March 5 | Response from Arizona
Dear Eric, No offense to Ann, who wrote the above, but I live in Arizona too, and did not find the wonderful services she is speaking of. My family was a hair's breadth away from homelessness last month and there were NO services for families. If you are a homeless male alone, IF there was room, you could sleep in a shelter. If you are a battered wife with kids, IF there was room, they would put you up. If you are a family, there were no shelters in the city I lived in for families. Not only that, but all the charities I encountered have this amazing thing they do. Even if you can prove loss of income and total lack of any income, they will not help with utility or housing costs without a shut off notice. The bad thing about that is, shut off notices mean having to get even more money to reinstate you. They also get listed on your credit report which will make your car insurance go up. (If you still have a car, if not there was very limited public transportation in my city.) The bad credit ding will also affect your ability to get a good paying job because more and more employers are doing CREDIT CHECKS as a prerequisite to employment offers. The whole system is skewed and definitely NOT as wonderful or helping as Ann would have you believe. For instance, Arizona is the only state which has the shortest time between eviction notice and actual eviction...14 days. All other states take 30 days or more for evictions. A family laid off from their jobs that are facing eviction in Arizona would be out in two weeks...on the street with kids and often no where to go unless they live in the only two cities that have some shelters for families. Welfare will give you cash assistance only if there is NO other income of any kind, even though unemployment is not enough to pay the living expenses of a family. The cash assistance for a family of six is about $600, (less than the max unemployment you might get) which won't even pay the rent, much less utilities and transportation. Food stamps buy only food. You are expected to have a place to live, come up with reliable transportation in a city that has limited public transportation, have the means to buy the insurance and gas required for that transportation, buy the things to keep clean like soap, detergent, deodorant, shaving equipment, clothes, makeup, and pay for a phone for employers to contact you....all without any help from the same government we pay so many taxes into. Where do you get the money to pay for all those things? No churches in my city were willing to help much. No groups seemed to be set up to deal with the problem. What was that about the homeless getting so much help? Perhaps if the help happened BEFORE they became homeless, there would not BE so many homeless. In essence, the welfare system in the US is about giving a man a fish, not about helping him get the fishing equipment, keep the transportation to the lake where the fish are, keep the house to live in and cooking equipment to prepare the fish, keep the utensils to eat the fish and the means to wash himself and the utensils. If it were to do the latter, there would be a lot less homeless people. The most glaring issue Ann is silent on is WHY there are so many homeless families here and all over this country. Giving out blankets is nice and all, but children are damaged for life when they experience the total lack of security that homelessness means. Our society is damaging millions of kids every day because of the "ownership" ideology. America is an "exclusive" country, unless you are rich and well connected, you are excluded from having a secure life. Europe is an "inclusive" society because so many are included in social contracts and programs that protect them and provide health security and life security. Europe is not perfect, but they are a lot better in many ways than America is when it comes to how the people are cared and provided for. -- Carrie | ||||||
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