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Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America

door Jonathan Kozol

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The author presents the experiences of men, women, and children who are homeless, drawn from months spent with them at homeless shelters, and discusses the causes and societal impact of homelessness.
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1-5 van 8 worden getoond (volgende | toon alle)
2006 (original 1988), paperback, Three Rivers Press
P.8:
" 'yes, there are new jobs,' a minister said. 'There's a new McDonald's and a burger king. You can take home $450 in a month from jobs like that. That might barely pay the rent. What do you do if somebody gets sick? What do you do for food and clothes? These may be good jobs for a teenager. Can you ask a 30-year-old man who's worked for G.M. Since he was 18 to keep his wife and kids alive on jobs like that? There are jobs cleaning rooms in the hotel you're staying at. Can you expect a single mother with three kids to hold her life together with that kind of work? All you hear about these days are so-called service jobs -- it makes me wonder where America is going. If we aren't producing anything of value, will we keep our nation going on hamburger stands? Who is all this "service" for, if no one's got a real job making something of real worth?' "

P.15-16:
"What distinguishes housing from other basic needs of life? Why, of many essentials, is it the first to go?
Housing has some unique characteristics, as urban planning specialist Chester Hartman has observed. One pays for housing well in advance. The entire month's rent must be paid on the first day of any rental period. One pays for food only a few days before it is consumed, and one always has the option of delaying food expenditures until just prior to eating. Housing is a non-divisible and not easily adjustable expenditure. 'one cannot pay less rent for the next month by not using the living room,' Hartman observes. By contrast, one can rapidly and drastically adjust one's food consumption: for example, by buying less expensive food, eating less, or skipping meals...."

P.45:
"Some, but not all, welfare hotel owners make large contributions to political campaigns in New York City. Mister Horn and his partners, who received the largest business, make the largest contributions.
One of their hotels, the Jamaica Arms, was selected by the city to house 90 families with sick children. This building belonged to the city in 1982; it had been seized from former owners in default of taxes. Instead of keeping the site to operate a humane shelter, the city sold it to a private corporation for $75,000. It was then resold to its present owners for $200,000. 'the city,' writes Thehe Voice, 'now pays about $1.2 million a year to house families in a building it owned 4 years ago.'
since 1980, the owners of this building have contributed over $100,000 to the electoral campaigns of City officials, several of whom determine housing policy."

P.46-7:
" 'City policy toward the homeless,' according to a task force of the American Psychiatric Association, 'is best described as one that lurches from court order to court order... Harvests of waste rather than economies of scale are reaped when crisis management becomes the modus operandi...' This, in the opinion of most homeless advocates in New York city, is the first important explanation [why NYC keeps on wasting public funds to shelter homeless people in such dangerous hotels].
Reverend Tom Nees, director of the Community of Hope, a nonprofit shelter in Washington, D.C., speaks to the same point in describing the response of government officials in that city. 'They're just putting out fires,' he observes, 'and picking up the bodies.' This is an inevitable result when crisis management replaces wise, farsighted planning.
A second explanation is provided by Kim Hopper and Jill Hamberg in a paper written for the Community Service Society of New York. Their words, although directed to the crisis in New York, apply to the entire nation.
'the pace, form, and vagaries of contemporary relief efforts,' they write, '-- their reputed "failures" in short -- may be read as signaling the re-emergence of an older disciplinary agenda. Specifically, they portend the return to a style of assistance that, while alleviating some distress, accepts humiliation as the price of relief and upholds the examples of its labors as a deterrent to potential applicants for help.' "

On fostering children taken away from un-housed families:
P.104-5:
"The dollar cost of juvenile placement are the least important; even these are quite astonishing. The cost of placement for a child is who is too severely damaged to be suited for an ordinary foster home -- one who requires placement, for example, in a low security institution -- ranges from $25,000 up to $50,000 yearly. In cases where children are believed to need more careful supervision, costs may be as high as $80,000.
Shortages of space in juvenile homes, moreover, frequently compel the court to place the child in an institution which is also home to serious offenders. The status offender and the genuine offender (one who, were he older, would have been condemned to prison) live together in such institutions. The status offender learns survival strategies from those with whom he dwells and must contend. Soon enough, the categories that divide them become academic. The child whose sole offense had been a status that compelled compassionate attention from the state now becomes apprenticed to those who are competent in real offenses. he learns to struggle, to connive, to lie, and to fight back.
With few exemptions, children placed in institutions of this sort mature in time into adult offenders. The cost of their adult incarceration may be less than that of juvenile detention ($40,000 yearly in an average cost for prison maintenance of adults at the present time in New York City), but there are additional expenses that cannot be measured: damage to victims and to properties; cost required to provide police protection for the law abiding citizen; costs of litigation, prosecution, and defense; and all the other billions squandered as the seemingly inevitable price of our initial willingness to countenance the institutional assault upon these children in their early years."

One thing I resent the most about the country that I was born in, is the teaching to me as a child that my country is not chueco. You would hear about mexico, and how corrupt the officials are. Others would tell me, when I would mention this, "your country is just as corrupt; it's just hidden."
As I grew older and more disillusioned with my country, how true I have found that out to be. This book was published originally in 1988. It's now 2021, so how many times worse has this problem gotten? the gradual but purposeful pushing of the working class into unhoused status, into sickness and death, of their children being pushed into becoming criminals?
( )
  burritapal | Oct 23, 2022 |
I was reading this when I was attending the National Writing Project. Here is what I wrote in my journal back then:

>>It was one of the most infuriating and outrageous books I have read. Kozol is very able to illuminate how humanity can allow humanity to suffer through indifference and lack of compassion. The stories of homeless children simply wrench your heart as the reader is angered by the way in which the government bureaucracy simply allows people to live in subhuman conditions.

Kozol shatters the stereotype of the homeless as bums, people uneducated who have nothing to offer. As it turns out, many of these homeless were well-employed people who were hit by tragedy; loss of job, divorce, illness can all combine to bring any of us to an EAU (Emergency Assistance Unit) in search of a shelter. This is the most scary aspect of Kozol's book, the ease with which any of us can fall into homelessness. However, it does not end there.

Kozol provides specific stories of homeless families, of children who are basically allowed to die while the wheels of bureaucracy slowly grind. He also writes of those who profit from human misery and of the overburdened heroes struggling to restore some humanity to those whom the system views mostly as a number-a social security number, a Medicare number, a welfare case number, a bed in a shelter number, a body bound for Potter's Field number.

While the book was written in the 80s, all the reader needs to do is watch or read the news to see the situation has not changed. Thus the book is just as relevant today as it was a decade ago. The fact that the situation remains the same serves to validate his assessment that this country does not view homelessness as a crisis but as something to be swept under the rug. Overall, I found the book to be an eye-opener, a necessary piece of reading not just for activists but for each of us.
I wrote that in my journal a little over ten years ago, and it is scary to see now that the book is still relevant, maybe more so now. Sad however is the fact that no politician in the upcoming 2008 election even seems to have any idea about the issue or even be concerned about it. I have gone on to read and enjoy Kozol's other books. Infuriating at times, yes, but worth reading. ( )
  bloodravenlib | Aug 17, 2020 |
I read this book after wanting to find a good book about homelessness, so that in my monthly prayer group I could be more mindful when I prayed on that topic. From the moment I started reading it, I couldn't tear myself away! Yes, the data was from a good few decades ago, but what happened when I was reading was that it made me recall how I remembered my local community back then, the economic struggles, my first time ever seeing "bag ladies" rummaging through trash cans, and things like that. I could better understand from reading the results of poorly managed shelters how desperate the downtrodden could become, and did.

I appreciated the author's accounts of speaking with so many people from different walks of life, who all ended up homeless, and in despair, even if they had jobs. It was a depressing book at times, made me cry and want to go right the world, but at the end of the day, it was an eye-opening read that I think everyone needs to read if ever they hope to be in non-profits or to even just help out their local church's community outreach endeavors. I honestly couldn't put the book down, or stop talking about its points with my friends! ( )
  nlpolak | Jan 25, 2020 |
I read this book based on a recommendation from Grant Lyons my sophomore year of high school in 1994. Yes, I did not read it until 2006, but I had it filed away as a "want-to-read" on my list :) This book provides a look into the trap and cycle of poverty in America. Times have definitely changed since it was written this book was written in 1987, but the fundamentals have not. The impossible, seemingly unbreakable cycle of homelessness is still here, just a few generations deeper and I believe even easier to become trapped. I am not blindly sympathetic to any person who falls on hard times --- we all must take accountability for our actions --- but I do think as a society we need to focus on how to raise people up, especially our children and elderly. I recommend this book to interested citizen who want to make our country stronger. I would reread this book."A society reveals its reverence or contempt for history by the respect or disregard that it displays for older people. The way we treat out children tells us something of our moral disposition too." ( )
  lieslmayerson | Jan 31, 2010 |
I read this book based on a recommendation from Grant Lyons my sophomore year of high school in 1994. Yes, I did not read it until 2006, but I had it filed away as a "want-to-read" on my list :) This book provides a look into the trap and cycle of poverty in America. Times have definitely changed since it was written this book was written in 1987, but the fundamentals have not. The impossible, seemingly unbreakable cycle of homelessness is still here, just a few generations deeper and I believe even easier to become trapped. I am not blindly sympathetic to any person who falls on hard times --- we all must take accountability for our actions --- but I do think as a society we need to focus on how to raise people up, especially our children and elderly. I recommend this book to interested citizen who want to make our country stronger. I would reread this book."A society reveals its reverence or contempt for history by the respect or disregard that it displays for older people. The way we treat out children tells us something of our moral disposition too." ( )
  lieslmayerson | Jan 31, 2010 |
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The author presents the experiences of men, women, and children who are homeless, drawn from months spent with them at homeless shelters, and discusses the causes and societal impact of homelessness.

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