Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Homeless hell in America's Midwest
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020265/Homeless-hell-Americas-Midwest-thousands-middle-class-families-forced-bunker-mattresses-economic-crisis-bites.html ^

Posted on 08/01/2011 3:24:31 AM PDT by kcvl

Thousands of middle-class U.S. families are being forced to sleep on floors in public buildings because so many have lost their homes and jobs in the economic crisis.

These shelters were once the preserve of drug addicts and alcoholics but now normal Americans are having to bed down in halls and corridors as they have no other place to go.

An investigation has also found many from the Midwest are spending their benefits to stay in motels for up to ten days a month to avoid having every night on mattresses surrounded by dozens of strangers. 

Experts say that these middle-class people are from 'the boom suburbs that have now gone bust'. 

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: americas; default; economy; hell; homeless; midwest; police; teachers
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-49 next last
Maurice Henderson was until recently a successful manager of a vehicle fleet, who has lost that job and his home.

Distress: Maurice Henderson and his young family are in the shelter after he lost his job and later his home

He, his wife Roseangel, and their small children, are sleeping on the floor of a church in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

'When you have lost a job and you have to downgrade, and those bills start racking and stacking up. You sell you car, you cannot pay bills and you lose your home and then you end up here.'

1 posted on 08/01/2011 3:24:33 AM PDT by kcvl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]


2 posted on 08/01/2011 3:26:25 AM PDT by kcvl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: kcvl

What did they expect when the US government declared open warfare on jobs??


3 posted on 08/01/2011 3:28:26 AM PDT by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Happiness)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: kcvl

4 posted on 08/01/2011 3:30:17 AM PDT by Bobalu (He who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: kcvl

Where is the outrage at what the rat party and its Fuhrer have done to our country?


5 posted on 08/01/2011 3:31:11 AM PDT by Jacquerie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GeronL

From the article:

“It (the economy) grew in the first half of the year at the slowest pace since the recession ended,”

Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the MSM keep saying the recession has ended. Is everybody employed again? When did that happen?/s

“Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” Joseph Goebbles


6 posted on 08/01/2011 3:34:29 AM PDT by Ernie Kaputnik ((It's a mad, mad, mad world.))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Jacquerie

Trucker Larry Antista is in the shelter with his daughter Michelle, after he lost all work and eventually their home.   

Homeless: 14-year-old Michelle Antista has not even told her school that she has nowhere to live

‘In these economic times my spouse took off on us and that cut our income in half. We lost our house and here we are,’ he said.

His 14-year-old daughter Michelle says that her friends and teachers are clueless about the fact she is now homeless. ‘They haven’t asked so I haven’t told them,’ she said.

She also warned that many American families could fall on similarly hard times.

‘If they came to live one day like us they would see how hard it is and how good they have it. They complain about what they have got but that is really dumb,’ she said.

Experts are warning today that many more families may go down this route as the U.S economy continues to creak.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020265/Homeless-hell-Americas-Midwest-thousands-middle-class-families-forced-bunker-mattresses-economic-crisis-bites.html


7 posted on 08/01/2011 3:37:05 AM PDT by kcvl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Jacquerie

Sonya and Tim - he was a manager at McDonald’s but the branch closed and she worked at Subway but they cut her shifts - lost their home and moved into a small apartment, but when the unemployment money ended they lost that too.

“We slept in our car, it was scary,” says Sonya. “Then we came here.”
Larry Antista and his 14-year-old daughter Michelle are bedding down alongside 80 people they do not know. Does her school know she is homeless? “I didn’t tell them,” Michelle says. “I stay there until six o’clock to do my homework.” They lost their apartment when the family split up.
Maurice Henderson and RoseAnna Ortice are across the parquet floor with their three kids. Maurice used to manage a car dealership. They lived in a motel. The day his unemployment cheque did not arrive was the day he had to leave the motel and come here. They have been on the mattresses for two weeks.

There is wrath aplenty here - though you seldom hear such thoughts expressed on the US media. “They’re wasting money on wars,” says Larry. Maurice tells me the same thing. A guy crawls over his large family and almost whispers to me, “I’m Native American. My tribe runs a casino so where does the money go? Why don’t they use it to help their own people?”

Steinbeck, who had lived in California most of his life, had to be alerted to the existence of the camps on his doorstep by Lange’s husband, an academic, who wrote one of the first field reports of the migrant problem. Then, as now, the poor had only a walk-on part in the mass media, and their script lines seldom reflected what they actually thought.
All along Interstate 40 I have been cursing the motelscape. The inedible sludge of reconstituted egg, “biscuit” and gravy that allows them to advertise “hot breakfast” - the coffee weak enough to read the Wall Street Journal’s markets pages through.

Reynalds takes me to a line of cheap motels right by the interstate where rooms are $29 (£18) a night. “These places fill up in the first two weeks after the benefit cheques are paid and when they run out, they empty out and people drift over to Joy Junction.”

Now I see the cheap motels in a new light. This is where America’s hidden homeless live.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-us-canada-14296682


8 posted on 08/01/2011 3:42:37 AM PDT by kcvl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: GeronL
"What did they expect when the US government declared open warfare on jobs??"

...not to mention the extreme amounts of federal funding to local governments.


9 posted on 08/01/2011 3:50:24 AM PDT by familyop ("Plan? There ain't no plan!" --Pigkiller, "Beyond Thunderdome")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: GeronL
What did they expect when the US government declared open warfare on jobs??

It's all happening so fluently that it almost seems like it's a contrived political action plan but we all know THAT would never be here in the good ol' free USA.

10 posted on 08/01/2011 3:51:16 AM PDT by EGPWS (Trust in God, question everyone else)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: EGPWS

Leave 0bummer and the ‘rats in power and it’s fini for the USA.


11 posted on 08/01/2011 4:00:56 AM PDT by luvbach1 (Stop Obamania in 2012)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: kcvl

I was about to say that the homeless rearing their heads under a Democrat administration is ... unexpected.

But, this is the foreign press. They don’t get the memo sometimes.


12 posted on 08/01/2011 4:03:08 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: kcvl

Obamavilles.


13 posted on 08/01/2011 4:04:27 AM PDT by popdonnelly (The Liberal Era is over.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: EGPWS; GeronL
What did they expect when the US government declared open warfare on employers and jobs??
It's all happening so fluently that it almost seems like it's a contrived political action plan but we all know THAT would never be here in the good ol' free USA.
It's all so simple. We don't have free and independent presses. We have an Associated Press - and that is an entirely different matter.

14 posted on 08/01/2011 4:08:11 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (DRAFT PALIN)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Ernie Kaputnik

Well, the first one never ended. They include federal (debt) spending in GDP calculation -as in + production. Take out the gov spending and the first recession never ended. This is another reason the Dems are fighting spending cuts tooth and nail. Removing the spending shows the private economy has been shrinking since 2007, when the Dems took over Congress.


15 posted on 08/01/2011 4:13:18 AM PDT by Justa
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Jacquerie

In their feeble minds, it’s still President Bush’s fault. They are still beating the “inherited” drum because they have nothing else. Obama has no accomplishments to run on. None.


16 posted on 08/01/2011 4:17:33 AM PDT by jersey117
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Ernie Kaputnik

The first quarter growth rate was revised down to 0.04%

Is that a recession or a depression?


17 posted on 08/01/2011 4:26:06 AM PDT by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Happiness)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: kcvl

These people aren’t blaming Obama. These people are wanting handouts it sounds like.


18 posted on 08/01/2011 4:29:07 AM PDT by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Happiness)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: kcvl
barack hussein obama... Mmmmmmmmm... Mmmmmmmmmm... Mmmmmmmmmm! You voted for him... “ain't gonna have to worry ‘bout my mortgage or filling my tank no more”.

LLS

19 posted on 08/01/2011 4:33:26 AM PDT by LibLieSlayer (juan mccain certified Al Palin Hobbit Terrorist)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: kcvl

It is getting worse.


20 posted on 08/01/2011 4:40:11 AM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-49 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson