Unheard and Unseen: The Plight of America's Homeless Poor

With the rare exception of a special report producedworking or middle class lives. Many thousands are
by educational television channels and shownsimply the working poor. Lacking skills and contacts,
sandwiched between reruns late at night, we seldomthey trudge daily to minimum wage, low level
see the faces of America's enormous homelesspositions: motel maid, security guard, custodian,
population. They live their street lives in decayingwaitress, or day labor. The minimum wage is a social
downtowns and slum districts, hidden from our dailyfarce for a single individual, never mind someone with
commute between work and the suburbs.I live in thechildren or family to support.Can Congress or the
Los Angeles County section of Southern California.Administration explain how someone clearing less than
Within my one county are more than 90,000 people$200 per week can feed and clothe themselves and
who have nowhere to call home. Like most of mytheir family and yet set aside enough money for
neighbors, I never use public transportation or visiteven the cheapest apartment? Can the finest
the poorer areas. Unless I make a special effort, Ifinancial minds in the country calculate how to pay
never see the thousands on the sidewalks.It is onlyfirst and last month rent and a security deposit when
when disaster strikes a poor area that the countrythere are only pennies left at the end of the
sees the face of poverty. After Andrew in southernweek?Yet President Bush moved to suspend the
Florida and Katrina on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and1931 Davis-Bacon Act for the rebuilding of New
Mississippi, the omnipresent television cameras caughtOrleans. Is it his theory that the poor don't deserve
a glimpse of what it is like to be poor in America. Wethe protection of prevailing wages so he can use that
saw the faces of the forgotten lined up in themoney to protect them from terrorism?The poor
Superdome and had to admit that the national dreamand the homeless don't even think about a bomber
of success and a comfortable lifestyle does notat an airport or what's happening in the Middle East.
extend to everyone.There are those who believeThey have more pressing concerns such as where is
that the poor bring on their own misery. That anyonetheir next meal coming from, how can they educate
with any motivation would be able to worktheir children, and where would be the safest place
themselves out of the mess. Certainly there areto spend the night.And the oil companies, with their
thousands of homeless who have drifted away fromalready obscene profits, get a tax break.Where are
the larger society because of drugs or mental illness,we heading, folks?Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical
the have-nots who fail to qualify for the treatmentpsychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology
and rehabilitation programs established for the moreand politics. She has performed therapeutic services
fortunate.Many thousand more are simply victims offor more than 20 years and has studied the effects
domestic violence, illness, structural unemployment, orof cultural forces and employment on the individual.
a series of events that devastated their former