We at the Homeless Voice are establishing a new subscriber list in the event of an financial emergency. What is a financial emergency and what does it mean to you and to us? Most of you all know we take the most chronic homeless individuals, We take the ones that have been rejected by our government shelters and the ones who are very hard to handle because of severe mental illness or a person who has severe seizures and just can’t stay settled where they can meet the requirements of a county shelter. Government shelters only give you a certain period of time to get your act together and, well, how can we expect a person to get their act together in a period of time when science and medicine can't always do that.

Funded shelters have very strict rules on who they can take, we don't. Most of you also know the reason why we can take the hardest of the hardest cases is because we and you fund our shelter system. This is great, we can buy what we need now not five months later trying to get approval. We can do outreach in the street and find a way to help them right then and there. We can do all of these great things because of you all who donate money to us allowing us to continue to treat the most difficult cases in the community. However there are some down sides as well.

We have always saved money for emergencies in case it rained for a month or two straight where we would only sell half the amount of papers per month. We’ve even saved money in case we had two bad hurricanes and the streets were blocked for several weeks where trees and other debris would block the streets from traffic.

Now comes the next problem. We also have saved for a month or two for a simple pandemic where I felt it was in the best interest of our vendors and the community not to have our vendors out in the street where they might get sick or pass their own sickness off to an unsuspecting person wanting to donate to us. We could actually survive for about four months without one cent coming into the shelter. Also we can’t forget in the time of a true pandemic where it is so bad that many other people would also be out of work and may not be able to give to our group. This swine flu I was watching the kill ratio and the amount of people in Florida who were infected so I could start our own procedure of pulling the vendors off the street, A lot of people do not realize money is dirty and we have to count all this money coming into the building. Sure we could be safe counting the money because we would use masks and other equipment to make the money safe but our vendors would be risking their lives to bring in the donations and that is something I did not want them to do if it was a bad pandemic. First we can stop reading this story right now and take a break and thank the good Lord for such a weak virus. So let’s say it together, THANK YOU GOD FOR KEEPING US SAFE.

Most of you know that I have been trying to educate as many people as I could with our own paper telling each and every one of you to be prepared and to be prepared for months and in some cases for up to eight months. It is called social disruption and with social disruption food is not always at Publix and jobs are not always available and that also means charities and churches are at risk of going out of business. In fact with so much turmoil charities and churches do not even want to ask for money at the time of a major crisis where thousands will lose their lives. Sure we do it for disasters but doing it for a pandemic is going to be difficult for most of us who depend on your support. It is not right unless we are out there in the field spending thousands on helping others get food and supplies.

What I wanted to do was to secure our supporters emails in case there was a major issue such as a pandemic where we could reach out and send an email to each supporter for them to please send in their $2.00 donation each and every month we are not on the streets. Each and every month we sell between 80,000 to 100,000 papers and if a very bad pandemic hit us and we were not selling our papers we could survive. The government has already instructed businesses to keep money saved for a pandemic so they can continue to serve people and to pay their staff. We have a very detailed plan on how to cut costs and cut our own expenses where we could cut our budget down from the 100,000 a month to about 65,000 a month where we could survive even longer but that is the lowest possible budget we can live on.

Please understand we will not use this email system unless it is an extreme emergency, however you may want to send in your one time donation today so we can plan even better. You can send in a one time donation today for $16.00- this would allow us to run for the worst type disaster for a period of up to eight months. If you want to send in your donation today please see the below instructions.

Before I go, please even if you do not wish to help us reach these goals or you just can't help us now please remember the need for you and your family to be fully prepared in case there is a pandemic is essential. Please each and every month stock up on supplies and if you are prepared you will not have to panic. Please go to our Pandemic web site at:

PandemicBirdFlu.ws

COSAC EMERGENCY FUND
P.O. Box 292-577 Davie, Florida 33329

THANK YOU AGAIN LORD FOR SUCH A WEAK FLU!