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Love us not

on being poor and homeless

by Roslyn Cassells


Also posted by Roslyn Cassells:

Love us not

Government policies, public opinion, some former friends, and even family...if you are poor, they love you not.

Carefully designed policies and rules exclude, defund, detach, reject, and disrespect our humanity...and with the sweep of a pen we are out...of our homes, out of money, out of programs, out of consideration. 

Refused treatment, access, medications. 

Avoided, ignored, denied.

They hope we'll just go away.

It's cheaper if we die.

Surely we're to blame for our own misfortune...we made decisions...it a free world isn't it?

When you are poor you discover public spaces are not for all of the public, in particular those most in need of them as they have no where else to go.

The poverty pimps...the charities and the NGOs...fill out their forms and pass round the plate for money that never seems to filter down to those who most need it.

Instead finding its way into the pockets of those in control of the funds.

How's a marginalized person supposed to complain about that?  I guess that's how they get away with it.

Housing is a human right I heard nothing about in the last election.

If you have no housing you are at risk of death...from freezing, from roasting, from being attacked...or starving or dying of thirst, from exposure to the elements.

From despair...and no health care.

Housing is so much more than a place to live.  It is a place not to die.

If so many people are without housing or at risk of homelessness and the numbers are growing then the powers that be have decided that it is alright for the poor to suffer and die...

just to be clear.

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