Metro Detroit schools coping with surge of homeless children

[ckramer]

Source: DN

DETROIT -- Cherish Brisbane loved Gompers Elementary School, where she was friends with girls named Tyler, Casey and Amanda. Now she's trying to find friends at Owen Academy, her new school near the homeless shelter in Highland Park that she now calls home.

"I miss my school, and that was a good house. Plus I miss my dog, Precious. We had to give her away to somebody," said Cherish, a pretty girl with her hair pulled into a puff on top of her head. "The hardest part was I lost all my best friends."

The 8-year-old is one of a growing number of homeless children attending schools throughout Metro Detroit, where the number of children known to have no fixed address has shot up by more than 70 percent in the last three years. Cherish has lived in two shelters since her family was evicted from their Detroit home in November.

The state Department of Education estimates it's serving about 20,000 homeless students statewide, including 3,540 in Detroit alone.



Read more: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080407/SCHOOLS/804070387

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[ckramer]

1. That's why I said Alan Greenspan is a criminal

The poor suffer greatly under his low rates policy.

[Andy823]

6. I think it will be Obama

Most of Bush's administration are criminals! Greenspan did his job for Bush and the big money who run this country. He is just as guilty and in my book, they all need to be in jail!

[Pale Blue Dot]

2. My wife and I have friends from Ohio.

They report that the whole region is already in depression. That's why they moved to CT.

[acmavm]

3. I don't care WHAT anyone believes, you do have to hold out hope for

a big fucking cosmic karmic payback for those upper 3-5% on this planet (let alone in this country) who have so much while others are going without food and a roof over their heads.

That is inexcusable no matter what anyone says.

[Andy823]

4. This is the kind of thing we need to address

All the families without homes, jobs, and work, are being ignored by this administration. All Bush wants to do is help the big banks, and wall street. Sure he throws a few bones to the little people, but his goal is not aimed at helping people stay employed so they can provide a home for their families, nor is he willing to give real help to the people who were suckered into loans by the people Bush is helping out!

Stop the damned war, and use the money we waste there daily to improve our own country, by rebuilding our infrastructure, providing jobs for our citizens who have been left unemployed by the outsourcing of our country by the greedy corporations who are the only ones doing well in this mess Bush has put this country, and the world in!

[asjr]

5. I have a feeling in my gut

that things are much worse than we are hearing. I do not want to say Depression, but it looks as if it might happen. And it was avoidable! We have been betrayed by Republicans.

[ohio2007]

10. big buisness outsourced all the jobs in Detroit

I don't think Detroit is a sign of things to come.
It's a sign of yesterdays nighmare already arrived and the mayor is having his day in court.

[Zoigal]

7. My husband and i taught a combination of eighty years

and to our knowledge never had a homeless child in our classes.
Grades 1-12, four states, fifteen schools. Something is terribly wrong with our country now. z

[ohio2007]

8. no child left behind...except for the 3,540 in metro Detroit

tax base going down the unemployment line tubes

[kestrel91316]

9. IMHO, it's time to put these to work again:

[Demeter]

11. K&R For My Birthplace

Detroit is just a little ahead of the rest of the state, folks.

[Theres-a]

17. Mine too!

St. John's hospital on 7 mile road,1967.:hi:

[BumRushDaShow]

12. It's time to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security and create a Department of Public Works

Put the DHS agencies back where they belong under existing departments, end this damn $12 billion per month war, and divert those funds into the new DPW, which can absorb HUD. And then start working on the infrastructure of this country. Infrastructure = construction and maintenance jobs and will spawn a service/support industry around those job sites, which can include housing rehabilitation. There is no damn reason to have hundreds of thousands of vacant homes around the country and people who are homeless.

[L0oniX]

13. This is only the begining.

[slackmaster]

14. Crap, that is very sad

At least the school gives them SOME stability.

[mojavekid]

15. Very Sad,

and I agree with some here, it is not going to get better anytime soon. It will in fact need to get much worse before it CAN get better.

The Inland Empire in Southern California is our "Ohio" or "Detroit" when it comes to forclosures...a broad statement to be sure, however things are much worse there than in Santa Monica, where you would think most everything is fine...except for the incredible number of for sale signs popping up and the increasing number of for lease signs on retail space...

Hundreds of homeless forcibly evicted from Southern California refuge

http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=144&a=5928


-mojavekid

[Preening Fop]

16. With obvious long abandoned structures every few feet, shelter for the homeless is no problem....!!

:nuke: :hide: :nuke: