NC: From silence to savagery, pain for the poor intensifies - Wealth Gap becomes a Chasm

[TalkingDog]

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/12/28/3488213/from-silence-to-savagery-pain.html

A national report last month named Roanoke Rapids and Lumberton two of the three poorest cities in the nation. Robeson County has America’s third-highest food stamp participation rate. The number of homeless K-12 students in North Carolina rose dramatically between 2010 and 2012. We have, statewide, over 9,000 homeless veterans.

As this series has documented, hundreds of those vets live under bridges and along wood lines in Fayetteville, often fresh from battlefields. Some 250 wounded souls occupy tents and cardboard dwellings in otherwise bucolic forests, outside Hickory, unable to find relief in over-pressed shelters. Hundreds line up, before 6 each morning, at Crisis Ministries in Charlotte, trying to avoid the ravages of homelessness.

Over a thousand Tar Heels recently stood on line outside the civic center in Fayetteville – many for over 30 hours – hoping to get generously proffered dental services. No small number had to be turned away. This year, due to inadequate support, sponsors were forced to cancel most of the previously scheduled clinics.

As economic engines rev across parts of Charlotte and Durham, isolated neighborhoods experience mushrooming, and terrifying, child poverty rates – sometimes exceeding 80 percent. And families scramble to exist, almost unseen even to their neighbors, without access to electricity, sewer and clean water.