Homeless Students Top One Million, U.S. Says, Leaving Advocates 'Horrified'

[Stuart G]

Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/28/homeless-students-us_n_1635709.html

Back in November of 2005, Diane Nilan had what she now concedes may have struck some people as a “crazy notion.” She’d been working as advocate for homeless families in Illinois, getting frustrated by the glacial pace of political and bureaucratic change, when she decided to sell her town house, buy a Gulfstream motor home, and set out on the road to talk to homeless families living around the country. She drove to Pensacola, Fla., and then to Lafayette, La., and then to a tiny town in Texas, where she met a little boy who had been abandoned by his mother. She spoke with homeless children and their families at campsites and motels and shelters, and filmed them in an attempt to share what she learned.

Since then, she's become one of the country's most prominent experts on family homelessness, logging 148,000 miles and talking to families in about 30 states. So she wasn't entirely surprised when she heard the latest bleak statistic: 1 million homeless students in America, according to a report released by the Department of Education this week. Talking to the families of such students, she said, she hears "the same story time after time. Lost their job, had some medical problems, things fell apart, boom, boom, boom. Now they're living in shelters or motels."

U.S. Education Department reported that, for the first time, the number of homeless students in America topped one million by the end of the 2010-2011 school year. These kids live in shelters and on the streets, and increasingly in hotels and on the couches of friends and relatives. On one hotel-lined stretch of highway -- a road leading to Disney World -- Nilan heard of schools where there are as many as 25 homeless students in classes of 28. The government report said 1,065,794 homeless kids were enrolled in schools in the 2010-2011 school year, an increase of 13 percent from the previous year and 57 percent since the start of the recession in 2007.
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Another national tragedy that adds shame to the United States. How can this be?

[Scootaloo]

1. 1,065,794 homeless kids

In a nation of 311,591,917 people total.

if those kids are enrolled in school, odds are they have at least one parent homeless with them. Let's say 1.5 parents.

2,664,485 homeless people in these families.

This is not counting the no doubt many kids that aren't enrolled in school. This is not counting the homeless people without enrolled children.

Almost 1% of our population is made of homeless children and their families. At a minimum. One percent might not sound like much, but when you consider the same percentage of the population owns enough wealth to buy each and every one of these people two summer homes in California, and still have bajillions left over? That's fucking shameful

[MannyGoldstein]

2. 20 years of Third-Way Democrats moving right

And here we are.

[Art_from_Ark]

5. I miss the days when we had a War on Poverty

The glory days of the Great Society, which lingered into the 70s and then started dying from neglect in the 80s.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Would you be so kind as to cross-post this to the poverty forum? Thank you so much! :^)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1118

[BREMPRO]

4. we are number one!

another grim statistic sure we beat the rest of the western world in.. homeless students, along with percentage of citizens in prison, number of televangilsts,

here's 20:


#1 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.

#2 According to NationMaster.com, the United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.

#3 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.

#4 The United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week.

#5 The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.

#6 There are more car thefts in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world by far.

#7 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

#8 There are more reported murders in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

#9 There are more total crimes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

#10 The United States also has more police officers than anywhere else in the world.

#11 The United States spends much more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other nation on the face of the earth.

#12 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet.

#13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.

#14 Americans have more student loan debt than anyone else in the world.

#15 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. 89 percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.

#16 The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.

#17 The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.

#18 The United States has far more foreign military bases than any other country does.

#19 The United States has the most complicated tax system in the entire world.

#20 The U.S. has accumulated the biggest national debt that the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.

[raccoon]

9. Great post. #7, 8, and 9 may be due to REPORTING.

Would you report that you'd been raped if you lived in a country where you might
be forced to marry the rapist--or worse?

[Igel]

6. Full report.

http://center.serve.org/nche/downloads/data_comp_0909-1011.pdf

They don't define "homeless students," whether they have to be reported homeless during the period that they're enrolled, or for how long the homeless lasts. Usually these reports want to be conservative and give the greatest number possible--why minimize the problem?--and would assume that if you're homeless for a night you're homeless.

Some students--those not yet in foster placement--are homeless but sheltered. Most are doubled-up. Something like 5% are unsheltered and 18% in shelters.

I've known lots of homeless students by that measure. But none of them have been in that 5% unsheltered,l which is the stereotypical "homeless" (albeit 1/20th of the data). One was in a shelter, but she'd never go into a foster home. Most doubled up--but a few were in temporary ("transitional&quot housing while waiting for their permanent digs. (In one case, two of the kids were waiting for their new, permanent, $350k house because it wasn't done when the sale on their parents' old, $250k house, closed. It pays to remember the definitions of terms when using them.)

Homeless kids are a problem. This tries to give the highest possible number, lest a kid be left out.

[RainDog]

7. k&r n/t

[CoffeeCat]

8. It seems as if things are getting worse...

...the middle class continues to fall apart. The homeless statistics are growing and wages are stagnant while the costs for basics soars.

The media is not reporting the reality. I am really sick and tired of feeling as if we are being bamboozled. Things are not getting better. We are sliding further into economic hell.

I guess the corporate powers that be figure that if they hide the harsh realities, that people will be too ashamed to admit that
They are struggling. Why be one of the lone voices talking about how rough things are when the media is saying that all is swell?

I'm sick of the lies. Pretending that everything is peAchy only mskes our society neurotic and shutout off from one another.