In shadow of White House, homeless seek blessings
U.S. marks Thanksgiving as billions of dollars cut from food programs
Thanksgiving tends to be a pretty full day for U.S. President Barack Obama, what with the annual ritual of pardoning the White House Turkey.
This year 80 gobblers competed for the reprieve. “It was, quite literally, the Hunger Games,” Obama joked.
It is, of course, no joke for the hungry.
While the 38-pound prized National Turkey named Popcorn was spared the axe Wednesday and sent off to live the rest of his days at the publicly owned Morven Park’s Turkey Hill in Virginia, the city’s homeless can find no such sanctuary.
Washington is among the richest cities in the United States, yet it has one of the highest rates of homelessness and poverty in the country. The capital of the world’s wealthiest country is among the starkest reflections of its growing income gap.
On any given night, close to 7,000 people are counted homeless in the District of Columbia. About 136,000 people (20 per cent of the population), including about 33,000 children (30 per cent of the population under 18) live below the poverty line, which is $22,000 for a family of four. This is the third highest rate in the U.S.
Thousands of homeless wander the streets of central Washington every day begging for handouts. “Help the homeless, help the homeless” is their plea and their message. Few people do.
They sleep on cardboard boxes in store doorways, in entrances to subways, in parks and on ventilation grates, wrapping themselves in layers of coats over ragged sweaters and the ever-present grey felt blankets handed out by volunteers. Steps away, the White House is their constant neighbour.
Many are mentally ill or suffer from mental problems as a result of the loneliness of homelessness. The vast majority of the homeless, however, find themselves and their families on the street because they either can’t find a job or their jobs don’t pay enough to cover the city’s high rents.
“I know a guy who lost his job when his employer found out that he was homeless,” Arryn Sayer, 19, who helps feed the homeless and is a student at George Washington University, said.
Few political events in the U.S. end without acknowledging the nation’s soldiers. Thanksgiving was no exception. Obama phoned 10 armed service members to thank them for their service and wish them Happy Thanksgiving.
Yet veterans are “over represented,” as one study puts it, in the ranks of the homeless. They even have their own organization, the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, which claims that they comprise about 13 per cent of the adult homeless population. The organization also states that about 1.4 million veterans are so poor that they are constantly at risk of becoming homeless.
Many veterans find themselves destitute because it takes more than a year for a veteran to obtain benefits. According to the veterans association, there is a backlog of about 500,000 veterans waiting for benefits. So acute is the problem that the federal government started the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program, which distributes money to non-profit groups working with the homeless.
Yet there’s not much anybody can do when housing is unavailable. In D.C., there’s a waiting list of about 70,000 for subsidized housing, according to the D.C. Housing Authority. Of those, about 25,000 list themselves as homeless. At the same time, public housing units have decreased by 4,000 to only 8,000 and the average wait for public housing is up to 20 years.
To compound the problem, the number of low-cost rental units has decreased by 50 per cent, even as the number of housing units costing more than the median rent has tripled.
Meanwhile, Congress’s cost cutting has trimmed billions of dollars from food-stamps program designed to help the country’s 47 million poor.
This month, Congress cut $29 a month from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That can be a big hit to a family receiving a maximum of only $526 a month to buy food.
In D.C., more than 18,000 families receive welfare of $428 a month. Just this month, the city cut that amount by 20 per cent because of congressional budget cuts. The 2008 recession had added 14 million people to the food-stamp rolls by 2012.
After pardoning the White House turkey, Obama took his family to spend 38 minutes at a food bank filling bags with food. His administration, however, has failed to stop the growing national income gap now at record levels.
The Obamas then sat down to a sumptuous turkey dinner with friends at the White House. It featured, standard turkey dinner fare plus nine different kinds of pie.
Meanwhile, Washington has entered November to March “Hypothermia Season.” This is when state-supported shelters must open their doors to the homeless. The problem is not enough beds. So each night hundreds are turned away.
What’s more, this year D.C. announced that it expects a 10 per cent increase in families seeking shelter.
“The numbers are growing so much the police are pushing the homeless out of the parks,” said Anthony Robledo, 24, a construction worker who often finds himself homeless when he can’t find work. “The guys in offices that look over the parks are complaining. I guess they don’t like seeing the homeless.”