Like most metropolitan areas, skyscrapers towered over downtown and rows upon rows of suburban stucco neighborhoods surrounded the city center. Gridlocked traffic, tired schools, and a handful of nonviolent crimes were the only issues this community faced.

Until the day the earth shook.

Who would have thought a shift deep below the ground would cause 20,000 people to lose their homes? City building officials spent days red-tagging houses and apartment buildings that were so devastated that they had become uninhabitable.

The response to this disaster was similar to the response to every major emergency in the country. Makeshift shelters were set up in local schools, churches, and community centers. Volunteers flocked from across the country to serve food and help rescue workers. For months, heroic compassion was trumpeted and camaraderie was the norm.

Then the volunteers returned to their normal lives and the country’s fickle attention turned to the next national emergency.

But thousands of people were still unable to move back into their homes, and the schools and community centers needed their spaces back. Gradually, people trickled out of their temporary shelters and ended up on the streets, in parks, under highways, and beside rivers.

So community leaders hosted a town meeting to figure out what to do. The city was broke, so they couldn’t afford to build their way out of the problem. The federal government provided loans to homeowners, but the thousands of renters still had nowhere to go.

Specialists hosted conferences. National experts flew in to present best-practice solutions. The Mayor and County Supervisors even chaired a blue ribbon panel of leaders to design a plan to end homelessness.

But that plan would take a decade to complete, and the Mayor would not say, “Just wait ten years, then we can help you.”

With no quick solutions in sight, some groups set up shelters in converted warehouses and large, empty homes. But the struggle to place these facilities in the community turned neighbor against neighbor.

“Not in my backyard!” people shouted. “You’ll ruin our neighborhood!”

When those living on the fringe of mainstream life ventured to the shopping centers and highway off-ramps to beg for food and change, faith groups set up public feeding programs to serve dinner to people in need.

Sometimes the lines stretched around the entire block.

Portable toilets were set up to help those living on the streets. Public storage units were provided to give people living outside a place to store their belongings.

Panhandling was not good for local businesses, so business owners installed “parking meters” that allowed tourists to donate money without encouraging begging. Then public officials banned people from sleeping on the streets of the business district.

The community struggled to create a system to manage homelessness. People could sleep outside, but not near businesses. They could eat, but had to wait in line outside. They could use portable restrooms if they needed them. They could beg, but not near tourist locations.

Addressing homelessness became a never-ending cycle, and only a few people were successful in actually getting of the streets.

Then, one day, a little boy living in car with his mom and sister was approached by a television reporter.

She asked, “What is your dream?”

Most boys his age dreamed of being professional athletes or pop stars. But this boy just shrugged his shoulders.

“I wish I had a home. That’s it.”

He became an overnight YouTube sensation. A million hits in just a few days.

That video began a movement to get people into permanent homes. The town had become HomeLess, but was now once again able to proudly reflect its name:

HomeTown.

I wonder if we’d notice that there were no more people camped out under freeway overpasses. No more tents propped up against the chain-link fences surrounding empty lots.

I wonder if we would miss the people who stand beside freeway off-ramps holding tattered cardboard signs that ask for money, food, or work. Or if we’d wonder what happened to all those run-down RVs with the windows blocked by newspaper.

I wonder what it would be like if I had to live on the streets. If I lost my home because I received a pink slip at work and couldn’t pay my rent.

I wonder where I could find a safe place to sleep at night in a scary, violent city. In the dumpster behind a Walmart? No wonder so many people on the streets head to safer places like the beach, parks, and suburban neighborhoods.

I wonder what it would be like if I had two young children with me while I searched for shelter. No wonder many homeless families huddle in their cars, often their last material possessions. It seems much safer than staying in a shelter with 200 strange adults or, God forbid, letting their kids sleep unsheltered on the city’s streets.

I wonder what it would be like if homelessness was ended.

I wonder what it would be like if every homeless shelter and program had to shut down, not because of lack of funding, but because there was no one left in need of help. If all the shelter beds were empty because no one needed them any longer.

I wonder what the homelessness advocates and service workers would do. Perhaps they would become teachers, or County social workers, or firefighters, or international aid workers.

I wonder if this country could ever imagine, I mean clearly picture, a nation without homelessness. Maybe if we closed our eyes, and saw empty streets and empty shelters, it could actually become a reality.

I wonder.

This year some experts think the group to win over is the “purple people,” consisting of those middle-class, suburban families who lean neither extremely red nor extremely blue.

Whatever the label or color of these apparently influential people may be, groups mobilize their voting base in order to have a political influence. From new voters trying to rock the election, to older voters who are worried about their medical benefits.

For years, advocates for people who are homeless have done the same. They visit shelters, affordable housing developments, and drop-in centers to help Americans experiencing homelessness register to vote.

In Los Angeles, the agency I run hosts a polling place, allowing people who are homeless to vote without having to go across town. In New York City, registration assistance is being provided to the more than 45,000 people living in homeless shelters to ensure that everyone has a voice come election day. Likewise, in Washington D.C., voter outreach is being conducted among homeless and low-income residents.

Those who work toward ending homelessness in this country know that the person sitting in the Oval Office has powerful influence over funding and policies affecting homeless Americans, from housing and medical care to emergency assistance.

But can small voter registration drives among people who are homeless really have a significant political effect, especially when only 10 percent of homeless Americans vote?

Consider this: In 2010, more than 600,000 Americans were currently homeless during a week-long count conducted in communities across the country. That same year, more than 1.6 million Americans were homeless at some point during the calendar year.

How significant are 600,000 votes? To put it in perspective, the difference between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in 2000 was less than 600,000 votes.

Of course, we elect our President based on state electoral votes rather than by popular vote alone, but in some districts a mere few thousand votes could sway the outcome.

No wonder political activists on all sides are pushing for or against Voter Reform Laws that would require photo identification, proof of citizenship, or eliminate same-day voter registration. This would make it far more difficult for people struggling on the fringes of society, like homeless Americans, to make their voices heard.

Organizations like the National Coalition for the Homeless are working hard to help people who are homeless register to vote and are fighting laws that make voting more difficult.

Mobilizing voters is as American as apple pie and a white picket fence. Helping homeless Americans influence a political campaign, so that they too can have a white picket fence in front of their own permanent home, would truly be the American Dream.

Photo by Tim Olson.

What do these men have in common with homelessness?

We love a deeply secretive, politically sensitive conspiracy theory. It gets our blood flowing; provides a wonderful cocktail party conversation, and validates our distrustful nature.

Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill John F. Kennedy on his own or was it the FBI? Or the Russians? In 2003, 70% of Americans thought our President’s assassination was part of a deeper plot.

Did Americans really walk on the moon back in 1969? Or was it just a hoax to show the Russians that America was better? NASA is still posting stories on why moon walking conspiracy theories – and I don’t mean Michael Jackson’s dance step (that was real) – are just not valid.

Is Osama Bin Laden really dead? How about Elvis Presley? The conspiracy theories go on and on, as if movie director Oliver Stone is looking for more story plots.

How about this one? There is a conspiracy in this country to intentionally keep 643,000 Americans homeless (the total number of people experiencing homelessness).

I know. Why would one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world intentionally keep so many of their citizens living on the streets like animals? It sounds like an Oliver Stone movie.

This country certainly has the resources to house every person who is homeless. In 2010, America possessed 18.4 million million empty homes due to foreclosure. We have become an empire of people-less homes and home-less people.

If we wanted to build new homes for these 643,000 people who are homeless, we would need nearly $100 billion (at a cost of approximately $150,000 per unit). Sounds like a lot, especially during these difficult economic times. But America spent over $800 billion for the war in Iraq. If ending homelessness was a national security issue, we certainly could afford it. Besides, the iPhone and iPad company, Apple, could fund the houses on their own, with their $128 billion.

We all know that everyone wants to end homelessness. The business community does not want people panhandling in front of their businesses. Families don’t want their children playing in parks overwhelmed with homelessness. Community-based organizations work hard every day to house people who are homeless, and even people living on the streets yearn for a permanent place of residence.

So why does this country struggle to end homelessness?

Is homelessness in America really a conspiracy? Should we blame it on the Russians? No, that’s so 1970s. How about an al-Qaeda conspiracy? Are they hiding terrorist sleeper cells among the homeless population?

Maybe the rich just want to keep that $100 billion for their own tax breaks? Or maybe the liberals want to keep the homeless industrial complex – the whole social services and housing system – operating? Because what would a homeless shelter employee do if we ended homelessness?

We have the money. We have enough empty houses. We all agree that homelessness needs to be ended. But this country struggles with homelessness like an overweight middle-age man struggling to return to his high school-age weight and physique. A little bit of sacrifice and sweat is not enough.

Perhaps homelessness in this country really is a some sort of conspiracy to keep two-thirds of a million Americans living on the streets, as if they are a bunch of convicts being shipped to Australia back in the 18^th century.

Perhaps homelessness is a conspiracy of neglect. We close our eyes for a few decades, ignoring the consequences of extreme poverty in this country, and voila… hundreds of thousands of Americans end up living without homes.

But if we cannot end homelessness in the next five or ten years, then even I might think there is some deeply secret conspiracy going on behind the walls of this country’s leaders.

They’ve saddled the government with obligations that leave it without “the cash or flexibility to address emerging non-elderly needs.”

He’s not the only one to pit the interests of seniors against those of the younger generation.

Stephen Marche, for example, styles spending on Social Security and Medicare as “The War Against Youth.” The baby boomers, he says, are “eating the young at the dinner table.”

Congressman Paul Ryan warns that younger Americans are “on the hook for trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities,” e.g., the commitments inherent in our Social Security and Medicare programs.

And they’re already “in a tough position” because those government “transfer programs” are building the “wealth gap between the elderly and the young.”

More and more of our limited resources are going to higher-income households that don’t need assistance. All those well-off baby boomers sucking up funds that could otherwise be spent on … well, it’s not altogether clear.

This, after all, is the Congressman whose budget plan would radically cut programs for the bottom fifth of households — those he’s purportedly concerned about.

Former Senator Alan Simpson takes the argument to a whole other level — up in heat and down in civility.

Back when he was co-chairing the President’s fiscal commission, he blasted individuals and organizations that had raised concerns about what the commission might do to Social Security — as well they should have, given what he and co-chairman Ernest Bowles came up with.

The advocates, Simpson said, “don’t care a whit about their grandchildren.” The people writing him were “old cats … who live in gated communities and drive their Lexus to the Perkins restaurant to get the AARP discount.”

He recently doubled down with a letter that calls a protesting organization “a group of wretched seniors” — “greedy geezers” who use young people as “a front for [their] nefarious bunch of crap.”

Set aside, if we can, the potty-mouthed language. Simpson too is framing the Social Security issue as a conflict of interests between the old and the young,” with the old winning out because the organizations that represent them “make money pretty good by juicing up the troops.”

I suppose I’m a tad sensitive to allegations that seniors care only about themselves — not to mention the notion that we advocate only because we’re juiced up by some rabble-rousing profiteers.

What got me going here, however, are two other things.

One is an egregious distortion of Social Security and Medicare benefits.

While it’s true that well-off seniors as well as others receive them, they’re already, to some extent, adjusted according to means.

High-income seniors receive lower Social Security benefits relative to the payroll taxes they contributed during their working years. They pay higher premiums for the portion of Medicare that covers non-hospital costs as well.

More importantly, relatively few seniors enjoy such wealth as to make Social Security benefits merely a source of discretionary income for fancy cars and the like.

More than half rely on their benefits for at least 50% of their cash income. Without those benefits, 13.8 million more seniors would have fallen below the Census Bureau’s very low poverty thresholds in 2010.

Second, this portion of the entitlements dialogue exemplifies a framing I’m seeing elsewhere.

We’re being given to understand that our federal budget is — and must be — a shrinking pie. A slice for one group necessarily deprives another. Or a slice for one need necessarily leaves another unmet.

No one, I think, would argue that every single program we have should be kept intact and amply funded.

But we’ve got more than enough wealth in this country to ensure that everyone has enough to live in reasonable comfort and opportunities, in Ryan’s words, to “make the most of their talents and dreams.”

We effectively deny this when we pit one group’s legitimate interests against another’s. We deny the common interests and mutual obligations we have as a community.

And we most surely, whether intentionally or not, foster the divide and conquer strategies of those who want to send us back to the radical individualism of the late 19th century, when social doctrine celebrated survival of the strong and death, by deliberate neglect, of the weak.

Original photo by Worcester Academy.

The Ways and Means Committee also had to find more savings — $53 billion over the next 10 years. And it too met its target by shifting costs to low-income people. But they’re not the only ones who’ll be harmed by what it’s come up with — far from it.

Here’s what the committee passed — and what the full Republican majority in the House almost surely will pass before week’s end.

Child Tax Credit Restriction

Ways and Means dusted off a proposal that earlier surfaced a way to offset some of the costs of extending the employee payroll tax cut andwhat remains of long-term unemployment insurance benefits.

Under the proposal, only parents with Social Security numbers could claim the Child Tax Credit. Immigrants who pay their income taxes using a number issued by the Internal Revenue Services would have to pay more because they’d lose the credit.

And those toward the bottom of the income scale would lose the partial reimbursement the tax credit provides.

First Focus reports that 5.5 million children would no longer benefit from the extra money their families have to spend on basic needs.

Elimination of Social Services Block Grant

Ways and Means would wipe out the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) altogether. This also is a rerun, already revived in the current House budget plan.

SSBG is a relatively small program that provides states and the District of Columbia with funds they can use to meet a wide range of needs.

It’s commonly used for subsidized day care, services to protect both children and vulnerable adults from abuse and neglect, foster care and services that help seniors and people with disabilities live independently, e.g., Meals on Wheels, transportation.

Many states and the District also use SSBG funds for casework services that link people to programs that can help them.

The House Budget Committee calls the services “duplicative” because other pots of federal money fund them too.

This is misleading for two reasons. First, some states use the block grant for services that aren’t covered under other programs, e.g.protective services for elderly victims of abuse and neglect.

Second and more importantly, services aren’t duplicative just because states can draw on more than one program to fund them. Low-income parents who get child care subsidies funded by SSBG, for example, don’t also get subsidies funded by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

In other words, SSBG enables states to extend services they consider essential to more people who need them — over 22.6 million, according to the latest official figures.

Unlimited Health Care Subsidy Repayments

This is a bit technical, but it’s a big deal. So bear with me here.

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), people who aren’t poor enough to qualify for Medicaid can get subsidies to purchase health insurance through the exchanges, i.e., the upcoming state-level insurance markets, if they meet two conditions.

Their incomes must be at or below 400% of the federal poverty line. And they can’t get adequate, affordable health insurance through their employers.

The initial size of the subsidy is based — as it must be — on their income at the time they purchase or renew their health insurance. The lower their income, the bigger the subsidy.

What if their income rises substantially during the year? They’re unemployed at the beginning, but get a job, for example.

Under current law, they have to repay the excess they received, but only up to a fixed amount. Congress established a limit so that people wouldn’t choose to forgo health insurance because they might get stuck with a big repayment.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, Congress has twice raised the repayment cap to offset the costs of other health care legislation.

House Ways and Means would eliminate the cap altogether. The repayment some people could face would be more than five times the amount of the penalty they’d have to pay for not having health insurance.

An estimated 350,000 people — mostly the healthiest — would chose the penalty over the potential shock to their budgets later. Some, of course, would then be devastated by unexpected health care costs.

Meanwhile, people still in the insurance pool would, on average, have higher health care costs. So premiums would rise and, with them, the costs of subsidies.

The added stress on the exchanges would undermine the basic structure of the ACA — not an unintended consequence for the Republican majority. Nor is the outrage some people would feel when hit with a big repayment bill.

More support for the ACA repeal Republicans promise, if the Supreme Court doesn’t kill the law first.

Well, the House Ways and Means proposals, in their current form, won’t even get a vote in the Senate. But what we see here is that bad ideas don’t die just because they’re not enacted right away.

We should expect to see these and others resurface when House and Senate negotiators sit down to work out a way to avert the across-the-board cuts due to begin next January.

Lots of pressure. Lots of horse-trading then.

Photo credit: Images of Money

The generation before me consisted of traditional activists who rebelled against an American society that they thought had wrongfully sent young men to kill Southeast Asians without much clear rationale, other than to fight some political theory that supposedly threatened democracy.

Back in the 1960s, the young adults who differed with our country’s political leaders fought hard to change the direction of the country and world.

Back then, there were no iPads, Internet, or smartphones. They simply had their cardboard signs, megaphones, and power in numbers. They changed the world with sit-ins, love-ins, and physical battles with shielded police sporting batons and water cannons.

Those grainy black and white television images of young people with headbands, long hair, and bell-bottom jeans standing up to armored national guards still resonate today.

Today’s activists, however, don’t typically knock heads with plastic police shields or get hosed down by a coercive stream of water. Why put yourself in harm’s way when you can sit at your Ikea desk, open up your Macbook Air, and click a few buttons?

Click, click, click, and you just reduced carcinogens in the environment. Click, click, to join the fight to end AIDS. Click, and that emaciated Third World child will eat a well-nourished supper tonight.

Changing the world is way easier today than when those hippies in the 1960s battled it out with angry uniformed men. All you need to do today is join some cool world-changing movement on Change.org in the comfort of your bedroom in your parents’ house, and you are a bona-fide activist. Just ignore those critics who call you a slacktivist.

Click, click, and you just housed a homeless person.

Wait. Is it that easy? For decades, homeless advocates have been struggling to help people on the streets overcome mental health issues, addictive behavior, and find permanent housing that would nurture people back to physical and emotional health. Can a click of a button do all of that with one simple push?

I wish ending homelessness was as simple as pressing that bright red Staples Easy Button. Can a simple Tweet house a homeless person?

Of course, one click of a button won’t magically transport a family of three from living in their van to walking across the threshold of an apartment. But as homeless advocates are figuring out today, it takes the whole community to mobilize enough resources to permanently house their homeless neighbors.

And that’s where social media is at its best, when a community wants to mobilize everyone.

So why not create a KONY 2012-type of campaign to end homelessness? Create a moving, very personal YouTube video of why our country needs to end homelessness, and then Tweet it out to celebrities who have the influence to rally millions of people.

In fact, why not Tweet those celebrities who have been homeless themselves. Famous people like Jim Carrey, Hilary Swank, and Shania Twain.

“Hey @JimCarrey, you already know homelessness is not a joke! Help end homelessness.”

“@HilaryASwank, you know the drama of being homeless. Help us end homelessness.”

“@ShaniaTwain, you know homelessness is not a beautiful country ballad. Help end homelessness.”

I know, it may sound like a desperate gimmick. But when the drama of homelessness has sadly persisted for decades in this country we need all the help we can get.

So should we start clicking away?

Photo credit: Robert Raines

The guns at issue here are funds for defense. Sequestration, i.e., the annual across-the-board cuts required by the Budget Control Act, would reduce them by $54.7 billion a year.

Nobody in a position of power wants those cuts, including the President.

His proposed Fiscal Year 2013 budget would hit the total deficit reduction targets in the BCA by a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases. It would also, as the BCA does, protect certain key programs for low-income people, including food stamps.

House Republicans will have none of this. Their budget plan, among other things, charged six committees to come up with more non-defense savings — enough to hit the deficit reduction targets, but without touching defense.

The House Agriculture Committee had to save $33.2 billion over the next 10 years, beginning with $8.2 billion in the upcoming fiscal year.

It could have gone after the costly subsidies our government pays to farmers — actually, for the most part, large farming operations.

Some of these provide special benefits for producing certain crops, e.g., yearly payments (even if the farmer grows nothing), compensation to make up for lower market prices. Another subsidizes insurance against crop losses. Yet farmers also get compensated when droughts, frosts,etc. ruin their crops.

All told, these subsidies cost some $25 billion a year. Nice safety net, huh?

The House budget plan itself identifies some of these subsidies for “reforms.” But they’re for another day.

So the Agriculture Committee, heeding “assumptions” made by the Budget Committee found its mandated savings — all of them and more— in the food stamp program.

First, it would shave months off the expiring boost in benefits that was part of the Recovery Act. They’re now scheduled to end in November 2013 — thanks to earlier cutbacks Congress made to offset the costs of other measures.

Under the House Agriculture plan, the boost would end two months from now. For a family of four, this would mean $57 less per month, according to a new brief from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The bulk of the savings, however, would come from two changes in the food stamp law itself.

One of them would, in effect, require households to be poorer to qualify for food stamps.

Under current law, a household can generally have no more than $2,000 in assets — or $3,250 if any of its members is a senior or a person with a disability. Total household income must be no greater than 130% of the applicable federal poverty line.

But most states — and the District of Columbia — have used an option in the law to eliminate the asset test. They’ve expanded their definition of “categorical eligibility,” i.e., types of low-income households that automatically qualify for food stamps.

This not only allows low-income families to conserve what they can for unexpected expenses. It also lets states raise the income eligiibilty threshold up to 200% of the federal poverty line — the level that many analysts use for classifying the low-income population.

The House Agriculture Committee would put a stop to this. Only households in which all members receive cash assistance could be deemed categorically eligible.

No more categorical eligibility for those that receive other types of publicly-funded support for low-income people, e.g., child care subsidies, job training.

Nor for households where only the children receive cash benefits through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program or asSupplemental Security Income.

At least two million people — perhaps as many as three million –would be forced out of the program. More than 280,000 children would lose not only food stamp benefits, but free school meals.

The other change in existing law would permanently reduce the benefits some households receive — again by severely limiting an option a growing number of states now use.

Briefly, the complicated formula states must ordinarily use to calculate food stamp eligibility and benefits levels includes an income allowance for utility costs, based on those applicants actually have to pay for.

But if the family receives benefits from the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, it automatically qualifies for the maximum allowance.

Fourteen states — and the District — have given families in the food stamp program a small LIHEAP benefit. Some of the families get higher food stamp benefits as a result. No big windfall here, however.

The House Agriculture Committee would virtually eliminate the so-called “heat and eat” option — or so I infer, since it expects to save $14 billion.

All this would be in addition to, not instead of the $133.5 billion House Republicans intend to save by converting the food stamp program to a block grant.

Moral of this story: Some people’s safety nets are worthier than others.

Photo credit: Bread for the World

The businesses and homeowners admonish local politicians by threatening to withdraw their financial campaign support, while advocates for the homeless use their vote-getting potential to insinuate they will support a leader who sympathizes with their cause to protect people on the streets.

Local elected officials and non-government organizations are caught in the messy middle.

Take Venice, California, for example. This Los Angeles westside neighborhood sits next to the Pacific Ocean and has roots in its eclectic, bohemian community where its ocean boardwalk is famous for tattoo artists and bizarre knife swallowing daredevils. Nestled in this tourist attraction has always been people sleeping on the sand or in their rundown VW beach vans.

So when Southern Californians figured out that Venice was one of the last coastal neighborhoods affordable enough that they didn’t have to sell their youngest child, the inexpensive beach cottages became gentrified residential estates.

And so, the battle for the streets began in earnest.

Imagine investing a million dollars into your dream house near the beach, only to discover an encampment of homeless neighbors squatting in the alley near your home. Although you compassionately support social services in your community, you call the police and your local representative to complain about the loud noise at night, and the remnants of trash in the morning.

You are told that their homelessness is not a crime, and unfortunately they have the right to be there. So you become the newest neighbor to fight to protect your streets.

It used to be the battles between property owners and homeless advocates occurred in the chambers of city councils. But with elected officials struggling to find Solomonic solutions to the problem of extreme poverty colliding with wealth, property owners are turning to other tactics.

Their logic is simple, albeit controversial – If you, advocates for the homeless, support homeless people’s rights to camp out in front of my house, then why don’t you let them camp out in front of your house?

And so, the online battle began.

Property owners created their own blogs, and listed the names, addresses, and phone numbers of key community leaders who support homeless people’s rights to live near their homes. If you are going to live on the streets, they say, go live near the people who advocate for you. This list included neighborhood leaders, homeless advocates, and even the Mayor of Los Angeles. They call the list a  “Westside Guide to Safe Camping Locations for the Homeless.”

Advocates are furious. They call these property owners “bum-haters” who are bashing privacy rights.

Is posting addresses of homeless supporters  a form of online bullying? Sort of like a group of teenagers bullying a peer on Facebook?

It seems to me if stakeholders, on both sides of the homelessness debate, are going to use online tools to promote an agenda to rid the community of homelessness, they should promote ways to link their homeless neighbors with access to permanent housing.

That, to me, is the Solomonic solution.

Photo credit: Zach Klein

They had no place to stay and no money for food. And the Family Resources Center — the District’s central intake for homeless families — couldn’t help them.

The mother told me that they’d been advised to find some place to stay — as if they’d have asked for shelter if they had one.

They’d returned to the Center in hopes of a gift card so they could buy some food, but it had run out of cards. I was told the cards were donated by corporations like Safeway and Giant, and the chains hadn’t come through of late.

The family could, however, get a Metro fare card. I asked the father what they’d do with it. He said he guessed they’d go back to their former neighborhood and see if someone would take them in. Not likely, he seemed to think.

So here’s a family that’s destitute. A little kid and an unborn child at high risk of long-term health and developmental damages due to hunger.

Perhaps for the toddler also psychological damage if he understands what it means that they’re spending nights in bus stations or hospital waiting rooms — even, as seems likely, if he picks up on the fear and stress his parents are feeling.

Who knows how many more stories like this there are — and how many more there’ll be in months to come?

All because the District government couldn’t find enough money to fund its homeless program in light of projected needs.

A 46% increase in family homelessness since 2008. A report indicating extraordinary vulnerability to increased homelessness.

And a budget for this fiscal year that provides not a penny more for homeless services — actually $3 million less than what the Department of Human Services was spending.

So DHS has again stopped providing shelter for newly homeless families. Official end of the winter season means they’ll be on their own — perhaps till the next freezing-cold day.

And now Mayor Gray has proposed a budget that would effectively cut homeless services by $7 million. These are “lost,” i.e., spent, federal funds that he could have replaced with local dollars.

No doubt the budget must address many priorities. But I fail to see how letting homeless families fend for themselves squares with budget development principles that include “protect the District’s most vulnerable residents.”

Also fail to see why all tax and fee increases must be off the table if the alternative is cuts that undermine other principles.

The Mayor tells us that to “seize our future,” we must “improve the quality of life for all.”

My quality of life wouldn’t be impaired by paying, say, a sales tax on services that aren’t covered now — or for that matter, income taxes at a higher rate.

It is impaired by helpless worrying about the literally help-less family I met. Their quality of life goes without saying.

Photo credit: Foomandoonian