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Unreported World
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Series 2010 | Episode 9 | USA: Down and Out
Unreported World meets the USA's new middle-class homeless: families struggling to hold down jobs that pay so little they're forced to live in tent cities or their cars and receive little help from the government.
Reporter Ramita Navai and producer Clancy Chassay begin their journey in Chicago, one of the country's manufacturing centres, which has been hit hard by the effects of the worst financial crisis in decades. St Columbanus church is one of 600 charities across the city that gives out emergency food rations.
Across America, many working people from all sectors have taken as much as 40% in pay cuts in desperation to hold on to their jobs. Their motivation is clear: if you are a temporary, part-time or self-employed worker you don't qualify for government help. The result is that many can't make ends meet and afford to feed themselves and their families.
Father Matt Eyerman tells Navai that the number of families receiving help from his church has leapt from 240 to 498 over the last two years, even though many of them still have jobs.
Today, more than 37 million Americans receive either state or private food assistance. More than three million were made homeless in 2009 despite holding down jobs. More than half of those living in shelters have had their homes repossessed by banks.
The team travels south to the state of Tennessee. They've been told that thousands of homeless people are taking refuge in temporary encampments. The City of Nashville, which has only only one emergency shelter for families, has more than 40 of these 'tent cities'.
Navai meets Michael and Stacey Farley, who have been living in the tent city for six months. Stacey tells Navai that she has been forced to leave her son and daughter with relatives while they both look for work.
Navai and Chassay move on to California, where more and more people are ending up on the streets. California has the highest debt in the USA and many essential services have been cut, including emergency housing assistance. 'Skid Row', which is one square mile of Los Angeles, has as many as 2,000 people sleeping rough every night. It has a reputation for drugs and crime and Navai talks to homeless people who are forced to walk all day to avoid being picked up by the police for loitering.
The US economy is in recovery but many experts believe the most damaging effects have yet to be felt. It's predicted that another 1.5 million people will be forced into homelessness within two years, and in a country with few safety nets, many more people could fall through the cracks.
On TV
- STEVE HEEBS on Thursday, July 01, 2010 at 23:06This program is a little shocking and enlightening. This extremism ,as mentioned below, is too much. I can see the other extreme even in this country. BUT, if we allow this to happen here, then the country will burn. This is wrong, for all the reasons mentioned below and more. Also, as noted below, the majority in this program were black. I think global society is out of control and needs more intervention. I can only liken it to the big bang theory, expanding in every direction,starting after the war sometime, (1960's) and being accelerated with technology and greed. I don't have the answers (you can't put the smoke back in the fag as I read recently). But on the whole, we need to have and expect less, share out the working hours and wealth and be a little poorer. I know this sounds a little like communism but I'm not advocating that. We still need the right as individuals to make our own decisions and improve our situation if we wish. We Just need a little less absolute wealth and opulence. And other stuff.
- JOHN TURNER on Monday, June 28, 2010 at 10:44I don't know about mile long queues in Russia, there were queues in the film of people waiting for handouts in "gods own country" the USA. It seems absurd to me to throw people out of their houses and leave them to stand empty, deteriorating and being vandalised; when they could at least be allowed to stay and pay rent on them. What a way to run a country !
- G.L. on Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 23:04Wow. This is reporting on America as if it were a third-world country. What other third-world country, I wonder, has fat, pudgy people with bluetooth headpieces in their ear complaining about not affording food?
- XAN on Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 16:59John Turner: You can remember Stalin and the 30 million Russians who were forcibly conscripted and sent to their deaths; but you can't remember how Russians lived 40 years since with their mile-long queues for bread and secret police hauling people in the middle of the night to disappear forever? That's more than a little bit thick.
- ALAN on Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 13:13What a pity for the Richest country in the world which cannot look after its own people. The American Dream is dead, Democracy and free market is dead as all the problems were caused by greedy bankers , and the fat cat Senior Management. Obama promised to punish the bankers but cannot do anything as the Banking Lobby is a strong force. The majority of people in the documentary seemed to be blacks who are victims of this crisis.
- JOHN TURNER on Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 10:47to E :- Whatever the failings of Joe Stalin may have been, I am old enough to have lived through and remember the war and I know it was Stalin and the Red Army and the 30 million russians who died in that war that saved my family and yours from the gas chambers. Incidentally communist China ain't doing too bad !
- DYLAN DOUGAL on Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 08:59Again Channel 4 reporting injustices in other countries. 80 thousand homes repossessed in the UK last year but Channel 4 will not do a story about any family throw on the street in the UK, WHY. Because the Masonic Zionist Controlled Press will not expose the utter corruption of the British Banks and Building Societies, and the corruption of the British Courts is stealing peoples homes, to prop up the collapsing Banks and the Financial system in the UK.
- E on Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 01:56To John Turner - Didn't Stalinist Russia reveal the complete faliure of the Communist system? Both are extremes, both are corrupt. A middle ground is more sensible, more realistic and not simply an idealogy.
- JOHN TURNER on Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 09:54What they need is communism. This shows the complete failure of the "Free" capitalist system.
- SELINA CHENG on Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 09:45Selina C 26 June I am saddened by this report. If this situation can occur in America, one of the affluent countries in the world, what would happen in other less well-off countries such as Greece.... Thank God for churches and charitable organisations supporting their community. That raised the question: has the government done enough to assist its citizens in times of crisis through no fault of their own?
- The myth of the "American Dream" peeled back to reveal a basically third world country, in which the rich and famous make the news and the poor and dispossessed cannot even make do. Barbara Ehrenreich, in Nickle and Dimed, wrote about people working two or three jobs and still having to live in their cars because they could not afford actual homes. That must have been about ten years ago, so expect the situation to be much worse now. Obviously, making it illegal to sleep in your car simply looks like punishing the poor for revealing their poverty to the world. This is the problem. The people who have lost everything are hiding away in tent cities, unseen under America's freeways. They have been ridden over roughshod by the banks and now they are driven over by those comparatively rich enough to own a car. This is the richest country in the world. This is the land of plenty. This is the land of the brave and the home of the free. This is where you hide you poverty with shame, huddled and crushed, because the biggest crime in America is to be seen not to succeed. A man tells the reporter that there are people living on the streets with PhDs because they could simply not quite cling hard enough to the material world to manage their own salvation. The problem is that a few months ago, everyone agreed that it was the banks which had caused the global economic meltdown. We were all robbed to prop up the banks, whose profligacy and dim-wittedness had broken the world's finances. Now, we are being told that it is the fault of the poor. Soon, nobody will even remember that the banks owe us the money and caused the catastrophe. The myth will be that the banks tried to save the stupid, feckless poor, but the poor were just too lazy to grasp the opportunity. And we are taking this. We are accepting it and crouching with our tails between our legs like whipped dogs. The banks have got away with it. They now know the system works. They know the poor will always be made to pay.
- MARY G on Friday, June 25, 2010 at 20:12USA:Down and Out What a depressing insight into US society. People holding down jobs while sleeping rough, others only allowed to stay in some shelters for a maximum of 120 days, adults only allowed - living in tent cities under highways. This is the US and not Africa or Asia. Helicopters circling overhead Skid Row in downtown LA made me think of Kurt Russell in 'Escape from New York'. Scary stuff. Yet through all this these people show such dignity and courage and kindness too caring for their animals out of their meagre rations. Shame on society and the greed of financial institutions that people find themselves in these situations.
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