Alan Feuer’s article, Homeless Families, Cloaked in Normality, conveyed one single mother’s arduous journey being homeless with three sons- ages 19, 15, &2, in the middle of New York City. It brought the plight of homelessness that many families are living with in this country and worldwide to light by chronicling a day in her life. A life walking a fine line daily in trying to balance a low paying job, temporary housing, single parenting, and being on the receiving end of an on-going and forever shifting political and economical disagreements between the city and state officials on their policies concerning their homeless communities. Feuer’s statistics proved helpful in visualizing the city’s homeless population. But he particularly paid attention to the complexities of the homeless problem politically as to how the different levels of governments went back and forth in trying to solve the problems with some of its programs, funding, and political differences. Feuer placed 38 year old Tonya Lewis among the three-quarters of 40,000 homeless people in shelters who do not fit the “normal” profile of homeless simply because she is not on the street sleeping on benches or some other “rat-infested welfare hotels”, but lives in private housing where she is able to receive support. Despite that, the inequalities that are present in her daily life are still quite real but they are propelling her toward getting her independence back.
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