A third of the homeless in my county are children!

[Cleita]

Third of homeless in San Luis Obispo County are under 21

By Nathan Welton

A third of San Luis Obispo County's 2,400 homeless people are under age 21, and more than a fifth aren't yet out of junior high school.

Those are some preliminary results of a unique project conducted last fall in which dozens of volunteers counted people living in encampments, campers and shelters countywide.

More data will surface next month, and the numbers are released as funding shortfalls for homeless services threaten local shelters.

"A number of communities think they don't have any homeless because people tend to define homeless people as those they see on the street," said county Supervisor Jim Patterson. "But people will be blown away to see how many children there are."

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/14220492.htm

I wonder how these stats compare proportionately nationwide? With all the brouhaha wedge issues that are being thrown at Congress and us the electorate by the White House, why isn't anyone talking about this? I think this needs to be a big issue in the upcoming elections.

[Horse with no Name]

1. The reason is very simple

Them illeeeegal aliens took their houses.:sarcasm:

[Cleita]

4. It's an awful disgrace.n/t

[cynatnite]

2. They are poor and don't vote

why should they care?

[Cleita]

3. Maybe we need to rub their faces in it? I for one am going to

try to see how we can get them registered to vote. This is disgusting. Also, a homeless man of sixty shot two people in a Denny's here locally and then shot himself, killing them and himself. I imagine that three lives and a lot of trauma could have been saved if that man had a place to stay and the medical care he needed. I mean what kind of nation lets a sixty year old man sleep in his car and I can tell you that the temperatures this winter have dropped down below freezing? We even had snow.

[cynatnite]

8. It is a travesty

This does not have to be happening in this country. Here in E. TN where normally you wouldn't expect it, there are more homeless. The police pick them up, but I have no idea where they go. I'm inclined to believe they do it for aesthetic reasons. They closed down a homeless shelter here a few months ago for not having the money to stay open.

[Cleita]

11. This is what they did when I lived in Los Angeles.

The police would pick them up and drive them to the next city line usually if a shop owner complained about one on his street. (Los Angeles is made up of a patchwork of little cities and county areas) The police there would drive them to another city line. I heard a story of a homeless guy who was picked up in Santa Monica and ended up in Costa Mesa in the next County.

[wildeyed]

10. Homelessness is an abomination in this, the richest country

in the world. It is not moral to have people who don't want to sleeping outside.

I have done some voter registration with homeless. It is hard work but gratifying. One of the reasons that I am a big supporter of same-day voter registration, too. It would be so much easier to get people to the polls if we could do registration and voting at the same time.

[wildeyed]

7. I worked on a project registering homeless citizens to vote.

We registered maybe 200, only turned out 50 to actually vote. A local wingnut politician managed to get them all kicked off the rolls, because, the way the law is written on our state, you have to give your HOME ADDRESS to vote. We registered them at the shelter, where they receive mail, which is technically a business address. So basically, as it stands, if you are homeless in my state, you can't vote because you don't have a home address. :banghead:

Even some of the Republicans were horrified by this, and I am certain the law will be changed, but still, it is very frustrating.

[Cleita]

13. I'll let them use my address. It's in the country and it's possible

for many to pitch tents on our property. If I can get a few of our Democrats interested in providing addresses maybe we can do it.

[wildeyed]

15. The law is probably different,

and I hope better, in your state. Call the Board of Election and get the details on how to do it properly, get the name of whoever you talk to documented, then follow their directions impeccably. Also, talk to the shelter people. They may be doing some registration already, and then you can just volunteer with them to help out.

Of course that is what I did, and fat lot of good it did us. But I found that when you start trying to empower the dissempowered, it make some in the entrenched structure a wee bit testy. :evilgrin:

But seriously, my goal, when I started the project, was to make the local officials, both dem and repub, more responsive to the needs of the community. I figured if I could get 200 homeless to actually vote, that would be enough to get some attention for the locals, maybe do a little good. I still think so, and I will make a second go of it this year, once the laws have been clarified.

[Hekate]

18. In 2004 I was told the homeless could use their crossroads

Hi Cleita --

That is, a more experienced registrar told me they could write down the place closest to where they slept at night. "Corner of 5th and Main" kind of thing.

I live in Santa Barbara County, and never got to check out the accuracy of this statement, but I bet a quick call to your SLO County Registrar would be helpful.

The point is, the issue of having to be landowning white man to vote was settled quite some time ago, so the homeless should be able to cast a ballot. I think the only caveat would be that you wouldn't want someone driving busses of homeless from one county to the next to vote, but assuring that should not be insurmountable.

Yeah, the children. The safety net is a bad joke these days. More mothers are out on the street, and with them, their kids. It's obscene.

Hekate

[Cleita]

21. That makes sense, however, considering how much

attention is paid to our Constitution these days, I wonder. It's worth bringing up though.

[simonm]

5. f%@*! republican rubberstamps

With the money wasted on Bush's Iraq war adventure we could have solved so many issues here at home .

Damn shame. :nuke:

[Cleita]

6. It's so tragic. When Clinton left a surplus we all had so many

hopes to solve these problems. Aaaagh!

[paul_fromatlanta]

12. Its amazing when you graph it

[Cleita]

14. That's amazing! n/t

[paul_fromatlanta]

9. Not surprising 51% of kids in urban areas live in low income families

The kind most likely to live paycheck to paycheck and be vulnerable to possible homelessness if something bad happens.

BTW, that compares to 29% in suburban areas and 46% in rural areas.

http://www.nccp.org/pub_cua05.html

[Cleita]

16. We really need safety nets so that paycheck to paycheck

living doesn't throw a family out in the street if the paycheck is lost temporarily.

[paul_fromatlanta]

17. Everybody knows the emotional and ethical arguments

Everybody knows the emotional and ethical arguments for providing a safety net. I'm a Christian and try to be a good person but I'm also a capitalist - here is the capitalist argument: a well timed investment in a vulnerable family that has had bad luck saves far more money than than it costs.

This is the reason that we don't have debtor's prisons - not because capitalists want to write off bad debts but because the smart ones learned a lesson. When debtor's prisons began to allow the debtors to bring their families and to leave the prison to work or raise funds, the bankers got more of their money back...this was the beginning of a new understanding.

It cost a great deal in money and human capital to lose a home. From that moment the family becomes consumed with their homelessness and they don't pay taxes, they don't generate economic activity and they become a long term drain while they suffer.

If we can intervene at the right time we can often prevent this cycle and ultimately make back the cost of the intervention plus a profit as they become productive again.

I know this sounds cold blooded but if the topic is "how do we prevent kids from suffering homelessness" the answer is to sell voters on a safety net. One way to do that is to emphasize the long term economic benefits. That doesn't mean we drop the moral argument but there is a place for an economic argument too.

[Cleita]

19. It's only common sense!

I use the same argument for people who don't think everyone should have access to health care. My argument is that diseases cross all classes. If everyone gets timely medical care, there is less chance of a disease spreading. In the last century TB was a scourge because it spread from the slums to the middle class and the rich.

They are just talking about the bird flu right now on the local news. Now since we are still kind of rural and near the ocean, we have more birds and species of birds both land and sea than in more populated areas. So if the birds bring bird flu here, those homeless will be the first to get it and spread it to everyone else.

[paul_fromatlanta]

23. Granny used to say "Common sense isn't as common as it ought to be." n/t

[mdmc]

20. I wonder how many of the homeless children are in the custody of

the county.

That would be a very interesting statistic. How many of the children that they are reporting as homeless are legally in the custody of the county's department of social service?

:kick:

[Cleita]

22. They haven't put the complete report out yet. It will be

interesting if they address this. I think though that these kids are with their homeless parents. I know that there are families who sleep in their cars on the street. I hope they also put a statistic out as to how many are working homeless. Many work but can't afford the outlay of money to rent an apartment, you know first and last month rent, and security deposit.

[mdmc]

24. I am betting that the report will not address kids in DSS custody

that are homeless. This happend quite a bit - kids runaway from foster homes and take to the street.