Spitting Mad!

I do not believe this. I was innocently reading the papers this morning, and there was a story that infuriated me so much that I may not recover all day.

New York is now charging rent to the homeless people occupying shelters.

Yes, you actually did just read that. The people who are living in shelters because they cannot afford to rent an apartment are being charged for the shelters. In one case, a young woman who has a 2 year old child is making $8.40 an hour (or $800 a month - so the paper says and I didn't bother to check their figures), and is being charged $336 a month - TO LIVE IN A HOMELESS SHELTER. Now this woman is paying close to $100 a week in child care services (so she CAN work and save enough money to get an apartment), and the 2 year old is still in diapers. Well, by my calculations (I did calculate this one), between the rent and the child care, that leaves her $164 a month to live on - before you figure in diapers and whatever else she might need. And there's no hope of her ever being able to save any money, of course.

THIS IS INSANE. As far as I can figure out, what the city is saying to these people is that they should stay in homeless shelters for the rest of their lives. Oh, and in another case, a woman who makes $1,099 a month and is supporting a 19 year old son (I'm going to charitably assume that he's disabled or something, though it's not stated) is being charged $1,031 a month for HER rent.

What is this saying? It is saying that even if you overcome whatever difficulties have put you in a homeless shelter, even if you're trying your damnedest to work and make a life for yourself and your children, if you have any, even if you conquer life in a shelter (yeah, you try and look neat and clean for work under those circumstances) - IT DOESN'T MATTER. You will never, never be allowed to get out.

THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING.

On a lighter note - well, lighter for my readers anyway, I wasn't all that charmed - Joshua elected to talk about the book The Art of War this morning because evidently there was a documentary on it last night. Now, I've gotten fairly used to him waking up and insisting on describing the plots of various movies to me (why, I don't know - if they're movies I've seen, I know the plot, and if they're movies I haven't seen, then I didn't want to see them and I don't care what the plot is). But this morning he did 40 solid minutes, and got all the way through WWII, Viet Nam, and the Civil War, relating each of them to The Art of War.

My God. I never thought of this before, but it would solve a LOT of problems...why don't we send JOSHUA to Gitmo and he can TALK the prisoners into submission?

Love, Wendy (who is still steaming)