USA's Shame - 3 Million Homeless This Year

They take the paper and they read the headlines. So they've heard of unemployment and they've heard of bread-lines. And they philanthropically cure them all by getting up a costume charity ball. - Ogden Nash

On Tuesday the BBC Online ran a special report on "Homelessness in a Land of Plenty". I read it and filed it in my memory for later. Sometimes I read a news article and my blood boils right away, this time it was more of a slow burn that took a couple of days to spill over. Now, I am ready to say my bit.

This year, at some point, over 1% of the US population will find themselves homeless. The US Census has a useful little page called the POPClock that has a running estimate of the US population, now standing as I write this at 295,244,307 and growing by one every 12 seconds. That, my friends, means almost 3 million people in the "greatest civilised country of all time" will find themselves on the streets this year. That is simply shameful, and in no way civilised.

Nor, contrary to popular myth, are the legions of homeless made up of the mentally or physically ill, the addicted and the deliberately homeless.

Most people become homeless because of an economic crisis - like losing a job or being evicted or because their incomes just can't keep pace with rising housing costs.

"Once you lose housing, it's expensive to get back in - deposits, two months rent, have a bad tenant's history - so the threshold becomes much higher," says Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

There is a social stigma to being homeless in the US, it is treated as a crime, not as a condition which requires alleviating. Many states make it illegal to sleep on the streets while the general public try really hard not to notice the homeless.

"Most people are so involved in their own daily lives, they look at you and if they sense you're homeless, you're kind of invisible to them," says Chester, who has been homeless for about two years.

"They're not bad, they're just that way. They look at you and they see you maybe, but they don't see you."

Scott Schingleberg, director of D.C. charity "Martha's Kitchen" hits the nail right on the head:

I think, as a society, until we wake up and say these are systemic issues that we can't address through volunteerism or individual donations, we're going to continue to see this problem.

So...

To Democrats and liberals - unlike many of my more widely read and infuential progressive blogging colleagues I will NOT be endorsing a candidate for the DNC Chair. However, I call for whoever is elected to stand firm on this and other issues of extreme poverty in this "greatest country" and show leadership for the left by calling loud and long for government at federal and state level to take positive action. Let us not simply leave these crippling problems to charities. To do so is to deny every principle that we hold dear and alienate ourselves from the progressive movement in one stroke.

To Republicans and conservatives - you must admit that the pandemic problems of poverty in this nation are everyone's business, and not simply a result of individual lack of acumen or individual choice. A crusade against homelessness in the USA would be one way in which the religious right, the moral majority, could show their power and gain a widespread backing from the nation. It would be the Christian thing to do. For the neoconservatives and PNAC it should be a matter of pride. Nothing undermines the view of America as the world's natural leader more than the sad truth that it fails to be civilised, fails to prevent the crushing weight of living on the streets from descending on it's own citizens.

We require a joint action by federal and state government, working with the charities in this field, to build new and affordable homes, to provide assistance and temporary shelter, to change laws and attitudes that stigmatise the homeless. The economic benefits of the building program alone would far outway the costs, I feel.

The right to a home should be inalienable in this country. Surely this is one issue we can all be united on.