Reply #31: What makes you think the homeless are all unemployed?

[Breeze54]

THE HOMELESS, THE HUNGRY, AND THE WORKING POOR — by Catherine Morgan

http://informedvoters.wordpress.com/2007/01/16/the-homeless-the-hungry-and-the-working-poor/

We have a growing crisis in America today, and it is our own countries blatant neglect of the homeless, the hungry, and the working poor. It was recently reported that there are 744,000 people that are homeless in the United States today. Even worse, over 40% of the homeless are families. Reuters reported that more Americans went homeless and hungry in 2006 than the year before and that children made up almost one quarter of those in emergency shelters.

Children and families are the new faces of the homeless and hungry in America, and it seems to me that most Americans, as well as the government would just like to turn a blind-eye to this growing crisis. Why is that? We are the richest and most powerful country in the world, surely we can help are own citizens? We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq alone, it seems shameful that we don’t even spend a fraction of that amount on helping the most needy in our own county.

Many people seem to take the attitude of….We shouldn’t give “hand-outs” to the poor, they just need to work harder…. They wouldn’t be poor if they just worked harder. Contrary to popular belief, the poor don’t want to be poor. The truth is, that many of the poor in our country are part of the growing number of “working poor”, they work very hard, very long, and still don’t have enough money to feed their families. So, if how hard a person works really was a determining factor of whether a person would be rich or poor, many of the rich people in this country would suddenly find themselves poor, and the currently poor would be basking in the glory of their new-found wealth. Many American citizens work hard and get very far in life, and many others work hard and get nowhere in life…..that’s just the sad reality.

Most of the working poor in our country actually work forty or more hours a week at two, three, or even four different jobs.

I assure you, these people work very hard.

Bad economy is creating a new generation of homeless people

http://www.tbnweekly.com/content_articles/071608_pco-02.txt

(Editor’s Note:
This is the first of a two-part story on Pinellas County’s homeless problem. ?? :grr:
The second part will be published next week.)

By THOMAS MICHALSKI
Article published on Wednesday, July 16, 2008

PINELLAS COUNTY –

The plummeting economy coupled with skyrocketing food, fuel and other higher cost of living
prices is creating a new generation of poor and homeless people.

So severe are economic times that people are reduced to begging at gasoline stations for
loose change to purchase fuel to standing at intersections begging for food money.

Although many social programs that were nonexistent just a few years ago are in place, there
are growing numbers of new poor and homeless people that society is often unwilling to recognize.

Many organizations such at the Suncoast Haven of Rest Rescue Mission in Pinellas Park are hurting
for funds in an economy that worsens each day. Local jobs are not filled or are shipped overseas.
Mortgages go unpaid. People and the organizations that help the destitute are, in a word, hurting.

“We just suspended our bag lunch program due to the lack of money,” said the Rev. Lionel Cabral, executive director of the Suncoast Haven. “Last month we were within two hours of having our electricity turned off for nonpayment.”

The lunch bag program provided meals for street people each day at various locations. On Saturdays the mission provided free meals at the sprawling Pinellas Hope facility in incorporated Pinellas County.

“I have seen a dramatic increase in new homeless people,” Cabral said. “The bad economy is
forcing people out of their homes because they cannot afford rent and mortgage payments.”

The mission not only feeds the homeless, but the poor who have shelter as well. Each month the “working poor” obtain bags of bread, boxed and canned goods and other food. But food contributions have steadily decreased in recent months along with the dollars to keep the mission operating.

“The demand for helping the poor and the homeless is higher than ever before, and donations are down,” Cabral said.

The mission collects food from such establishments as Publix, Sweetbay, Pizza Hut, Red Lobster and Wagon Wheel Flea Market, to name a few. To get those items the mission has two trucks on the road. Higher fuel prices pushed the mission’s annual fuel budget past the $25,000 mark.

The alternative is to take one of the trucks off the road and combine runs when possible.

“People are losing jobs and that means bills, such as rent and mortgages, go unpaid,” Cabral said.

Snip-->

And the face of homelessness has changed due to more families with children on the streets
and additional working poor households.

Coalition statistics show that more than 33 percent of homeless adults work full or part-time,
and about 23 percent receive disability, veteran or retirement benefits, but not enough to
maintain an apartment or home.

“Just recently,” he said, “I was able to get a homeless man and his three children into a shelter.

There are many families like that.”

The housing slide has crushed contracting jobs, the mainstay of day labor establishments that
assign such positions to homeless people. Out of work carpenters, bricklayers, painters and
landscapers abound.

“It’s not only hurting the low wage people, but the middle income folks as well,” Butler said.

“It’s a trickle down problem that will not stop tomorrow or next week.”

“The bad economy is creating more poor and homeless people,” Herring said.

“There are individuals on the streets who have masters degrees and no jobs.”

more.........

:(