Sign of grim times: Kids in Nickelsville

[n2doc]

By VANESSA HO, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Updated 09:24 p.m., Sunday, November 6, 2011
In January, Seattle's annual homeless count delivered some seemingly good news: It found fewer people sleeping without shelter than in years past.

But a month later, a deep cut in state benefits went into effect, devastating thousands of poor families. Suddenly, social workers in Seattle began seeing a spike in families losing housing, searching for shelter and finding none, in a grim trend that shows no sign of abatement.

"I've never had seen it like this," said Jeanice Hardy, a longtime housing director for the YWCA of Seattle.


"More families are on the street. More families are really desperate in finding a place. I see it every night, two or three women with their kids have no place to go. We're now having to send families to Nickelsville."


Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Sign-of-grim-times-Kids-in-Nickelsville-2255880.php

[midnight]

1. After reading this I'm reminded about how the White House want to deal with the empty homes

of all the Americans who were foreclosed on because we can't seem to reign in the banksters... The White House has recommended that the huge amount of empty home be purchased by the wealthy....

I could think of a much more successful program.... House the homeless.... Our tax dollars have already purchased these home.... Let's get these folks off the streets,

[lunatica]

2. How can those families ever hope to raise themselves out of this kind of poverty?

They've fallen through the cracks and have been abandoned by the wealthiest country in the world. The heartlessness is plain to see. Someone makes the decision to cut funding. That decision has major consequences for people.

Where does all the money go when people all over the world are falling into desperate poverty? It doesn't evaporate into thin air. It doesn't dissolve leaving only what's left to the rich.

It goes to the rich. Meanwhile families are living in squalid tent communities that are growing.

This is criminal.

[MedicalAdmin]

3. It is and if the criminals have corrupted those charged with protecting us ...

from those criminals then the only option may be armed rebellion. This assumes that elections or legislative fixes don't work. We haven't gotten there yet, but given how the OWS has been treated in Oakland but even more assiduously in Arizona ( using summons to threaten the participants with fines and criminal records) it may become inevitable after the 2012 elections.

People are suffering. The country is burning. And Washington fiddles. And cuts.

[deutsey]

5. The big smiley-face mask of Reaganism has fallen off

and we're finally seeing the vile contempt behind it that the economic royalists in this country have always felt toward us.

[LiberalEsto]

4. Nicklesville, FYI, is a tent city for the homeless

Those of us who don't live in the Seattle area have no idea what Nicklesville is.

I'm posting another paragraph from the article so that the rest of us can be enlightened.

"That has forced more families to live in cars, tents and such last-resort places as Nickelsville, Seattle's semi-permanent shantytown on a city-owned piece of property in West Seattle. A count of residents there in the West Seattle Blog last month found 10 kids out of 140 people."

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Sign-of-grim-times-Kids-in-Nickelsville-2255880.php#ixzz1d1ezzPqu

[ThomWV]

6. If it is cold at night every god damned Government building should be opened for shelter

Every Court House, every Post Office, every Municipal Building, every Army Barracks, every heated building paid for in full or in part by public funds should be opened up to let the homeless in for shelter at least. And food and toiletries should be provided, and medical care too. Can't we even do that very little bit? Have we become so self absorbed that we will not insist that even our public buildings, the one's we pay for 24 hours a day if they are used or not, be made available to the very least able among us?

[n2doc]

7. kick n/t