Voices of US Poor and Homeless Unlikely to be Heard in Polls

LOS ANGELES - America's growing army of homeless and poor faces a desperate plight, but most are unlikely to make their voices heard in the US presidential election campaign as they struggle just to survive, advocates said.
As US President George W. Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry ) promise voters economic prosperity and comfort if they are elected, battered homeless people feel disenfranchised and overwhelmed by their woes.

"We haven't been following the elections," said homeless former waiter George Holling Jr. as he lay in a dingy alley behind an office building in fashionable Hollywood.

"Why should we? They (the candidates) are not going to provide shelter for the homeless. The elections are only going to benefit the rich and the Republicans," the 31-year-old said.

Holling's mentally-disabled wife, Tamiko, 30, was equally skeptical that politicians, whatever their party, care about their fate.

"Whoever wins, it doesn't matter to us. It's is not going to change how the police treat us, how we have to fight for our benefits, how we have to fight off rapists and attackers in the streets. No election has ever helped me," she said, her tone angry but defeated.

The Hollings are far from alone in their resignation and despair as largely-abandoned citizens of the world's richest nation.

The US Conference of Mayors estimates that more than 3.5 million people, or 1.25 percent of the US population, are living in city streets or homeless shelters, a number equal to the populations of Albania, Uruguay or Lithuania.

In addition, the number of Americans living below the poverty line jumped by 1.3 million to 35.9 million or 12.5 percent of the population last year, according to the US Census Bureau.

Advocates for the homeless say their plight has worsened as Bush administration budget cuts have chipped away at social services and as the number of homeless grew by around 19 percent in 2003 and 13 percent in 2002.

"It gets harder every day to survive in this ultra-capitalist nation where money is everything. If you don't have it for any reason, you're out of society," said Courtney Frogge, a volunteer for homeless groups in San Francisco.

But ironically, the worse things get, the less energy street dwellers have to fight for their rights.

"People who live in streets and alleys don't feel that anyone will do anything for them," said Bill Hart, director of the General Assistance Advocacy Project (GAAP) in San Francisco, where 12,000 to 16,000 people sleep in the streets each night.

While helping the homeless to get the meagre federal and local benefits to which they are entitled, GAAP also hands out voter registration forms in an effort to give some of America's homeless a voice on November 2.

"But the fact is that most of them won't vote," Hart said. "They don't feel their voices will be heard and many of them -- especially those who have endured homelessness for long period of time -- just resort to self-survival."

In addition, many homeless people suffer from mental illness and alcohol and drug addictions and need government time and money to help them rejoin society, but that aid is increasingly thin on the ground, he said.

As poverty and addiction lead to crime, especially theft and prostitution, many homeless people find themselves barred from voting because they have felony criminal convictions.

"Its almost impossible to be homeless and not have a criminal record," Frogge said.

Still, the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless said it had managed to register 25,000 homeless voters ahead of the November election, twice as many as for the 2000 poll.

"This year the level of interest is higher than we have ever seen it," said Donald Whitehead, the group's executive director.

"Homeless people feel that things have got worse for them and that their issues have not been addressed by the current administration or by either candidate's campaign, so more of them want to make their voices heard to try and affect change," he said.

Many of those who live on collapsed cardboard boxes or old blankets in America's streets blame Bush for their woes and resent his decision to spend billions on going to war in Iraq (news - web sites) instead of helping desperate Americans.

But they still feel powerless to change their destiny.

"I am a registered voter, but why bother?" Tamiko Holling asked angrily. "Nobody cares. After the election we will still be sleeping on this same concrete."

© 2004 AFP