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Originally Posted by irishtrekker
Oracle, I don't mean to pry, but did you have access to health care? Regular meals? A roof over your head?
You consequently were way ahead of the kids I worked with in shelters, who start out with addicted or imprisoned parents (who often were barely adults themselves), no support, no money and no home.
Most of the teenagers I knew from that shelter wound up in trouble or on the streets, too.
Some people have a lot farther to climb than others, and sometimes when they fall it actually isn't their faults. Hell, some never even get off the ground.
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Sorry to push my own quote forward again, but I don't feel like anyone's really addressed it. These kids face a lot more challenges than not wanting to dress appropriately, or whatever. Oh, and Seattle, some of them were Pacific Islanders and/or Southeast Asians. Some of them were white. Some were African American. Some were Alaska Native/American Indian. We saw a little bit of everything. The people in our program were the ones who really, really wanted to get out because our HUD funding requirements were too stringent to take anyone who didn't have a significant chance of getting into permanent housing. But the reality is that HUD funding has been slashed and Section 8's aren't being allocated anymore. The waitlist for Section 8 was *closed* in Seattle when I worked there, and people still left on the waitlist had a 3-5 year wait for permanent housing. Transitional shelters can't hold you for more than 18 months to two years MAX, and the waitlists for places like us are really, really long. So kids of homeless parents get bounced from shelter to shelter for years. Schools have to change, friends disappear, money is almost nonexistent...think that doesn't make it harder for them?
All I'm saying is that it's unfair to come down hard on kids who don't stand much of a chance by accusing them of being lazy/ungrateful as adults. If we're such a pro-life nation, why don't we make sure that every child is able to thrive and be protected until they're old enough to make their own decisions? Life doesn't end at birth...but for some of the kids I knew, it might as well have. Sorry, but I can't even explain how awful some of the stuff was that I saw. You can't control the circumstances into which you're born, and when you're born homeless, in some way you've already fallen out of the social nets that are supposed to catch you. Do some homeless kids wind up doing amazing things? Of course. But a lot don't, and I'll be damned if I'm going to shake my head and say, "If only they worked a little harder..."