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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And yet, I mean, you know, I was just, I mean, you completely shocked when I heard you make these incredible statements about the dramatic situation right now. You said, are we going to watch parents choose between food and putting shoes on their children’s feet? And then even worse, you said, are we going to be prepared to see, I guess so many mothers, prostitute themselves in order to put food on the table for their children? I mean, that’s catastrophic.
DAME LOUISE CASEY, FORMER U.S. GOVERNMENT ADVISER ON HOMELESSNESS: Well, that’s partly what’s so important right now about conveying the message into the Cabinet Office, into 10 Downing Street, and actually into all of the MPs that at the moment are not in the right place on supporting families. I cannot convey strongly enough the incredible effect. So our biggest problem in this country is working poor. So these are people that are poor, but they’re in work. If you take their income down, they’re already in poverty. We accept as a country in our own indices and all the evidence that the government would accept that we have this patriarchal (ph) record working poor. So if you’re working poor and you remove 20 percent, or 27 percent, or 30 percent of their income, how are they supposed to find the other third for their rent, for their food? We already know in the northeast from the significantly understated charity called Changing Lives that used to be called Tyneside Cyrenians long history in faith and in the church. They have themselves said that women during the course of this pandemic have started to prostitute themselves in order to make to put on the table. So it is happening here. And, you know, I think the problem always with people is that if you don’t live with it, if you don’t come from it, if you don’t feel it, you don’t see it, that is pretty easy to stigmatize people like Marcus Rashford’s mother, and pretty easy to stigmatize the people who we see sleeping out on our streets who are homeless. And that’s where I think —
AMANPOUR: I mean —
CASEY: — that prove this one wrong.
About This Episode EXPAND
Dr. Syra Madad discusses the trajectory of the pandemic in the coming weeks. Louise Casey, a former UK government adviser on homelessness, explains how COVID-19 has exposed a massive inequality gap. Dr. Richard A. Friedman explains the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health.
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