Our greatest urgency is to help as best we can the large number of homeless children that are an inevitable consequence of job losses and home foreclosures. See OurBetterAngels.info. William Laney was interviewed on BBC8-TV on March 9. Here's his interview on YouTube in four parts: Part I , Part II , Part III , Part IV .

Palm Beach County is like other metropolitan areas. It has swirls of vitality, points of light, gifts of nature, many reasons to love living here. And it has pockets of despair. Even among people who are doing what they are supposed to do it has misfortune. Injury and lack of insurance, loss of a job, and other surprises cause some individuals and families to become unexpectedly homeless. The number of people who experience homelessness for at least part of the year in Palm Beach County is certainly in the thousands. The School District counted 2037 students being reported as homeless at some point in the 2005-06 year. The official count of homeless persons in PBC on January 26, 2007 was 1766, but the true number is far higher. And, if you consider that many homeless people get back on their feet in a few weeks it is easy to see that our "point in time" count is the tip of the iceberg. But the iceberg is hidden because "we are a tourist economy" and it is not acceptable that we have homeless people. Guess what? We do! It is true that 23% are chronic homeless with various forms of mental illness and substance abuse. But, 41% of homeless people are part of a family. And, 38% of homeless people are children under 18. These people, kin to some of us, are compelling reasons to look hard at homelessness, judge our level of help, and figure out how to help more if our effort is insufficient.

Broward County leadership woke up to homelessness in 1994 and at this time has helping agencies with 4886 beds for homeless people. PBC is smaller with just 71% of Broward's population. If we were as ready as Broward to help homeless people, we'd have 3482 beds. We have 1262. So we are 36% as ready as Broward. Dade County's readiness to help homeless people is even greater than Broward's. We aren't arguing that we should be like Broward or Dade, but we certainly should not pretend that we are fully ready to help our citizens who have by misfortune become homeless. Westgate Tabernacle, despite harrassment by Palm Beach County authorities, and despite its dingy conditions and lack of funding support, has become the "de facto" emergency shelter for homeless people in Palm Beach County. Every night, somewhere between 100 and 200 people sleep with safety and with satisfactory meals at Westgate Tabernacle. The County has claimed it can help these people, but it has not managed to do so.

The lesson here is not that Westgate Tabernacle is good or right, or that Palm Beach County is good or right. The lesson is simply that there is very serious need here, if only to protect children and those who care for them. At present there is insufficient advocacy. We propose to seek understanding and assistance in faith communities and to turn that into a changing political climate whereby we will seek our fair share of federal funds to help homeless people and where we will have a greater measure of compassion for those in need of shelter and food.

Our action plan is develop the idea of a faith community team. The job of the team will be to:

• Contact as many faith communities in or near it's city as possible.
• Make sure that our database of faith communities is correct for that faith community.
• Tell them about:
  • Family Promise which will provide shelter and food to homeless families;
  • Westgate Tabernacle which provides shelter and food to anyone who knocks on the door;
  • our readiness to bring a custom designed presentation into their faith community as their invitation to become more involved.
• Our goal will be to identify a contact person in that faith community thru whom we will work. We need that person's name, phone number, address, and e-mail address.