Repost From Sapphire Blue's Journal: Ending The Crisis of Homelessness

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Repost From Sapphire Blue's Journal: Ending The Crisis of Homelessness

Sapphire Blue's Journal
Our Democratic candidates, especially Clinton & Obama, are fantastic fundraisers.
Posted by Sapphire Blue in General Discussion: Primaries
Tue Sep 25th 2007, 09:04 AM
I wish they would all get together & hold a fundraiser or two for affordable housing programs throughout the country.

NEW REPORT DOCUMENTS CORRELATION BETWEEN HISTORIC CUTS TO FEDERAL HOUSING PROGRAMS AND CONTEMPORARY MASS HOMELESSNESS

Communities call for the new Congress to take a new approach to addressing and ending the national crisis of homelessness

~ excerpt ~

"Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures,� documents the correlation between these trends and the emergence of a new and massive episode of homelessness in the 1980s which continues today. It particularly focuses on radical cuts to programs administered by the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), which administers funds for rural affordable housing. Available online in PDF format, the report also demonstrates why federal responses to this nationwide crisis have consistently failed.

Created in partnership with five other organizations, the report uses federal budget data and other sources to document that:

HUD�s budget has dropped 65% since 1978, from over $83 billion to $29 billion in 2006.

The Emergency Shelter phenomenon was born the same year that HUD funding was at a drastic low point. In 1983, HUD�s budget was only $18 billion, the same year that general public emergency shelters began opening in cities nationwide.

HUD has spent $0 on new public housing, while more than 100,000 public housing units have been lost to demolition, sale, or other removal in the last ten years.

Federal housing subsidies are going to the wealthy. In 2004, 61 percent of these subsidies went to households earning more than $54,788, while only 27 percent went to households earning under $34,398.

More than 600,000 identified homeless students went to public schools in the 2003-2004 school year, according to the US Department of Education.

Federal support helps homeowners instead of poor people. In 2005, federal homeowner subsidies totaled more than $122 billion, while HUD outlays were only $31 billion � a difference of more than $91 billion.

According to Paul Boden, executive director of WRAP, �The Administration�s current �Chronic Homeless Initiative� is just the latest in a series of inadequate flavor-of-the-month distractions from the real problem. It does nothing to address the huge cuts to federal affordable housing funding that caused mass homelessness. Housing is a human right, which a democracy should advance, not restrict.

Those on the frontline of homelessness � homeless people and the providers who serve them � are drowning in a sea of blame. We have joined together to speak truth to power: until federal affordable housing programs are restored and expanded, homelessness will continue to grow.�

http://wraphome.org/wh_press_kit/press_release_wrap.html

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 25:

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html