“Motel Generation” children – “60 Minutes” and Scott Pelley, 3/6/11

I watched Scott Pelley describing our country’s Motel Generation children or the Hardtime Generation last Sunday. I had tears in my eyes as I saw his interview of the children in question. There are a record number of children going into poverty and the number will soon reach 25%. That will be the largest since the Great Depression. Fourteen million children were in poverty before the recent Great Recession, and now the U.S. Census says it is 16 million – up two million in two years. That’s the fastest fall for the middle class since the government started counting 51 years ago. I think the middle class is rapidly disappearing as we lose our jobs and slip into the lower class, leaving just two classes of people in this country.

Scott did his investigation in Seminole County in Florida which is one of the worst for the kids. The area around Disney World is full of cheap, sleazy motels where many of these impoverished families are forced to live. Homeless shelters want to split up the families, so the motels are the only answer. The area around them is scary as the kids say - shootings, muggings, etc. so they mostly stay inside. There are 67 motels housing around 1,000 kids who have lost their homes. The film showed a school bus stopping in front of a motel and kids coming out to board the bus. One little girl was embarrassed because she said everyone knew where she lived. Her clothes were not like regular school kids – bits and pieces thrown together. The kids interviewed said they are hungry most of the time. One said he goes to school and asks the other kids if they’re going to eat what they have, and if not, maybe he could have it. One family lived in a car for a while with three kids. The car was parked at Wal Mart and they cleaned up in the bathroom there every morning before going to school. Scott talked to many of the kids, and it was simply heartbreaking to hear what they said. Most were sad because their parents were having such a hard time. One little girl felt like it was her fault for having to have her parents buy her clothes. Most of them talked of being hungry and how that felt. One boy – 14 – said “I’ve gotten very mature in a very short time.” I think it was the family that lived in their van at Wal Mart that was able to move back into a cheap motel. The father had looked and looked for work and finally did something he never thought he would do. He made a sign that said, “Family of five, please help. Thank you.” He stood by the road and many trucks and cars flew by, but one woman got his phone number and said she might have something for him. She called in a couple of days with a job as a parking attendant for $10 an hour. That was enough to get them back in a cheap motel for a while. As all these children talked to Scott, many had tears running down their cheeks. It was not an easy thing to watch.

It got me to thinking . . . I had just watched the Oscars, and got to wondering just how much money goes into that big bash. They gave gift bags to each of the winners worth $75,000, and to the losers who had worked so hard to win and made a bunch of money on their movies, they gave $20,000 gift bags. Nice! So no one was left out except for kids and families who have no gift bags, let alone food or shelter. And I wonder how much the Vanity Fair dinner cost with Wolfgang Puck as the chef. That certainly doesn’t come cheaply. I know people donate to different funds and it’s not always reported as they don’t like to make a big thing of it. But some of the functions that are thrown for this and that could be stopped. I think people could do without the Oscars; they could read the winners’ names in the papers and, hopefully, that money could be utilized where it really mattered. With so many foreclosures and no jobs, the homeless numbers will just keep rising. And the CEOs of the banks who screwed so many people will keep on getting their golden parachutes and spending no time in jail, hungry or homeless. Everyone is trying to cut back now and live within their means . . . at least that’s what they say. But you know not everyone is doing that. The lower middle class is definitely doing that because there’s no other way to live. How do I know that? Because that’s where I am with a lot of my friends.

When I think about all those children I saw Sunday night, I realize they are the future of our country. They should be well fed and well schooled, not hungry and homeless. They need a good foundation for the future. Without that, I think we all are in a lot of trouble.