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Our tired, our poor, our kids
We must ask ourselves just one question; are we, the American society, focusing on what is truly important for the well being of our families today?   While we sit at home watching what we think is the most important topics today, there are families having to sleep on benches in parks. We turn our focus to other topics, while the family down the street slowly loses everything they own and are having to be placed in shelters and are forced to bring their young children with them.
Placing families of six in a big room in a shelter, then being able to go home to a nice three bedroom house where only one of those rooms actually get slept in, and being able to go to sleep at night thinking we’ve done enough to help these people is a joke. “For what they pay for me to stay in a shelter I could have lived in the Hamptons” says Sharanda mother of five. These families are screaming for help and no one in America seems to be listening. We all are just blocking the harsh reality out while we continue with our everyday lives of, work, being able to get a good education, having the privilege of owning a car to get you back and worth from your job and school. Not realizing as we drive past woman and children and men who all have to walk everywhere they go, including work if they’re lucky enough to have found work.
“People don’t like to hear it, but shelters are going to be the low-income housing of the future,” says Ralph Nunez. Two years ago a study was conducted on how much you need to make an hour to hold up a two-bedroom apartment and the results were $12 an hour. This number is more than twice the amount of minimum wage today. Knowing this number we expect the people in society to be able to afford this, when half of these people do not even have jobs, and are on unemployment of welfare. Even with the state “help”, it was found that a third of homeless families’ benefits terminated or had been reduced.  
America has the potential to... [continues]

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