Health & Fitness
The Working Poor Are Becoming Homeless and Congress' Response: Defund The ACA
Working Families are loosing ground and the middle class is shrinking. The GOP's response is further cuts to social programs
Today the New York Times posted an article “In New York, Having a Job, or 2, Doesn’t Mean Having a Home” and if you have not already read it, you should. It tells the stories of people who work in NYC and are forced to live in a homeless shelter.
“On many days, Alpha Manzueta gets off from one job at 7 a.m., only to start her second at noon. In between she goes to a place she’s called home for the last three years — a homeless shelter.”
This truly depressing story is about the working poor. The working poor are those who have a job (or as the article highlights two jobs) and still are below the poverty level. This is a huge problem. In NYC over 50,000 people call a homeless shelter their home.
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“More than one out of four families in shelters, 28 percent, include at least one employed adult, city figures show, and 16 percent of single adults in shelters hold jobs.”
This is just another example of how low wage jobs do not provide enough for people to actually live.
Find out what's happening in Nashuafor free with the latest updates from Patch.
“A one-bedroom in East New York or the South Bronx is still $1,000 a month,” said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst with the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy and housing services group. “The jobs aren’t enough to get people out of homelessness.”
New York City is not alone when it comes to working poor. There is not one state in the entire country where a low-wage worker can afford a two bedroom apartment working 40 hours a week. In many states a low-wage worker needs to work over 100 hours a week to afford an apartment.
Yesterday the Census Bureau released their latest finding that over 15% of all Americans are living in poverty. MSNBC reported, “46.5 million Americans—including 16.1 million children—remain impoverished, half a decade into the post-recession economic recovery.” Bloomberg reported, “almost 22 percent of Americans under age 18 were in poverty in 2012.” (“The poverty threshold for a family of four in 2012 was $23,283, according to the report.”)
It gets even worse. The website American Prospect reported, “median incomes have fallen in the last ten years by more than 11 percent.” The middle class is shrinking and workers are loosing ground every year. “Altogether, from 2000 to 2012, median income for non-elderly households fell from $64,843 to $57,353, a decline of $7,490, or 11.6 percent.”READ THE REST OF THE STORY http://nhlabornews.com/2013/09/the-working-poor-are-becoming-homeless-and-congress-response-defund-the-aca/ Read the rest of the story
