It's Time to Share the Wealth
by Diane Nilan April 30, 2010 06:00 AM (PT)
http://uspoverty.change.org/blog/view/its_time_to_share_the_wealthCounting the minutes ... most of us let time fly by without a thought. Not those without resources. Sherry, who is bouncing with her husband and their two young children between friends' couches and cheap motels to avoid the mean streets and meaner New York City shelters, pointed to the 7.2 minutes remaining on her cell phone, her only lifeline for safety and link to possible jobs.
Belongings stashed in a too-expensive storage bin, these stressed-to-the max parents are college-educated professionals from NYC filmdom. Now they concoct fairy tales, assuring their four-year-old they're going to move into a nice new home, someday. A nearly defunct borrowed laptop offers fragile connections to the world outside their scummy, very temporary motel room. On that keyboard she shared the painful admission:
So for the first time in my life I have no home. And unbelievably my 2 babies, our 1 and 4-year-old sons have no home. It's heartbreaking. Clothes, toys, everything but a few items that we can carry with us are in storage. I do all I can to make my very smart 4-year-old feel a bit secure. I showed him the key for the storage space and assured him his toys, clothes and all of our stuff is safe. Daddy locked it up safely and only we have the key ... I could not tell him we have no home ....This is America. As Sherry and her family — and millions more — live out their American Nightmare of homelessness, someone I know recently was at a dinner party where guests sipped from a $10,000 bottle of wine. Can't we figure out a way for the "haves" to help the "have-nots"? What happened to the commitment to social justice that we church-going kids learned in our youth? Or should we make plans to convert the ubiquitous self-storage units to housing?
As an indicator of how bad things are getting in America's Heartland, the Kokomo Tribune in Kokomo, Indiana reported on local schools' significant rise in homelessness, where an administrator astutely points out, “While many people may think of the homeless as people who are drug-addicted or have mental problems, we're in a culture now, we have people with master's degrees unemployed. It could happen to anybody, no fault of their own." Yup, homeless children everywhere, while the elite sip pricey wine and munch on delicacies.
Those without resources for their own place may turn to subsidized housing instead of storage units, although wait times are astronomical. The government operates buildings or pays landlords a competitive rent (Section 8) to house families and individuals whose incomes fall near the poverty level. It is not easy being a landlord, nor is it easy being dependent on Uncle Sam for housing.
While the behavior of some housing authority tenants may be indefensible, many public housing authorities (PHA) operate as dictatorships (not all — I'd love to hear about good housing authorities), bullying and evicting tenants, as described by Aaron Haas, a Texas RioGrande Legal Aid attorney. Error prone, grossly mismanaged and impervious, public housing agencies can be feeder systems to homelessness. Housing authority boards seem to get scant attention as they oversee our tax dollars that theoretically provide an alternative to homelessness. Too bad no one in power much cares how well they operate.
Seems to me it's time to stop digging the hole of homelessness and inadequate housing deeper. I say we take the billions that Goldman Sachs and friends have amassed by plundering American investors and pay the cell phone bills for Sherry and millions like her whose connection to society is about to be dropped.
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