With economic downturn, more families face the streets -- PUBLISHED: 11/18/2008

[Breeze54]

With economic downturn, more families face the streets


Angie Kimball, University alumna and lead pre-school teacher at People Serving People
in Minneapolis, watches over children during naptime at the PSP shelter on Monday.

:redbox: About half of the homeless population of Minnesota are children under the age of 21.

http://www.mndaily.com/2008/11/17/economic-downturn-more-families-face-streets

BY Briana Bierschbach
PUBLISHED: 11/18/2008

For Steve Walker, 49 , and his wife and three children, their home isn’t technically a home at all, rather its People Serving People, an emergency homeless shelter in downtown Minneapolis .

The family has been living in the shelter off and on since 2003.

“It’s one of the hardest things we have to do,” Walker said, talking about his children. “They hate moving all the time, and are embarrassed to be picked up by the bus in front of the shelter…But I have to go where the work goes.”

For Walker, and about 3,000 other homeless people in Hennepin County, jobs are not easy to find with the current economic downturn, and more and more families are finding themselves at shelters like PSP.

This week is homelessness awareness week, but Cathy ten Broeke, coordinator of the Office to End Homelessness in Minneapolis and Hennepin County, said a lot of people aren’t aware that many of the homeless in Hennepin County and the country are children and families.

“I think when people think about the homeless, they typically think of the man standing on the corner with a sign,” Broeke said. “We see homelessness affect everyone.”

The city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County recently passed a plan to end homelessness in the area by the year 2016. This 10-year-plan to end homelessness, also known as Heading Home Hennepin, was developed by members of the community who have experienced homelessness .

Broeke said the number of single homeless adults has not changed much in the last few years, but she has seen the number of homeless families and children increase because of the economic downturn and bad housing market.

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, the rate of requests for emergency assistance for homeless families rose faster than the rate for any other group between 2006 and 2007.

Of 23 cities surveyed, each expected an increase in the number of families with children seeking assistance in 2008. However, 32 percent of homeless families with children were turned away in 2005 due to lack of resources.

More.......

[Breeze54]

1. "About half of the homeless population of Minnesota are children"

Gheeze!! :cry:

[Double T]

2. This is the kind of news that the MSM is not showing.

I believe there is a lot more of THIS KIND OF THING than most could ever imagine. I believe there will be massive and many tent cities and homeless centers/shelters required to house the millions of Americans that will lose EVERYTHING because of the bush/cheney economic depression; hopefully uncle dick will be in an orange jumpsuit in a prison setting in South Texas, soon! The bush/cheney economic depression will be far worse than the 1920s-1930s depression as there will be no creation of jobs due to slave wage foreign outsourcing. We have entered the dark ages of america and until corporate control of our country is ripped away from these criminals, nothing will change.

[Breeze54]

3. That's what scares me too... the outsourcing of all the jobs will have a major impact on recovery.

Great post! :hi:

[cliffordu]

8. Yep. Perfect.

[DBoon]

4. you "eliminate welfare as we know it"

you end up with this

[Breeze54]

6. True that!!

And it's disgusting. :(

Poverty IS a racket for some of those that "help" the poor.

(Think 'faith based initiatives') That's how they get the grants!

:grr:

[magellan]

5. This is shameful

And just like torture and fabricated evidence for war, it'll only be reported sporadically at best until 1) Kira Phillips appears on camera looking rough after spending her fourth week sleeping in her car outside CNN HQ, or 2) the economy gets better, at which point the Repugs will claim the homeless problem was a leftist conspiracy theory and they'll be voted back into office in a landslide.

Meanwhile, today we offered to take a 63-year old neighbor in should she be evicted for not being able to pay the landlord's sudden demand for $650 in property tax from each of us by December 31.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate our government, the corporate media and the greedy capitalist pigs who are all running us into the ground?

[Breeze54]

7. You, magellan, absolutely ROCK!!!!

:yourock:

:hug:

Thank You for being you!!!

[cliffordu]

9. What you said.

:patriot: