Hakki
--------------------------
Disunited. A tale of two Americas
This is the other front line - a charity helping the US jobless. September 11 doubled its caseload. The third of our eyewitness reports.
David Teather and Larry Elliott Friday November 16, 2001 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,595460,00.html
(...) A system that seemed to epitomise the tough love of the new left when jobs were plentiful in the mid-1990s now looks brutal and callous in the recession of 2001. State and federal budgets are under pressure as a result of the recession, so the same message is going out to those at the very bottom of the labour market: go out and find work. Or go hungry. (...) John Donahue is executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless which campaigns for affordable housing and universal healthcare. He estimates that the number of homeless in Chicago will increase to 80,000 this year. (...) One of the things that kept the economy hot was that women were forced to take low-pay jobs - minimum wages that don't pay the rent in any city in this country. And those are the first to lose their jobs. People who have jumped through the welfare-to-work hoops and are ending up in shelters. The average age of a homeless person today is nine years old because of the number of homeless single mothers. (...) Another stark statistic is the speed with which the organisation has eaten through a separate state-funded sum designed to provide a bridge for people who have lost their jobs to keep up payments on their mortgages. Last year, the budget was $1m which helped 2,500 people. This year the budget was increased to $2.5m. The financial year began on July 1 but the money was all gone by October. "We are creating a situation here which is really untenable for the future," he says. "We are seeing more and more people becoming homeless because of mortgage foreclosures." (...)