Homelessness among children who are living on the streets of America is on the rise. Nationally, 1 out of every 45 children is living homeless in America today.  These children and young adults are a testimony to our flawed socio-economic priorities and practices.  Today in America we have a governmental system that is being supported by a dependency based society.  Without dependency on being governed by our political leaders, I believe that we would faire far better than we do today in America’s flawed political system.

Let’s Look at How Things Work…

Political leaders continually create programs that are supposed to help a society as a whole; and yet ALL politically funded charitable programs which are supposed to be for the social good inevitably create a huge dependency on the recipients.  These recipients in turn become more and more dependent upon those public service programs in order to support their lives.    There is something backwards about this.

Huge amounts of funds are poured into these programs for which a great amount of re-distribution goes to administrative costs and publicity; in these cases, and commonly so, the political leader is propped up as a Savior.  However, we must not forget that it is the taxation of American citizens that is funding these self aggrandizing political programmed agendas. 


If these programs are in fact creating a social good we must ask,

“Why the increase in childhood homeless across America?”

Let’s See How Well They Are Performing With These Facts & Figures…

Nationally approximately 500,000 children aged 0-5 years old experience homelessness in the course of a year. (Source: Urban Institute, 2000).

Tonight over 1,200 families will be staying in publicly funded family shelters. Within these families, there are 1,200 children under the age of five. (Source: Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance).

Compared with low-income housed children, homeless children experience more health problems, developmental delays, increased anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, and lower educational achievement.

Something I Pulled From an Ancient Codex Manuscript…

“When you apply charity and it is self-sustaining, this judgment is rendered in your favor.  You may feed three drunkards’ families, and flatter yourself that you have done charity worthily; but, if you have not done that which will make them no longer in need of charity, you have done little.”

“Another man may not feed them, but he may reform them, and put them in the way to be self-sustaining. Such a man will have done a hundred-fold greater charity. To open the way for employment and industry, this is the greatest of all charity. For, by these avenues, charity will not be needed, even for the aged, nor for orphans.”

                          
Today, our political system has created governmental dependency through mis-management leading to economic collapse, the resulting unemployment leading to loss of homes for many families, and also through dependency based programs that do not teach nor help the individual to support themselves; rather they are taught to be stagnant and wait for the governmental welfare system to feed, house, and cloth them.This causes each individual suppressed in this cycle of dependency to loose their sense of self worth each and every day that they rely on these services; verses finding the value in their own abilities and talents and thereby building their own sense of self sufficient values.

 “Consider, then, how little any people have to boast of for charity's sake. Even their asylums and poor-houses and homes for the aged and helpless are so many witnesses against the people who built them; because some great wrongs and evils existing within the state were also built by these same people in the first place.   They are as paint and plaster, hiding and redeeming them, in some measure, for the shortness of a deprived people.   These may say, Behold us! What a charitable people we are!  I say to you that you do not understand the kingdom of heaven, nor its love and purpose towards its people.”

Interview with Toni, a Homeless Teen...
 
I decided to talk with a homeless teen and find out how she ended up homeless, here is a portion of that interview: 

Hi Toni, thank you for talking with me…

Can you tell me how old you are?

I am 13 now; I lost my home at 12.

How did that happen, Toni?

My Step Father used to beat me almost every night, one night he beat me so bad that I ran away.  As I was running out the door, he told me never to come back.

Did you take anything with you, clothes, food, money?

No, there was no time for that.  I had on jeans and a T-Shirt and just ran out the door after a really bad beating. 

How did you survive on your own?

That first night I was picked up by a guy that took me to a restaurant to eat.  Then he told me he had a house that he stayed at here when he was in town.   He told me that I could stay in his house for free if I would take care of it while he was out of town.

Did you take him up on his offer?

For sure, I was excited to think that I finally had a home where I could be safe and able to stay in school.  He stayed with me that first night and we watched TV and ate popcorn late into the morning.  He did not try to have sex with me or anything that night and so I thought he was for real and that I would be safe.

You say thought, did something happen that changed your mind?

Yes, the second night after I had cleaned the house, I was tired and I decided to go to sleep early.  At about 1:00 a.m. a man came into the bedroom where I was and said the man that let me stay there had said he could come and get a little.

What happened then?

That man raped me for three hours.

What were you thinking when this was happening?

I was afraid he was going to kill me, but I just kept waiting until I had the chance to run away.  I stayed awake all night until I knew he was sound asleep and then I grabbed my clothes and ran out the door.

END OF INTERVIEW...

Homelessness influences every facet of a child’s life – from conception to young adulthood.  The experience of homelessness inhibits the physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and behavioral development of children.  It is my hope in writing this blog that ALL people will begin to see that to value life is to give the living an opportunity to support themselves.  To give children the awareness that they are not just the castaway numbers on some over-population chart. 
 
We must begin to understand what helping one another is.  We must move away from causing our society to be dependency based; rather we must create opportunities for all individuals to prosper and live happily by removing corrupted political and dependency based practices that do little more than continue to prop up failed concepts and systems.

 
Our children deserve better than what we are offering them in America today.  Each one of us can make the change for the better if we discontinue supporting political agendas that remove our liberties and cause us to be a governmental dependency based society in America today.
 
My Final Thoughts…

I ask you to look around you today at our society, are we doing the right thing when we continue to vote into office these political leaders that offer no more than white washed speeches and politically agenda driven proposals that are driven by the very same motives that have created these tragic homeless statistics across America today?

Be the change you want to see in your own life; and through your life’s work and creations given and received, we as a society can – and will lift ourselves out of the suppressive rut we live in today.

Thank you,

TheUndefeatedLife