Answer lies in living wage campaign.

• Position: Occupy Wall Street

As Americans across the country camp out to protest economic inequality, Richard Troxell, a National Coalition for the Homeless board member and author of Looking Up at the Bottom Line: The Struggle for the Living Wage, offers a rallying cry for Occupy Wall Street: replace the Federal minimum wage with a universal living wage that is proportionate to the cost of living where an individual resides and works. It would allow anyone working 40 hours a week to afford at least an efficiency apartment. It is a concept that already is in use by the U.S. military.

"The problem is that, in any U.S. city, the minimum wage isn't enough to support a full-time worker," Troxell points out. "Housing costs in major metropolitan areas are far beyond the reach of minimum wage earners, and once someone gets a job, [he or she] no longer qualifies for support programs!' This year, 3,500,000 people will experience homelessness, Troxell notes. The Federal government says 42% of them work at some point during the week. They are among the nation's 10,100,000 minimum wage workers.

The universal living wage calls for increasing the Federal minimum wage for 10 years. Each year, the wage would increase by one-tenth the amount needed to afford basic rental housing in each geographic area, as determined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development Fair Market Rents.

"Homeless minimum wage workers would be able to find jobs and housing, and feed themselves...