Wednesday, March 11, 2009

One in Fifty Children are Homeless...For Children it's as bad as the Thirties.....but we all knew that....


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Snippet from Raw Story Article......click the title to read the rest...
"One in 50 American children is homeless and the economic crisis hitting the United States will make the problem worse, a report released Tuesday said."Without a voice, more than 1.5 million of our nation's children go to sleep without a home each year," said the "America's Young Outcasts" report by the National Center on Family Homelessness.The child homelessness crisis is the worst since the Great Depression, says the report, which looked at the years 2005-06 -- or before the economic slump had fully hit the United States.Children without homes are twice as likely to go hungry, more than twice as likely as middle class children to have health problems, and run twice the risk of other children of repeating a grade at school, being expelled or suspended, or not finishing high school, the report said."
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Now the awful thing about this report is that it was done in 2005 and 2006, BEFORE the Economic Meltdown hit so many families, now with so many Jobs Lost ( MILLIONS ) and Homes Lost ( Millions Foreclosed ), We can only estimate how bad is this number ? The 2010 Census may the only way to truly gather all the needed data on the Crisis hurting our Children and Families....

4 comments:

Fran said...

Even then, I know the Census people make an effort to try to track down homeless people. but I think lots of them fear the gvmnt is going to mess with them & they'd rather not be counted or bothered.

Besides kids stuck in this mess, even the places of refuge..... schools are starting to brace for cutbacks, larger classes, budget axes.

One teacher in a poverty area school district said "kids who are hungry & poor don't learn well". They created meals programs, and even clothes & laundry soap programs- because it is the whole being that needs to be cared for.

Kids need to be clean, have food and the total support to be in a position to learn.

When state budgets are operating in red ink.... school programs & social services get cut- right at a time when they are needed the most.

What kind of country are we???

the walking man said...

It can get worse than the '30's because most people don't have the same survival skill as them of our grandparents generation.

Annette said...

This is getting to be such a huge problem... with the tent cities growing all over, and more coming up every day.

They sure don't want to talk about it very much though.. because it looks bad against Bush and they can't really spin it against Pres. Obama...

NEWSGUY said...

I have met homeless children in Los Angeles classrooms. Kindergarten kids. Dressed neatly in clean clothes. Homeless kids. And the ones I've met are good students.