Homeless shelter filling up

'Room at the Inn' program rotates among churches.

October 20, 2008

MARQUETTE -- A Marquette homeless shelter program that rotates among a dozen local churches is already at capacity..

"The Room at the Inn" program was taking in five or six people each night last winter, but this year, officials say, the numbers are between 13 and 16.

"It's not so much the space as it is how many volunteers you need to work a shift with 13 people versus how many do you need to work a shift with 20 people," explains Helen McCormick, the founder of the program. "And we're having difficulty filling all the shifts at some of the churches. We have lots of volunteers, but they're not always available."

McCormick says "The Room at the Inn" is looking not only for more volunteers, but also for more churches to take part in the rotating program.

WLUC TV news

This is yet another of many reasons I can think of to vote for and help to elect Senator Barack Obama President of the United States. This area of Michigan has a very small population and as you can tell by the article very limited resources to combat homelessness and make sure the area's homeless have shelter during the very harsh winter months. Even though the population of the homeless is small, the mere fact that it more then doubled from last year is pause for concern. I understand they still have enough space and I believe churches and other locals will step up and volunteer, but seriously, how much more GOP policies can America take? If it is creating a homeless problem in the county I live in (with a lot of HUD and low income housing available) what is it doing around the nation? I think I am going to create a 2nd part to this diary citing articles from national sources rather than just this one local source. I am willing to bet dollars to doughnuts we are entering a very crazy time in regards to homelessness and am willing to bet it is at an all time high.

Senator Obama's economic policies will not take any of the pie from the rich and will not take anymore of the pie from the lower and middle classes. Instead his policies will grow the ever mentioned (mostly by dopey GOP pundits whining about socialism) economic pie expanding opportunity for the lower and middle classes by providing tax cuts and more importantly jobs. It also increases the upper class, albiet not by tax cuts, but by rather giving more spending money to the non upper class thereby providing business owners, CEOs and other upper class rich folks with more money. I am probably terribly oversimplifying things but this is how I understand things to be.