Hunger, Homelessness and Opportunity

by Jeff Singer

Darlene Jones, the disabled mother of a son in military service, is on the other end of the telephone, crying softly. “If you can't help me, I don't know what I'll do. They're coming to put me out tomorrow morning.” Ms. Jones receives $185 per month in State disability assistance. When the rent for her room was increased to $200, she borrowed from everyone she knew. Now she is calling agencies she doesn't know. She had already received one of the more than 150,000 eviction notices filed in Baltimore each year. Soon she is likely to become one of the 50,000 Marylanders experiencing homelessness this year.

On August 26, 2004, the U.S. Census Bureau issued its annual report on incomes, poverty, and health insurance trends. The nonprofit sector was not surprised to learn that Americans were poorer and had less access to health care than in the past:

• The official poverty rate rose from 12.1 percent in 2002 to 12.5 percent in 2003.
• The number of people living in poverty increased by 1.3 million people, to 35.9 million in 2003; by contrast, in 2000, 11.3 percent of the population (31.6 million) lived in poverty.
• The poverty rate for children rose from 16.7 percent in 2002 to 17.6 percent in 2003.
• The number of U.S. residents without health insurance in 2003 increased to 45 million, or 15.6 percent of the population, from 43.6 million, or 15.2 percent of the population in 2002.

(“Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2003,” Current Population Survey)

Increased Need for Services

Unfortunately, the bad news was expected, because nonprofit “safety net” providers (those who provide services geared toward hunger, homelessness, and economic opportunity) have been experiencing a steady increase in the need for food, shelter, financial assistance, and health care. Earlier in the year, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that requests for emergency food assistance increased by an average of 17 percent over the past year, and requests for emergency shelter assistance increased by an average of 13 percent in the 25 cities surveyed. In its most recent study on homelessness, the Maryland Department of Human Resources reported that people were turned away from emergency shelter in 2003 a record 47,190 times. The Maryland Food Bank's 2003 food provider survey revealed that more than 45,000 different people rely each week on free food from soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters, and other feeding programs to avoid going hungry. Nearly 80 percent of food providers in this State assisted more clients in 2003 than in 2002.

This year more Marylanders than ever will slip through the large holes in the social safety net. Many will lose their homes and sleep in abandoned cars; others will eat their one daily meal at a soup kitchen; yet others will go into debt seeking medical care at hospital emergency rooms. As increasing numbers of Marylanders find themselves without adequate incomes, the safety net is stretched to the breaking point. Between 2001 and 2003, the median income in Maryland declined by 2.9 percent. During this same period, the percentage of Marylanders living in poverty increased from 7.3 percent to 8.0 percent. The minimum wage continues to lose value. The National Low Income Housing Coalition's annual study confirms that a full-time worker earning $5.15 per hour cannot afford housing in any jurisdiction in Maryland. As such, the “minimum wage” is not a “livable wage”. Similarly, an individual receiving Federal disability assistance cannot afford housing in Maryland.

Maryland's Social Safety Net

Hundreds of thousands of our neighbors must rely on the social safety net, a more formal version of the “kindness of strangers”, to make ends meet. Maryland's social safety net is comprised of thousands of public, private nonprofit, and faith-based agencies. These agencies are working desperately against the tide of economic and political policies that prevent Marylanders who work at low wage jobs or who have disabilities from living with dignity and independence. The social safety net includes soup kitchens and food pantries operated by churches, mosques, and synagogues. It includes homeless shelters and transitional housing programs managed by secular nonprofit agencies. Other important safety net services include emergency financial aid, utility payment assistance, and subsidized transportation.

None of these services is more critically needed than the free or low cost health care provided to our uninsured and underinsured neighbors. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that between 2001 and 2003, the percentage of Marylanders without health insurance increased from 12.8 percent to 13.6 percent. In Maryland, 750,000 men, women, and children are unable to afford health care. Not only are they at risk for serious disease and death, but their lack of insurance requires those with insurance to subsidize their health care. Treating people without insurance also strains the resources of the entire health care system. Thirteen community health centers and a number of free clinics treat tens of thousands of our neighbors each year, but hundreds of thousands more need these scarce and valuable services.

In his 1967 book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. Its is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty.”

Until we abolish poverty, the social safety net must remain as our response to the most desperate needs of our neighbors. As we address the fundamental causes of poverty, we should simultaneously strengthen this safety net; each individual who falls through its gaps represents the failure of our commitment to a civil and just society.