[HPN] Affordable housing critically short in Twin Cities - MN, USA FWD

[Tom Boland]

http://www.pioneerplanet.com:80/seven-days/1/opinion/docs/033680.htm
FWD  St. Paul Pioneer Press - Tuesday, February 1, 2000
     St. Paul & Minneapolis, Minnesota

MORE KIDS AT RISK

Affordable housing in critical shortage

Mention homelessness in the Twin Cities and most people fail to think first
of a 6-year-old child. They think of a veteran, a transient, a drug or
alcohol addict, a person in his 40s who looks to be his 60s.

   The conclusions of a new 18-month study of the transitional housing
system by the Family Housing Fund are that more and more often, children
fall into the homeless category. On a single night in 1987, 244 Twin Cities
children were in temporary housing. On a single night in 1999, 1,770
children were housed temporarily.

   If that statistic isn't hard enough, consider the physical and emotional
impact on a youngster of being without a home. Homeless kids are three
times more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems. They are twice
as likely to have respiratory infections and twice as likely to have
learning disabilities. The study found that 75 percent of these children
test below grade level in reading, and 28 percent attend three or more
schools in a single year.

   The easiest reaction is to blame the parents, who may be poor,
chemically dependent, mentally ill or suddenly divorced or laid off from
work.

   What must be remembered, however, is that the social causes for
homelessness are complex and constant. What's new on the scene is the
growing shortage of affordable housing. The area's rental vacancy rate is
still below 2 percent, driving up rental costs. A two-bedroom apartment
typically goes for $621 a month.

   A bank teller, nursing or teaching aide, receptionist or school bus
driver all would have trouble paying rent at that cost. Should they lose a
job, they learn it's a nonstop trip from eviction to a homeless shelter.
Too often that journey is made in the company of society's most vulnerable
travelers: small children and infants.

   It's one thing to condemn the homeless as completely responsible for
their fate. But when children make up an alarming percentage of that
population, arguments for self-sufficiency and personal responsibility fall
flat.

END FORWARD

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