homelessness

In Peter Smith's Homeless: Can you build a life from $25?, we read the story of a young man who went from searching for a homeless shelter with twenty-five dollars in his pocket to a life with a job, a car, and a place to live.

Clearly, the American Dream, right? But what about all the other homeless people, the ones who are still homeless, who are still sleeping in the cold we can barely handle for a moment, in order to avoid the shelters ("I hate those places," people at Saint Pat's soup kitchen tell me). How do we end homelessness? And which candidates are going to try to tackle that in office-- or at least claim they will?

Let's see what the candidates say (thanks to their respective websites) about poverty or homelessness...


Barack Obama:

“I'm in this race for the same reason that I fought for jobs for the jobless and hope for the hopeless on the streets of Chicago; for the same reason I fought for justice and equality as a civil rights lawyer; for the same reason that I fought for Illinois families for over a decade… That's why I'm running, Democrats — to keep the American Dream alive for those who still hunger for opportunity, who still thirst for equality.”

— Speech in Des Moines, IA, November 10, 2007

He encourages (and I quote his site), expanding access to jobs, encouraging working by giving tax and other incentives, strengthening families, increasing affordable housing, and more.


Hilary Clinton, surprisingly, does not list Poverty or Homelessness under her "Issues" tab, instead separating issues like health care and education that we know support the working poor. However, as I just looked through her website for a while, homelessness is not an easy topic to find. For someone who champions the middle class and has been granted the support of numerous organizations, why isn't this highlighted on her website?


John McCain also does not emphasize poverty on his website under "Issues," but, like Hilary, he mentions individual issues that will tackle the bigger issue of homelessness: education, human dignity, health care, and more.


So, who is going to inch us closer to an end to poverty in America? And how do we know that now? Are election claims or past experience enough for us to know?