Will you stand up for Human Rights for the Homeless & send this report to your Senators & Rep?

Sapphire Blue

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Wed Feb-07-07 05:10 PM
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Will you stand up for Human Rights for the Homeless & send this report to your Senators & Rep?

When you go to bed tonight, somewhere in America, perhaps in your own town, perhaps in your own neighborhood, thousands of people, families, children, young people, middle aged people, elderly people, military veterans, disabled people, working poor people, mentally ill people, physically ill people, will be sleeping w/o a roof over their heads. One or more of them might die tonight. It doesn't have to be this way. Will you please make copies of this 88-page report & send them to your Senators & Representative? Ask them what they will do to restore funding to Federal Housing Programs; ask them what they will do to alleviate the epidemic of homelessness in America.

The report:

�Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failure

http://wraphome.org/wh_press_kit/Without_Housing_20061114.pdf

Thank you!

Without Housing, the Poor Will Perish
by Janny Castillo

"Wet Night On Sutter Street." In this painting by Christine Hanlon, a homeless person sleeps outside a fancy clothing store on a rainy night while well-dressed mannequins are dry and warm inside.

"The government pegs homeless persons as dysfunctional human beings in need of rehabilitation. This report says, 'I don't care how many life-skills trainings you give me; if I don't have a place to live, I am going to be homeless."
-- Paul Boden, WRAP Executive Director

"Until this government invests billions of dollars more a year in housing for the poor, homelessness will increase and deaths will increase."
-- Terry Messman, Street Spirit editor

According to a U.S. Department of Education report, more than 600,000 identified homeless students attended public schools in the 2003-2004 school years. These children are invisible. They will not be seen on rooftops in flood waters, trapped and afraid. Their desperate faces are not plastered across our televisions, moving the country to do something, anything, to help. They are survivors of a different and more subtle catastrophe than Katrina.

On November 14, 2006, a group of homeless advocates met in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco to announce the release of a report written by the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) entitled, "Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures." Juan Prada, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, organized the event. The 80-page report documents 25 years of federal housing cuts that have resulted in "a new and massive episode of homelessness."

"Those on the front line of homelessness -- homeless people and the providers who serve them -- are drowning in a sea of blame," said WRAP Executive Director Paul Boden. "We have joined together to speak the truth. Until federal affordable housing programs are restored and expanded, homelessness will continue to grow."

Continued @ http://www.thestreetspirit.org/Dec2006/nohome.htm

NEW REPORT DOCUMENTS CORRELATION BETWEEN HISTORIC CUTS TO FEDERAL HOUSING PROGRAMS AND CONTEMPORARY MASS HOMELESSNESS

Communities call for the new Congress to take a new approach to addressing and ending the national crisis of homelessness

(Excerpt)

�Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures,� documents the correlation between these trends and the emergence of a new and massive episode of homelessness in the 1980s which continues today. It particularly focuses on radical cuts to programs administered by the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), which administers funds for rural affordable housing. Available online in PDF format, the report also demonstrates why federal responses to this nationwide crisis have consistently failed.

Created in partnership with five other organizations, the report uses federal budget data and other sources to document that:

HUD�s budget has dropped 65% since 1978

The Emergency Shelter phenomenon was born the same year that HUD funding was at a drastic low point

HUD has spent $0 on new public housing, while more than 100,000 public housing units have been lost

Federal housing subsidies are going to the wealthy

More than 600,000 identified homeless students went to public schools

Federal support helps homeowners instead of poor people

According to Paul Boden, executive director of WRAP, �The Administration�s current �Chronic Homeless Initiative� is just the latest in a series of inadequate flavor-of-the-month distractions from the real problem. It does nothing to address the huge cuts to federal affordable housing funding that caused mass homelessness. Housing is a human right, which a democracy should advance, not restrict.

Those on the frontline of homelessness � homeless people and the providers who serve them � are drowning in a sea of blame. We have joined together to speak truth to power: until federal affordable housing programs are restored and expanded, homelessness will continue to grow.�

http://wraphome.org/wh_press_kit/press_release_wrap.html

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 25: