Being thankful

This morning I read an article by Megan Woolhouse and David Abel of the Boston Globe, and I was stunned to learn about just how many homeless families there are in the streets of Boston. An impressive 2,100 families are living in and out of motel rooms and assisted housing, which has been an increase from 2010. Despite Massachusetts being one of the first states to turn around from the recession four years ago, it is still getting affects economically and that starts with housing. Being a 19 year-old who grew up in the streets of Boston for the first 12 years of my life it really hits home with me by reading this article. You can find this article at the front page of today's Globe. 

"Record numbers of homeless families are overwhelming the state’s emergency shelter system, filling motel rooms at the cost to taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars a year.

An average of nearly 2,100 families a night — an all-time high — were temporarily housed in motel rooms in October, just about equaling the number of families in emergency shelters across the state, according to be the state Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development." ~ Megan Woolhouse and David Abel

I learned in the article that one of the strong reasons why there are so many homeless families is due to the uneven recovery, and the lack of cut housing and food subsidies. 

"This jump in homelessness is another example of an uneven recovery. Even as stocks soar to new heights and real estate values rebound, many of the state’s poorest residents remain without jobs and homes four years after the last recession. The problems have been compounded by the dramatic federal spending cuts, known as sequestration, which have cut housing and food subsidies." ~Megan Woolhouse and David Abel

Another thing that was hard to swallow by reading this article was hearing that a college student by the name of Felicita Diaz has a family struggling while she is at college. I can only imagine if it was my family, and how hard that would be for me to just pay attention in school. This article does a good job at explaining the "so what", and it digs deeper into its affects towards people of the Boston Community like this college student. 

"Diaz, 18, a freshman at UMass Boston, said she took the commuter rail to get to her first day of college and then stayed with friends so she could attend classes and keep her job in the admissions office. But her 11-year-old brother missed about three weeks of school because the family could not afford the daily $9 fare to and from Boston on the commuter rail. Her mother had to quit her English as a Second Language classes because of the distance." ~Megan Woolhouse and David Abel

After reading this article I am very thankful to have my family still in their homes, and I am thankful that I do not have to worry about that issue while being away at college, however I do have other things to worry about. Having a shelter, water, and food is something I will not take for granted, because you never know when that gets taken away from you just like these families who are having trouble with these three necessities for survival.