World Hunger and Poverty

Florence Graves and Hadar Sayfan recently wrote about “housing first,” a new approach to end homelessness. I include an excerpt:

In the past, society’s approach to homeless people with chronic health problems such as addiction has been governed by tough love: Stay in treatment, or you don’t get the opportunity for publicly supported housing. People who could not confront their addiction, the thinking went, could not handle an apartment.

But a new approach, called “housing first,” is gathering momentum. The idea is to target the most difficult cases — the chronically homeless who make up between 10 and 20 percent of the homeless population and spend years cycling between the streets, shelters, jail cells, and emergency rooms — and give them apartments without requiring them to get sober, in the hope that having a place to live will help them address their other problems. More than 150 cities or counties around the country already have programs of some kind or plans to initiate one, and last month the Massachusetts Senate Ways and Means Committee recommended doubling the size of a small pilot program in the state. If the pilot succeeds, proponents say it could force dramatic changes in homeless policy — and a recognition that the current shelter system, built on what they call a punitive moralism, has fundamentally failed.

Read entire article by Graves and Sayfan.

The traditional ways of fight homelessness and poverty have failed, so we do need to find new ways. However, I fear giving people unconditional housing assistance. If we give people housing regardless of whether or not they try to fix their own problems, then these people have no reason to fix their own problems.

We cannot realistically expect a person to fight off addiction and fix their problems if they live on the streets. So, it does make sense to get them housing assistance first, but we need to end the assistance if these people do not do what they can to fix their own problems. If they stop attending treatment facilities, then we need to stop giving them housing assistance. Let’s focus our resources on the people who want to help themselves.

Ron Harris reports that veterans who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are increasingly showing up homeless at shelters and agencies across the nation. I include an excerpt:

As the nearly 1.5 million military personnel who have been deployed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to return home, more are expected to join the ranks of the estimated 195,000 homeless veterans, Veterans Affairs officials said.

In addition to mental health issues and addiction, the homelessness stems from several other factors, say federal officials and veterans advocates. Long and repeated deployments strain the bonds of relationships back home, they said.

“Guys, when they get back, their girlfriends put them out,” said Steve Baker, executive director of Grace Resource Center, which serves homeless veterans in Lancaster, Calif. “Some of them, their wives get divorces while they’re overseas. So, they have nothing to come back to.”

Others never had a home to return to, said Peter Dougherty, director of the VA’s Homeless Services Division. Many former foster children join the military once they are too old for foster care so they can have a place to live and an income, he said.

Others are unemployed or underemployed. Some severely disabled veterans unable to work end up homeless because of long delays in receiving disability pay — sometimes up to two years.

But homelessness among today’s returning service members mainly can be traced to the nation’s inability to meet veterans’ mental health needs, federal officials, service providers and veterans advocates said.

Read entire article by Ron Harris.

Needless wars such as that in Iraq cause many devastations, but some of the worst happen to the troops – the young men and women who give up their freedom to protect the citizens of their country, only to have the pledge misused by corrupt politicians and war profiteers. First these brave troops get killed and injured in these needless wars. Then, out of the ones that get to come home from these wars, they get ignored and neglected.

How come the politicians who claim to “support the troops” the most send them to needless wars to get traumatized, injured, or killed? Why do these some politicians enact policy that leaves veterans hungry, poor, and/or homeless?

Take for example draft-dodger George Bush, the leading warmonger. Bush cut $600 million from the Veterans’ Administration budget, although the VA is already under-funded by around $2 billion a year and now has over 200,000 new veterans to service.

Let’s support the troops by ending these needless wars. Let’s support the troops by bringing them home from Iraq.

Naomi Spencer writes about homelessness in the United States:

While statistics do not capture the real social dimension of homelessness in the United States, new data confirm that the homeless face increasing brutality, criminalization and neglect. But like the growing poverty population, the suffering of the homeless population finds no meaningful reflection in the budget or policy priorities of the federal government.

An estimated 754,147 people were homeless in the US in the winter of 2005, according to the first comprehensive survey by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) of homelessness.

Read entire article by Naomi Spencer.

I certainly find it disgustingly odd that the government can find trillions of dollars to spend on such absurdities as needless wars and drug criminalization. However, I doubt we can ever hope from better from a government. Because they fund themselves through taxation, governments do not have to please any customers. Politicians from all sides of the political spectrum only want to advance their own carriers and please their cronies and lobbyists. If we want to find the resources to end hunger, we need to get it out of our own pockets. Use your money to fight hunger, poverty, and homelessness; Don’t use it to pay taxes to corrupt, warmongering governments.

A recent America Magazine editorial addresses homelessness:

While most people think of homelessness in terms of single men, roughly a third of the homeless population is made up of families, many of them headed by single parents. Families represent an especially vulnerable segment of the homeless population because of the presence of children. Advocates for the homeless point out that the disruption in the lives of children from living in shelters can lead to such health problems as respiratory and intestinal infections, along with psychological trauma. Their overall health status is far worse than that of children in homes. The trauma can be exacerbated when family members must separate upon entering shelters, with fathers and older male children often sent to shelters for men. Hardest of all is the fact that because of “lack of resources,” 86 percent of families may be turned away. Little wonder that families have resorted to sleeping in cars, under bridges or in wooded areas.

Adding to the struggles of homeless people is a strong sentiment against them. This has led to municipal ordinances that punish homeless people primarily because they have no stable housing. Aimed at banishing them from public places, statutes of this kind prohibit begging, lying down, sitting or “loitering.” Las Vegas offers an example. In July 2006 it passed an ordinance that makes sharing food with destitute or homeless people in public places a crime. Violation of the statute can be punishable by up to six months in jail. Nevada’s A.C.L.U. has filed a federal suit against Las Vegas, claiming that the ordinance violates the constitutional right to free assembly and free speech.

Homelessness is a solvable national problem, but the needed resources have not been forthcoming from the federal government.

Read entire America Magazine editorial.

Nobody has an obligation to help homeless people, but for the government to make laws that outlaw helping them seems absurdly atrocious. Regardless of these laws, let’s put an end to homelessness, a preventable problem.

Passive indignation cannot suffice. We must actively work to get homes for the poor innocent children who suffer on the brutal streets of America. These children cannot grow into healthy, happy, self-sufficient adults if they grow up in such devastating conditions. We all benefit by helping put an end to this preventable problem.

What do you think?

PBS recently published an article with facts about homelessness in the United States. I include an excerpt about the causes of homelessness.

Homelessness may be caused by a variety of factors, but the coincidence of increased levels of poverty and decreased numbers of affordable housing often to blame. Other notable causes may include:

• Lack of healthcare
  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2004 nearly a third of persons living in poverty had no health insurance of any kind. The coverage held by many others would not carry them through a catastrophic illness.
• Domestic violence
  In 2005, 50 percent of the cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors identified domestic violence as a primary cause of homelessness.
• Mental illness
  Many mentally ill homeless people are unable to obtain access to supportive housing and/or other treatment services. A 2005 U.S. Conference of Mayors study found that about 22 percent of the single adult homeless population suffers from some form of severe and persistent mental illness.
• Substance Abuse
  While recent research questions the disproportionately high rates of alcohol and drug abuse among the homeless population, and no agreed-upon statistics exist, poor people who abuse substances are far more likely to experience homelessness than their sober counterparts.

Read entire PBS article.

Unfortunately, homelessness rates for families and children continue to rise. Such homelessness denies children the type of childhood conducive to a successful life. By neglecting to properly house, nourish and educate these children, society leaves these children unprepared for adult life, trapping the children in a life of poverty.

What do you think?