Main Street

Housing, Heat, and Homelessness

Over 150,000 are in danger of losing their heat in Detroit.

State and local agencies estimate an unprecedented 150,000 metro Detroiters are at risk of having their heat shut off if they don’t receive help paying their bills. The number of people seeking state assistance so far this winter jumped 30% over last year at this time, according to the state Department of Human Services.

Officials blame the rise on metro Detroit’s miserable economy that continues to cost people their jobs. Since last winter, unemployment rose 33% — to 288,000 people — for the tri-county area, according to state employment data.

Detroit has the highest unemployment rate of any metro area in the nation. This winter, people who have never asked for help before find themselves asking, which means that there’s more need than there is funding.

The state’s largest nonprofit for energy assistance, The Heat and Warmth Fund (THAW), is experiencing the highest demand for help since it was established 25 years ago. Volunteers are scurrying to raise more money.

The Huffington Post is doing a series they call “Bearing Witness,” stories of middle class families who are barely getting by. If you have a story to tell, email Laura Bassett (LBassett@huffingtonpost.com). They recently profiled the story of the Renault family, published by Voice of America.

The Renaults are one of more than 20 homeless families currently living in Lebanon’s Timberline Campground. Timberline’s the kind of place someone with a tent or camper might spend a night; a day or two at most. The Renaults have been here since last August.

It’s a giant step down from the three-bedroom home they lost. Renault says her family’s slide into homelessness started nearly two years ago when her husband Troy lost his construction job. “[For] a little under a year,” she recalls, “we just kind of maintained living expense. But then it just got to a point where, with the economy shifting, it caused people to no longer really utilize his services.”

These are the kinds of stories we aren’t seeing told on the nightly news – or in most of the mainstream media. Many people aren’t aware of just how dire the situation is for so many working families like the Renaults, which is why it is important that they be told. There is a stereotype of what a homeless person is, a stereotype that does not apply any longer.

But beyond the physical hardships, Tammy Renault says her family is getting a crash course in what it means, socially, to be labeled homeless. “It’s being called names. It’s being ridiculed. It’s running into people that have seen you in your highest and are not even speaking to you anymore because they’re too afraid for where you are and don’t know what to say.”

Meanwhile, Colorado is facing decisions on what to do about tent cities that are springing up around the state.

The colorful tents and their colorful residents, both very visible amid the barren winter landscape, have been the focus of months of lively debate, public forums and study by lawyers. But Colorado Springs is just one of dozens of cities struggling to find a solution to unsightly and unsanitary tent cities that house thousands of homeless across the country.

In Colorado Springs, the issue emerged when the homeless complained that police and a city contractor were making sweeps through the camps and scooping up their few personal belongings. An investigation reported that one homeless man, a veteran, lost his driver’s license, Social Security card, clothing and sleeping bag in one “clean up.”

Now Boulder is contending with homeless outrage as well. Several homeless people, fed up with being dealt fat fines they can’t pay for sleeping outside, took their complaints to the City Council, urging a moratorium on ticketing the homeless for sleeping outside.

Fining people for being homeless is not any kind of a solution. That the United States has a huge and growing homeless population should be a source of profound national shame. Our leaders should be focusing on ending homelessness, and preventing more of our fragile middle class from entering the downward spiral.

Tags: homelessness, Housing, unemployment