"The Hidden America" is the name given to the follow up to tonight's 60 Minutes segment, Homeless children: the hard times generation.
It's hard to watch Scott Pelley's "60 Minutes" report on homeless kids without being moved. It was even harder, as Pelley and his producer explain, to stay composed as they reported this story.
It certainly was hard to hear eleven year olds discussing going to bed hungry and teenagers dropping out of high school to help pay the bills so the family can stay together off the streets and out of homeless shelters. Probably the hardest part is that there are children in this story who think their situation is because of something they did wrong.
"I kind of feel like it's my fault that we don't have enough money. I feel like it's my fault that they have to pay for me. And the clothes that they buy for me."
Scott Pelley's report Homeless children: the hard times generation describes a new Great Depression that the government and media seems totally unaware of.
Nationwide, 14 million children were in poverty before the Great Recession. Now, the U.S. Census tells us its 16 million - up two million in two years. That is the fastest fall for the middle class since the government started counting 51 years ago.
The report came from Florida, where school buses now stop at cheap motels for children who've lost their homes.
One of the consequences of the recession that you don't hear a lot about is the record number of children descending into poverty.
The government considers a family of four to be impoverished if they take in less than $22,000 a year. Based on that standard, and government projections of unemployment, it is estimated the poverty rate for kids in this country will soon hit 25 percent. Those children would be the largest American generation to be raised in hard times since the Great Depression.
In Seminole County, near Orlando, Fla., so many kids have lost their homes that school busses now stop at dozens of cheap motels where families crowd into rooms, living week to week.
The one scene where Scott Pelley sits in a school lunchroom and asks "How many of you have gone to bed hungry?" the hands go up and American children try to explain what it is like.
"It's hard. You can't sleep. You just wait, you just go to sleep for like five minutes and you wake up again. And your stomach hurts, and you're thinking 'I can't sleep. I'm going to try and sleep, I'm going to try and sleep,' but you can't 'cause your stomach's hurting. And it's cause it doesn't have any food in it."
"And it's like a black hole. And sometimes when I don't eat, my stomach, you can hear it's like growling. You can hear it."
"Usually we eat macaroni, or we don't or we drink water or tea."
Then when he asked "How many of you have had the electricity tuned off?" and almost all the hands went up. Children in the richest nation in the world doing homework by candlelight or going out to the car for the interior light to study.
One quote about "socializing and learning being cruelly complicated by homelessness" is gut wrenching and you just don't hear about this. Watch the video and see these children treated with respect for a change.
Update: The video is posted at You Tube now;
Washing up at the Wal-Mart bathroom before school.