Spilling Ink
By Elizabeth Canfield
I
was surprised to read that the US Housing and Urban Development Department
sends out teams of workers
each January to count the homeless people in our country. The funding
for the homeless is dependent upon the numbers tallied then. This year
the count was done in mid-March, which doesn’t help much; the
weather in Wyoming in March is not often much better than it is in
January.
Casper’s teams found very few people sleeping under bridges and in
parks, which is understandable. They felt that the ones who weren’t
in shelters were likely sleeping in cars, or on friend’s floors and
couldn’t be counted. Statewide, homeless shelters, food kitchens
and other agencies counted their numbers to establish Wyoming’s
needs.
Brandon Espinosa, program director of Lifestyle Transitional Housing,
said that Casper’s homeless include families, even some people
with stable jobs. He has seen a number of people left homeless by one
medical crisis
or the loss of a job, as well as many people who live daily with the
fear of such things happening.
I can’t think of anything worse than being homeless in a Wyoming
winter, although I remember hearing that, in the early days here, when
there were the big cow outfits, most of the working cowboys would be turned
loose when winter came, to fend for themselves, “riding the grubline” all
winter…
The US Census Bureau estimates that came out a week ago show Crook County
to be the 6th fastest-growing county in the state, with an increase of
3.4 per cent over last year. The calculation of growth between 2000 and
2007 is 6.7 per cent. Much of the increase was attributed to areas closest
to Campbell County, with workers coming over to live in Crook County, although
the entire county shows some growth.
You can see this right here in our area. It seems to me to be a good thing.
Many of the people coming in are fine, contributing members of our community
activities.
I wonder if we have individuals or families on the verge of homelessness.
This is a tragedy that shouldn’t be happening in a country like ours.
It happened in the 1930s, when events came together to literally shatter
our economy, urban and rural. Through the years since then we have always
been assured by the government that it can never happen again – that
there are safeguards in place to prevent it.
Little by little, many inequities have crept up on us. And no matter which
candidate becomes president, he or she alone will not be able to remedy
the ills that beset us. The citizens will need to come together, to work
at compromise and commonsense, as well as demanding that our affairs get
straightened out. We are becoming as divided and alienated from each other,
politically, as are the factions in the old, old countries in Europe and
Asia. Africa too.
We truly are better – and smarter – than that.
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