InvisibleLink #2: They Aren't Playing Hide and Seek

Homeless Children

T J Pappas School

In America, homelessness, it seems to me, is not so much invisible as it is ignored. Not by everyone, of course--many people work to fight homelessness in both large and small ways, most obviously because homelessness confronts us with the absolute potential for our own sense of "normal" to degrade completely. But in the US at least, child homelessness is largely invisible, particularly outside of urban areas. Invisible in part because many of us believe the government has systems to make sure homelessness in children doesn't exist and invisible because we often have a very traditional view of homelessness--living on the street, eating whatever you can find, begging. Homelessness does not, however, always take such a form. Living with friends, living shelter to shelter, living wherever you are always a guest and never a resident--all of those are homelessness. And homeless children face these pressures and situations differently than their parents or adults do.

For example--to enroll in school, every child typically needs a resident address (to catch a bus), immunization (to prove that they do not pose a health risk to others), and former school records. If you are homeless, it is possible to change schools three or four times (if not more often) in a year. And even if you are at the same school--what are the chances you'll be near a bus stop regularly? Or be able to show up in clean clothes? The T J Pappas school in Arizona is entirely for homeless children, to give them the special attention they need and suited specifically to deal with the problems that homeless children face. The school was fairly controversial for a while (probably still is), in part because of money and in part because many critics claimed it segregated homeless students from "normal" students. The websites posted above have more info. If you are interested in homelessness in general, The Homeless Guy's blog is a good place to start.