Your Profit Is Our Pain
- Crystal Sanchez
- Jul 30, 2025
- 2 min read
By Crystal Sanchez, Western Regional Co-Director for The National Union of the Homeless, President of Sacramento Homeless Union
3/24/2025
Count the dollars that you make
From each tent that you forsake—
Eighty bucks per empty bed
While we sleep on concrete, dead.
Your shelter-industrial scheme
Profits from our broken dream.
Million-dollar contracts flow
To "fix" the crisis that you grow.
Empty offices reach highWhile your "programs" pass us by.
You build your empires on our backs,
Then label us the ones who lack.
Ten years of "emergency"—
Your business opportunity.
Each "sweep" brings funding to your door
While we get beaten, blamed, and more.
You call it "services provided"
While human rights remain divided.
Your "navigation centers" rise
Like prisons touching troubled skies.
Two toilets for a hundred souls,
While you collect your payroll rolls.
You say there's "shelter" when we call,
But waiting lists become our wall.
We see through your bureaucracy,
Your forms of new hypocrisy.
While billions flow through city halls,
Our people freeze behind your walls.
Your "housing first" became last place,
Your "help" a mask on profits' face.
But we're not numbers in your game,
Not statistics you can tame.
We're humans rising from these streets,
Our Union growing with heartbeats.
Your industry of homeless pain Won't break our will to fight again.
From Sacramento's burning ground
To every profit-poisoned town,
We stand together, proud and strong,
Exposing every systemic wrong.
Your complex built on others' grief
Will fall before our disbelief.
So count your dollars while you can,
Your "homeless services" grand plan.
Our power grows with every lie,
With every budget you deny.
The truth breaks through your money wall:
United people cannot fall.
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The part about sweeps bringing funding “to your door” while folks get hurt is brutal, and it rings true in how incentives get set up: the system gets paid for churn, not for stability. I also appreciated how it refuses the “statistics you can tame” framing — it’s a pushback on being managed instead of housed. Weirdly, it reminded me of how easy it is to generate polished images in imgg while the real-world mess stays unresolved; the contrast makes the poem land even harder.
That line about “ten years of ‘emergency’” really hits — it’s wild how the crisis becomes a permanent budget line item while people are still sleeping outside. The poem’s rhythm keeps circling back to the same point: paperwork and “programs” don’t mean much when the basics (toilets, safety, an actual room) aren’t there. Side note, the whole “counting dollars per bed” framing made me think of this site — different context, but the same uneasy feeling of reducing real lives to a tidy calculation.
The “one winner each month” setup is motivating, but I wonder if you’ve thought about a small runner-up shoutout so more people feel seen (even if it’s just reposting a couple entries). I was organizing my stash by season recently and went down a rabbit hole on personal styling inspiration — it made me realize how much a quick example photo can guide people on what you’re looking for. A couple sample unboxing shots (flat lay vs video vs finished project) would probably boost entries a lot.
The prize options are actually nice (refund vs roll over vs store credit), but the “rules and exclusion” section could be formatted a bit clearer so people don’t miss the active subscriber part. Side note: I was browsing hrefgo the other day and it reminded me how much clearer things feel when each requirement is its own bullet with a short header. Would be cool if you also clarified whether Stories count or it has to be a feed post.