The Link Between House Fires and "Hard Times"

A family having "hard times" (translation: homeless due to hardship) in Starkville, Mississippi was recently taken into the small apartment of India Williams, a 25-year-old mother of three who understood what "hard times" do to a family. Williams paid dearly for her kindness. On Monday, Dec. 28, in Starkville, a fire in that overcrowded apartment killed three women and six small children.

Tell the mayor of Starkville that the link between poverty and house fires is real -- and needs to be addressed NOW.

The fire that took their lives, sadly, is part of a nationwide house fire epidemic. The Red Cross reports a 200% jump in house fires, attributed mainly to an increase in impoverished and desperately cold households turning to unsafe methods to stay warm following utility shut-offs. The nationwide cold spell has only made things worse.

I've noticed an interesting, and revealing, phenomenon when it comes to news stories about these tragedies. "Hard times" and variations are common terms. The Tulsa World ran a story with the headline "Tough Times" describing poverty among families in the OK state. The Denver Post just ran a superb feature on Colorado childhood poverty focused on people "trying to get by."

"Hard times," "tough times," "trying to get by," are euphemisms for abject poverty and homelessness. I want to call it what it is so the clueless get a clue. Poverty's devastation is felt through all communities. It costs more to maintain poverty than it does to holistically address it.

So HEAR US is launching a campaign, "Up the Food Chain," to challenge mayors to recognize hard times as poverty. We've set up a Change.org petition asking mayors to go up the "food chain" to state and federal legislators urging development of comprehensive approaches to poverty. By targeting communities where poverty-related house fires occur, we hope to make some sense out of these tragedies. Let them hear you!

Why mayors? Well, the U.S. Conference of Mayors is an influential body with ties, formal and informal, to statewide and nationwide administrations. Petitions get mayors' attention. Case in point: the successful campaign HEAR US and Change.org launched in Grand Junction, Colorado to force local authorities to provide daytime shelter for homeless families left out in the cold.

Seems to me it's time to put significant energy -- or at least a few keyboard clicks -- into reducing "hard times" before we all get to know first-hand what it means to experience hard times. Join our effort, share this campaign, and do what you can in your community to make lives of homeless children, families living in poverty and those having "hard times" just a little easier. We'll all be better for it.

Photo credit: Diane Nilan