 |
| Photo (c) Diane Nilan |
[Naperville, IL, 1/17/13] Winter weather at its worst. Blinding dust storms. Scorn
from unenlightened community members. Seemingly endless, stark drives wrapped
around arduous events. “Bring it on!” two determined women (Pat LaMarche and
Diane Nilan) dare Mother Nature. Traveling as the Babes of Wrath on behalf of homeless children, families and youth, these
two women are about to embark on a grueling month-long, 5,000-mile
awareness-raising tour of the southwest part of this country.
This tour, of their own free will under the banner of HEARUS Inc., Nilan’s Naperville-based nonprofit organization, begins Tuesday, 1/22 in Little Rock, AR. Beleaguered local service providers along the route are eager for the
Babes to land in their cities and towns. “We’re so glad SOMEONE is doing
advocacy,” one shelter director told Nilan. She bemoaned HUD’s ineffective
“structure” supposedly addressing homelessness on a local level, known as the
“continuum of care,” local agency representatives charged with translating inadequate U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) resources into services for homeless
persons.
One critical issue in discussions with concerned local leaders
is a dreadful one—how families with babies and toddlers are ignored, part of
the pattern of abuse and neglect perpetuated at the federal level. The consensus:
families have never been a priority. In fact, they are very low on HUD's homeless subpopulations served (and funded).
HUD says they’re allowing the
local community to set priorities as they point out that there's enough federal money to go around. In this imperfect world, the “Littles” lose.
When the Littlest Nomads (babies and toddlers, with parents)
are ignored, it creates a feeder program of homeless adults. Little kids, in
their prime growth stage, miss out on nurturing, nutrition, developmental
opportunities, and they absorb the toxic influences—emotional and
environmental. They’re ill-prepared for school and they often struggle and
fail. Chances are their family’s housing situation remains precarious. Poverty
follows them everywhere.
When these kids end up as homeless adults, no one should be
surprised. But everyone with the power to do something should be ashamed. The
feds get left off the hook when local communities try to do things on their
own. For every local community able to step up to the daunting
challenge of providing housing and other essential services to impoverished
families, hundreds—or thousands—cannot, or will not, do the job.
 |
| Pat (L) and Diane on their 2011 Southern Discomfort tour |
Pat and Diane, Babes of Wrath, will listen, learn and
challenge communities large and small to bolster their local efforts and to let
their elected officials know that this is very much like the Great Depression,
with millions of people—babies, toddlers, kids, parents, and single adults—in
need of life-saving shelter, food, heath care and other vital services. LaMarche will blog on Huffington Post, Nilan on Alternet.
Their message will make them as popular as the great
dust clouds that continue to batter the southwestern part of the country. But,
as history teaches, eventually Depression era officials caught on and
implemented common sense dust-reduction strategies. With homeless people small
and large rolling like tumbleweed across the land, this nation’s approach
toward homelessness needs rethinking. Sooner rather than later, they hope.
# # #
