recession
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15% Hungry in America
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Jobless Rates Soar to 10.2 Percent
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Faith-Based Organizations Must Reinforce Our Safety Net
The Audacity of Home
Published November 20, 2009 @ 09:12AM PT
If there were ever a time for the Obama Administration to fulfill its promise of restoring Hope for America, re-prioritizing the promise of "a Home for all" is the ideal start. The sum of our devastating housing and economic crisis, combined with the recent findings from the international human rights community, prove that there is no better time to move housing to the top of the federal policy agenda.
Today, I'm taking a step back. Away from the details in the news, away from the constant flow of comments, the banter. Today I want to talk about something so simple, so basic that most of us take it for granted.
Home.
A Home is a basic necessity. Something so basic that it's easy to forget. We see homeless people, we hear about programs designed to serve them, we read the news of the worsening crisis. Yet we're desensitized to the severe psychological implications of not having a home. We're numb.
A Home helps to ensure safety, health, and well-being. It is our base, a place we can always return to. We identify with our Home - with the structure we live in, the town and state it's in, the schools it's near. A Home is safety, it is opportunity. For many people, it is even identity. It is not far-fetched to say that our ability to hope is directly related to having a Home.
Are Storage Units Modern-Day Carboard Boxes?
Published October 29, 2009 @ 10:30AM PT
Somewhere along the line, the cardboard box became synonymous with homelessness. But today, these old stereotypes are changing as our modern-era homeless population grows and utilizes existing resources. Today, many homeless individuals and families are taking shelter in storage units.
An article in last week's Chicago Tribune told the story of a family living in a storage unit. It's not a new phenomenon; similar stories have been reported out of Hawaii and Maryland. At $179/month, the price is certainly right. And as I wrote back in March, storage units beat the dangers of the street, the rules of shelters, and the stigma of tent cities for people who are newly homeless.
Still - it's ironic, isn't it? Storage units exist because people have too much stuff. So much stuff, in fact, that we can't even squeeze it into our houses or apartments. Yet, at the same time, homelessness is at an all-time high in many cities. What does this say about us a society, about the enormous gap between the rich and the poor?
Have we come to value "stuff" more than we value people?
Crisis Looming for NYC Homeless System
Published October 16, 2009 @ 10:37AM PT
The New York City homeless shelter population has hit an all-time high. Over 120,000 people sought shelter in NYC during the past year and 39,000 homeless people check into NYC shelters each night. With cold weather on the horizon, the number of people seeking shelter inevitable increases. What will this mean for a city already struggling to meet the current need?
This new information comes from a report published this week by the Coalition for the Homeless, a NYC homeless advocacy group. It said that the city has not seen such high levels of homelessness since the Great Depression. These alarming numbers come despite Mayor Bloomberg's commitment to ending homelessness "as we know it" back in 2004. Despite this commitment, the Coalition points out that homelessness has increased 45 percent since Bloomberg took office eight years ago.
Then again, pointing fingers during a time like this is useless. New York City has a crisis on its hands. If shelters were filled to the brim at the end of the summer, it's unsettling to think about the possibility of running out of shelter space come winter. This is not a far-fetched possibility, given that cold weather often sends people to shelters in droves.
Stop squabbling - politics can wait. It's time to start thinking about how to save lives this winter.
Crowds Clamor in Detroit for Homeless Prevention Funds
Published October 08, 2009 @ 08:46AM PT
Yesterday, thousands of individuals swarmed to downtown Detroit and spent the day standing in long lines. American Idol tryouts? Health care rally? Try again. These individuals were in line to fill out an application for a shot at homeless prevention funds.
Detroit has bore the brunt of the nation's economic woes. The city's foreclosure rate is among the nation's highest, and 25 percent of the cities residents are currently unemployed, according to the AP. So it's no wonder that so many people who are on the cusp of homelessness came out in droves yesterday for a shot at keeping their home.
Still, desperate times call for desperate measures, and "desperate" seems to describe the overwhelming feeling of the crowds outside the Cobo center yesterday. From the AP:
Scuffles erupted as several thousand Detroit residents jockeyed, pushed and shoved Wednesday to get free money being offered to only 3,500 of the city's recently or soon to be homeless.
Several received medical treatment for fainting or exhaustion while frantically trying to obtain the applications for federal housing assistance. The long lines and short tempers highlighted the frustration and desperation that Detroit residents feel struggling through an economic nightmare.
By the end of the day, 50,000 applications had been distributed for the 3,500 assistance emergency grants to be distributed. With so many people hurting in one city, Detroit's HPRP homeless prevention funds very well could be providing more false hope than help.
That said, if these funds keep 3,500 people in their homes, that is certainly a worthy and critical use of stimulus funds. Still - I worry. Without any plans for an influx of jobs, could these prevention funds simply be delaying the inevitable?
Below: images from the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit.
Images from @unitedwayjohn and the Associated Press.
Deep Budget Cuts in D.C. May Close Shelters
Published October 05, 2009 @ 02:09PM PT
City officials in Washington D.C. have slashed $20 million dollars from the city's homeless services budget, simultaneously leaving a gaping hole the city's safety net. Local advocates say that these funds are not restored, hundreds of families, individuals, and children will end up on the streets in a matter of weeks.
The cuts -- announced last week by the Fenty administration -- has left D.C. homeless advocates shocked and outraged. Many felt blind-sighted by the announcement, while others are overwhelmed at what the cuts will mean for the area's safety net.
So what does a $20 million dollar slash in Washington D.C. homeless service budgets look like? Here are the projections from a statement prepared by a coalition of D.C. homeless service providers:
- More than 100 families in temporary and transitional shelters are at risk of being removed.
- 480 women would face eviction; about half of whom are housed by Catholic Charities.
- Shelter providers will be forced to reduce the number of people served.
- The waiting list for shelter beds would increase. In July, at least 285 families D.C. families were on the waiting list for homeless shelters, a number that kept growing as unemployment increased over the summer.
It is unfathomable that, during a time when the need is so great, the city would even think about touching these lifesaving services. Many providers have difficulty meeting the needs of people even with level funding.
Amidst all of the uncertainties, one thing is clear: If $20 million in funding is not restored to homeless service providers, Washington D.C.'s safety net is in serious jeopardy.
Image from Daquella_Manera's public Flickr stream.
Is the National Surge in Homeless Students Bailout-Worthy?
Published October 05, 2009 @ 08:51AM PT
In schools across the country, the heat is on. And we're not just talking about the chilling weather. In addition to the pressure to produce higher test scores and graduation rates, schools are also grappling with economic issues, like the gargantuan task of serving skyrocketing numbers of homeless students with tighter budgets.
The rising numbers of homeless youth speak for themselves. The National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth says there were 679,000 homeless students reported in the 2006-7 school year. As of last Spring, the New York Times reported that this total had surpassed 1 million. In areas of the country hit hard by job losses and foreclosure, these numbers are much worse. In Central Florida, for example, the number of homeless youth enrolled in schools is up 20 percent over last year. Last Spring, Fairfax, Virginia saw a 63 percent increase over the previous year.
Sure, these numbers look bad on paper. But for the schools that must keep these students in pace with their classmates, this often means resources. Resources in the form of transportation costs, counseling, food and supplies, and classroom time. One community in Central Florida will spend $17,000 just to provide transportation to 10 homeless students this academic year.
But when it comes to meeting the basic needs of the youngest among us, we cannot afford inaction. The federal requirements in place to ensure that children without a home do not fall behind in school are - simply put - good policy. What McKinney-Vento requires of schools is critical for ensuring that homeless students do not miss educational opportunities simply because they are homeless.
But these things are useless if they drain the budgets of schools that are already stretched due to the economy.
How dire must a situation be to be dubbed bailout-worthy?
Image from the Orlando Sentinel.
Homelessness Not Confined to Cities
Published October 03, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
If you think homelessness is primarily an urban issue, think again. A new study from a national advocacy group illustrates the prevalence of homelessness in urban and rural areas across the country. The numbers - and the noted challenges of collecting homelessness data - speak for themselves.
Grayson County, Texas is not a big city. So many members of the Texas community assume homelessness is mostly a problem for Dallas or Houston. But according to the local news station, KXII, it's all relative. One shelter worker told the newstation that "homelessness is a much bigger problem in Texoma than anyone realizes." Indeed, all of the shelters in Grayson County are full and shelter workers believe people are living on the streets.
The latest study out from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, titled Geography of Homelessness, used 2007 homeless census counts and census data to determine the prevalence of homelessness in rural areas. As expected, the study found urban homelessness is more prevalent than any other type of area. But the study argued that this may be due to the intrinsic differences in the homeless population that make finding and counting homeless people in non-urban areas much more challenging.
First, many rural areas do not have shelters. Some communities do not have any kinds of social services whatsoever. Therefore, the report notes, extremely poor people in rural areas "do not stay in shelters but rather double-up with family or friends or live in substandard housing, and many leave rural areas in search of increased employment opportunities and homeless services."
Given the established difficulties of finding and counting the homeless in rural areas, the report's numbers illustrate of the potential scope of the problem:
- Urban areas: 29 out of 10,000 persons are homeless
- Mostly Urban areas: 19 out of 10,000 persons are homeless
- Mixed Rural/Mostly Rural areas: 12 out of 10,000 persons are homeless
- Mostly Rural areas, 8 out of 10,000 persons are homeless
- Rural areas: 14 out of 10,000 persons are homeless
This data is critically important in understanding just how dire the homelessness situation in rural areas is as reported. It's extremely troubling to wonder to what extent we are under-counting these areas, particularly with a recession on our hands. Clearly, better effort need to be made in rural areas to meet the unique demands of this population. We know that when it comes to social services, one size definitely does not fit all.
Image from hubb-a-dubb's public Flickr photostream.
