Family Values Take a Hit While ‘Shenanigans’ Get the Headlines

We have managed to work up rage about $165+ million AIG bonuses, but are we distracted from the big picture? I think so….

Why is it we have so little focus, or fury, about millions of struggling low-income families and individuals torn apart by the anti-poverty storm that has raged in this country for over 25 years? Children, teens, women, and men have ended up unnoticed, or as scapegoats, on our nation’s streets. To no surprise but much dismay, unscrupulous “shenanigans” have ruined the world’s economy, reducing the likelihood that resources, not to mention political incentive, will be available to substantially address poverty. So we futilely flail at bonuses.

In the meantime, the tepid “concerted” federal response to homelessness, HUD’s ill-fated and under-funded 10-year-plan to end homelessness, barely gets lip-service.

Few have paid attention to the reality: this superficial approach diverts resources from the majority of the homeless population—families, youth, and single adults without multiple crises—to remove unsightly stereotypical (mostly) men from street corners in major cities. It diminishes family stability, ensuring a steady stream of “consumers” of public assistance, i.e. emergency shelters (where they exist and if they can continue), child welfare services (a frayed system at best), expensive reactionary health care, and the criminal justice system.  Cost effective?  Not if families’ well-being is valued.

Two recent reports provide alarming evidence that families stand to bear the brunt of “shenanigans” perpetrated by the greed-meisters:

• A report just issued by the National Center on Family Homelessness offers sobering state-by-state statistics as to how prevalent homelessness is among the invisible, largely ignored segment of the population. (At least) 1 in 50 children are homeless before this economic meltdown.

• Sharon Johnson’s recent Women's e-news article cites an incomprehensible 2,900 families A DAY projected to lose their homes to foreclosure. It doesn’t take much to turn a good number of those families into bona fide homeless families.

The U.S. House is sitting on a bill, the Homeless Children and Youth Act, to expand HUD’s definition of homelessness to include families and teens, the majority of the population, heretofore ignored by the “family values” crowd.

The U.S. Senate is considering a bill, the Helping Families Save their Homes from Bankruptcy Act, to help up to 12 million families stave off foreclosure. Take your time, guys (mostly), it’s only 2,900 families a day!

We’ve heard terms like “responsibility” and “too costly” being tossed around like water balloons at a church picnic by the same unscrupulous promoters of sub-prime loans that targeted women twice as often as men, focusing on minorities and low-income working mothers of struggling families which adeptly paved the way to homelessness. Are they the best ones to criticize plans to alleviate poverty and homelessness?

Seems to me this crisis could provide the window of opportunity to link the previously-homeless with the nuevo-homeless, and use the numbers to motivate Congress into creating a comprehensive approach to family stability and opportunity. After all, impoverished families are now the majority, providing the test for true family values.

For more on homelessness in the U.S., check out Shannon's End Homelessness blog.

(Photo by James Jordan)