SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
families
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Unhoused Families Are Being Ignored
Local politicians don’t see advantage in tackling a crisis that is hidden from view. So, it is up to the rest of us to step up.
Aug 15, 2025
Our eviction court clients do not want US President Donald Trump’s attention. Nor the Supreme Court’s, for that matter. But they would appreciate it if the rest of us took notice.
Last month, Trump issued a heinous executive order pushing for the arrest of individuals engaged in “urban camping and loitering.” Trump’s order followed on the equally callous 2024 Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which gave the legal green light for imprisoning people just because they are forced to live outdoors.
The Grants Pass decision opened the floodgates for state and local governments to destroy homeless encampments and make arrests for the crime of being unhoused.
Fortunately, many people have responded to these heartless attacks with both compassion and action. They lift up the proven success of Housing First programs that address the core need for a safe place to live, which then allows for other needs to be addressed effectively too. Sometimes, politicians and business leaders help—even when they seem to be motivated mostly by a desire to rid the city sidewalks and neighborhoods of unsightly displays of unhoused suffering.
When Trump and others label homelessness as largely caused by addiction or mental health issues, they have the causation arrow pointed in the wrong direction.
All good. Our sisters and (mostly) brothers in the streets and encampments deserve housing and dignity.
But, beyond the demonizing and harassment directed to visibly unhoused people, there is another deeply damaging outcome from all this political, media, and advocacy attention: Unhoused families are being ignored.
Thanks to the research of Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, we have long known that children are the most common demographic among the 7.6 million people who face eviction each year. That means our clients usually don’t look like the stereotypical single man on a downtown street corner or huddled under an overpass. But they need help just as much.
Consider our clients Kevin and Samantha and their infant daughter (I will not use clients’ real names), who each night squeeze themselves in to sleep in their 2011 Ford Focus. Just finding a place to park is a nightly challenge. Walmart security guards and park police pound on their windows and shine flashlights in their faces, waking the baby and kicking them out of parking lots.
Depending on the season, they have to run the car engine several hours of the night just to keep some heat or cooling going. Sleep is hard to come by in their cramped quarters, especially while keeping an eye out for police and attackers.
Since Kevin and Samantha take turns watching the baby while the other one works a shift at a fast-food restaurant, they often arrive early for their shifts. That way, they can take the baby into the restaurant bathroom and try to bathe as the best they can.
Tonya and her two children spent hundreds of dollars on rental application fees, only to be turned down each time because of a past eviction filing. For awhile, they bedded down on the floor of Tonya’s sister’s apartment. But the sister’s landlord threatened eviction for packing eight people into a two-bedroom unit.
So, when Tonya’s meager home healthcare wages allow it, she pays $75 for a night in a motel. The room is dirty—she won’t let her youngest crawl on the crunchy brown carpeting—and the parking lot is filled with loud, frightening people. But the motel doesn’t check tenant records, and it beats the alternative. On the nights Tonya cannot afford the motel fee, she and the kids sleep in the car.
Shelters Full; So is Subsidized Housing
Each morning, Samantha and Tonya call the handful of local shelters that accept families and ask if there are beds available. The answer is almost always no. After that, there is nowhere else to call. Subsidized housing for families has years-long waiting lists, which means 3 of every 4 households eligible for subsidized housing are out of luck.
These families are sometimes referred to as the hidden homeless. Parents with children avoid the streets and encampments not just for safety reasons: Allowing their kids to be seen unhoused can trigger a call to child welfare agencies. Unhoused families staying out of sight is a big reason why the official homelessness count is widely acknowledged as being far too low, especially when it comes to child homelessness.
Volunteers and professionals conducting the annual Housing and Urban Development “Point in Time” count do their best, but you can’t tally what you can’t see. That means that communities’ homeless counts sometimes fail to include almost any children at all, despite the fact a recent report by SchoolHouse Connection and the University of Michigan revealed that nearly a half-million infants and toddlers were homeless during the studied years of 2022 and 2023. For pre-K to grade 12 students, the number was 1.37 million. For context, that means the total number of kids experiencing homelessness in the US over the course of just two years is significantly larger than the entire population of the city of Philadelphia.
Living wages, childcare guarantees, and affordable housing—especially affordable housing—would shut down our eviction courts and empty out homeless family shelters.
When Trump and others label homelessness as largely caused by addiction or mental health issues, they have the causation arrow pointed in the wrong direction. For our clients and the majority of those who are unhoused, their main problem is not mental health. They simply cannot afford their rent. But their housing struggle definitely leads to health crises: Multiple studies have shown that evictions and homelessness contribute to children’s mental illnesses, respiratory conditions, infections, delayed cognitive development, and difficulties in school and social settings.
Donald Trump is not paying attention to this. Downtown business leaders are unconcerned. Local politicians don’t see advantage in tackling a crisis that is hidden from view.
So, it is up to the rest of us to step up.
The solutions are not hard to find. Families living without shelter is unthinkable in other nations, as it largely was in earlier generations here in the United States. Living wages, childcare guarantees, and affordable housing—especially affordable housing—would shut down our eviction courts and empty out homeless family shelters.
To get there, we first have to pay attention to the families of Kevin, Samantha, Tonya, and the million-plus other kids and parents who don’t know where they are going to sleep tonight.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Economic Anxiety of Americans Surges Under Trump: Poll
"The president promised to lower costs on day one, and by that standard, he's broken that promise and has made choices that will cost families thousands of dollars a year," said one policy expert recently.
May 12, 2025
The Trump administration has made its desire for Americans to expand their families well known, but a new survey out Monday details how a growing number of people are postponing such major life decisions—including having children, buying a home, or expanding their education—due to the economic anxiety created by President Donald Trump's policies.
The Harris poll was conducted on behalf of The Guardian between April 24-26, in the wake of the news that the White House was considering multiple ways to encourage people to have more children. The proposals being floated by "pronatalist" advisers include a $5,000 "baby bonus" that the administration would offer to people when they have a new baby—which would cover less than half of the average annual cost of childcare in the United States.
The survey suggested that the proposal was not enticing to would-be parents in the U.S., with 65% of people who had previously planned to have a child in 2025 reporting they were now holding off on the decision. Thirty-three percent said they were not comfortable expanding their families in the current economy, and 32% said they were unable to afford having a child.
Trump has imposed and rolled back various tariffs several times since taking office; the White House announced Monday that reciprocal tariffs with China were being paused for 90 days while the two countries try to work out a trade deal. Tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods are partially in effect, and the administration has also imposed tariffs on aluminum and steel imports, cars, and car parts.
The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter, with the gross domestic produce declining at an annual rate of 0.3% after having climbed by 2.4% in the final quarter of 2024.
For Americans, the tariffs have meant higher prices for items like toys, children's clothes, household tools, and washing machines.
As Common Dreams reported last week, despite Trump's proposal of a "baby bonus," Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens has termed the tariffs a "baby tax"—directly causing essentials like strollers, high chairs, and cribs to cost more.
"The president promised to lower costs on day one, and by that standard, he's broken that promise and has made choices that will cost families thousands of dollars a year," said Groundwork Collaborative fellow Michael Negron told a U.S. House committee last week.
Nearly 80% of people surveyed said they've experienced higher grocery prices since Trump took office—despite the fact that he explicitly promised his presidency would swiftly bring about a lower cost of living—and 60% said they noticed their monthly bills going up.
The Harris poll found that 66% of people are now putting off making large purchases like cars or home appliances under Trump's economy, and three-quarters of those who had previously been hoping to buy a home are postponing that purchase.
Mortgage rates are currently 6.7%—more than double what they were four years ago.
CNN reported last month that although interest rates on home loans have been falling, "President Donald Trump's scattered approach to tariffs and an escalating trade war with China has injected volatility into the stock market, and resulted in a sell-off in U.S. bonds last week."
Sixty-eight percent of Millennial and Gen Z renters—those in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s—said they had a goal of buying a home, compared to 29% of older renters, suggesting that the major life decisions of younger Americans are being most affected by the Trump administration.
The Harris poll also asked respondents if they believed the economy is worsening, and found a partisan divide: 33% of Republicans said yes compared to 73% of Democratic voters who agreed.
But among Independents—44% of whom supported Trump in the 2024 election, according to a post-election survey—64% agreed with the majority of Democrats about the economy's trajectory.
Nearly a third of respondents said they believe Trump's tariffs will cause the most harm to their household finances, despite the president's claims that the tariffs will "make America wealthy again."
During his testimony last week, Negron said that higher prices on essential goods and services "are the types of things that you would expect to hear when you look at what experts have said, that [tariffs are] going cost anywhere from $4,500 to $5,000 more for the average household once they're fully in effect."
"When you look at the promises to lower prices," he said, "the administration is not living up to them."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Pushing to Eviscerate Head Start and SNAP, Trump Wants to Give Parents Medals for Having More Kids
Republicans, said one feminist writer, "don't care about making the world better, safer, or healthier for American families and children. They just want women to have more babies."
Apr 23, 2025
Political observers have warned that U.S. President Donald Trump has spent his first months in office "flooding the zone"—unleashing a torrent of executive actions and Republican proposals meant to overwhelm his opponents while furthering his right-wing agenda, including pushes to slash healthcare for more than 36 million children, eliminate funding for early childhood education, and weaken environmental justice initiatives.
But new reporting this week revealed that while taking significant actions that are expected to directly harm millions of children—and make the cost of living higher for parents across the country—White House officials have been considering a range of proposals aimed at encouraging people to have more children.
As The New York Times reported Monday, White House aides have met in recent weeks with policy experts and advocates for boosting U.S. birth rates, which have been declining since 2007.
Simone and Malcolm Collins, activists who founded Pronatalist.org, which they describe as "the first pronatalist organization in the world," told the Times that they have sent multiple draft executive orders to the White House, including one that would bestow a "National Medal of Motherhood" on women who have six children or more—a scheme with history in numerous fascist regimes, including those of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
Other proposals aides have discussed would reserve 30% of Fulbright scholarships for people who are married or have children; grant a $5,000 "baby bonus" to families after they have a baby; and fund programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles so they can use "natural family planning" and determine when they are able to conceive.
"Just so we're clear: Instead of teaching kids about birth control and sexual health, the government would fund programs that teach little girls how to get pregnant," wrote Jessica Valenti at the Substack newsletter Abortion, Every Day.
The latter proposal would likely be offered without offering women any information about contraception or other comprehensive sex education, which President Donald Trump vehemently opposed in his first term.
The administration's "pronatalist" push has been steadily building since before Trump won the presidency. During the campaign last year, Vice President JD Vance provoked an uproar when he doubled down on his comments from 2021 when he had said the Democratic Party was run by "childless cat ladies." He said last summer that people without biological children "don't really have a direct stake in" the future and defended his previous remarks that the government should "punish the things that we think are bad"—meaning not having children.
"For years, proposals and debates have separated having children from raising children. But parents aren't dumb. They'll look around and ask whether this is a world where it's good to have children."
Vance's claim that the Democratic Party is "anti-family and anti-child" was based largely on his belief that politicians on the left are too negative about the future—frequently expressing concern about the scientific consensus that continuing to extract fossil fuels, which Trump has promised to ramp up, will cause more frequent and devastating extreme climate events.
Since Trump took office, he has pledged to be a "fertilization president"—touting his support for in vitro fertilization even as federal researchers in reproductive technology were dismissed from their jobs—and his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, told staffers to prioritize infrastructure projects in areas with high birth and marriage rates.
But the Republican Party, including Trump, has long scoffed at concrete policy proposals meant to make raising children—not just birthing them—more accessible for American families.
The Michigan Republican Party penned a memo in 2023 saying a paid family leave proposal was a "ridiculous idea" akin to "summer break for adults," and a budget proposal by Trump in 2018 claimed to require states to provide paid parental leave, but it was derided as "phony and truly dangerous" by one policy expert.
Senate Republicans last year blocked legislation that would have helped lift 500,000 children out of poverty by expanding eligibility for the child tax credit.
According to a leaked draft for the Health and Human Services Department's budget, Trump is now proposing eliminating federal funding for Head Start, which provides early childhood education and other support services for low-income children and their families, helping nearly 40 million children since it began six decades ago.
Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus on Children, said of the proposed cuts to Head Start last week that it was "shocking to see an administration consider a proposal that will impose such widespread harm on children."
"Rarely has there been such a clear, targeted attack on children," said Lesley. "Parents already have trouble finding available childcare and early learning programs, and even when they do, they struggle to afford them. The average annual cost of center-based childcare for an infant is over $15,000, more than in-state college tuition in many states. And who has the least access and greatest financial challenges to care? The children served by Head Start.
Meanwhile, the federal budget proposal passed by House Republicans earlier this month would help pay for "huge tax giveaways for wealthy households and businesses," said the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, by cutting health coverage for 72 million people who rely on Medicaid and food assistance for an estimated 13.8 million children who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
Responding to the reports of Trump's potential "pronatalist" proposals, Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, told the Institute for Public Accuracy that the White House "can't just encourage people to have children. You have to think about what happens to those children after they're born."
"The countries that have been more successful in [raising children] have given family allowances, parental leave, and focused on who will teach and take care of children," said Galinsky. "The more children you have, the more likely it is you'll need to work and bring in a salary. Do parents have flexibility at their workplace?"
"For years, proposals and debates have separated having children from raising children," she added. "But parents aren't dumb. They'll look around and ask whether this is a world where it's good to have children."
Republicans' proposed cuts to essential services for families demonstrate that they "don't care about making the world better, safer, or healthier for American families and children," wrote Valenti. "They just want women to have more babies."
"What happens after that?" she added. "They couldn't care less."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular