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Homelessness In America Quotes

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Homelessness In America Quotes

“It is hard to imagine a more elegant table at which to share a meal. Yet here it sits-never used, never disturbed-accompanied by a single chair. This table harks back to a different era, a better time in the life of Susan's family, when owning this house in this part of Chicago signaled the achievement of middle-class African American respectability. Before the economic anchors of this far South Side neighborhood closed down-the steel yards in the 1960's, the historic Pullman railway car company in the early 1980's, and the mammoth Sherwin-Williams paint factory in 1995-Roseland was a community with decent-paying, stable jobs. It was a good place to raise your kids. As the jobs left, the drugs arrived. 'It got worse, it changed.' Susan says, 'There's too much violence...unnecessary violence at that.' Given what her family has been through, this is more than a bit of an understatement. Susan's brother was shot in broad daylight just one block away. Her great-grandmother has fled to a meager retirement out west. Susan's family would like nothing more than to find a better place to live, safer streets and a home that isn't crumbling around them. Yet despite all its ills, this house is the only thing keeping Susan, Devin, and Lauren off the streets. They have spent the past few months surviving on cash income so low that it adds up to less than $2 per person, per day. With hardly a cent to their names, they have nowhere else to go.”

PovertyEconomicsPolitics Of The United StatesHomelessness In America
Book:$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
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“The results of Shaefer's analysis were staggering. In early 2011, 1.5 million households with roughly 3 million children were surviving on cash incomes of no more than $2 per person, per day in any given month. That's about one out of every twenty-five families with children in America. What's more, not only were these figures astoundingly high, but the phenomenon of $2-a-day poverty among households with children had been on the rise since the nation's landmark welfare reform legislation was passed in 1996-and at a distressingly fast pace. As of 2011, the number of families in $2-a-day poverty had more than doubled in just a decade and a half. It further appeared that the experience of living below the $2-a-day threshold didn't discriminate by family type or race. While single-mother families were most at risk of falling into a spell of extreme destitution, more than a third of the households in $2-a-day-poverty were headed by a married couple. And although the rate of growth was highest among African Americans and Hispanics, nearly half of the $2-a-dat poor were white.”

PoliticsPovertyEconomicsHomelessness In America
Author:Kathryn Edin
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“The results of Shaefer's analysis were staggering. In early 2011, 1.5 million households with roughly 3 million children were surviving on cash incomes of no more than $2 per person, per day in any given month. That's about one out of every twenty-five families with children in America. What's more, not only were these figures astoundingly high, but the phenomenon of $2-a-day poverty among households with children had been on the rise since the nation's landmark welfare reform legislation was passed in 1996-and at a distressingly fast pace. As of 2011, the number of families in $2-a-day poverty had more than doubled in just a decade and a half. It further appeared that the experience of living below the $2-a-day threshold didn't discriminate by family type or race. While single-mother families were most at risk of falling into a spell of extreme destitution, more than a third of the households in $2-a-day-poverty were headed by a married couple. And although the rate of growth was highest among African Americans and Hispanics, nearly half of the $2-a-day poor were white.”

PovertyHomelessness In America
Author:Kathryn Edin
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“America’s cash welfare program-the main government program that caught people when they fell-was not merely replaced with the 1996 welfare reform; it was very nearly destroyed. …This book is about what happens when a government safety net that is built on the assumption of full-time, stable employment at a living wage combines with a low-wage labor market that fails to deliver on any of the above. It is this toxic alchemy, we argue, that is spurring the increasing numbers of $2-a-day poor in America.”

PovertyWelfare ReformHomelessness In America
Author:Kathryn Edin
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“In a culture where the brain is considered the center of consciousness, an unraveling brain is an unraveling self. To let the mentally unstable live in our midst is to face the fearful fragility of the ego. So we whisper our fears over their heads, driving them into the wilderness of the streets or locking them away where they can’t be seen. We let them pale into husks of human beings, cut off from the mutual blood of society. Sometimes we toss them a coin; it’s a small price to pay for the relief of looking away.”

Mental IllnessHomelessScapegoatingHomelessness In AmericaHomelessnesss
Book:The Sea Once Swallowed Me: A Memoir of Love, Solitude, and the Limits of Language
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