Lights, ornaments and the most festive of trimmings overlay one of the world’s most bustling metropolises, testaments of a time of season when man’s humanity to man is thought to be as common as the air one naturally inhales.
And yet all is not regal or cheerful in NYC, where the Coalition for the Homeless forecasts that as many as 20,000 children will spend their nights leading up to the grandest of holiday seasons fighting for space and sleeping quarters in dimly-lit, grossly overpopulated shelter facilities spread all across the city’s five boroughs.
Adding to all the woe, experts predict even that number is dramatically on the rise, with as many as 40,000 children spending at least one night over the last year bedding down as residents or guests of the city’s municipal system. Overall, nearly 50,000 men, women and children now call such dwellings home and more than another 5,000 victims reside in other public or private refuges, not to mention the thousands more who foolishly chose to brave all potential elements and roam city streets from dusk to dawn.
“Not since the grim days of the Great Depression has New York City had 20,000 children sleeping homeless each night,” said Patrick Markee, a spokesperson for Coalition of the Homeless.
Research further reveals that African Americans and Latinos are the two demographics most adversely affected by the trend.
Approximately 53 percent of the city’s homeless population is black, while 32 percent identify as Latino and just six percent as white.
And just to think, none of this or, at the very least most of it, has to be. Under the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city has heartlessly eliminated all of its federal housing assistance programs, including access to both rental vouchers and public housing options. More recently, Bloomberg even elected to abandon his once much touted Advantage rental subsidy program, an operation which purported to aid homeless families in reestablishing their bearings and returning to the land of permanent home or apartment dwellers.
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article courtesy of BlackAmericaWeb.com
