In various cities in China, we have rarely seen the figure of homeless people, and occasionally meeting one or two on the street is also asking for money for various reasons.
So when many people first come to the United States, they will find that there are too many homeless people in the United States!
Homeless people can often be seen on squares, subway stations, parks, and under overpasses.
And what is even more surprising is that on the street not far from the bustling district, there may be vagrants pitching tents or simply lying directly on the ground along the way. What does strength deduction mean "on one side of heaven, on the other side of hell".
A street in Los Angeles is full of such tents and street sleepers
. In fact, in this country which is generally regarded as strong and wealthy, the number of homeless people is beyond imagination.
Statistics from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2018 show that there are 553,000 homeless people in the United States, accounting for 0.17% of the total population, of which 193,000 are “unsheltered” The state of being homeless and unable to find a shelter, regardless of the severe cold and heat, living on the streets for a long time.
Homeless people in the Seattle blizzard
Half of these homeless people gather in five states: California, New York, Florida, Texas, Washington . New York ranked first, followed by Los Angeles in second. The vagrant population is not only a scar on the people's livelihood, but also a government heart disease.
The top ten cities in the United States with the number of homeless populations
2018 data
What causes such a huge number of homeless people?
is based on the principle of seeking truth from facts. This article uses San Francisco and as a sample to try to analyze the reasons.
I found the latest point-in-time counting survey report issued by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (Z17z) of the San Francisco City Government (Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing) in 2019 (equivalent to the number of homeless people in the report = Number found). The report link has been placed at the end of the article. According to statistics from
in January 2019, the homeless population in San Francisco has reached 8,035, an increase of 17% over 2017.
It is worth noting that 69% of them have become homeless people for the first time. They have to repeatedly wander on the streets due to unstable living conditions and poverty. 65% of people have been homeless for more than a year.
street homeless
In our imagination, those who are on the street are mostly drug users or too lazy, leading to homelessness. But according to the survey, only 18% of people sleep on the street due to drug or alcohol abuse.
Street drug tramp
26% are due to unemployment, 13% are due to legal eviction, 12% are due to disputes with family members or friends living together, 8% are due to mental illness, and 5% are due to divorce or relationship breakdown. Inability to pay rising rents, imprisonment, and domestic violence are also causes of homelessness .
The main causes of homelessness (San Francisco data)
makes so many people homeless, one of the main reasons is that in the past few decades, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has cut its budget by nearly 50%, resulting in Insufficient housing for low-income people .
The special group of mental illness has a large number of homeless people because in the 1950s, the U.S. government put forward a “community support-based treatment plan”, hoping to allow mental patients to be accepted and taken care of by major communities, so closed There are a large number of psychiatric hospitals . But things are counterproductive, many patients do not get the support they deserve, so many mental patients can only wander on the streets.
Alfred Postell, a high-achieving student who graduated from Harvard Law School, unfortunately got schizophrenia and wandered on the streets
Moreover, although the United States has helped the homeless, not every city has good welfare for homeless people. The average person only takes 3 to 5 days, and only 30 days in special circumstances. Most people will still be "blasted out" after temporarily staying in the shelter.
In New York in the early hours of the morning,
, a vagrant sleeping in the subway, entered a vicious circle once he walked into the vagrant. No fixed address, no means of communication (mobile phone, telephone, etc.), no means of transportation, record of dishonesty and jail time, etc., making it difficult for these people to find a job or find a job that can afford rent . Therefore, many perennial homeless people have long lost their hope in life in the dark life on the street (robbery, blackmail, and beatings).
hopes that the United States will pay more attention to its own domestic problems when it intervenes in various things around the world!
report link: http://hsh.sfgov.org/research-reports/san-francisco-homeless-point-in-time-count-reports/
