The US is set to break a new record number of homeless people with more than half a million people living on the street this year.
Data collected and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal from more than 250 homeless organizations have counted at least 550,000 homeless people so far, a 10 percent rise from last year’s reports. The numbers gathered from cities and rural areas show homelessness as it was on a single night earlier this year.
The upward trend means that the US will probably reach and pass the 2023 estimate of 653,000 homeless people. It’s the highest number since the government began sharing such data in 2007.
The final estimate of the number of unhoused people will depend on data not yet reported from areas such as New York City, which had the highest population of any city in 2023.
Contributing to the most recent rise are migrants bused by Texas to cities such as Chicago and Denver. Large numbers of migrants have also arrived in New York, increasing the numbers last year.
I wonder what percentage of these people wouldn’t be in this situation if we had socialized medicine? Or if Regan hadn’t shut down the mental hospitals in the 80s? I realize that not all homeless people are schizophrenic, or addicts, or victims of medical debt — but it would probably explain why the US has a larger share of this problem.
Probably the most common way to become homeless is to flee domestic violence and be poor.
If not that, be poor, lose your job, get evicted.
Being homeless causes you to become mentally ill and drug addicted. Constant violent trauma, starvation and exposure does that.
We would need socialized medicine and socialized housing to solve the problem.
We have neither. Section 8 is a fucking joke, as in, its called Section 8 because it’ll take you 8 years to get a place.
And theyre almost all slums run by slumlords.
I think it’s because of the unprecedented amount of wealth hoarding by the .01 percent accompanied by unprecedented inequality and distribution of wealth.
Unfortunately some people don’t want help, either.
Mental hospitals were not good places. What we have now is a lot better. It’s not an easy thing to solve either way.
Edit. Healthcare for everyone would absolutely help a shit ton though, yes.