This is a call to support a plan recently announced by the Interagency Council on Homelessness in Cranston. It calls for a 130 million dollar plan  to provide a long-term solution to effectively end homelessness in Rhode Island. What makes this plan different than most, is that instead of concentrating on temporary shelters the funds will instead go directly towards building housing. A radically different approach then the stopgap measures of a dirty cot for a night, but one that has had amazing amounts of success in other parts of the country.

This plan however still awaits state funding. Something which many people argue will be unfeasible given Rhode Island’s currently tattered budget. What people forget is that budget is already supporting an already overburdened system of shelters. Yet this money is invested in the temporary, while the needs of the homeless are not.

It is up to every single Rhode Islander to help the state recognize how monumental this decision could be, and to tell their legislators to support this plan when it reaches the state house. If you are interested in more information about this initiative, you can read more here.

Check here to get the contact information for your local legislator, and call them to urge them support this plan and make Rhode Island the first state to actually take the initiative homelessness.

The biggest and most famous of these unofficial was called Camp Runamuck. As Dan Barry explains in the New York Times in Living in Tents and by the Rules, Under a Bridge , John Freitas and his wife Barbara Kalil founded this community in early April, 2009 with another unnamed couple. They came here as a last resort; only after they had been kicked out of their home and every other place they tried to pitch their tent. They were even kicked out of Roger Williams park, next to a statue of the famous founder inscribed with words describing the state he had founded as, “A place for those in distress.”

Eventually they ended up here, in a small strip of land under a bridge next to the Providence river. First there were ten people, and then eighty. They established community rules, enforced them, and elected leaders. As word began to travel of what was growing here outreach workers began appearing, and people began to drop off donations of food and clothes. The world began to react with a community that isn’t very easy to find.  Yet just as the world began to take notice the city of Providence informed the camp that the bridge they were living under would be demolished, and the residents of Camp Runamuck needed to find somewhere else to go.

For now they have moved across the river to East Providence. And now three years later the world could not be less interested in what happened to these unfortunate souls. But one thing can be sure, thousands of people just like them are still very much here in Rhode Island.

Thats a little over 140,000 people living below the federal poverty line.

That makes Rhode Island the state in New England with the worst poverty rate.

To make matters worse, 43% of these 140,000 Rhode Islanders below the poverty line are considered to be living in poverty but in “deep poverty”. Translated into numbers that means a yearly income of 9,150 for a family of three.  Thats mind-boggling. Yet this bleak picture is life for thousands of Rhode Islanders.

And if thats not depressing enough this statistics are made even worse by a recent study. The Rhode Island Standard of Need explored how much a family actually needed for basic expenses. What they found was that many families actually need two to three times the federal poverty line just to survive. That in Rhode Island a family of three needs to make roughly 50,000 dollars just to pay for housing, utilities, food. Yet the federal poverty line lies at around 20,000 dollars.

Put two and two together. People are perilously living on the edge, desperately hanging on to survival. Now more then ever before people need to get involved. Please next time you are considering what to do with your weekend, think about how many thousands of your neighbors could be struggling just to get by. Instead of going to the mall or the movies, donate some time or some food to your local social service organization.