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At
any given time today in America, there are about half
a million people who are "homeless" -- they don't
have a “permanent, safe, decent, affordable place
to live.” Around the world there are about 100 million
homeless people, and many of them are women and children.
-- Robert
Alan Silverstein
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Exploitation,
alienation, poverty, disempowerment, fragmenting and debilitating
labor, production for the profit of a few -- much less harsh
homelessness, starvation, and degradation -- are not like
gravity. They arise from institutional relations established
by human beings. New institutions, also established by human
beings, can generate other vastly superior outcomes. Defining
and working to attain those new institutions ought to be
our economic agenda.
-- Michael Albert
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“In
today's climate in our country, which is sickened
with the pollution of pollution, threatened with the
prominence of AIDS, riddled with burgeoning racism,
rife with growing huddles of the homeless, we need
art and we need art in all forms. We need all methods
of art to be present, everywhere present, and all
the time present.”
-- Maya
Angelou
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“Shelter
Network’s programs and services are a rainbow in the clouds
for homeless children and adults.”
-- Maya
Angelou
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Clearly,
there are a thousand and one scenarios for how someone
can slip through the cracks. I'll walk down the street
and see a homeless person, and I'll want to stop them
and say, How did this happen? Where's your mother?
Are you physically ill? Mentally ill?
-- William
Baldwin
"A
strong economy causes an increase in the demand for
housing; the increased demand for housing drives real-estate
prices and rentals through the roof. And then affordable
housing becomes completely inaccessible."
-- William
Baldwin
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You
can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the
homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a
golf course.
-- Jello Biafra
“Music
is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes,
then shelter, then music.”
-- Christian Nevell Bovee
The
average family earning minimum wage spends 141 percent of
their income struggling to meet basic needs - food, shelter,
clothing.
-- Sherrod Brown
*
Peace
is no mere matter of men fighting or not fighting. Peace,
to have meaning for many who have known only suffering
in both peace and war, must be translated into bread
or rice, shelter, health, and education, as well as
freedom and human dignity - a steadily better life.
If peace is to be secure, long-suffering and long-starved,
forgotten peoples of the world, the underprivileged
and the undernourished, must begin to realize without
delay the promise of a new day and a new life.
-- Ralph
J. Bunche |
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“There
are certain things that are fundamental to human fulfillment.
The essence of these needs is captured in the phrase 'to
live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy'. The need to
live is our physical need for such things as food, clothing,
shelter, economical well-being, health. The need to love
is our social need to relate to other people, to belong,
to love and to be loved. The need to learn is our mental
need to develop and to grow. And the need to leave a legacy
is our spiritual need to have a sense of meaning, purpose,
personal congruence, and contribution”
-- Stephen R. Covey
“If
one's life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity
is extremely important for happiness. Having few desires,
feeling satisfied with what you have, is very vital:
satisfaction with just enough food, clothing, and shelter
to protect yourself from the elements. And finally,
there is an intense delight in abandoning faulty states
of mind and in cultivating helpful ones in meditation.”
- The
Dalai Lama |
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*
"What
we would like to do is change the world-make it a
little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter
themselves as God intended for them to do.
-- Dorothy
Day
The
works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war,
feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, nursing
the sick, visiting the prisoner. But we are destroying
crops, setting fire to entire villages and to the
people in them. We are not performing the works of
mercy but the works of war.
-- Dorothy
Day
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"What
we would like to do is change the world-make it a little
simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves
as God intended for them to do. And, by fighting for better
conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of
the workers, of the poor, of the destitute…we can, to a
certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis,
the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We
can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its
ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat,
there is nothing that we can do but love, and, dear God,
please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our
neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend."
-- Dorothy
Day
“What
difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and
the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought
under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of
liberty or democracy?”
-- Mohandas
Gandhi |
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"When
we bear witness, when we become the situation — homelessness,
poverty, illness, violence, death — the right action
arises by itself. We don’t have to worry about what
to do. We don't have to figure out solutions ahead
of time. Peacemaking is the functioning of bearing
witness. Once we listen with our entire body and mind,
loving action arises.
-- Bernie
Glassman
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*
“They
are safe but they are not in their homes. They are city-less.
I think it's just a disaster for everyone."
-- Teri
Hatcher |
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I mean, I don't think I'm alone when I look at the homeless
person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the
drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures
in my mind's eye. You don't think they were cute like
every other baby?
-- Dustin
Hoffman |
"It
is in the shelter of each other that the people live."
-- Irish proverb
"This
is my chosen fast: to loosen all the bonds that bind humans
unfairly, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke.
Share your bread with the hungry, take the homeless into
your homes, clothe the naked when you see him/her, do not
turn away from people in need. Then cleansing life shall
break forth like the dawn, and your wounds shall soon be
healed. Your triumph shall go before you and your Lord’s
glory shall be your rearguard. Then you shall call and the
Lord will answer. "
-- Isaiah 57
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“If Americans ever allow banks to control the issue
of their currency, first by inflation and then by
deflation, the banks will deprive the people of all
property until their children will wake up homeless”
~ Thomas
Jefferson
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We
must all work together to end youth homelessness in
America
-- Jewel
Kilcher
Support
for shelters and transitional living and housing programs
is necessary if we are going to change the landscape
for homeless boys and girls in America.
-- Jewel
Kilcher
What
I know about street outreach is that it is essential
to dealing with the issue of youth homelessness.
-- Jewel
Kilcher
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Most
homeless kids are on the streets because they have been
forced by circumstances that cause them to think that they
are safer there than in any home they once knew.
-- Jewel
Life
in a shelter or on the streets puts homeless kids and youth
at a higher risk for physical and sexual assault and abuse,
physical illness, including HIV/AIDS
-- Jewel
All
architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design
of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the
persons in that space.”
-- Philip Johnson
They
have stolen the public lands. They have grasped all to themselves,
and by their unprincipled greed brought a crisis of unparalleled
distress on forty millions of people, who have natural resources
to feed, clothe and shelter the whole human race.
-- Denis Kearney
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*
Poverty
is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a
weapon of mass destruction. Unemployment is a weapon
of mass destruction.
-- Dennis
Kucinich
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We have
come dangerously close to accepting the homeless situation
as a problem that we just can't solve.
-- Linda Lingle
Public
housing is more than just a place to live, public housing
programs should provide opportunities to residents and their
families."
-- Carolyn McCarthy
“People
who are homeless are not social inadequates. They are people
without homes.”
-- Sheila McKechnie
Seven
out of 10 Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless.
-- Pras Michel
Our
aim is to convince the world's leaders that our cities,
towns and villages need to be healthy, safe, just and sustainable.
-- Wally N'Dow
'My
home is a place of warmth and love. No one should be denied
a home.'
-- Gail Porter
"Don't
try to drive the homeless into places we find suitable.
Help them survive in places they find suitable."
-- Daniel Quinn
'Home
is a sanctuary for me and the place where I can relax. Everyone
should have the right to a safe and secure home.'
-- Corinne Bailey Rae
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*
If
you walk down the street and see someone in a box,
you have a choice. That person is either the other
and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension
of your family.
-- Susan
Sarandon
If
you walk down the street and see someone in a box,
you have a choice. That person is either the other
and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension
of your family. And that makes you at home in that
world and not fearful. So really it's very self-serving.
-- Susan
Sarandon
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*
Sometimes
the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly
to economic poverty, which robs people of the freedom
to satisfy hunger; or to achieve sufficient nutrition,
or to obtain remedies for treatable illnesses or the
opportunity to be adequatley clothed or sheltered,
or to enjoy clean water or sanitary facilities.
-- Amartya
Sen
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Sometimes
the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic
poverty, which robs people of the freedom to satisfy hunger;
or to achieve sufficient nutrition, or to obtain remedies
for treatable illnesses or the opportunity to be adequatley
clothed or sheltered, or to enjoy clean water or sanitary
facilities. In other cases, the unfreedom links closely
to the lack of public facilities and social care, such as
the absence of epidemiological programs, or of organized
arrangements for the health care or educational facilities,
or of effective insititutions for the maintenance of local
peace and order. In still other cases, the violation of
freedom results directly from a denial of political and
civil liberties by authoritarian regimes and from imposed
restrictions on the freedom to participate in the social,
political and economic life of the community.
-- Amartya
Sen
Somewhere
near you, somebody right now is trying to help the indigent
and poor - providing food, shelter, clothing or simple kindness.
-- Tony Snow
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“When
my syndicated show got canceled, the next day I still
knew how to write jokes. That was a huge revelation.
Because at first you think, "I won't have any shelter!
What am I gonna do? The sun is hot. Very thirsty."”
-- Jon
Stewart
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"There
is much suffering in the world - physical, material,
mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the
greed of others. The material and physical suffering
is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from
all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering
is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I
have come more and more to realize that it is being
unwanted that is the worst disease that any human
being can ever experience."
-- Mother
Teresa
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All
these people talking about morality should just take
a walk downtown. They don't want to go downtown because
instantly they see homeless people and they don't want
to.
-- Neil
Young
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People
will sooner aid a sick dog lying on the sidewalk than to
try to find shelter for a sick person. It's too much to
deal with.
--Michael Zaslow
Homeless
Persons' Memorial Day
- December 21
World
Habitat Day - 1st Monday in October
End
Poverty Day - October 17
See
also END POVERTY Quotes
