12.11.12
by Abby Zimet
The federal government has made strides in reducing the ranks of the chronically homeless and of homeless veterans, but the numbers of homeless overall has stayed steady at close to 700,000, the latest annual report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development shows. The thing is: Officials say homelessness in the U.S. could be “effectively eradicated” at an annual cost of about $20 billion – or, ThinkProgress notes, what the country spends each year on Christmas decorations.
Comments
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cripes • a day agoSo, it’s not really a “budget” issue after all. Like the rest of the phony budget issues, it’s really a matter of priorities. And the priorities we’ve been following for years have been foreign wars, drug war, war on the poor, endless subsidies to wealthy corporations and wealthy people, guaranteed profits and no risk for billionaires, micromanaging peoples personal and sexual behaviors, etc.
Providing living wage employment, health care, disaster relief and decent housing just isn’t part of our government’s “job.” I guess we can thank Reagan and the libertarian crowd for that.-
John Buchanan cripes • a day agoThe Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP, funded
through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) was a $1.5
billion federal effort to prevent a recession-related increase in
homelessness. The second link..
It ran out this fall so we can expect it to get worse… unless psychopaths experience spontaneous remission.-
Justin Smith John Buchanan • 14 hours agoIn my experience, in Indiana, it ended in June,leaving families that it contracted to help, losing their rent money abruptly and months before they were told that it would end.
Thank the Republicans!
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Thomas Jefferson cripes • a day agoI’m a Left Libertarian,
But I gave you an up vote anyway, since I think you hit the nail on the head.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything you have.”
That quote attributed to Jefferson is exactly what’s happened. The EPA, the FDA, and FEMA never do their jobs anymore since K street Lobbists always show up showering those federal administrators with goodies. The NRC is always stuffed with Nuke industry executives. The FDA with big junk food, big Ag, Big FrankenFood and Pharma gold diggers. Your tax money, is used instead for endless war and wasteful corporate pork.
Better to just shut down everything but Social Security and EPA and National Parks and start over imho. If we don’t close down that corrupt political city in D.C., nothing is ever going to change, imho.
The main Libertarian planks are supposed to be eliminating Foreign Wars, Bailouts, Drug prohibition, Central Banking oppression, sexual interference, Bill of Rights, etc. Right Libertarians (retread Repukes) are not on board those main planks of the Libertarian Party, as far as I can tell. It’s a big problem in America. Libertarians in other parts of the world are not Republicans in costume. Many Libertarians in the USA seem to confuse liberty for individuals with de-regulation of fictitious entities like Wall Street Corporations.
Ronald Raygun actually grew the government as did both bushes (The blank checks to DOD for black programs, missiles etc caused a lot of that.) This is not consistent with Libertarian ideology, so I don’t think you can lump the two together.
The Far left always thinks that government functions as advertized, while the Libertarian instinctively distrusts all government, since the very nature of it is misplaced trust and betrayal.
TJ
“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?” – Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 inaugural address
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Keith McHenry • 16 hours agoIf you place “750,000 homeless Americans” in Google News You will see that the number of homeless Americans has stayed the same since1992. I have been sharing food with Americas homeless since 1980 and it is not heard to see that the numbers of people living on the streets has increased far beyond the “official” annually repeated numbers into the millions. www.foodnotbombs.net -
gardenernorcal • 18 hours agoI am not certain why we are focussing on how much is spent on Christmas Decorations. We could just spend a quarter of what was spent on beer in 2010 and cure the problem.
A total of $101 billion was spent on beer in 2010.
http://retireby40.org/2012/01/
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Or we could consider the 12.8 trillion spent to bail out Wall St.. I personally get more out of enjoying other peoples Christmas decorations then I did out of saving Wall St..
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-t…
Even then you’re not going to solve the homeless problem totally if no one is charged with the care of the mentally unstable. Does that 20 billion include that? Or is this the basic think tank figure that averages how much housing would cost for an estimated number?-
Don Lutz gardenernorcal • 14 hours agoI would imagine the issue comes up because it’s Xmas time.
But your point is well taken.
How much time, energy and land is wasted to grow, transport and kill 100 million Xmas trees every year? -
dkshaw gardenernorcal • 14 hours agoAnheiser Busch spends $10,000,000,000 (not a misprint, ten billion dollars) a year on ADVERTISING alone.
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Grant Schreiber • a day agoWell hell’s bells. If we wipe out the capital gains dodge, we not only end homelessness, but get FREE Christmas decorations. Let’s do that.
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Jag_Levak • 13 hours agoAnd out of that 700,000, it would appear one million of them are children:
http://tinyurl.com/7kkvsjy
I guess the good news there is that the number of adult homeless isn’t merely zero, but 300,000 less than zero.
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