The new face of homelessness

is a woman driving and sleeping in her SUV. If you believe CNN news. I stopped to watch a feature about the plight of women in Santa Barbara or one of those upscale California coastal communities who were sleeping and living in their vans and SUVs. Their city had an ordinance about that, but had made a concession and opened a city parking lot 7 p.m.-7 a.m. where they could be reasonably safe. The info-babe interviewed two of them. As I recall, one had a job, but had lost her condo in foreclosure. Her daughter was staying with friends.

There were two huge holes (or more since I didn't see the whole thing) in the story. First, the economy has gone south since Democrats have taken over Congress with their big anti-Bush "we need to have change" push, but the implication is always that all problems reside in Bush's hip pocket. Second, one woman had at least 2 very large dogs in her SUV--either Goldens or Labs, and the other woman had 4 cats. Now pets are OK in your own property, but many, many landlords and agents will not accept pets. So even if you love your pets, even if you think they are your children, whose responsibility is it that you're sleeping in a van with dogs if you can't make other arrangements after losing your home?

This is the kind of inanity that passes for serious journalism--that even walking through the room and seeing 30 seconds of the story, I can figure out that much.

So I checked Google. The 67 year old with the 2 large dogs has 3 adult children and lost her job as a loan processor, but gets SS and works for $8/hr. One could live modestly in Columbus, Ohio on that, or probably even in rural California. However, on the left coast, most communities have ordinances to protect the environment and green spaces that have the unintended (or intended) consequence of keeping out the poor and working class folks. They usually don't allow the big box stores either that provide food and goods at a reasonable price for low income people. Now that she's "retired," she really can't expect to live there. She apparently never saved privately for her retirement, isn't married and isn't welcome to live with her adult children. There are 49 other states (well, except maybe Oregon and Wisconsin which are just as liberal) who will be happy to have her and where she can live with her pets, but she just may have to give up those beautiful ocean views and her unhelpful children.