Whatever shabby deals the corporate news media make with the financial and political powers that be, NBC and other major networks have been doing a service lately by bringing into our living rooms the faces that illustrate the most appalling side of the current economic situation: the faces of children.
Even pictures of adults forced to leave their foreclosed houses are not as searing as the footage of children living in cars, tents, garages—short of food, without proper places to bathe, struggling to improvise lighted spaces to do homework.
Adding to the other stresses on these youngsters is the constant threat that they will be separated from their parents when social services catch on that they don’t have a proper place to live. These news pieces lay bare the heartlessness of a market that commodified, sliced and diced a basic necessity—housing—to create questionable investments and channel huge profits to the top.
The National Center on Family Homelessness, based in Newton, Mass., recently issued a report entitled America’s Youngest Outcasts: State Report Card on Child Homelessness. The group found that in 2010, 1.6 million children were homeless, up 33 percent from 1.2 million in 2007. “What we have new,” according to Center president Ellen Bassuk, “is the effects of a man-made disaster caused by the economic recession.”
To quote from the report: “Foreclosures rose 70 percent between the third quarters of 2007 and 2008. The impact on children is startling. More than 150 school districts reported at least a 50 percent increase in the numbers of identified homeless children from the 2006-2007 school year to 2007-2008. Within the first three months of the 2008-2009 school year, 177 school districts had already served the same number or more homeless students than they served during the entire previous school year.”
The problem of homeless children is not at its worst in Massachusetts, but it’s more severe than many might assume. Massachusetts ranked 21st among the 50 states for the percentage of its children who are homeless (the Springfield public schools, for example, had 1,300 homeless students in March, 2010, about double the number the year before, according to the Springfield Republican).
In terms of the well-being (health, safety, education) of its homeless children, Massachusetts scored higher, ranking 12th among 50 (the best place to be if you’re a homeless child is North Dakota, according to the report).
A less important effect of the “man-made disaster” than the humanitarian effect, but worth mentioning because it underscores how the the recession has robbed taxpayers as well as homeowners and investors, is seen in another item from the Republican story by Jack Flynn. In West Springfield, Flynn wrote, “the city’s transportation budget mushroomed from $35,000 to $200,000 [between 2009 and 2010] due to an influx of homeless children living in motels along Riverdale Street.”
