Homes for the Homeless Amid the Crisis

[CuriousMoon]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced on Jan. 29, 2010 that federal property is unsuitable for use to assist the homeless.
The U.S. governemnt has millions of acres of land. This land is being used in many ways by the public, by private corporations, and by a variety of organizations, yet it is not being used for the purpose of saving lives and families.
The public uses federal land mainly as parks or as reserves for endangered species. They use these parks as areas of recreation. The public takes camping trips or other types of sight-seeing tours to enjoy America's beauty. That is, the wealthy families do. America's poor and homeless leave that to their one day bucket lists. Corporations see the federal land as an opportunity for profits. They cut down the trees, mine the minerals, and set-up organized camping areas to bilk the public out of their money just to experience their own public land. Schools and other organizations use the land to study nature or protect it from man's harmful affects, yet at the same time, charging a fee to do so.
None of the before mentioned uses serves the public in such a way as providing a space where a family might flower and grow in the security of a home. Thousands of the millions of acres are suitable for building a home and starting a garden. A use for which has gone unseen, unheard, unheralded, and under-recognized as one of the greatest ways to help the homeless of America.
Federal land has been given to American homeless before, in fact, 1.6 million acres of land was granted for such use between 1862 and 1916.
The Homestead Act of 1862 provided a growing population with the land Americans needed to live, prosper, and grow. This was furthered by the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909, and the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916. These humanitarian acts indeed set the course for America's strength and prosperity to flourish and grow. America's strength has always been her people, who are of various types, but all have the backbone, desire, and American spirit to set forth upon the land and develop it with homes and farms.
The Veteran's Land Warranty also helped many Americans obtain a piece of land after fighting in the Civil War. Do veterans of today's wars deserve any less? Do the homeless of today's economic crisis of the twenty-first century deserve any less than the settlers of the 1860's?
Mark R. Johnston, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Needs in the Department of Housing and Urban Development doesn't think so. By his report, dated January 29, 2010, as published in the Federal Register claims that no federal land is of suitable use to the homeless. He apparently did not take any Forestry, Shop, Agriculture, or Home-Economics classes in school. Hundreds of thousands of the millions of acreage that the U.S. Government owns (known as Federal Property)is suitable for development. It is far more suitable than back alleys and street corners and sidewalks where they are prodded along and shewed away. This was as if the National Coalition for the Homeless hadn't won their case against the Veteran's Administration back in December of 1988. Veteran's rights, the rights of the homeless, are American's rights. the constitution states "provide for the general welfare". This seems to be one of those times in American history when the governemnt can do the most good by instead of a debt load heaped upon them by Fanny Mae or Freddy Mac, that a grant of title to 80 acres shall be made after they meet the condition set out by the Homestead Act of 1862: build a home 12X14, five(5)yrs. continuance occupancy, and make a garden.
My own family tree shows titles of land granted to them by the Homestead Acts and the War Veteran Warranty Act, sadly most of this has been taken by the banks and corporations that have grown up around a once free and sovereign nation.