Motley Moose – Archive

Found on the Internets …

This week is National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. Follow the hashtag #NHHAW and this Twitter account for more information.

It's dangerously cold outside! Call your local hypothermia hotline to make sure no one is left on the street to brave this weather.

— National Homeless (@Ntl_Homeless) November 19, 2014

America’s Shameless Child Homelessness Record

A record 2.5 million children in the U.S. were homeless at some point in 2013, according to a new report from the National Center for Family and Homelessness.

This amounts to one in 30 children and an 8 percent increase in child homelessness between 2012 and 2013. Nearly half the children are under the age of six. While the problem is most prevalent in Alabama, Mississippi, and California, it exists in every city, county, and state in the country.

Why does this matter?

Chilly temperatures and cold on tap

– The arctic chill dominates the Midwest with highs in the 10s and 20s for most areas.

– Slightly less cold 30s are confined to eastern Kentucky and the upper Ohio Valley.

– Record low temperatures are likely Monday night from the eastern Plains through the Ohio Valley as the mercury drops into the single digits and lower teens.

More …

On Saturday morning, I read a sobering first person account at Think Progress about “The Bone-Chilling, Heart-Wrenching Process Of Counting The Nation’s Homeless”:

It was 1 a.m., three hours since I’d last felt my toes, and the four of us stood over a man who may have been dead.

“Are you okay under there?” Catherine asked the pile of blankets tucked away in a building alcove on the corner of 23rd and I St. NW in Washington, D.C. It was the type of spot where most pedestrians wouldn’t even know a homeless person was there.

He didn’t move. She asked again. No answer. She repeated a third time. Nothing.

The three of us held our breath, looking to her for some simple explanation why this wasn’t what it seemed. Maybe he was ignoring us. After all, we were uninvited guests to his makeshift home in the middle of the night.

Maybe he had some secret way of handling five-degree temperatures, even when others might freeze to death.

I wondered, along with the author, about what kind of nation we were that 610,042 people are homeless on any given night in America, some in the worst possible physical conditions.

But nothing prepared me for my reaction to an Op-Ed piece in the Miami Herald by Leonard Pitts, the reminder of those who have, perhaps, too many homes.

Grab a tissue …