When school is over you head "home," wherever that may be. One day it might be the 7-Eleven so that you can use the bathroom, or, if you are lucky, your mother has a friend who will allow her to park in the driveway.
I have the opportunity to see firsthand some of the personal struggles playing out every day in every city in our state.
Joy and sorrow fight for my attention as I remember some of the more than 900 families who visit the Family Connection Center Food Bank every month. Many succeed in overcoming unforeseen crises and many show amazing perseverance in their fight to provide the basic necessities and overcome tremendous obstacles like domestic violence, lack of education, limited English, low-paying jobs, and high rent.
One couple has made the choice between paying for food or paying for the medicine the wife needs to treat her breast cancer. Luckily they came to the FCC to help with the food. Another man is homeless and living out of his car, and countless single mothers come for support and help to find a place to live, a way to furnish an apartment and give food to their children.
One Hispanic family has five children (one is autistic) and bring home about $1,200 a month between the two of them; another family had been living in a vacant, unfurnished apartment with only the clothes on their backs and no way to cook for weeks before they finally asked for help.
As I think about the results of taking away the safety net provided by the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funding as proposed in President Bush's budget, I feel a sense of fear creep over me. Throughout the Utah Community Action Partnership Association network, made up of four private non-profit agencies and five government programs, more than 129,337 people find a place to go for help when life gets too hard to bear or unforeseen crises show up. I've been in that place before and I know there are many of us who are just one paycheck or medical crisis away from disaster.
Without the support and helping hands of literally thousands of staff and volunteers working to keep the safety net intact, I wonder where Utahns would be. Surely we would need larger jails and prisons to house the criminals who were just trying to feed their families. There would be more people living in their cars, on the street or camping out in the parks and mountains around our cities.
A million-dollar fire was started in the mountains east of Farmington two years ago by a man who just wanted a place to stay. CSBG funding directly pays for programs that are helping these folks. It has been the catalyst to start new programs to fill in the gaps in services.
It has also been used to leverage funds at the rate of one CSBG dollar to six other private and public dollars. Even with this funding at its present level, many people still need additional help. We are far from solving this very human problem; however, taking away the last hope for thousands of people would not be the answer.
There are better ways to reduce the federal budget than to take away hope and opportunity from our neighbors. Please contact your congressman and senators to express your concern and your support to keep CSBG funding stable or to increase the funding in the future.
---
Sharon B. Anderson is executive director of the Family Connection Center in Davis County and president of Utah Community Action Partnership Association.
