Beyond A Crisis: U.S. Family Homelessness

I didn't need to watch Sunday’s 60 Minutes piece on homeless families. But I did, along with my 90-year-old mother, my brother and his 14-year-old son, and my brother's significant other. She cried. I raged. Mom shook her head sadly. Mike and his son didn't say much, but were subdued.

CBS did a decent job on the surface issue, letting kids say how hard it is to live this nomadic existence. Their parents rose above the understandable shame and allowed the audience to peer into their erstwhile "normal" lives. And so far, online comments haven't sunk to the sewer-like level of frustrated blame and distorted interpretation of the story. (Though columnist Jay Ambrose seems to be confused, writing that "As virtually any historian can tell you, the average poor family today -- especially as defined under law -- is easily better off than many families considered well off in the Depression years." Huh?)

This wasn't a "feel-good" story. Some points need reiterating:

• A family of 4 at the poverty level earns less than $22,000. (Joe might want to do a math-reality course to see what less than $22k --gross--buys today as opposed to the Depression days.)
• The poverty rate for children in our country is nearing 25% by the (understated) government standards.
• This is the fastest and largest fall from middle class that we've seen since the Depression, an unprecedented jump from 14 million to 16 million, with no signs of abatement.

Those are statistics. But more painfully than the above statistics are these stark realities for the families in Seminole County and invisible families across the country:

• Often families face the dilemma of homelessness and head for the local shelter (if their area has one)--only to be split up because the shelter only allows (typically) women with kids (boys under the age of 12, which varies).
• Families not willing to split up, or wanting to keep their pet, or having a parent who works a job outside the shelter's curfew, often bunk with a friend/family member until that becomes untenable then they move into a motel at the steep price of $150+ a week.
• Families "stuff" often ends up in storage and lost because it's sold when they cannot pay the storage fees. Stuff lost includes important identification and other documents, pictures, and personally valuable items.
• Areas around these unsupervised, unsanctioned "homeless shelters," a.k.a. motels, frequently deteriorate and become unsafe for the families and others. Drugs and prostitution are common at many motels. So are lice, scabies and bedbugs.
• Space inside the motel room is inadequate for one. Multiply that by the number in the family and you get the idea that this is not a vacation.
• Food, especially nutritious meals, becomes a logistical and expensive nightmare. Just think of the steps in buying, storing, cooking, serving, and cleaning up in the average motel room.
• Hygiene and space become serious detriments for infants and toddlers who require special attention and activities to develop into healthy children.

We ignore the dark, growing cloud of poverty negating well-intentioned and expensive education efforts. We toss a crumbs to low-income housing, far too little to make up for the past 30 years of shortages, during a massive housing crisis that tosses middle-income families to the streets. We slash resources for health care, mental health services, child care, family support. We bought into lies that "welfare queens" are causing our nation’s fiscal woes, not the wealthy robber-barons of corporations and Wall Street. 

Seems to me we need to admit what we’re doing: We toss our kids under the national-budget bus, ostensibly to balance the budget--or more truthfully, to give huge subsidies to oil companies and other wealthy interests. Can we at least admit we have a problem?

HEAR US Inc. has been invited to testify at a congressional briefing on homeless children on Weds. March 30, 11-noon at 1300 Longworth House Office Building, Washington DC.

HEAR US will screen on the edge on Weds. March 30, 6 pm - 7:30, 2325 Rayburn HOB, Washington DC, open to the public, free.

New York, New York Could Help Regauge Poverty

Homeless shelters in rural southern New Mexico are rare--or consist of ramshackle trailers gutted to make dorms, like this location outside Deming. Emma, the woman who runs this ministry, says it's not a place for families. But they come anyhow....

A New York movement to change the way poverty is measured could give rise to a long overdue adjustment to how this nation measures poverty. The reassuring message that "only" 12.5% of the population lives in poverty is misleading at best.

The current U.S. Poverty Level is based on the good ol' days--the 1960s. Remember those days?? Gas cost $1 for 4 gallons! Home heating and electric costs were minimal. Housing didn't require 2 incomes. Take a look at this link and decide if you'd be able to survive, much less thrive, at this level.

No president wants to adjust the poverty rate in this country. It just wouldn't look good, "My legacy is poverty statistically doubled during my term of office." Nah, it ain't gonna happen.

Some enlightened economic experts have determined what it takes to survive in this rapidly changing economy, suggesting that doubling the current rate would be more accurate. The independent and brassy mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, has embraced their concepts.

Shift from bustling NYC to the fringe of the SW United States border to the town of Columbus, NM. This crusty, dusty community of about 1,800 embodies poverty to the limit: at the current rate it shows up at 57%. More realistically it would be 100%, with no visible means of lifting itself out of the poverty pit.

As we were being shown around this area by the school district's homeless liaison, both Laura and I cringed at the thought of anyone being raised here in this shantytown. Hundreds of children walk to an overcrowded school and play on the shade-free dirt roads a mere 3 miles from Mexico.

"Doing without" typically means doing without water, without heat, without a solid structure to come between ravages of weather and your family.

Far too many places like Columbus exist in our still-wealthy country, hidden in the mine-scarred Appalachian hills; in forgotten fringe neighborhoods abutting fast food littered Interstate highways; spilling through the guts of large, medium and small cities; discretely concealed on the edge of glitzy resort communities; and scattered like tumbleweed throughout remote rural areas.

What seems to be lost in the argument is that these neighborhoods are comprised of people--adults and children discarded by the techno-economic monster that devours its own in its greedy pursuit of power and profits. Homelessness is a natural by-product of such inequities. Homelessness is proof that poverty is alive and well in America.

Seems to me that it's time to get the numbers right instead of deluding ourselves that "only" 12.5% are poor. Maybe by channeling 25% of our nation's resources to alleviate poverty and homelessness we'll start to undo decades of neglect that has led to the mess we're in right now. What do our presidential candidates say about this?











Columbus, NM poverty