Devastating Epidemic Hits America

Millions of vulnerable adults, teens and children in America suffer from a serious, largely untreatable, 21^st century malady: Equipment Deficit Disorder (EDD).

Equipment - anything needed to survive: street-smarts, good credit, a high school or college diploma, good judgment, money, functional transportation, a safe/affordable place to call home, phone, computer, and access to physical and mental health services, among other essentials.

Deficit - a crisis — health problem, car repair, job loss, fight with a spouse/partner — exacerbated by a lack of a safety net.

Disorder - how this condition affects the people directly involved and the ripple effect on the quality of life of the community.

Thankfully, some still have a safety net, typically family or friends to ease eventual crises. Their community may have limited resources available, but with the ongoing fiscal deterioration of states and localities, and with burgeoning requests for emergency assistance, resources are as scarce as phone booths.

Take “Belinda” for example. This hard-working single parent lost her job a few months ago. Her family abandoned their house before being evicted. They've exhausted the good will of her family and friends. Now she farmed the kids out so she could work brutal hours at a new job that offered decent pay ($13 an hour). But the new job didn’t work out, and now she’s spinning in the vortex, extremely and rightfully afraid that she’s going to lose her kids.

She suffers a severe case of EDD: no high school diploma, untreated mental disorder, no place to live, history of bad choices in mates (resulting in domestic violence, pregnancy, and lack of parenting support), her mother suffers from physical and mental disorders (homeless, living in a motel),  and Belinda has a panic-fueled bad-ass attitude that puts off many in the “helping” profession.

Her worst-case scenario is about to get much worse. Because of her EDD, she’s not accepted into the over-crowded emergency and long-term programs for families in crises. Sadly, most transitional family shelters pick from the “cream of the crop,” families most likely to succeed. Government and private funders look for successful performance measures. Belinda is a long-shot at best. We'll be paying for our neglect of Belinda and her family for years to come.

How many have EDD? I’d guess millions. Yes, millions. Just consider the number of people whose houses are in the foreclosure pipeline. And consider the debilitating effects on the children, as documented in a new report by Family Focus.

We’ve come to this point: too many people needing help that loved ones or beleaguered agencies can’t begin or continue to provide. Public and private resources have been slashed, with every sign on the horizon indicating a brutal time ahead as states and localities realize the feds are not going to bail them out. No matter that benevolent Uncle Sam gifted banks and Wall Street companies with trillions. None of that is trickling down to Main Street, as Senator Sanders recently bellowed, causing a national EDD epidemic, resulting in:

• Decimated mental health budgets - those without insurance are unlikely to get help coping with the growing reasons mental health services are needed — stress, mental illness, and trauma. Parents like Belinda are forced to “parent up” and figure out how to make things work.
• Scarce (or misused) housing resources - Subsidized housing waiting lists extend into 2020 and beyond. In Florida, millions of affordable housing trust fund dollars went, instead, into general revenue to pay for who-knows-what.
• Squeezed and rearranged nutrition budgets - School lunch funding is one example. Food stamp money was siphoned to pay for better school lunches, an unenviable choice.
• Out of reach physical health services - many poor Americans, especially those in underserved rural areas, just get sick, ending up in hospitals or dead.

Part of problem — clueless public officials create unenlightened policies (Gainesville, FL). Their spoken or unspoken reasoning: poor people don’t often vote, don’t contribute to political campaigns, are hard to serve, etc. And too many people don’t understand, or don’t like, poor people.

You can help by signing our wildly successful petition to improve policies in Gainesville.

The income-challenged get more: more folks with no homes; more lives destroyed by poverty; more use “corrections” facilities; while more public resources are needed to address violence, health crises, and crime; and the quality of life in our communities deteriorates. In the meantime, the poster-child for greed, Countrywide's former CEO, Angelo Mozilo, and the rest of the money-grabbers spend like drunken sailors.

Seems to me this nation suffers from a collective case of EDD. Too bad we've gotten rid of phone booths. It's at least a place you can get out of the nasty weather.

Photo by: Diane Nilan