Last year, in honor of Thanksgiving Day feasting and remembering, I posted the following diary.
Homelessness: America's Shame
I thought it might be appropriate to revisit it one year later, considering the frightening statistics regarding foreclosures and home loss.
Even more frightening predictions loom for those contemplating homeownership or loan refinancing in order to keep their current homes that may be threatened by balloon payments.
. . .the [Mortgage Bankers Association] MBA estimates volume will continue to plummet through 2008 even though rates are predicted to remain fairly stable and remain between 6.4% to 6.6%. The hardest hit sector will continue to be refinance transactions which are expected to fall a whopping 31% through 2008 and account for only 37% of all originations.
So, some time surrounding the carving of the turkey ceremony today, take time out to count your blessings and remind yourself that while we may live in the Land of Plenty, plenty of us can't afford the land to build a house.
WARNING! When I checked, the statistical internal links to Homelessness: America's Shame no longer work. However, you can visit the National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty where articles on the dire need for housing highlight the wastefulness and mismanagement of housing resources in this country.
However, these "stat-bites" tell the continuing story of hunger, homelessness, and poverty in our country.
An estimated 754,147 people were homeless in the US in the winter of 2005, according to the first comprehensive survey by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) of homelessness.
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On an average day between February and April 2005, 335,000 homeless persons slept in shelters. Additionally, on a single day in January 2005, 338,781 unsheltered homeless persons were reported to HUD by local agencies.
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there were 438,300 emergency and transitional housing beds in early 2005. . .In 1984, HUD estimated that there were 250,000 to 350,000 homeless persons in the US, with access to 100,000 beds. By 1988, 180,000 homeless persons were using emergency shelters each night, and beds numbered 275,000. . .Two decades later, the number of shelter beds has decreased by more than 57,000, while the known homeless population has grown at least four times in size.
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Nearly a quarter of the sheltered homeless were found to be under the age of 17. . .Veterans make up 18.7 percent of the sheltered and 21.3 percent of the unsheltered homeless adults.
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According to Without Housing, a study released in late 2006 by the Western Regional Advocacy Project, HUD oversaw the construction of 755,000 public housing units between 1976 and 1982. Since 1983, only 256,000 new public housing units have been built. Moreover, between 1993 and 2003, 1.2 million unsubsidized affordable housing units have disappeared.
If you're feeling a little overindulged, stuffed, or even bloated after that huge celebratory dinner, now might be a good time to visit So Others Might Eat.
Things are not getting better; the poor are truly getting poorer, with severe poverty rates in the US at their highest in three decades.
Still, I wish you each and everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. And I hope that maybe next year you will have found it in your heart to do even more to help the less fortunate to enjoy some good fortune. Remember, it's painless to live simply so that others may simply live.