Media
Eddie “EB” Barber
STORY OF HELPING
As you may have heard, since the pandemic up to as many as 70% of the folks still working
work from home. What you probably haven’t heard is the story of how working from home became legal. Chances are that unless you were trying to work from home prior to the mid 1990’s, you probably never even knew it was ever illegal to work from home. Here’s the story of how one of America’s (and the world’s) norms came to be.
Prior to the early to mid 1990’s it was literally illegal to work from home in most of America
with a very few exceptions:
If you worked on a farm or ranch
If you worked for a church
or in some rare instances
If you had a store or business on the 1st
floor you could live above it
In 1989 I lost my business/building in Hollywood and became homeless living in my car
until I figured out how to lease a home with credit cards. Within a year I was busted by the City of LA for working from home, so I moved. Then within a year I got busted again, this time I started a “Neighborhood Watch” program in an effort to go from being the person complained about to being the person being complained to. But then was busted again. There was this guy from LA “Building and Safety” that would come by to write me citations for being in violation of LA Zoning laws. I remember telling him it was crazy that I couldn’t work from my home and him telling me “This is the way it is, this is the way it has always been, this is the way it will always be and there is nothing you can do about it”.
So I began trying to lobby the Los Angeles City Council Members and the Mayor’s office. Unfortunately, there were many, many gate keepers, you couldn’t just go to city hall and ask to see the Mayor (trust me, I tried on several occasions). Writing letters didn’t help much either.
Ironically, being a director cameraman I seemed to be in the loop for shooting campaign ads
for folks in smaller cities around southern California that were running for public office. This gave me face time access to newly elected Mayors and City Council members open to an out of the box thinker such as myself.
Within a very short time my pitch (along with charts, graphs and testimonials…
1. According to the LAPD, there is less
crime in residences were folks work from home as burglars don’t like to
break-in to places where there’s activity.
2. According to the LAFD, there are
fewer house fires when people work from home as most house fires are from
people leaving in a hurry to get to work and forgetting to turn off stoves,
ovens curling irons and other appliances.
3. According to both FedEx and UPS about
30-40% of the folks in my neighborhood are working from home. If all those people were to get into their
cars and drive to work, smog, traffic, congestion crime and fires would be
much, much worse!
4. Lastly, if “Stay at home Mom’s” (and
dads) had to stop working from home and were forced to put their kids in day
care, many couldn’t afford it and would have to go on public assistance.
…was helping
make it legal to work from home around Southern California).
Also ironically, you could (as I did) literally go to the City of Los Angeles, apply
for a business license, pay the fees and within about a month or so, they would
show up at the address you had given and bust/fine you for working from home!
Then in 1995 some AMAZING things happened. 1st I was somehow able to turn/flip LA City Council Woman Laura Chick (who went on to become the LA City Controller and then the California Attorney General under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger), then we got CNN involved. They said I was “an in home outlaw” (which really freaked out my Mom in North Carolina when she saw the CNN News story), when they interviewed me, I said “I think it’s totally ridicules that the President of the United States can work out of his home, but I can’t”, they also interviewed LA City Council Woman Laura Chick, then they ambushed LA Mayor Richard Riordan, played him my interview as well as Chick’s, then interviewed him.
Amazingly he was immediately on-board (guess it was the CNN camera or light or mic or Reporter, or perhaps the planets just finally aliened for us), CNN ran the story, every TV station in LA picked up and reran the story.
CNN News
link (copy and paste in Google search):
With-in about 2 months the LA City Council introduced a “Home Occupations ordinance” making it legal to “Work from Home”. It passed overwhelmingly 14 to 1, the only council member to vote against it was LA Councilman Nate Holden. When I spoke with him
later, he told me he wasn’t against the new ordinance; he was against that it wasn’t specific enough.
Then Mayor Riordan gave me amnesty for all my fines, penalties and interest AND invited me
to speak at a “Luncheon”. But it wasn’t just any luncheon, it was a luncheon for a National Mayor’s Association were I was able to speak and get my message in front of a few hundred Mayors, City Council Members and City Controllers from across the country!
I received a standing ovation, and then upon returning to my seat I was inundated by Mayors,
City Council Members and City Controllers from across the country giving me
their business cards and wanting me to help them get the laws changed in their
cities. Within about two years we were able to make it legal to work from home (with some restrictions) pretty much anywhere in the country!
Here are the savings numbers (in addition to saving countless lives):
In 1995 (a mid point) there were approximately 266M people living in America. Now there are approximately 334M or an average of approximately 300M since 1995.
According to Google, approximately 60% of those folks work. Of those 180M that work, about half work from home. Also according to Google the average saving to someone working from home (just in transportation, not to mention man hours) is $4K.
That means that helping get this one law changed has saved countless lives, and Americans
(300M x .60 = 180M x .50 = 90M x $4K/year = $360B/year x 27 years = $9.72T) more
than $TEN TRILLION DOLLARS when adjusted for inflation.
Possible Homeless Solutions
As I am sure you know, the homeless situation in Los Angeles is out of control. Recent news reports put the number of homeless in LA at more than 75K. With mental illness a key cause, this proposal may not help everyone, but could definitely help tens of thousands turn from liabilities back into productive contributors to society. This is more of a Teach folks to fish versus give folks a fish, or Give them a “Hand-Up” versus a
“Hand-out” approach.
Estimates for Tiny Homes are all over the place. Per Google, these range from $8K each up to about $150K each (plus land, utilities and staff), and shelters average $62 per day, and hotels as much as $125 per day per person with no end or real sustainable solution in site.
The purpose of this proposal is to help create a doable way to turn this liability into a sustainable solution by:
1. Create a Team to address the issues and help implement doable solutions (Homelessness Solutions Task Force, of which I would love to be a member).
2. Utilize and provide funding for organizations that have already been housing and rehabilitating previous homeless as well as offer incentives for others to offer similar services.
3. Utilize empty LA City & County Properties as well as offer tax incentives to owners of empty buildings that can be used as temporary live/work/rehabilitation shelters allowing for a 2-3 month vacate agreement. (Utilizing “Desk Beds”, portable showers and kitchens)
4. Make living where you work legal (just like the laws I was instrumental in getting changed making it legal to work from home, see other attachment “Story of Helping get Laws Changed to make it Legal to Work From Home”). Lobby City Council Members, the Mayor and other City, County (and state) Officials to get them on board to help implement this plan.
5. Utilize Volunteer psychology Students as well as other groups like DMH and the Mayor’s Crisis Response Team to help with the Psychological element of this endeavor. Also support and engage in revolutionary new clinical trials in new treatments (like Psilocybin, I HIGHLY recommend anyone interested in solving homelessness watch the Netflix documentary “How to Change your Mind”) for many of the conditions that plague the homeless.
6. Implement an educational training program teaching the homeless skills that will enable them to help design, manufacture, market and sell products and services of companies wanting to utilize this program (mine for one). They can even help make “Tiny Homes”.
7. Find or create exemptions in laws allowing for a fees and commissions scale for the above, similar to exemptions in minimum wage laws regarding the handicapped. (allow folks to work for whatever they can get)
The team will interview, evaluate and identify members of the homeless community that seem to be viable candidates for a pilot program (hopefully between 15 to 50 or more). After an initial input of funds from the City, County, State (or all 3), the income created from the endeavor should make the program self-sufficient and infinitely scalable.
We know not all homeless will be open to help. Therefore, we should offer the following choices:
1. Sign up for a program similar to the one outlined above.
2. Be relocated (tent, trailer/RV & all) to a Homeless Camp with reasonable facilities (showers, restrooms, counseling,
security etc.)
3. Self-relocate elsewhere out of Los Angeles (Assistance may be available).
But they can’t just continue to squat and be a public nuisance. For more information, or
to discuss, volunteer or contribute,
Please contact: Eddie Barber @ 818-640-7775, email: BarberEddie@gmail.com
Another great reason for supporting the Eddie Barber Foundation:
There are often catastrophic catastrophes that happen to us. Here is an example of one such event that could have been much, much less severe had Eddie Barber had the appropriate resources to intervene and been able to implement his later confirmed (by former BP workers) solution.
April 20, 2010 Deep-water Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico:
I was watching the news when I saw a report about an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A couple of weeks later I saw another story, this time showing a video of the oil leak from a submersible at the ocean floor with images of oil spewing out and dissipating into a funnel shape heading up toward the surface. I immediately came up with a basic concept to solve the problem and began researching the variables to see if it was practical as well as to make it work.
Problems:
#1 It’s about 5,000 feet (about a mile) down below the surface.
#2 It’s freezing cold, temperatures between 32-37 degrees Fahrenheit.
#3 Pressure is about 1 ton per square inch.
I very quickly realized that the “Cap it” dialogue I was hearing all over the news
sounded like a very difficult and backwards idea.
I figured that they drilled the well in the 1st place to harvest the oil, so why try to plug it? At those depths, those temperatures and those pressures, “Capping” it sounded extremely difficult (if not impossible), and a bit crazy! Why not just capture the oil and redirect it to tanker ships at the surface?
After a bit more research I formulated this solution:
1. Get a large “off-the-shelf” Feed Bin top (approximately 15 to 20 feet in diameter).
2. Cut out an approximately 3-5 foot hole in the top.
3. Coat the underside with a non-sticky surface (like Teflon)
4. Also install a “Heat Coil” to help keep the captured oil from freezing and clogging the feed bin funnel, as well as weights around the bottom rim that will help keep it weighted to the ocean floor once in place.
5. Attach a large (3 to 5 foot diameter) flexible hose (think fire fighter exhaust hose) to the opening on top of the feed bin top.
6. Use the 3 on site submersibles to lower the contraption down to the leak adding more and more of the flexible hose until it reaches the leak, then add buoys to keep the top of the hose floating on the surface.
7. Use the 3 submersibles to triangulate the Contraption over the oil leak and lower it into position.
8. Pull empty oil tankers up beside the top of the hose and begin pumping the water out of the hose and back into the ocean.
9. Once the oil begins to reach the top of the hose (Surface), switch the pump hose over to one of the tankers.
10.Once that tanker is full, switch the pump over to the 2nd tanker, replace the 1st tanker with a 3rd, repeat until the well is dry.
This solution should have been able to be implemented in less than 1 week and should have cost less than about $100K (along with the utilization of equipment and personnel already on site).
But because of my inability to get this information (solution) to the right people (Trust me, I tried tirelessly for months), the cost was:
Approximately 150K sea turtles killed
82K birds
26K marine mammals
In all about 1M wildlife were killed
Cost to BP (British Petroleum) approximately $65B-$85 Billion
We’ll never know when the next catastrophe may happen, however with your help, we can definitely be much, much better prepared when it does!
More great reasons to support the Eddie Barber Foundation:
Having grown
up in North Carolina (a Tobacco State) in the 60’s and 70’s, and having even
worked on tobacco farms and in tobacco warehouses as a teenager, I was never a fan. Yet it seemed that just about everyone else was. Both my parents (now
deceased), and my two sisters smoked.
In 1979 when I traveled (as a Photo-Journalist) with the Governor of NC James B. Hunt as part of a Trade Delegation to China and Japan, he (Governor Hunt) and I were the only members of the group that didn’t smoke.
So when I moved to Los Angeles in 1983, I was quite thrilled to see that only a small fraction of the population smoked compared to North Carolina. Additionally, I was thrilled to learn of LA City Councilman Marvin Braude and his attempt at a “Smoking Ban” just a decade earlier.
Together (the whole team) we worked at getting Smoking banned on airplanes, in Public places, in restaurants, and eventually even in Bars. I was equally thrilled to see those bans spread thought-out the world. Today, over 70 countries have “smoke-free” policies that cover all indoor places. You can only imagine the number of lives those efforts have saved as well as time, money, pain and suffering.
