Sticking it to the poor

For the life of me, I can't understand what's so Christian about increasing money for war and making sure the wealthy have their tax cuts, tax loopholes, etc. while services to the poor keep getting cut!

Yesterday the Tulsa Housing Authority Board of Commissioners made the difficult decision to close our waiting list for Section 8 housing assistance. Section 8 is a housing assistance program where recipients can use vouchers to pay a portion of the rent to any landlord who will accept the vouchers. Right now demand is so tight that we have a waiting list of 2-5 years. The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development has been cutting funding to local housing agencies, which means we have to make the choice between number of vouchers available and amount of rent we will subsidize. Our board decided that we don't want to cut benefits to current recipients if we can at all help it. So, they voted to stop accepting new applications. Nobody wants to see someone in need denied assistance -- and we have lots of people in need, right now, who aren't getting assistance. And we may not be out of the woods yet. We have been able to stave off cuts thus far by dipping into reserve funds. But that won't be an option next year. Unless Congress votes to put more money into HUD, we may have to start cutting vouchers to current recipients next year. As our Executive Director puts it so eloquently, who do we cut? The single mother of 3 children who's managing to hold down a full time job & go to Tulsa Community College at night so she can qualify for a job that pays more than minimum wage and get off public assistance? The disabled vet who can't work because of war injuries who's receiving assistance after having been homeless? The elderly gentleman who's pension was gutted by corporate malfeasance & who has no family to help him? The teen mother who got kicked out of the house when her parents learned she was pregnant, and who's struggling to get a GED and raise her baby?

The trouble is, the folks in Washington see our residents as numbers -- or, worse yet, they subscribe to the Welfare Queen myth. Those of us working here see real people, with real needs. Most of these Real People want to get off public assistance -- but they are thwarted every step of the way by wealthy Republican politicians who are more concerned about protecting tax loopholes & tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, plus the huge contracts for their corporate buddies who are funding their campaigns, than they are about good, honest, hard-working individuals trying to make ends meet.

Then, last night, I heard on the news that Morton Health Services has suspended operations due to political infighting on the board. (They just fired the clinic's director Monday night -- after this guy got the clinic back in the black.) Now we have a bunch of uninsured persons in North and East Tulsa, as well as Nowata, who have nowhere to go for health care. What is it about that Board that's more concerned about their political turf issues than it is about maintaining services for the folks who need them?

Tell me, what's so Christian about sticking it to the poor?