When A Budget Motel Is 'Home,' There's Little Room For Childhood

[KamaAina]

http://www.npr.org/2015/08/16/432472821/when-a-budget-motel-is-home-theres-little-room-for-childhood

California ranks third in the U.S. — behind only Kentucky and New York — in the percentage of children who don't have a home, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness. The evidence of this is clear in San Bernardino, which is littered with dilapidated neighborhoods and abandoned blocks, even in the city's center.

Here, budget motels have become a last refuge for desperate people with nowhere else to go. Joe Mozingo, the Los Angeles Times staff writer behind the series San Bernardino: Broken City, says kids who live in these motels get exposed to some troubling conditions....

One prime example is Juanita Blakely Jones Elementary School, just a block away from the Golden Star Inn. Mitchell says 1 in 5 of the students enrolled there lives in a motel.

"And of course it causes that school to have a high turnover. They're close to a 55 percent turnover rate over there," he says. "So sometimes we'll have kids drop and re-enroll two or three times in the same school year."

[ripcord]

1. One of the charties I support

http://www.caterinasclub.org/#intro

Help Chef Bruno feed the motel kids of Orange County Ca.

[villager]

2. Great movie coming out about this -- and the home repo fiasco: "99 Homes"

Not a doc, and set in Florida, but ripped from true tales of predatory capitalism. Terrific cast, something to say, and I'm recommending it to all DUers.

There are several scenes dealing with the "Motel Kids:"

"SYNOPSIS: In this timely thriller, charismatic and ruthless businessman, Rick Carver (Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon), is making a killing by repossessing homes - gaming the real estate market, Wall Street banks and the US government. When he evicts Dennis Nash (Golden Globe nominee Andrew Garfield), a single father trying to care for his mother (Academy Award nominee Laura Dern) and young son (newcomer Noah Lomax), Nash becomes so desperate to provide for his family that he goes to work for Carver – the very man who evicted him in the first place.

"Carver promises Nash a way to regain his home and earn security for his family, but slyly seduces him into a lifestyle of wealth and glamour. It is a deal-with-the-devil that comes with an increasingly high cost - on Carver's orders, Nash must evict families from their homes. As Nash falls deeper into Carver's web, he finds his situation​ grows more brutal and dangerous than he ever imagined."

[pnwmom]

3. The Rethugs want everyone to live like that. In the new uber economy,

everyone will be migrant workers, following the temporary jobs.

Who cares about owning homes and giving children some stability? Not the Rethugs.

[ripcord]

4. Actually KFI a local conservative radio station

Does a huge radiothon every year to help with this problem. One of the big things the charity does is pay the first, last and security deposit to get families into apartments and out of the motels.

[KatyMan]

5. And that whole 'tiny house' thing is part of it

getting people used to living in 50 square feet of mobile property and the 1% charging people for water/power hookups, etc. No more property ownership for prols!

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. kick.