Hidden Voices, a report to be released this month by the Coalition on Homelessness, establishes homeless families and immigrants as an integral part of the over-all homelessness crisis in America, and argues for the inclusion of families and immigrants in any strategy to reduce or end homelessness.

Today, 14.4 million American families—one out of every seven families—have critical housing needs. Despite all of the talk of family values in America, we have utterly failed as a society to value our families. We have failed to create the necessary affordable housing, decent and accessible jobs, income safety net, childcare, and health care that will allow all families in this country to thrive. Despite the severe needs of America’s low-income families and children, the last twenty years have witnessed massive cutbacks in programs that benefit them. The 1996 Welfare Reform act has also adversely affected America’s families by pushing heads of households into low-paying jobs while eliminating social safety nets.

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Community is where you find it. Especially when you’re someone who has already fallen through the cracks of this country’s community-at-large: someone who is houseless or marginally housed, unemployed or marginally employed, one of the growing number of people who have lost their footing in the world for reasons ranging from tiny accidents of luck or timing to severely disabling conditions of body or mind.

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In late September, the United States Senate Appropriations Committee passed a FY 2005 spending bill for the U.S. Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The differences in that bill and the previously passed House version will now be negotiated and the final outcome determined by a Senate and House joint conference during the “lame duck” session following the November election. Although there is much work to be done, advocates can breath a temporary, collective sigh of relief, as the Senate bill includes $20.7 billion for Section 8 housing assistance, an increase of $2.2 billion over the Bush Administration’s request and roughly $700 million more than the House bill. The Senate Committee also rejected the Bush Administration’s “Flexible Voucher” Proposal, asserting that the proposal would “eliminate the current Section 8 requirement that three-quarters of all vouchers go to extremely low-income families who are often the elderly and disabled, result [ing] in these families and households having to live in substandard housing at unsustainable rents or else become homeless.” These encouraging developments aside, the Section 8 program continues to come under heavy assault through funding shortfalls, rule changes, proposed adjustments in determining a voucher’s value, and a host of anti-Section 8 rhetoric from Administration officials.

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Proposition A will provide money for affordable housing according to the following categories:

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Less than a week following the City’s much heralded, extensive outreach effort to connect chronically homeless people with city services, residents of Episcopal Sanctuary—one of the largest city-funded shelters in San Francisco—learned with less than 24 hours notice that they would be forcibly relocated to locations unknown on Tuesday, October 19th, 2004.

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The tradition of honoring the dead is part of the culture in Latino-America; in some countries, families prepare altars to their relatives who are gone. These altars include flowers and the favorite dishes and drinks of the deceased. In some other countries, part of the celebration is to stay overnight in the cemetery and share food and favorite drinks with the dead, this is a joyful celebration in which people get close to the dead and at the same time celebrate life.

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La tradición de honrar a los muertos es parte de la cultura latino-americana, en algunos países se preparan altares con ofrendas de las comidas y bebidas favoritas de los que ya se fueron, en otros se llevan las ofrendas al cementerio y se pasa la noche al lado de las tumbas de los seres queridos en un ambiente de alegría y tertulia.

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It’s been two weeks since the relapse and Vinny trudges blankly down the avenue pushing his shopping cart. A police cruiser crawls up alongside the sidewalk and rolls down the window. “Hey Vinny, c’mere for a second.” Vinny drops the can of Colt 45 into his pile of earthly possessions and prepares to receive his third pink violation slip of the week. Three more lands him another expense paid trip to Riker’s Island. As he reaches into his pocket to pull out his ID he hears, “Yeah Vinny, how much you want for one a them books? Oh yeah, and could you sign it for me?”

Motivated by a desire to shed light on the enigma of street life in the world’s richest city, in 2001 I began tape recording and editing the life stories of people living on the streets around Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Two years later, what had begun as a casual experiment had evolved into a 300 page book, Stranger to the System: Life Portraits of a New York City Homeless Community. Since publication last July, homeless vendors have sold over 6,000 copies on the streets of New York.

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La proposicion “A” va a proveer dinero para vivienda en las siguientes categorias:

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As I was sitting in my neighborhood Coffeehouse, after another one of my countless interviews that will most certainly not lead to an offer of employment, I started to reflect on my apparently never-ending job hunt, and on how much energy all of this nonproductive work was draining the life-force from my soul. How do so many folks keep up the brave face in this madness? How can you really find the strength to keep on going to Interview after Interview, come home empty handed, and head back out to do it again? I often wonder, how folks just keep on keeping on?

Doesn’t it get tiresome sometimes to try and always come up with a novel way to tell a prospective Employer why you’re so very interested to work for their company, when the truth of the matter is all you want to do is have job. All you really want to do is make a fair wage for an honest days work, and that you really never dreamed of putting plastic tips on Shoe Laces, like your prospective Employer apparently did. Where’s the honest in the Job Hunting process? Most of us aren’t working at our “Dream Jobs,” we’re working at the jobs we were fortunate enough to get hired for when we needed the work.

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