704,000 People Homeless

That figure is low. If you read the article, it expresses my first thought. "What about the people who don't seek shelter? They're homeless too". According to the article, they're not included in the total. It would be much higher if they were but they live under the radar and aren't easy to track.

I've worked most of my adult life and I'm here to tell you that for most of it I was one or two paychecks away from homelessness myself. Now that I'm retired and raising the girls, that hasn't changed. We live payday to payday and get to hear morons like Johnny Appleseed tell us what leeches we are.

I have a suggestion for my blogging partners. We could start a new blog consisting of excerpts from our hate mail. On second thought, that would give them far more attention than they deserve.

I'll just consider the source and ignore it.

Here are a couple of articles from USA Today regarding homelessness. The first is a breakdown of the numbers.

704,000 sought shelter

19% are veterans

65% of the adults are men

23% are children, half of whom are younger than 5

45% are blacks

Source: Department of Housing and Urban

Development

And here is the main article. Click on the post title (I haven't done that in a while) to read the entire page of USA Today.

HUD gets new view of who's homeless

Study a 'huge leap' in understanding problem, chief says

By Wendy Koch
USA TODAY

A groundbreaking survey of homelessness being released today found that 704,000 people nationwide sought shelter at least once in a three-month period.

Families with children accounted for one-third of those seeking emergency shelter or transitional housing between February and April 2005, the most recent period studied, according to the report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The rest were individuals, mostly adult men. Nearly half were black.

The count covered only those seeking shelter, not people living on the street, so the total number of homeless people would be higher.

"This first-of-its-kind study is a huge leap forward in our understanding of not only how many people are homeless, but also what their needs are," HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson says. The report says, for example, that at least a quarter are disabled.

HUD, which briefed USA TODAY on the report Monday, says it is the most comprehensive government estimate ever of homelessness. Previous counts looked only at the number of people homeless on a given day or week.

The three-month figure � equal to the population of South Dakota � is an estimate based on a sample of 80 communities. It will serve as a baseline for annual reports to Congress and may be expanded to include people living on the street.

Martha Burt, a homelessness scholar at the Urban Institute, says the new database has shortcomings. For example, it has limited information about the health of those seeking shelter, and she thinks future versions will have trouble tracking those living on the street.

HUD's report also cites a previously reported one-night survey of hundreds of communities in January 2005. That survey found 754,000 homeless people, including 45% who were living on the street. USA TODAY published its own estimate of 727,000 in October 2005, based on earlier tallies.

The three-month count found that on an average day, 335,000 people sought shelter, but more than twice that number sought shelter at least once during the entire period.

Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania who co-wrote the HUD report, says it's unclear whether homelessness has increased or declined, because past estimates were done differently.

He says poverty among blacks, who are more likely to live in urban areas, runs deeper than for other groups.

Culhane says families with kids have remained a steady one-third of the homeless, and he says government needs to do more to provide housing, such as expanding rent subsidies.

One of every three homeless kids has a diagnosable psychiatric disorder, such as post-traumatic stress, by age 8, says Ellen Bassuk, a psychiatrist who is president of the National Center on Family Homelessness.

"They have trouble sitting still and learning in school," she says.

Nine of 10 homeless mothers have been victims of violence, often domestic, she says.

Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless welcomes the new count but says more housing and shelters are needed as well as a focus on the root causes of the problem. He says homelessness "can happen to everyone."

Hunger and Poverty- A National Disgrace

Children. Our most precious resource. Our future. The future of the world. The future of our species.







[I spent from 9:30 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. researching statistics on child hunger, child poverty, and health- uninsured children. In six hours of searching I became frustrated, annoyed, and then puzzled because of all the innumerable sites I researched on each subject, I could find no stats more recent than 1996! Oddly enough I found no stats on children who had no health insurance. They may be out there but I did not find them. I know there are more recent stats on each subject because I have read them in my newsies. Unfortunately I did not keep those news articles. If anyone finds more recent stats, please either post them on comments or email me. Thank you. WA] [Later: I FINALLY found a few updated sites.WA]

The suffering of children from hunger, poverty and deprivation of health care is the primary focus here but it also applies to adults.


Bread for the World
Seeking Justice
Ending Hunger

Stats on US Children Hungry;

35. million people hungry
12.4 million children hungry
More than 1 in 10 households in US hungry = 11%
http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-basics/hunger-facts-domestic.html (update Jan 2007 - click on url for complete article)

Child Hunger in a Land of Abundance Makes us All Poor
'>http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0924-21.htm">

Homeless and Hungry
http://www.usmayors.org/uscm/hungersurvey/2006/report06.pdf




Child Poverty in Rich Countries (including the US)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/pove-j01.shtml For complete article, click on url.
Excerpt:
The child poverty rate in the US has steadily risen every year from 2000, according to several recent reports and press releases from public policy institutes and government agencies.

Child Poverty in Rich Countries, 2005, a report by the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, provides a comparative assessment of the conditions facing poor children in industrialized nations, primarily in Europe but also including the US.

The study begins with this assertion: “Protecting children from the sharpest edges of poverty during their years of growth and formation is both the mark of a civilized society and a means of addressing some of the evident problems that affect the quality of life in the economically developed nations.” By this standard, the US has the dishonor of being one of the most UNCIVILIZED of the major industrialized countries. [ emphasis mine. WA]
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Many thousands of American children who live in poverty have no health insurance. Today, even more who live above the poverty level, even middle class, either have no health insurance or are underinsured. If Bush's cuts to Medicaid and other health programs are approved, there will be yet more without health coverage. This is a national disgrace. Even small European countries have better rating for child health care than America does.
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Hearts and Minds: Children in Poverty
http://www.heartsandminds.org/articles/childpov.htm for complete article, click on url.
Excerpt:
Poverty's Effect on Children
According to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau in September 1996, 13.8% of Americans live in poverty. Many more are on the borderline. [ Old stats, but they have increased since 2006. WA]

Poverty affects all ages, but an astonishing 48% percent of its victims are children: About 15 million children -- one out of every four -- live below the official poverty line.

22% of Americans under the age of 18 -- and 25% under age 12 -- are hungry or at the risk of being hungry.

Everyday 2,660 children are born into poverty; 27 die every day because of it.

Children and families are the fastest growing group in the homeless population, representing 40% of the homeless.
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Stats on percentage of homeless are veterans, and it is a rapidly growing problem, and hunger stalks the homeless: Homeless Veterans; http://www1.va.gov/homeless/page.cfm?pg=1

Excerpt: Homeless Veterans
Overview of Homelessness
About one-third of the adult homeless population have served their country in the Armed Services. On any given day, as many as 200,000 veterans (male and female) are living on the streets or in shelters, and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year. Many other veterans are considered near homeless or at risk because of their poverty, lack of support from family and friends, and dismal living conditions in cheap hotels or in overcrowded or substandard housing.

Almost all homeless veterans are male (about three percent are women), the vast majority are single, and most come from poor, disadvantaged backgrounds. Homeless veterans tend to be older and more educated than homeless non-veterans. But similar to the general population of homeless adult males, about 45% of homeless veterans suffer from mental illness and (with considerable overlap) slightly more than 70% suffer from alcohol or other drug abuse problems. Roughly 56% are African American or Hispanic.
VHA Programs Home Page [This is from a government site. Although they concur that 45% of homeless veterans suffer from mental illness, they blandly deny it is from PTSD. FIE!! Mental disorders, like PTSD, often contribute to alcoholism and drug usage as they attempt to self-medicate and stem their emotional and mental pain. WA . FIE again!]

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Causes of poverty ( Global. Old stats - 2004 - but the same causes exist today. Article too long for a post but please scan the most pertinent causative factors.WA)
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp

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Reducing Poverty (Global. Please scroll down to paragraph: "Critical Investments for Poverty Reduction"WA)
http://www.unfpa.org/pds/poverty.htm
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Mapping Poverty and Other MDG Indicators

Click here for animation >> Then click on tabs for more information.

The "civilized" industrial nations are not represented here. Why is there no data available? Is this supposed to indicate that there is no poverty stricken, hungry, or health care deprived people in these countries? Statistics prove otherwise.The US, Canada, the British Isles, Scandinavian countries, and Australia surely have stats!