At a press conference held last Tuesday, UMB student and MASSPIRG member Charlean Skidmore, called upon the Bush administration for immediate action to strengthen programs to alleviate hunger and homelessness in communities throughout the United States.

Skidmore was joined by representatives from the City of Boston Emergency Shelter Commission, Dorchester-based shelter Project Hope, and Professor John Mcgah of the UMB McCormack Center for Social Policy to announce the release of the MASSPIRG student campaign against hunger homelessness’ 2004 Communities in Crisis findings.

MASSPIRG, the Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group (MASSPIRG) is a state-wide, student-funded and directed organization that researches and advocates for environmental, consumer, and democratic issues.

The report, according to a national representative, surveyed 900 food and emergency shelter agencies in 32 states across the country, including 63 agencies in the state of Massachusetts.

According to the findings, homeless shelters and food providers on a national level report that their resources are falling short of requests for food.

MASSPIRG says that 64 percent of the state’s shelters and 22 percent of food providers surveyed are forced to turn away individuals requesting assistance primarily as a result of a lack of resources. They continue that 86 percent of agencies that responded within the state report either had decreased or static federal funding.

Skidmore feels that the release of the Bush administration’s 2006 Budget proposal, that according to MASSPIRG would cut nearly $250,000 from the food stamp program over the next 10 years, and reduce resources for emergency shelters, job training programs, and affordable housing, ignores the issues the study has surfaced regarding hunger and homelessness.

“The Bush administration is just out of touch with the increasing hunger and homelessness problem here. Communities in Crisis shows that these problems are increasing, and that we need the federal government to support programs,” said Skidmore.

Acting Director of the City of Boston Emergency Shelter Commission Jim Green applauded MASSPIRG’s efforts to help students and communities think more critically about these issues within society.

According to Green the City of Boston’s Emergency Shelter Commission annual census this year counted 5,819 homeless men, women , and children. He cited a seven percent decrease in the number of homeless families in the city, and a two percent increase in the number of individual homeless.

Green says that despite the decrease, the picture for homelessness in Boston is incomplete. He continued that as a result of barriers for eligibility, more than half of families requesting shelter are denied. Further, Green cited disproportionately high percentages of housing costs in Massachusetts and the east coast over the past 25 years as a complicating factor.

The Acting Director of the city’s Emergency Shelter Commission further said that the number of individuals living on the city’s streets jumped from 230 last year to 299 this year, an increase of 30 percent. He continued that one in four of that 299 are estimated to be aged 55 and older.

Green suggests that this may stem from the fact that Boston’s shelter system has remained over capacity for the last seven years.

“Shelters…where people have to compete for a scarce number of beds become very intense, very intimidating places in the winter,” said Green.

He continued that unless the structure of both federal and state-level funding agents are further committed, “…we’re not going to regain ground in homelessness and people are going to continue to face the kind of struggles and desperation that they face.”

Senior Research Associate of the McCormack Center for Social Policy and director of the “Give Us Your Poor” project on homeless awareness at UMB, John Mcgah, closed the discussion with strategies regarding the prevention of homelessness.

Of the issues surfaced throughout the press conference regarding the maintainence of programs for the homeless and further prevention of the epidemic, Mcgah said, “It takes some gumption on the part of leaders in public office, but it also takes public will in a groundswell. That’s why this work, I think, is so important.”

MASSPIRG’s Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness Communities in Crisis report was released last week in 32 states across the country. They are hoping that Congress and the Bush administration will take their report into account and increase, rather than cut, funding for low-income programs.