Full Shelters = Hotel Homelessness

by Mark Horvath · 2010-08-29 15:00:00 UTC
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This new video comes from Mark's InvisiblePeople.tv 30-city, 11,000-mile, 75-day road trip, going on now. Mark has been producing videos faster than we can post them, so we're devoting the blog to InvisiblePeople.tv all day today.

This is the real face of homelessness that is rarely seen. Candace lives in a weekly-rate hotel with her four children in Wentzville, Missouri. The federal definition of homelessness does not include this family, which means that all the numbers the government publishes on family and child homelessness are, at best, a good guess. The real numbers are much, much higher.

Candace had the courage to leave an abusive relationship. Most women stay. But if it wasn't for the help a kind man helping unseen homeless families in St. Charles County, Candace and all of her children would be literally out on the streets.

All the shelters are full. Hopefully, Candace will find an opening soon. But there are far more homeless families than there is help. This is a real crisis.

In a past life I worked for a church in a neighboring community. There are many churches in this area, as there are lots of churches throughout America. Unfortunately, the average church in this country spends more money trying to fill seats than actually doing something to help hurting families in its own community.

As the economy gets worse we must get better. My prayer is that the faith-based community will wake up and stop wasting money and resources trying to fill buildings, and start working with their communities to solve this social crisis.

The church needs to be more like Paul. Not the Paul in the Bible, but the Paul in St. Charles County who has become the real hope to so many. Paul is helping homeless families not because he's trying to get people to go to church or win "souls," Paul is helping simply because it's what we all should be doing — helping our neighbors without an agenda.

Please support First Step Back Home.

Mark Horvath is an activist for the homeless. He vlogs at invisiblepeople.tv and blogs at hardlynormal.com. He was formerly homeless in Hollywood.

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