In Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s State of the Union address in 1944, he suggested America adopt a second
bill of rights
to guarantee every American six fundamental rights as citizens. Besides
a decent job, education, Social Security, medical care, and freedom
from monopolization, Roosevelt believed every American deserved housing.
Seventy years later, repugicans are eliminating decent jobs, freedom
from monopolization, and are attempting to eliminate medical care,
education, and Social Security. Unfortunately, in 2012 their policies
were responsible for keeping well over
640,000
American citizens without housing and their precious sequester will
increase those pathetic numbers for the next nine years. It is appalling
that, like ravaging hunger and poverty, the richest nation in the world
has any homeless Americans, but that is the state of the nation with
Republicans setting economic policy.
Accompanying the depressing statistics that hundreds-of-thousands of
Americans are homeless is the seriously disheartening number of homeless
citizens that perish every year because they lack housing. According to
the National Coalition for the Homeless, approximately
700 homeless
Americans die every year from hypothermia; typically on the East Coast
and Midwest because of harsh winters. But this year while temperatures
have repeatedly dipped below freezing in California, thousands of
homeless people were in danger of dying and sadly in the Bay Area, seven
American citizens froze to death because they lacked housing.
Last week, a 50-year-old man who
wanted to work
but was only able to find occasional odd jobs that prevented him from
affording a place to live was forced to sleep outside in freezing
temperatures because there were no available emergency shelters for
single men. The man, a father and grandfather, who had lived on the
streets for several years, was looking forward to permanent shelter
because he moved up to
second place on a list to get permanent supportive housing after waiting in line for months. On December 10
th
the man was found dead in an old city hall courtyard wearing only a
hoodie and shorts because he had been robbed of a new winter coat his
sister had
sent him
less than a week before. Police said the man’s death was weather
related after temperatures fell below freezing the day he died; he was
the seventh homeless person to die of hypothermia (freezing to death)
since a cold spell hit the region around the end of November. As tragic
as the number of Americans freezing to death for lack of shelter is, it
is the number of Americans who are homeless that should shame
politicians into taking action, but as Americans know, repugicans are
incapable of being shamed as they are barbaric and inhumane toward
American citizens.
About 62,000 (13%) of all homeless persons are veterans, and these
men and women who put their lives on the line for their country, these
heroes that men like compassionate wingnut Paul Ryan calls
“takers,” are living on the streets because they cannot find work or
affordable housing. President Obama and Democrats attempted to create a
jobs and housing assistance programs to help them, but Senate repugicans prevented a vote on both
jobs and
housing programs using their favorite weapon the filibuster; as repugican Pat Toomey said, “
some
on my side did not want to be seen helping the president do something
he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it.” It was also likely because as repugican Tom Coburn said, “
We ought to do nothing now that makes the problem worse for our kids and grandkids,” which is just one of the repugican cabal’s
phony reasons
to withhold spending for anything to help any Americans. Such is the
state of America, and why tens-of-millions of Americans living in
poverty and face the very real prospect of not only being jobless and
hungry, but sick and homeless as well.
Even for Americans finding low-paying jobs repugicans claim is why
they are ending unemployment benefits for 1.3 million Americans, a
full-time worker with a family earning minimum wage could not afford
fair-market rent for an apartment anywhere in the U.S. according to
estimates from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It
leaves hardworking Americans to make a hard choice of whether to feed
their family and live on the streets, or put all their pay into meager
shelter and let their families and themselves go hungry. They can hardly
count on food assistance anymore because repugicans intend to slash
more from food stamps to keep pace with their cuts to housing assistance
because depriving “takers” from their right to nutrition is on par with
keeping them homeless in repugican circles.
The repugican sequester drastically cut housing assistance for
Section 8 candidates, and many of those on waiting lists were informed
earlier in the year their prospect for finding affordable shelter was so
remote that counselors began warning new, prospective, and existing
recipients not to sell their vehicles because they would need them for
shelter. Sadly, many homeless people suffer from mental illness as a
result of repugican man-turned-god ronny 'raygun' who not only
emptied every mental hospital
flooding California streets with homeless mentally ill residents, but
he and repugicans eliminated President Jimmy Carter’s Mental Health
Systems Act before the ink had barely dried on the legislation.
This is the America repugicans began creating thirty years ago when
they initiated their crusade to shrink the government that exists to
serve the people; particularly those who are in need through no fault of
their own. Over the past five years, they ramped up their assault on
domestic programs at the behest of groups headed by the Koch brothers
who will see their “vision of a transformed America” to fruition one way
or another and despite the cost in Americans’ lives. As many Americans
are witnessing, that vision includes poverty, hunger, and
hundreds-of-thousands of American citizens living on the streets with no
prospect of ever having a decent job, healthcare, education, Social
Security, or even housing; basic rights that Roosevelt attempted to
procure for every American 70 years ago. Sadly for Americans, repugicans have spent all 70 years attempting to eliminate those basic
human rights and tragically they are nearing the point of victory.
Today is - The Winter Solstice 
