NJ Shelters are full and pantries are bare
“We are seeing people we have not seen for a long time,” said the Rev. Jarret Kerbel, director of the Crisis Ministry’s food pantry, which supplies food to 1,400 households in Trenton each month.
“We are seeing people who haven’t crossed that threshold for five, six or seven years coming back. We are seeing people whose unemployment has run out and they are struggling in that gap while they reapply and, of course, we are seeing the usual unemployed.
This will be the first real test of [Bill] Clinton’s so-called welfare reform.”
The week of Thanksgiving arrives with hunger and homelessness at record levels. Two recent articles underscore the impact on New Jersey. With daily bailouts of banks and corporations the question that needs to be answered is when will there be help for the homeless and those at risk of losing their homes.
Chris Hedges in the TruthDig blog highlights the plight of the hungry and homeless in Trenton, NJ. He quotes Elba Figueroa who sums up her predicament: “I don’t have any money. I run out of things to eat. I worked until I physically could not work anymore. Now I live like this.” The former nurse’s aide suffers from Parkinson’s disease. She lost her job. She lost her health care. She receives $703 a month in government assistance. Her rent alone costs $750. And so she borrows money from friends and neighbors every month to stay in her apartment.
Paul Koepp in the Star-Ledger’s article entitled “Cold Comfort: Homeless, hungry fill shelters during freeze” highlights the crisis in Hudson County. According to Jaclyn Cherubini of the Hoboken Center on Bloomfield Street, “the shelter is always at its 50-bed capacity but is now serving more meals than ever.”
“More people are in need, and the price of everything is going up,” Cherubini said, adding that not only the homeless but also the working poor are coming in search of food, clothing and a hot shower. “We’re trying to do more with less.”
With rising demand for shelter and food, how much longer can we survive by trying to do more with less. Chris Hedges entitled his blog post “Starving for Change.” He notes that “The swelling numbers waiting outside homeless shelters and food pantries around the country, many of them elderly or single women with children, have grown by at least 30 percent since the summer.” While the numbers of the homeless grow, the bailouts continue as if business as usual is acceptable.
Yes, change is what we need but will it arrive in time?
