Poverty is an ongoing epidemic plaguing millions of Americans in rural, suburban and urban communities even prior to this economic crisis.  Yet, now that an increasing number of middle class Americans are joining the roll call of homeless and welfare seekers, it is worthy of front page news.

“Why is no one helping our struggling middle class?” I have CNN running most days- background noise if you will, and this question has been posed a total of five times today alone.

Does poverty and financial strife among our mostly suburban, middle class hold more currency than the  lack of housing, adequate food and nutrition, access to health care, mental health counseling, clean clothing, etc., experienced by millions of Americans prior to the present financial meltdown?

Millions of children across this country live without health care, quality education opportunities, and are forced to live in conditions comparable to those in the third world. Yet, it has taken the deterioration of the quality of life for the American middle class for the country to truly wake up.

Local and state governments have failed for decades in adequately addressing issues of adequate housing and health care services, as well as quality education for much of the nation’s working and non-working poor.  These existing conditions are exacerbated by the credit and mortgage crisis, as well as an annual job loss that has far exceeded the 1 million mark.  Over 4 million homeowners are behind in their mortgage payments.  If conditions continue to deteriorate, over 5 million may lose their homes between 2008 an 2010. The current procedures and processes of loan modifications are fundamentally useless for those who lose jobs or have mortgages that are under water.

Rescue missions and soup kitchens across the country are bursting at their seams.  Food banks are seeing record crowds and are unable to service all those coming to them for help.  They are finding it more difficult to find donors due to the financial crunch.  Shelters are unable to house the many families who lose their homes due to foreclosure or job loss.  Families are separated as shelters dedicated to maintaining family units reach and exceed capacity.

Leslie Kaufman recently reported on the plan to reduce New York shelter capacities in all of its burroughs:

The city has a massive municipal shelter system that houses roughly 6,500 homeless individuals every night. But it also has a much more ad-hoc system for street homeless who are highly resistant to institutionalized settings.

That alternative system is composed of eight drop-in centers, which have showers and seats but no beds. From there, homeless men can find one-night beds in churches and synagogues – or, if they can show they’ve been on the street for more than nine months, they can use city-run safe-haven beds. But each night, more than 500 hundred people, on average, end up sleeping in the chairs at the drop-in centers – some by choice and some because there are not enough beds in the faith-based centers.

While we are all feeling the crunch, those of us who are employed can help in several ways that are not overly burdensome to our own wallets.

• donate unused canned goods from your cupboard to a local soup kitchen
• donate your time to a local food bank of soup kitchen. This is also a great family building activity.
• set out non-perishable food donation box at your place of employment or church (Our office allowed everyone who donated a canned good to wear jeans to work the following Friday.)