FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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November 13, 2013

Media Contact:

 

Dan Rabbitt

Health Policy Organizer

443-286-5537

[email protected]

 

 

 

New Report "Faces of Austerity" Shows How Budget Cuts Have Made Us Sicker, Poorer, and Less Safe

New Report Offers Stories Detailing Real Impact of Cuts to Discretionary Programs including Homeless Services

 

 

     Washington, DC - As House and Senate budget conferees meet today to discuss federal fiscal policy, programs that rely on discretionary federal funding - from job training organizations to housing for the disabled to homeless health care programs - continue to feel the impact of sharp reductions in funding. A new report shows how millions of Americans are being hurt in the process and calls on Congress to end these senseless cuts to important investments. 

      In "Faces of Austerity: How Budget Cuts Have Made Us Sicker, Poorer, and Less Safe," NDD United, an alliance of more than 3,200 national, state, and local organizations working to stop needless cuts to core government functions, goes sector by sector, from housing to public health to education to workforce development, telling the stories of those who've been impacted most by Washington's failure to protect the programs that keep us healthy, safe, and educated. The stories in the report represent thousands of other people being harmed, including patients of Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) clinics.

      National Health Care for the Homeless Council, part of the NDD United coalition,  represents HCH clinics nationally and advocates directly for legislative change in Congress to ensure that the health of homeless people is a priority in federal policy and budget decisions. The budget cuts have had devastating effects on people served by HCH clinics. It is estimated that 140,000 Housing Choice vouchers have been lost due to sequestration, prolonging homelessness and family instability. Working to secure housing and stay healthy in the midst of these cuts to affordable housing programs has been tremendously difficult:

  • Dr. Morgan McDonald, MD, is a physician at United Neighborhood Health Services in Nashville, TN. "Waiting times have gone up significantly for housing," she notes. "Patients are getting sicker, and winter is coming, which scares me for those who are still waiting." 
  • Erin Greer is a social worker and Homeless Program Assistant at United Neighborhood Health Services in Nashville, TN. "I hear people saying, 'I've been waiting for Section 8 for a year and a half, or two years," she reports. "The wait really gives people a hopeless feeling. And especially for those who are diabetic or have high blood pressure, their conditions get worse because they need medicine and they don't have anywhere to keep it."
  • Ginger Burgess, 35, is a homeless woman who is currently part of a residential substance abuse treatment program in Nashville, TN. She has been clean for six months, but worries about what will happen at the end of her program. "For a lot of us girls, the biggest fear is where we will go when we leave treatment," she says. "If we have a long wait for housing, it makes it more likely to relapse."

     "The cruelest of the cuts are those that take away people's housing," says John Lozier, Executive Director of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. "Without housing, what real chance does a person have to be healthy or hold down a good job or learn in school?" The National Health Care for the Homeless Council affirms that guaranteed housing is the basis for building a strong, healthy, prosperous society.

      The Budget Control Act established caps restricting how much funding Congress could allocate to discretionary programs each year over the next decade. As a result, by 2023 these caps will cut $1.6 trillion from defense discretionary and non-defense discretionary (NDD) programs combined, relative to the inflation-adjusted 2010 funding levels. Under sequestration these programs-including both defense and nondefense programs-face more than $700 billion in cuts over the next eight years. In two years, NDD spending will equal a smaller percentage of our economy than ever before - with data going back to 1962 - if lawmakers do not act to replace sequestration with a more meaningful and comprehensive deficit reduction strategy. 

     Even as Congress and the White House came to agreement on a budget deal earlier this month, the agreement conspicuously failed to address sequestration and the funding level for fiscal year 2014. 

 

     "Faces of Austerity" is available online at www.nddunited.org

 

     For photographs of and contact information for the individuals whose stories are provided above, please contact: 

 

Maria Mayo, Communications Coordinator

National Healthcare for the Homeless Council

[email protected] 

(615) 226-2292

 

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About the National Health Care for the Homeless Council
The National Health Care for the Homeless Council believes that homelessness is unacceptable, and every person has the right to adequate food, housing, clothing, and health care. We work to eliminate homelessness by ensuring comprehensive health care and secure housing for everyone. Follow our work on our website at www.nhchc.org.
� Copyright 2013 National Health Care for the Homeless Council. All rights reserved.