Letter to the Editor:

Government Must Stop Turning it's Back on Homelessness

An article in The Carroll County Times on March 15,

“Cities change course, clear homeless camps,” reports on the problem of homeless encampments in cities across the country. Cities are planning to use aggressive measures to remove encampments rather than treating homelessness as the humanitarian crisis it is. Instead of addressing the root causes of homelessness, cities have focused on criminalizing people who are homeless. While doing outreach in Carroll County with the Maryland Poor People’s Campaign, I talked with people who are homeless and those working yet facing eviction and possibly becoming homeless. A woman working two jobs had hours cut and when unable to pay rent, the landlord told her to pay with her credit card, putting her more in debt. A mother with a young child was three months behind in her rent due to her place of employment closing several weeks during the pandemic and then cutting her hours. The landlord did not inform her of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program that would have paid her back rent to keep her housing. A palliative patient on continuous oxygen was evicted by a landlord during the rent moratorium. These stories are not unique to Carroll County and can be heard all over Maryland and throughout the country. At the root of homelessness is systemic poverty, racism, ecological devastation, a war

economy and the distorted moral narrative that seeks to blame the poor instead of addressing systems that cause poverty. Social welfare and antipoverty programs have been underfunded to the extent that only a quarter of eligible families receive federal housing assistance. We live in a country where there is an abundance of resources, but our government chooses not to use the resources to uplift people. Housing provides stability, security, community and belonging. Without housing, everything else collapses. On June 18, I am joining the Maryland Poor People’s Campaign with thousands of people coming from across the country in the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Worker’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington to demand changes in a system that ignores the needs of people. It’s time to stand in solidarity to demand our basic rights to housing, healthcare, living wages and voting rights. Somebody’s hurting our people, and we won’t be silent anymore. 

— Shirley Eatmon, Finksburg

Eatmon works for the Maryland Poor People’s Campaign — Western Region