10 Shocking and Wildly Depressing Facts About Being Homeless in Uncaring America

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http://www.alternet.org/10-shocking-and-wildly-depressing-facts-about-being-homeless-uncaring-america


Fact One. Over half a million people are homeless

On any given night, there are over 600,000 homeless people in the US according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Most people are either spending the night in homeless shelters or in some sort of short term transitional housing. Slightly more than a third are living in cars, under bridges or in some other way living unsheltered.

Fact Two. One quarter of homeless people are children

HUD reports that on any given night over 138,000 of the homeless in the US are children under the age of 18. Thousands of these homeless children are unaccompanied according to HUD. Another federal program, No Child Left Behind, defines homeless children more broadly and includes not just those living in shelters or transitional housing but also those who are sharing the housing of other persons due to economic hardship, living in cars, parks, bus or train stations, or awaiting foster care placement. Under this definition, the National Center for Homeless Education reported in September 2014 that local school districts reported there are over one million homeless children in public schools.

Fact Three. Tens of thousands of veterans are homeless

Over 57,000 veterans are homeless each night. Sixty percent of them were in shelters, the rest unsheltered. Nearly 5000 are female.

Fact Four. Domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness in women

More than 90% of homeless women are victims of severe physical or sexual abuse and escaping that abuse is a leading cause of their homelessness.

[Fumesucker]

1. K&R

[raouldukelives]

2. Sad K&R. If only promoting the general welfare meant more than big banks & Wall St. nt

[theHandpuppet]

3. Thank you for keeping this subject in the forefront

It's a national disgrace.

[etherealtruth]

4. K and R

[Amimnoch]

5. "Prisons" for the homeless.

I'm not talking about locking them up and throwing away the key just because they have the misfortune of being homeless.

The recommendation I'd made to my congress critters several times over the last 20 years are Prison like centers for sheltering the homeless is More than just giving them a home, but giving them the services we give to our criminally incarcerated.

First, it's a voluntary facility with the sole exception of the severely mentally ill, and even then it would take a judicial review of their case.
Checking in assessments to determine mental wellness, capability, and ability.
Clean clothing, shoes, socks, undergarments issued.
3 hot meals a day.
Library, and education access.
Medical, dental, and mental health assistance.
Job finding assistance.
a safe secure, and monitored place to sleep.
Unlike prison, this would also be a place that would allow the residents to come and go.

Primary drives:
Identify, and help the ~20% who are severely mentally ill, and help them to a better road to wellness.
Provide counsiling and assistance to battered women, abused children, abandoned or run away children.
Help those who are just down on their luck get back on their feet through educational assistance, and job search/placement assistance.

Possible savings opportunities:
Some of the people who stay there could also end up getting employed there as security, cooks, laundry, administration. Heck, some of these places could potentially end up being completly run and operated by the same ones who stay/stayed there, and who would be more sympathetic management for a facility of this nature than the very people who've been through it themselves?

Really, if we can build prisons with all this stuff.. if we can build military bases with all this stuff.. why not homeless facilities (not just shelters) with all these resources??

[BlueJazz]

6. The United states sends people to war and naturally they see horrors that can easily ...

....totally, completely warp a human beings mind. They then degrade these same people and cause some to sleep on the street because of the mental images that these same people endure.
The US offers almost NO protection against women who endure scenarios that are almost as bad as war..causing them to "Go Homeless".
Half of the cities make it a crime to sleep in your car. You can't sleep in the streets. You can't sleep anywhere but you're suppose to function (get a job) without any sleep...oh yeah, that makes sense.
The rent for a person is absolutely ridiculous. You can't find a place to live even with a full time job.

In certain areas>What a sad, sad excuse for a country.

[Paka]

7. K&R

[Octafish]

8. 125,000 children.

This, in the richest nation during the wealthiest times in human history.

[G_j]

9. K&R!

[ZombieHorde]

10. K&R&NT

[daredtowork]

11. Very little of that "dependency" money goes into finding/stabilizing housing

Several posts today featured GOP candidates spouting off about "free money" and "dependency". Yet where is government when it comes to the thing poor people need the most help with: finding/stabilizing housing in an erratic jobs environment.

Where I live rents are off the hook, nonprofits that have nothing to do with housing are receiving non-stop phone calls from desperate people in imminent need of help, while our mayor's best proposal is to encourage people to continue to "couch surf"!

If you talk to anyone who hasn't been in this desperate situation, they have no handle on the situation at all. They think everyone is on Section 8, even though the Section 8 Wait List hasn't opened up in over a decade here (who knows how long before that) and probably never will. The mayor sold all the units of public housing in the city and has made nothing but disparaging comments about the effect of building low-incoming units. The grants we got to help the homeless went into consultants, committees, and reports. There is no political will to fight back because everyone secretly agrees: as long as their own housing is fine, they'd rather all those who lost out just go away.

Don't even try to scream and cry or carry signs in protest. We're in the new "mental health" regime. While no one will do anything tangible to help the homeless or resolve the issues that cause their stress, they will throw a dumptruck of money at checking on whether they need psychiatrists or sending out some police to see whether some uniformed authority figures can do anything to "help".

So much run-around. So much waste of resources and spending *around* the issues instead of spending directly on doing the right thing.

Dudes! We would be saving a heck of a lot of tax money, redeeming a heck of a lot of people for the productive workforce, and probably saving a heck of a lot of sanity if we just recognized the simple problems for what they were: when income is irregular, people can't meet regular commitments for rent and bills. They need to be shored up before the stress itself causes them to lose their jobs, making the problem worse. (Or even exacerbates health problems, causing an irreversible vicious cycle). People need help with very simple things: housing, food, heating, communications, basic necessities. People need to be allowed to earn money on top of help with these things because there are irregular expenses that aren't always covered by standardized categories. A fast-food job might require non-slip shoes, grandma might need a walker with a basket, a woman might need a special support bra. It's ridiculous to block people in poverty from getting the things that might prove to be a stepping stone out of poverty.

Anyway - help poor people take care of those needs, with minimal paper work and indignity. Then suddenly, voila, there is less stress. Then suddenly, those poor people have the breathing room to get a better job and turn their lives around. Just start with the principle of doing what it takes to actually HELP people instead of constantly humiliating people, putting people with through stress, hassle, humiliation, mental torture, and ultimately physical torture as they are herded into homelessness.

It's simpler and cheaper to do the right thing.

But the taxpayers spend more and make things more complicated so jackasses can go on TV and opine about "dependency" on a system that no one can understand because it's so incredibly convoluted and obtuse.