Blog#228
NO HOPE FOR HOMELESS SUPPORT
By
Richard Davis
Advocates and social service agencies that support homeless people are preparing for funding battles over the next four years that they know they are very likely to lose. With Republicans in control of the federal government, we can expect to see cuts to programs and a general stigmatization of homeless people as mentally ill substance abusers who should be herded into programs that should help them.
It is a false construct. Most people have come to realize that when Republicans say that homeless people need to seek out mental health support first, that the power brokers really don’t care what happens to them. The power brokers know that there are never enough people or programs to support homeless people with mental health and substance abuse issues.
A December 27 article in the New York Times provided enough information to get a perspective on homelessness. It states, “Homelessness soared to the highest level on record this year, driven by forces that included high rents, stagnant wages and a surge in migrants seeking asylum, the federal government reported on Friday.
The number of people experiencing homelessness topped 770,000, an increase of 18 percent over last year and the largest annual jump since the count began in 2007. The report, released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, showed that homelessness rose by a third in the past two years, after declining modestly over the previous decade.
While the report cited multiple reasons for the recent rise, including the end of pandemic-era measures to protect the needy, Biden administration officials on a call with reporters emphasized the role of asylum-seeking migrants who overwhelmed the shelter systems where much of the increase occurred. The officials argued that, since the annual count occurred in January, the migrant crisis had begun to abate.”
It is a complex picture and it is clear that asylum seekers coming to this country have made a significant contribution to the increase in homelessness. Many local communities try to do as much as they can to help the homeless. There are also places where residents want to simply get rid of homeless people by making it illegal to camp out or live anywhere but in a formal home.
No matter how much effort local communities expend toward supporting the homeless they will always be helpless to actually get to the root causes of the problem. The issues are bigger than simply providing housing for people. There are programs that use a “housing first” model where housing is the first thing homeless people receive. This approach is helpful and it will save lives, but it does not get to the root causes.
Senator Bernie Sanders frequently talks about the gap between the have’s and have-not’s. He points out the greed of big corporations resulting in low wages and the failures of our health care non-system. These are among the reasons for homelessness. The number one cause of bankruptcy and debt is the U.S. is unpaid medical bills.
The Times article also notes that, “Democrats typically blame housing costs, flagging wages and scarce rental subsidies, while supporting Housing First policies, which house the chronically homeless without requiring treatment for mental illness or substance abuse.
Many Republicans seek cuts in housing aid and other social services and blame what they call liberal permissiveness. They want to require unhoused people to seek psychiatric or substance abuse help as a condition of support. President-elect Donald J. Trump has called for clearing cities of encampments and for placing unhoused people into camps.”
Vermont now has the fourth highest rate of homelessness in the country with 5% of the population, or 3458 people, homeless as of the January 2024 count.
Get ready for a tumultuous time. Advocates for the homeless will have to become more vocal and more strident if they are to see any hope for government officials to help homeless people. If Trump has his way we will see a repeat of what this country did to Asian Americans during World War II. It is not inconceivable that we will see concentration camps for the homeless on American soil.
We need to figure out a way for evil intentions to not prevail.
