Homelessness In The Middle Class: Stable Families Reduced To Poverty

People once accustomed to middle-class comfort have turned to shelters for aid.

"They have this look on their face like, 'I never imagined this would happen to me. I've worked, I'm educated. This is not supposed to happen to me,'" said Chris Canter, executive director of Shelter Network in San Mateo, Calif. "But for a variety of reasons, it has."

Those reasons can be utterly commonplace. Just a few years ago, shelters were dominated by victims of drug addiction, mental illness or domestic violence. Those remain major causes of homelessness, but another leading cause has emerged.

Today, Canter said, the majority of his clients are homeless because of a job loss. Almost two-thirds, he said, are homeless for the first time.

As home prices continue to fall, and as the national unemployment rate remains stuck near 10 percent, Americans are seeing their wealth erode. More than 2.8 million homes received foreclosure notices in 2009, as foreclosure activity increased more than 20 percent, according to real estate data provider RealtyTrac. Between 2010 and 2012, 7.4 million more homes will likely enter foreclosure, the Federal Reserve predicts.

"Loss of jobs means loss of money, means inability to pay for housing," said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, in Washington. "Some people who are affected in that way end up becoming homeless."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/homeless-america_n_808339.html

Meanwhile the same government that outsourced our jobs, bailed out bankers who made record profits, and refused legal help to homeowners being foreclosed on illegally... tell the American people it is our fault because we bought houses that we could not afford(well maybe we could afford them before they outsourced our jobs!) and we should just pull
ourselves up by our bootstraps in the jobless recovery.

But, sadly, it probably won't happen

Not before a couple more generations give up the theory of social mobility

K&R

:kick:

Most people have thought it would never happen to them, and they kept on voting for republicans election after election. They simply could not grasp what was happening to them during the Bush years, and allowed the right to lie to them over and over and allowed the wedge issues like gays and abortion to decide their votes. They never stopped to think that one day it would be their jobs that were shipped overseas, or it would be them that lost health insurance, their homes, and ended up on the streets!

It's really a shame that people don't stop and "THINK" about the "REAL" issues before they vote, but allow themselves to be lied to time after time by the right, and still keep right on voting for them!

:shrug: