The Invisible Problem Of Suburban Homelessness
This article from the Houston Press looks at the issue of homelessness in nearby suburban Fort Bend County, a problem many public officials deny.
"Recent studies detail a burgeoning homeless population in suburban Fort Bend County, where there are no emergency shelters, no soup kitchens and no specialized housing for homeless youths or the mentally ill. There is also no bus system to move people around."
"But several elected officials insist there is no homeless problem, instead touting the county's national reputation as among the fastest growing and most livable."
"Three-term Katy mayor Doyle Callender compares his city to the sleepy TV town of Mayberry, a place where residents know their neighbors and look out for them. 'We take care of our own,' Callender says. 'There is no homelessness in Katy -- none whatsoever.'"
"Two-term Sugar Land mayor David Wallace says his city, the county's largest, does not need a homeless shelter. The same goes for public transit, he says. 'Why create something that nobody would use?' he asks."
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They're clueless twice over. Inspires confidence, doesn't it?
There are a lot more of us parents out there than I realized who have officially or unofficially taken in our children's homeless abused friends. At first we had no idea what was going on with the young man. He always managed to show up around dinnertime and at first we treated it as a joke - "It's time to eat, where's _____?" Slowly but surely he and our son opened up to us about his situation. We drove by his mother's place to see for ourselves - and it was awesomely bad. No power, no water, drug items everywhere - and later we found out her boyfriend had sexually molested a younger child in the home. And the kicker is that his school counselor and all his teachers at school knew about it, and did nothing. We contacted CPS - but as the article says, CPS would do nothing for our son's friend that required them actually making some effort. Finally, with the help of one of the social workers, we were able to get the drug-addicted mother to voluntarily give up custody to us - that way he could have medical insurance. (The boys had an aunt, but she was only willing to take the younger child.) She didn't want a teenager and didn't want to have to deal with a boy. CPS told us that at his age, they had no where to put him, and if they did find some place it would probably be out of the county or out of the state - which meant he would lose his slot in the high school JrROTC magnet program. Some time shortly thereafter, CPS gave the younger child back to the mother even though she hadn't met a single one of the "requirements" they gave her. We were dumbfounded. I think that if this ever happens again, we wouldn't even bother to contact the authorities. I understand now why no one trusts them. I think the parents in this article feel the way we now do - the workers, for whatever reason, are ineffective, and even if they do remove the kids from bad homes, foster care is a fate worse than death. That's why no one calls. This is a sad, scary indictment on the situation for abused and neglected teens. And by the way, I am going to be laughing my head off at those stuck-up city officials when peak oil makes all their SUV's undriveable due to outrageously high gasoline prices. Maybe they should read some real news sometime. Can they say "$150 a barrel?" I hope they all have fun walking to their jobs when there's no electric trolleys or streetcars.