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-- coordinate ICH with congressional committees on homelessness.
States should place homeless families in permanent housing, not motels; keep homeless children out of foster care; enroll eligible families in Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, and WIC (supplemental nuitrition for women, infants and children); pay for stabilization services for families exiting shelters to keep them housed; and make homelessness a priority at a time of great urgency.
Overall, NCFH wants quick administration and congressional action to end this growing crisis. We must "muster the public and political will" to do it. Fundamentally, the problem is affordable low cost housing. Assuring it is a core solution, along with jobs, education, health care, family preservation, hunger elimination, violence prevention, and lawmakers caring enough to act. "Only then can we end child homelessness." It will take a coordinated federal, state and local effort with committed federal funding to help.
Final Thoughts
At a time banker bailouts and imperial wars take top priority, expect little from our nation's lawmakers, short of grassroots pressure to force them. Even then, having America care again faces long odds. As a result, the outlook for disadvantaged kids and adults looks grim, their numbers sure to grow when no one in government cares, social benefit cuts are planned, and most people don't know the kind of future they'll face or for their kids. Most likely, it will be too little, too late when they find out America isn't America anymore, if it ever was.
While better under New Deal/Great Society programs, it was always a "democracy for the few" (the kind Michael Parenti explained), never dedicated to beneficial social change, especially for the nation's poor and disadvantaged, always most cheated and least able to cope.
Will this time be different? Unlikely, despite NCFH's efforts to explain the problem and recommend sensible solutions, ones a true democracy would implement. Not in America. Not now. Not planned. Perhaps never in a nation caring only about wealth and power, not its people. For most, one no longer fit to live in.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
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