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In the face of the growing numbers of families losing their homes, of having to split up for survival’s sake, and even of some children’s ending up in the hellhole of the Foster Care System, what is our Federal government doing? Unbelievably, what it seems intent on doing is systematically creating obstacles to families trying desperately to find a roof over their heads.

On April 2, the House (HR 1877) and the Senate (S 808) both reintroduced legislation entitled the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act of 2009. If this bill becomes law, as many people fear, thousands of destitute and poor families will fail to “qualify” for services funded with Federal homeless assistance dollars because they will be deemed not to be homeless enough.

Families who have had to double- and triple-up with other people, or who are living in hotels and motels, will be forced to show “credible” evidence to authorities to prove that they are indeed completely, unequivocally, totally, technically homeless.

If asked to leave a doubled or tripled household, their “host” will need to verify that they cannot return. New York City sends inspectors. If they are staying in a motel or SRO hotel room, they are not considered homeless enough until their total household savings are less than 14 days’ worth of hotel or motel fees. It is only at this point that a family can qualify to get onto the often month-long waiting lists for emergency homeless assistance.

Particularly significant for families and children is that both these bills prohibit HUD homeless counts from requiring communities to include these families. Every two years, HUD directs local communities to count their homeless populations. If a family has not managed to secure a shelter bed and therefore is living in tenuous doubled-up and motel situations, it quite literally does not count!

The consequences for homeless children and youth in these situations are particularly ominous: In 2006, the Department of Education reported 688,174 homeless children in our schools; this year, that number is expected to rise 15 to 20%. The educational and social barriers they face are great. It is a “story” getting lots of air time, but little serious consideration by policy makers.

Evidence: These same bills passed the House and the Senate last year with strong Bush White House support, but failed to come out of Conference Committee. Now they have been reintroduced. If they pass as written, and communities are prohibited from including many of these school children in the HUD definition of homelessness, they will also create additional barriers to referrals for services and other critical inter-agency collaboration. So where is the change we all voted for? New President. New Congress. Same old bill.

These bills promote a cruel and vicious cycle: Once families lose their homes, they scramble for any place to stay. If they stay in the streets, left with only tents to call home, they risk being categorized as “unfit parents” and losing their children to public agencies. But families will do everything humanly possible not to have that happen. And so they will stay with other people in unstable situations, or in motels. Ironically, that decision to keep and protect their children can then render them ineligible for homeless assistance.

Family homelessness, as with the mortgage crisis today, is deeply rooted in Federal government decisions. From 1978 to 2006, the Budget Authority of the Department of Housing and Urban Development fell from $83 billion to $29 billion in 2004 constant dollars. Meanwhile, in that same time period, Federal expenditures on mortgage interest deductions grew from $40 billion to $122 billion. Direct entitlement programs aimed at housing poor people were replaced with a mortgage interest tax deduction program aimed at promoting home ownership. But now that mortgages are collapsing and homes are being foreclosed, families that were homeowners are becoming poor people.

It should have been clear all along that Reaganomics and deregulation since 1983 would have a negative effect for others down the road. Homelessness is the end of that road.

The Bush Doctrine still rules in Washington, DC. Given the narrow and arbitrary definition of homelessness, the bills just introduced in the house and Senate are again designed to exclude many homeless families with children from homeless assistance services. If they pass, many will be forced into the desperate situation of actually sleeping in our streets before our government will allow us to assist them.

The Federal government along with unregulated banks created the crisis and banks are being bailed out. Families end up living in that crisis, but get cut out of emergency assistance.

WRAP

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 12:04 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.