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September 2004
Voteless and Voiceless—The Homeless in America

By Kymberlie Adams Matthews

 

On January 18, 2004, Raymond Greenwald froze to death under a footbridge in River West Park, Chicago. His body was discovered by a group of 14 year-olds playing in the snow. Raymond Greenwald was a homeless man.

The bleak truth is, over the past four years the United States has had a dramatic increase in homelessness, and tragically, because of the Bush administration’s swelling national deficit, the worst might be yet to come. To put into perspective, five years from now the average family’s projected share of the national debt will be more than $84,000, compared to the $500 per family when Bush took office.

According to the Department of Labor, unemployment has jumped 37 percent since November 2000 with housing prices at historic highs. In the annual Hunger and Homelessness survey it was noted that requests for emergency food assistance increased by an average of 17 percent over 2002, while emergency shelter assistance increased by 13 percent. The survey also noted that cities are finding the crisis overwhelming in the face of severe budget cuts, which limit their ability to provide emergency assistance. A record 84 percent of cities had to turn away people from shelters due to lack of space. This was up 38 percent over 2002 and the largest turn-away in seven years. Moreover, 61 percent of people requesting emergency food assistance in the cities surveyed held jobs.

Set figures are hard to come by, but roughly 800,000 people are homeless in America on any given night, and between 2.5 million and 3.5 million people will experience homelessness this year. Sadly, around half are families, usually with only one parent, who can’t find affordable housing. They usually stay in the shelter system until finding a place to live. If they are so lucky. The other half of the homeless population are single adults. Some pass through the shelter system relatively quickly, but around 190,000 or so never leave.

The future for America’s children is also grim. Large, sustained deficits eventually suck up national savings, meaning less money for education and training of young people. Add to this declining investments in other economic sectors and it doesn’t take long to see what’s in store. As deficits continue, huge chunks of taxpayer dollars will be diverted from education and health programs to service the national debt. Interest rates will rise and living standards will fall. And who gets caught in the middle? The most vulnerable of us: children.

Despite these alarming facts, the Bush administration wasted little time in backing away from the federal government’s commitment to provide low-income rental housing assistance through the Section 8 program to our nation’s families. Section 8 is a voucher program that currently provides housing to approximately two million low-income households of which 1.2 million are families with children. It gets worse, the National Low Income Housing Coalition has put out an alert regarding the Bush administration’s FY 2005 budget proposal which slashes millions of dollars in all areas of need (www.nlihc.org/news/020404).

Knowing Your Place
What can be done? How can homeless people help get Bush out of office? Well, that’s easier than it may sound—they can vote him out! Under the U.S. Constitution, every American citizen without regard to personal property has the right to vote. The fact that people who are homeless have no permanent residence should not be used to disenfranchise them. On that note, in comes Murphy’s Law, in that every solution breeds a new set of problems. Many homeless people, while qualified to vote, are unable to register due to the many policy and legal obstacles placed before them.

The disheartening fact is, 30 states require a person have a mailing address in order to register. And while nearly all states say that a person can register to vote even if he/she lives in a shelter or on the streets (48 states), only 17 have written policies and 24 have verbal policies. Currently, only ten states (Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, Oregon, and West Virginia) have laws which give homeless people the right to vote.

How did this get so difficult? According to the Constitution, we all have the right to vote. Could it be because in a presidential election year, homeless people could make a noteworthy impact in some states—Florida was decided by just over 500 votes in 2000—come November? When a state has a verbal-only policy on homeless voter registration, each county elections official makes its own policy. This sits well with opponents of homeless voter rights. Concerns about the process range from voter fraud to giving undue influence to transient residents of a community. Voter administration officials in major cities, however, show little concern since claims of fraud related to homeless people have never been proven, and voters today are comprehensively canvassed before elections to eliminate obsolete registrations from the polls.

A Hero
In 1992, Michael Stoops, director of community organizing at the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington DC started the “You Don’t Need a Home to Vote” campaign, and has since registered tens of thousands of homeless voters using shelters, post office boxes, and friends or families’ residences as their permanent address; as well as lobbying for written policies/opinions from either the State Elections office or the State Attorney General.

Now gearing up for the 2004 elections, they are promising to protect and promote a homeless person’s right to vote more than ever, ensuring people who are homeless maintain an active role and voice in shaping their future. From Washington to Ohio to California homeless advocates are stepping up efforts to bring the needs of low-income and homeless citizens out of the shadows and into the public eye. Registration tables are being set up in shelters, food pantries, and on the streets. With nearly a million people without a home on any given night, organizers are hoping to register tens of thousands. It aims to reach out to homeless in all 50 states during National Homeless Voter Registration Week in late September. And this year the coalition is focusing to register voters in six target cities including Nashville, Tenn.; Little Rock, Ark.; and Cleveland, Ohio.

The campaign uses a five-pronged strategy of registration, education, get-out-the-vote, state and federal legislation, and litigation. Their ultimate goal is to have laws passed to give “teeth” to either verbal or written policies. At the very least, it’s an opportunity to showcase what some say are growing concerns surrounding the 3.5 million people who cycle into homelessness each year and help them reintegrate back into society.

Activists are also at work in large urban areas: in New York, the Partnership for the Homeless hopes to register 5,000 voters by November, and the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness plans to register 20,000.

While advocates hope a voice at the ballot box can help get quality health care and education for those who need it, the main issue is ending homelessness permanently. One key topic this year is funding for Section 8 housing assistance programs in President Bush’s proposed budget for 2005. While new money going into housing subsidies has increased since 2003, unused funds from previous years cushioned the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s budgets in 2003 and 2004. As a result, even with an increase in funding, less money is expected to be available after this year.

Certain politicians are taking note as well. Before Super Tuesday, John Edwards’s New York State campaign director visited Peter’s Place, a Manhattan drop-in center. Hours later, John Kerry’s sister also paid a visit. But beyond political posturing, advocates say the simple act of registering and voting brings a sense of dignity to those forced to live on the streets. Having a home is not what makes you a responsible American citizen, in times like these, voting is.

Everyone deserves both the right, and the ability, to do so.

To find out what kind of policy/law your state currently has, contact the “You Don’t Need a Home to Vote” campaign at www.nationalhomeless.org. They can furnish you with model policies and legislation for adoption in your state. To help register homeless voters in New York, contact the Partnership for the Homeless at www.partnershipforthehomeless.org or 212-645-3444.

 

 


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