Letters to the Editor: Microloans can prevent homelessness. Government leaders, are you listening?
By Bob Kopp
Posted: 01/22/2013 09:54:05 PM PST
Updated: 01/22/2013 10:51:09 PM PST
When you are homeless, all-natural food items, such as beans, are your salvation.
Not so when you are on government assistance.
Government employees, who are working for you, for their entire lives, receive a government allowance to buy food. This is true through retirement, and even beyond.
When you are employed by the federal government, all you receive is government assistance for food.
They could easily have a meal plan at work, in which we buy food for work and use that to feed our household.
I don’t care if you have a job for eight years. Then you retire. You go on disability with medical costs, and you are on government assistance for the rest of your life. How do you survive on federal assistance?
In 2010, America’s homeless counted 12.5 million, with another 4.5 million in the shelter system. The total number of people in the U.S. who were homeless was 15.4 million in 2009.
The majority of them are African-Americans.
There are people who are very well meaning who are doing good work, trying to keep families together, to help the homeless.
They will not accept the reality that all-natural food items are the salvation to a life of hardship, especially when unemployment is at the level it is now.
I’m not talking about just people who are homeless in their cars on some back road.
I’m talking about people who are living in their cars or in the shelters or in their vehicles to get to work, or whatever it is that they do at night, and they need the food they need to get them through the day.
Homeless people are the people who need it most.
Their bodies can work, but their minds shut down. It’s time we start helping them to the point where they can work, but they can also
