[lit-ideas] Re: Bush Tackles Homelessness?
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 06:59:59 EDT
"hilarious" is hardly the word I would choose.
Julie Krueger
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Bush Tackles
Homelessness? Date: 10/10/2006 10:42:16 P.M. Central Standard Time From:
_writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxx) To:
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) , _Davidcowen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:Davidcowen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) , _MSpiegel@xxxxxxxx
(mailto:MSpiegel@xxxxxxx) ,
_ASpi1298@xxxxxxxx (mailto:ASpi1298@xxxxxxx) , _writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
Did you ever hear of anything more hilarious? The big guy really knows how
to play the game, doesn't he?
October 11, 2006
Far From Big City, Hidden Toll of Homelessness
By _RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/randal_c_archibold/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
TRINIDAD, Colo. â As the Bush administration promotes a widely praised
multibillion-dollar effort to end chronic homelessness in cities like
Washington
and San Francisco, a growing outcry is rising from rural areas that worsening
problems far away from urban centers are being overlooked.
Rural homelessness has always taken a back seat to the more glaring problems
in cities. Most studies estimate homeless people in small towns account for
about 9 percent of the 600,000 or so homeless nationwide. But local officials
and advocates for the homeless in small towns say that economic distress in
recent years, including closing plants, failing farms, rising housing costs
and other troubles, has left more people without homes and in greater need of
help.
Real numbers are hard to come by because most rural areas, where homeless
services often means ad-hoc help from church groups or volunteers, are far
behind a parade of cities taking head counts.
âWe are concerned that the focus on chronic homelessness may have the
unintended consequence of shifting services away from families and rural
communities,â said John Parvensky, executive director of the Colorado
Coalition for the
Homeless, one of several groups pushing the federal government to turn more
attention to rural areas.
Among the homeless here is John Lobato, who offered a tour of his
surroundings â the abandoned shuttle bus where he sometimes sleeps, the
makeshift
assortment of pallets, mattresses and blankets where he and other men pass
time,
often drinking, and the Purgatoire River, where he bathes.
Sometimes he takes his medicine for schizophrenia, Mr. Lobato said, sometimes
not. Sometimes he sobers up for a while, but then the bottle calls.
âI know I need help,â he said, before embarking on a search for a liquor
fix
at midday in this isolated town 180 miles south of Denver. âBut I donât
know where to get it.â
Until recently, many small towns like Trinidad coped with those who
panhandled or set up makeshift encampments in the woods with what Lance
Cheslock,
director of La Puente, a shelter in Alamosa, near here, calls âGreyhound
therapy.
â They handed out bus tickets.
âThey just send them up to the cities and let them deal with the problem
there,â said Mr. Cheslock, among the advocates pushing for a new way to
finance
rural homeless programs.
The growing visibility of the problem has made some towns reconsider that
attitude and push for local solutions, although they can be expensive and
difficult.
Rural homelessness âdoesnât get enough attention,â said Philip Mangano,
the
executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness
and the Bush administrationâs chief coordinator of homeless services. But
Mr.
Mangano said the problem had been difficult to assess because rural
communities by and large had not chronicled their problems with the data-heavy
planning documents the _Housing and Urban Development Department_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/housing_and_urban_developmen
t_department/index.html?inline=nyt-org) and other federal agencies
increasingly demand.
âLike any profile of the homeless, there is a lot of anecdote and hearsay,
but you need data and research to create policy,â Mr. Mangano said.
To confront the problem, he cited the examples of Washington and Michigan,
where every county, many of them rural, has committed to writing a plan to end
homelessness.
Here in Trinidad, a former old West coal town of 9,000 near the eastern
slopes of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, people have long struggled through
hard
times. The downtown is pockmarked with shuttered storefronts, but new cafes
and galleries have opened as the town tries to refashion itself as an
artistsâ
colony.
Interstate 25, dotted with motels of various quality and shopping centers,
slices through Trinidad, leaving tidy Victorian homes rising on a hill on one
side and modest ranches, several in disrepair, on the other.
Sandi Espinoza, who directs the Open Door Soup Kitchen, in space borrowed
from a church, said the organization was serving more meals than ever â
families, veterans, men just released from prison and a wide assortment of
people
smelling of liquor before noon. Some 85 people come daily for lunch, double
the
number from a few years ago, Ms. Espinoza said.
âWe need shelter here,â said one wobbly man, who when asked where he
sleeps,
replied, âdown under the bridges.â
There is no homeless shelter, only a few drug, alcohol or mental illness
treatment programs for the indigent, and a loose group of church pastors,
volunteers and other concerned citizens striving to look after people who have
no
home.
âPastor helps me out,â Mr. Lobato said. âThe soup kitchen helps me out
and
these guysâ â he motioned to his disheveled companions â âhelp me,
too.â
A couple of weeks ago, officials here cheered the establishment of a â
transitional housing unit,â a single-family home leased from the government
for $1
a year where a displaced family can live for a year or so until they get back
on their feet, the first such project started here. The organizers say
several families, doubled up with relatives or friends, need a place like
that.
There is nothing for the men living in the tents and shacks that have popped
up behind the Wal-Mart, near the river.
To seek more stable solutions, a small group was recently formed. With
guidance from Becky Vanderslice, an organizer with Housing Justice, a group
based
in Denver, they gathered around a church conference table and discussed
problems that included the need for rehabilitation programs and families unable
to
make ends meet.
Finally, said Cary T. Nelson, pastor at First Christian Church, the group
decided to start with the single-family home. Churches and volunteers will
subsidize the costs of running the house, a foreclosed property held by the
local
office of the federal Agriculture Department.
They called the house Haven of Hope and have begun searching for a family to
occupy it. One applicant, Brenda Holguin, said she hoped to move in with at
least two of her four children, who are living with her estranged husband. A
domestic dispute has left her homeless, living in a nearby domestic violence
shelter, and such a house would help set her on a steady path, Ms. Holguin
said. âHaving a house, my family in one place, would give me more
self-esteem,â
she said.
Ms. Espinoza, who runs the soup kitchen, said she was hoping that local
businesses or churches would step forward with donated space for an emergency
shelter.
The National Coalition on Homelessness, an advocacy group, is considering
mounting an effort to make the Agriculture Department, with its many field
offices and staff members in rural areas, the lead agency for financing
homeless
programs outside urban areas. The task currently falls to the Department of
Housing and Urban Development.
âIt should be the department of housing and urban-only development,â said
Michael Stoops, the executive director of the coalition. âWe should not give
up
on HUD, but we need to get other federal agencies involved.â
Last year, he said, HUD provided $120 million for 700 projects in rural
areas, an amount that has remained constant for several years, federal
officials
said.
This year, the federal government has increased direct spending on homeless
programs to about $4 billion, up from $2.9 billion and double the spending of
five years ago. About 10 percent of that has gone toward a new focus on e
nding chronic homelessness, Mr. Mangano said.
The approach has fired up hope in Denver, San Francisco, Washington and other
cities that headway is being made, but it has dismayed advocates in rural
areas, where grant-writing expertise and the Talmudic knowledge of federal
regulations are lacking.
Small towns also lack the network of nonprofit organizations and corporations
that often underwrite efforts.
âThe government wants matching funds and the big city funders only fund the
big cities,â said Donna Haddow, a member of the Trinidad-Las Animas County
Economic Development Board. âThereâs nothing left by the time we come
knocking.
â
Ms. Vanderslice of Housing Justice said a prominent foundation would not
finance the new housing program in Trinidad because it had decided to focus
most
of its resources on Denver.
âThere is a lot of money to end homelessness in the state,â she said.
âBut a
lot is going to the Denver metro area because the mayor there has a 10-year
plan.â
Here, she added, âthey are going on open faith.â
The message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments:
Shortcut to:
_http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/us/11homeless.html?ei=5094&en=b9ab292aa3040c3a&hp=&ex=1160539200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/us/11homeless.html?ei=5094&en=b9ab292aa3040c3a&hp=&;
ex=1160539200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print)
Note: To protect against computer viruses, e-mail programs may prevent
sending or receiving certain types of file attachments. Check your e-mail
security settings to determine how attachments are handled.
Other related posts:
