The sad reality is that homelessness is growing around the world!
Canada reports that more than 150,000 homeless people are scattered across their territories. Australia estimates that 110,000 are experiencing homelessness on that continent. In the United Kingdom, 11,000 “rough sleepers”(typical British understatement!) are sleeping in alleys and on the streets.
It is, to the shame of this nation, the United States of America that tops the world-wide charts with the highest number of individuals and families that are identified as homeless and that number is growing as we speak.
There have been a series of recent stories in the media focusing on what is called “the hidden homeless”, those who homeless, but somehow they are under the radar , struggling to survive yet their stories are not always told and heard and they are basically ignored by just about everyone.
The hidden homeless populations are found in Los Angeles, Memphis, Texas, Mississippi, Chicago, New Jersey and Philadelphia.
The hidden homeless includes families sheltered in motels, the working poor facing foreclosure on their homes, teenagers who have been kicked out of their homes or have left to get away from abuse and are now crashing with friends or other family members, college students who also squat on couches and floors in friends dorms or on the floors of their peers, and the mentally ill who are on the streets afraid of and uncomfortable with shelters, cafes and havens.
HOMELESS IN MOTELS:
We are in the era of rising unemployment, record foreclosures, out-of-whack rising food prices, increasing utility costs, shrinking paychecks, combined with massive cuts in social services that have forced more and more families out of their homes and into the homes of relatives and friends.
There are now a growing number of families living in pay-by-the-week motels.
A story by CBN News Dispatch reports that “One school’s buses pick up students from at least 6 different area motels in South Kansas City, Mo. One of the wealthiest school districts in Kansas City also counted 227 homeless students in January of this year.”
Pastor John Wiley of the River Christian fellowship Church in Raytown, Mo started to work with the homeless motel folks in 2008.
“They’d gone into the motels thinking it would be 2 or 3 weeks that they would be there. We found families that were there 3 or 4 years,” he told CBN News.
Pastor Wiley’s church began to help these families by providing hot meals and rent assistance.
The Church and the community are now expanding their mission, purchasing an abandoned building and converting it into a 66-unit center to house the needy, to be called “the River of Refuge Dream Center — a place where they can get healed with dignity and move out with their own money.”
It is estimated that there are 10,000 or more pay-by-the-week motels housing the homeless around the country.
Inquirer staff writer recently highlighted the family of Robert Cordero, his wife Samantha, his two sons and three daughters being housed at the Hillside Inn in Cherry hill, NJ. The Cordero family moved into the Hillside after he lost his home-remodeling job and they were evicted from their apartment in Woodlynne. The family lives in single rooms, where beds double as dinner tables, “and folded clothes, food, and toys are stacked high along the walls.”
The article continues: “The boys each have a dresser drawer, and the 2 youngest girls share a drawer. My 11-year-old has her own drawer…. and I put my stuff on top of a storage bin,” says Mr. Cordero.
Robert has just recently been rehired by another home-remodeling company and hopes that his new paycheck will help the family move out of the motel to a new apartment or house.
“You have to keep your spirits up and say, ‘Tomorrow will be better,’ “he said. “If I give up, my kids will think it’s OK to give up.”
Living in the same motel is Beth Allen and her 9-month daughter Kaylee. She is currently unemployed and disabled and escaping an abusive boyfriend. Life has been so rough for Miss Allen lately. “I was a sales representative for a medical equipment company, until a drunk driver hit my car in Delaware” a few years ago, said Allen, 46. “I had a brain injury and still have some memory loss. I’ve always worked hard. I’ve given food and clothing to others, and now this. I’ve gone days without eating – and Kaylee has just a half can of formula….. I’ve hit rock bottom.”
Other families at the Hillside profiled included Michelle Carter, with her 2 children John & Siani (6 and 8 respectively); Vianelis Rosario, with her 2 children, Derick, 4, and Brianaliz, 3; and Lakesha Bullard, son Jaheem, 13; and her husband, Barry, laid off from his postal service job.
For most of these families, it involves looking for work, eking out on welfare, food stamps, housing services, Medicaid, doing odd jobs “here and there” and “off the books”, all while trying to hold their family together.
According to a Camden County Board of Social Services director, “It costs $50 a night for us to put a single adult in a motel, $85 for a family.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that there were nationally more than 650,000 people living in shelters, motels, staying in relatives homes, crashing with friends, or on the streets last year. HUD identified some 14,500 in Pennsylvania and more than 14,000 in New Jersey in 2010.
At least 775 were marked as homeless in Camden alone and more than 1,200 in Philadelphia in 2010.
At least 1.59 million folks were homeless for at least one night somewhere in America last year.
These numbers are just an estimate, a low one at that.
As reported in the June 2011 One Step Away front page article, only in the past 3 months has there been a concerted, face-to-face, city-wide street outreach to accurately number the chronic homeless on Philly’s streets and parks, initiated by the 100K Homes Coalition.
While homelessness is a global problem, there is just too much wealth, too many resources being wasted, abused and misused, especially in this “richest country in the world” that it is absolutely inexcusable for too many people, too many families and children to still be homeless or facing imminent homelessness.
OSA wants to spotlight these “hidden homeless” so that their stories will spark more programs, services, coalitions, whatever is needed to find an effective solution to ending homelessness today, yesterday and tomorrow.
Next, ‘The Hidden Homeless” will spotlight high school and college students who are experiencing homelessness and keeping it hidden.
posted by Leslie Miles and Erik Younge./please comment at: eryounge@gmail.com
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