I hope you and the ones you love are eagerly anticipating a joyful and warm celebration of love and bounty this Thanksgiving. I hope you will all sit down to a table groaning with homemade food and see nothing but faces aglow with health and well-being. I hope that your feast is enlivened with exchanges of good news — increasing success in business, rising income, soon to be earned college degrees, and all the stories signifying upward mobility.
And I hope this all takes place under an intact roof, enclosed by four sturdy wall, in a comfortable air-conditioned environment where everything and everyone is clean, and in a place that is easily affordable to you. I hope that place is your residence.
For millions of Americans there will be no feast. There won’t even be a home for them to eat it in. Much less their own home. They are the thousands and thousands and thousands more without hope for the holidays. They are the homeless of America, our Nation’s shame.
Homelessness in America is nothing short of a disgrace and it should be the major domestic political issue in the 2006 legislative and gubernatorial races as well as the Presidential Election in 2008.
One candidate for Congress(OH16) is Jeff Seemann, who posted his diary on Daily Kos (where this diary is also cross-posted), “Trying to Understand” today, announcing that he intends to spend 100 hours living the homeless experience in order to better know and serve his constituency. I admire and applaud him. It is his diary that inspired this one. [Please read and respond to his diary after you finish this one. Thanks.]
WARNING! Readers, gird yourselves because nothing but bleak facts follow.
* There is no jurisdiction in the United States in which a full-time job at the prevailing minimum wage (either federal or state) provides enough income to allow a household to afford a two-bedroom home at the region’s fair market rent.
* Approximately 35.8 million people lived below the poverty line in 2003. This figure was an increase from the 34.5 million people who lived below the poverty line in 2002.
* The annual homeless population of the United States is 2.3-3.5 million people.
* 40% of the homeless population were made up of families (2003); 63% of the homeless population have at least one child; 84% of the homeless population in families are women.
* 44% of the homeless population are employed.
* 33% of male homeless adults are veterans.
* 55% of homeless individuals are reported as not having medical insurance.
Let’s all take a breath and consider just a little of what those statistics mean.
The minimum wage is not a living wage for American workers. “Minimum wage” is a despicable euphemism for “slave wage.” Such a policy of setting the minimum wage at a level so low is nothing short of the very unchristian message that the laborer is not worthy of his hire. The 44% of the employed homeless in this country can’t afford to buy a turkey and all the trimmings, much less sit down to the table and enjoy it in their merry domicile, surrounded by loving family even once a year.
Single families headed by mothers are the largest and fastest growing demographic of homeless victims in our Nation. I say “victims” because many of these homeless women are driven from the family household by domestic violence. They live in fear and shame, unable to provide a place for their children to grow and thrive. They can’t earn enough to feed themselves and their dependents, let alone treat them to a candle-lit Thanksgiving feast once a year.
Men who volunteered their lives and sacred honor in service to their country now find themselves with no homes to defend even if they wanted to. Some fought, and some were grievously wounded. Many did so on empty stomachs, stomachs filled only with MREs, and some lucky ones on stomachs that growled in chow lines, waiting for a slice of white meat, a blob of mashed potatoes, and a dollop of gravy. Now the only holiday celebration they can hope for will come from a compassionate charity kitchen and their trays of food will be taken in the company of downtrodden strangers.
WARNING! Dear readers who are still with me, a quick and dirty distillation of America’s homeless population from The National Law Center of Homelessness & Poverty:
* 41% are single men.
* 14% are single women.
* 5% are unaccompanied children.
* 40% are families with children.
* 67% are single parent families.
* 23% are mentally disabled.
* 10% are veterans.
* 30% are drug or alcohol dependent.
* 50% are African-American
* 35% are White
* 12% are Hispanic
* 2% are Native American
* 1% are Asian
Homelessness is an equal opportunity affliction. It is a pathogenic social disease that threatens to become an epidemic. It is also curable by:
* instituting a minimum living wage;
* by constructing affordable housing;
* and by creating universal health care for children and universal health insurance for adults.
All we must do is overpower America’s shame by force of will and common legislative good sense. Will you support, campaign, and vote for candidates who demonstrate they have the will and the proposals to end homelessness in America? If you do, perhaps we can all lift our heads and look each other in the eye knowing we stood for real American values. That’s certainly something to be thankful for.