How can we possibly justify criminalizing being unhoused?

The Walton Family of Walmart fame is one of the richest in the country yet more of their employees are receiving SNAP benefits than any other company because they can’t afford to feed their families. Again — not Fentanyl. It’s corporate greed.

I worked for Amazon during Covid. It was inhumane, demeaning and unsustainable. Rachel Maddow did a special on how Amazon had abused so many workers that they were struggling to man their warehouses.

Please stop blaming homelessness on Fentanyl and vote for politicians who support workers rights, living wages and every human’s right to be housed. The out of control Fentanyl walking dead are just the most visible of the population of humans dying on our streets, right before our eyes. Any one of us could be next.

Denise Martin is the creator of Domes4Homes and an advocate for the poor.

This story was originally published April 11, 2024 at 1:39 PM.