To answer Bonnie’s question, there’s no study or news report that will make me care enough about the problem to want to “demand my representatives do something about it”. First, far too many studies and news reports are the kind of useless drivel that this study and new report were. So the first thing that has to happen is news reporting has to stop consisting largely of reproducing advocacy group press releases.

Second, and more importantly, I don’t believe my representatives should be “doing something about it”. What you really want is for government to force others to care, in a form that government approves of. What I (and I think Tom) wants is for others to care enough that THEY will do something about it themselves, in a form acceptable to themselves and those they are helping, without government getting involved. To argue that there’s a level of “caring” between the two, to me, is irrational. You are asking when I am willing to point a gun at someone else to get them to do what I “care about”, when I am unwilling to do that thing myself… That’s the height of incivility. If I care, I’ll do something. There should be a higher – not lower – threshold of caring before I’m willing to force you to do it for me. This is what I think is – or should be – meant by “civil society”.

You also claim to worry that “homeless children become wards of the state.” But the recommendations of this study are that ALL children (defined as anyone under 21!) are to be made wards of the state.

Thank you again.

To reiterate: The problem is categorizing the “non-homeless,” as “homeless.” This is a problem because: (1) it violates language; (2) demeans and trivializes the homeless; and (3) manipulates and deceives the public (which can lead to public choice problems as outlined above).

It is not a valid response to say: “what type of study would you make to address the problem of homelessness.” You do not address any of the problems Tom has outlined, and even go so far as to insinuate that being deceptive is a good thing. You say that “these circumstances lead to homelessness,” yet this is not what the study says. It says these people ARE homeless. It is precisely because people will respond to this bogus study as you have (by reading stuff into it that the study doesn’t say) that this study does actual harm to addressing homelessness. If there is a problem, this study does nothing to help us confront it.

Check out the numbers in a recent post here. These circumstances lead to homelessness, and homeless children become wards of the state. Would you have us say that homelessness is not a problem for these children? Should we wait until after the fact to intervene? That’s like saying cancer statistics should only count those in the terminal stages. It may make the numbers look more palatable, but it does nothing to urge us to address the problem. We need to look at the entire continuum.

You claim that “There is a huge differnce between staying a night with your grandparents to visit and staying there because you mother doesn’t have any place left to go.” True. But having a family to spend time with when you need it means that you are not homeless. The phony “study” that is being discussed classifies people who spend one night with others because they don’t have their own place as “homeless.” I have had friends stay with me when looking for work — they were staying with a friend, not “homeless.” (Two stayed for weeks while interviewing; they would have been counted as “homeless” for doing that just one night.)

You ask “what happens to the children” when their parents don’t have their own place and don’t have friends or family with whom to stay. Then — and only then — are they “homeless.” Otherwise, they’re staying with family or friends. You must have had a very privileged childhood never to have had to move for purposes of finding work or for similar reasons. And when people do that, they are often not living in their own homes — they stay with friends or relatives. But that doesn’t make them homeless, not if by that term we also include people living under bridges. There is a huge difference between those two conditions. To lump the two conditions into the same category is to be very, very manipulative and deliberately deceptive. Cindy is on the right track: when people such as Andrea Dworkin classify all sexual intercourse as rape, they trivialize the experience of rape. And when rape is redefined as any situation in which a person later experiences any feelings of regret — as was done some years ago — in order to inflate the stats on “rape,” we add to the injury of actual rape the insult of comparing it to post-coital regret. Moreover, classing as rape any situation that sometimes results in rape is absurd.

As Charles notes, this “study” is complete bunk — a reprehensible lie — and highly insulting to those who experience actual homelessness. Shame on the people who have tried to con the public in this fashion.

The nonsense about forcing lenders to give away homes and funds (that’s what forcing banks to reduce mortgage payments is) I find particularly offensive. Wrecking the financial system by cancelling contracts en masse will do more and longer-lasting damage to American citizens, including children, than our current mortgage mess ever could.

Similarly, creating a national health insurance program that covers every “child” under 21 has nothing at all to do with protecting genuinely homeless children, but that’s one of the major recommendations of this group.

Claiming “it’s all for the benefit of the children” is a reprehensible lie, but scoundrels use it all the time.

I think that Tom’s point is that if you count any risk factors that might lead to homelessness as homelessness, you confuse the whole issue. If we counted all forms of sexual aggressiveness (like persistence in asking you out, even when you’ve said no) as rape, because it sometimes culminates in rape, we are not communicating. We are deceiving. To be “homeless” for one night is not a condition of homelessness, unless we want to say that because I was hungry this morning before lunch, I should be counted as a person who suffers from hunger and used in a report to justify changes in government policies.

There is a huge differnce between staying a night with your grandparents to visit and staying there because you mother doesn’t have any place left to go. I guess the difference could be summed up as security. Often when things get to the point where children are living in a park or a cardboard box (in reality more often a car) the state will intervene & remove the children. Separating them from their parents always harms a child.
It seems the point of the article is that if 1 in 50 children experience homelessness each year and we do nothing, we can expect more of them to end up under bridges & ultimately become wards of the state.
Back to a very basic dilemma: How do we help children who need it without helping the parents we might think don’t deseve it?

There is a condition of homelessness — when you have to live in a park or sleep in a cardboard box. That is a terrible condition. To conflate that with staying a night with your grandparents or your uncle and aunt is to mock those people who do live under bridges, or who are shuttled from one expensive (but state-paid) motel room to another day after day.

Bonnie’s comments are either a clever and subtle parody, or a sign of a mind with no connection to reality.

So the peole who are foreclosed on i suppose lived in their homes for free because they couldn’t afford rent so now will be homeless. What a joke! Because of the cheap money, rentals have been lagging. So now B.O wants to keep people in homes they can’t afford and stick it to the landlords. Jerk.