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Sunday, March 3, 2019

Homeless Children Living In RV's Right Here In Pacifica, California

Homeless children who live in RV's or cars
Thought I'd start a new thread instead of tacking this onto one of the many interminable RV posts. I'm not defending or endorsing children living their parents' semi-nomadic mobile vehicle lifestyle. Also not discussing about how they got to that point. But, children living like this is not a new thing in this country or any other place in the world. My grandmother and her sisters were teachers in rural America in the 1920's and 1930's. They taught in one room schoolhouses and out of maybe 30 students in ages 6 - 13 years old, only 4 or 5 were from the local farmer population. The rest were the children of transients, laborers or farm workers. Their housing and home life was sketchy to say the least. Barns, sheds, shacks, tents, covered wagons, Model T's. The kids were often sent to school with just a ball of cornmeal and a jar of water. They fell asleep in class due to hunger in the afternoons. My grandmother and the ladies from their church started the first free hot lunch program in Indiana- maybe in the country - to remedy this lack of children learning due to hunger problem. What I am saying here that's relevant to Pacifica is that if there are children among the local RV dwellers, they have a bigger need to be in school than you might think. They don't have it easy and didn't make the choice to be in that situation. It might seem unfair that they get precedence over the children who have a permanent address, but the need is so great for these children. They can't be left to slip through the cracks and basically go feral. That translates to a child being pretty much unprotected. This world isn't very good to unprotected children.

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