Homelessness
“This is the ongoing reality of the unhoused community,” she wrote on Facebook, referring to Langille’s amputations and the Jan. 7 death of Evan McArthur, 44, following a fire at a homeless encampment in the north end.
“We can’t waste any more time. Nobody should lose their limb or their life in order to have the basic necessity of a home.”
‘How much more suffering do we have to witness?’ advocate asks
Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon · CBC News · Posted: Jan 26, 2024
Less than three weeks after a homeless Saint John man lost his life in a tent fire, another is in hospital after losing his left leg below the knee and half of his right foot to severe frostbite.
Jamie Langille, 43, who has lived in a tent in a wooded area uptown for about three years, said he fell asleep one night with wet feet.
“I usually light a fire at nighttime,” he said, explaining he burns candles and hand sanitizer in a bucket to get warm. “And I thaw my whole body out. But that night, I fell asleep.”
His feet froze, Langille said, and he developed gangrene, the death of body tissue.
A CAT scan confirmed the extent of the damage and doctors broke the news that he needed immediate amputations.
“I don’t know how to deal with it right now,” Langille, who underwent the surgeries on Jan. 19, said from his hospital bed.
“It’s weird going from being able to walk and run around and do whatever with your two legs, and then now, I only have one leg and half of a foot. And I just don’t know what lies ahead.
“I’m already homeless. I don’t have a clue what to do.
“My mind’s racing everywheres and I just … It’s a difficult time.”
Infuriated, Catherine Driscoll, a volunteer with Street Team SJ, which provides food and supplies to the homeless, got Langille’s permission to post graphic before and after in-hospital photos.
‘We can’t waste any more time’
The photos showed Langille’s blackened, cold-ravaged feet and the white-bandaged stumps left behind.
“This is the ongoing reality of the unhoused community,” she wrote on Facebook, referring to Langille’s amputations and the Jan. 7 death of Evan McArthur, 44, following a fire at a homeless encampment in the north end.
“We can’t waste any more time. Nobody should lose their limb or their life in order to have the basic necessity of a home.”
Driscoll, who has checked on Langille weekly for the past year and used to check on McArthur, also sent a longer email to Premier Blaine Higgs, Saint John MP Wayne Long, local MLAs Arlene Dunn, Trevor Holder and Dorothy Shephard, Mayor Donna Reardon and city councillors. She thanked those who have been actively working toward a solution and urged them to continue to push forward.
“Time is not on our side,” she wrote.
“And since money talks (especially to Premier Higgs ..) how much do you think this hospital stay will cost from admission to discharge.”
Langille is now wheelchair-dependent, she said.
“That money could have been funnelled into a solution. We need to start focusing on an upstream-thinking approach. This should not be happening.”
Higgs’s office did not respond to a request Thursday for comments.
“The fact that there has been nothing from him, I think speaks volumes about his priorities,” Driscoll told CBC News, noting Higgs lives in Quispamsis, just outside Saint John, where “this is all happening.”
“I really hope that he can take a look at the human side of things and realize that there is more to running the province than whatever he’s doing; that you really have to bring it down to the humans that are part of this province and that he’s supposed to be caring for.”
The Department of Social Development declined to comment on Langille’s case Friday. “Due to strict legal obligations, the Department of Social Development cannot speak about specific cases,” spokesperson Rebecca Howland said in an email.
“Outreach workers, like the team from Fresh Start and other service providers, constantly work to ensure unhoused people are offered the right services that meet their needs, including any housing programs they may be eligible for through Housing NB,” she added.
‘We can’t just keep talking about it’
After McArthur’s death “rocked” the community and prompted talks with politicians, Driscoll felt cautiously optimistic that changes were coming.
“It just felt like the ball was rolling finally. And then this happened.”
Driscoll decided to post and email about Langille, not to exploit his situation, but to “keep building on that momentum” and to raise awareness.
How much more suffering do we have to witness and see them experience before change will actually happen?- Catherine Driscoll, Street Team SJ volunteer
“Action actually has to take place. We can’t just keep talking about it,” she said. “We really need to get solutions and get something up and running sooner rather than later.
“Like, how much more suffering do we have to witness and see them experience before change will actually happen?”
She included the photos, she said, because “something needs to wake somebody up in order to take this seriously.”
“I think thinking ‘frostbite’ is one thing. Seeing the pictures and seeing the reality is a whole other.”
Frostbite is not uncommon among the homeless, she said, but Langille’s is the worst case she has ever seen.
“It’s incredibly sad and frustrating.”
‘It should never have come to this’
“It should never have come to this,” she said, noting Langille has been on the wait list for housing for a long time and started having problems with his left foot last winter, when he had to have some frostbitten toes amputated.
This December, he was admitted to hospital with more problems with his left foot, given antibiotics and discharged.
The next time Driscoll and another volunteer stopped by his tent, Langille declined to come out and said he didn’t need anything. “I thought, ‘That’s not like him.’ I said, ‘Are you OK?’ And he said, ‘No, I’m in a lot of pain. I can’t walk.'”
Half of his left foot was black and the skin on his right foot seemed “mushy.”
They did some first aid, wrapped his feet in clean bandages and gave him some dry socks, foot warmers and a pair of boots a size too big so his bandaged feet would fit in them. But within a week or two, the damage progressed so quickly and was so extensive, amputation was the only option, she said.
A call for empathy
Langille said he faces up to a month of recovery and rehab in hospital, including learning to use a wheelchair, and hopefully being fitted for prosthetics.
He’s speaking out, he said, because he doesn’t want anyone else to have to go through what he’s going through, or to die, like his friend McArthur.
He thinks governments need to put more money into housing and services for the homeless, such as daytime warming centres, where they can go while shelters are closed between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and programs “to help them better themselves.”
“I don’t think they take it serious enough,” he said.
“I think they think it’s just a big drug epidemic and people are just on drugs and stuff, but people are homeless without being on drugs.”
“A lot of people are just down on their luck.”
Driscoll agrees. “Everybody has a story,” she said, urging people to be kind and empathetic.
‘Very next’ on housing list
Langille worked as a journeyman scaffolder from around 2006-07 until 2019, when he retired, he said. His pension was “very low,” so he lived with his mother, but then she got cancer and died in July 2021. His grandmother died a few months later and the rest of his family seemed to go their separate ways, he said.
He got on the By Names List, which matches people who experience chronic homelessness with available housing, but “it takes forever to get placed, I guess.”
According to Driscoll, single men are considered lower priority.
“Now my [social] worker tells me that I’m the very next person on the list,” Langille said.
If he has to go back to his tent, he doesn’t know what he’ll do, he said. “I hope that’s not the case.”
For now he’s trying to just “take it day by day,” and focusing on his recovery.
The next ignoramus that states the US is a compassionate Christian nation gets a pie in the face for being so naive. Lou
Homelessness shot up by more than 12% this year, reaching 653,104 people. The numbers represent the sharpest increase and largest unhoused population since the federal government began tallying totals in 2007, the U.S. Department of Urban Planning and Development said Friday. Last year, federal data showed 582,462 people experienced homelessness.
This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog under the title: The Biggest Spike In Homelessness Ever Recorded Is A Sign That The U.S. Economy Is Plunging Into An Abyss Of Pain And Suffering
At least things are still good for those at the very top of the food chain. But for everyone else, economic conditions have already become very painful. Today, the vast majority of Americans have less money than they did prior to the pandemic, and thanks to raging inflation our standard of living is steadily going down.
We are in the early stages of “the greatest real estate correction” in our history, and 1 out of every five children in the United States does not have enough food to eat. With each passing day, more members of the middle class join the ranks of the poor, and more poor people find themselves getting kicked out into the streets. According to the Wall Street Journal, new numbers show that the number of homeless people in the United States has reached a brand new record high…
The U.S. count of homeless people surged to the highest level on record, reaching more than 653,000 people early this year as Covid-19 pandemic-aid spending faded, new federal data show.
The increase reflects a collision of factors: rising housing costs; limited affordable housing units; the opioid epidemic; and the expired pandemic-era aid that had helped keep people in their homes, federal officials said Friday.
In addition to having more homeless people in this country than ever before, additional people are becoming homeless at the fastest pace on record…
Homelessness shot up by more than 12% this year, reaching 653,104 people. The numbers represent the sharpest increase and largest unhoused population since the federal government began tallying totals in 2007, the U.S. Department of Urban Planning and Development said Friday. Last year, federal data showed 582,462 people experienced homelessness.
We have literally never seen a spike in homelessness like this before.
It is being reported that prior to these new numbers “the previous largest increase was a spike of 2.7 percent recorded in 2019”.
Just think about that for a moment.
At no point during the “Great Recession” did we see an increase in homelessness like this.
Essentially the floodgates have opened up and an absolutely massive tsunami of homelessness has begun.
Sadly, some groups are being hit much harder than others…
- Black people made up 13% of the U.S. population in 2023, but they made up 21% of the U.S. population living in poverty, 37% of all people experiencing homelessness, and 50% of homeless people in families with children.
- Asian and Asian American people had the largest percentage increase in homelessness, up 40% from 2022, to a total of 11,574.
- Hispanic and Latino people saw the largest numerical increase, up 28% from 2022 to 179,336 in 2023.
And please keep in mind that these are the ones that they can actually count.
How many more homeless Americans are out there that can’t be found or that don’t want to be found?
Of course, many of you don’t need me to tell you that we have a homelessness crisis in America.
All you have to do to see it is to step outside your front door.
In San Francisco, residents have to do “the Poopie Dance” as they go to work because so many homeless people use the streets as a toilet…
They call it ‘The Poopie Dance’ and San Franciscans are having to learn it – and quickly.
It involves constantly looking straight ahead to find a clean line between where you are on the street and where you want to go.
Sadly, it’s the reality in parts of the Bay City as the growing homeless population have taken to using the famed streets of San Francisco as one giant open-air toilet.
So why is this happening?
Well, the truth is that there are a lot of factors that are contributing to this crisis, but one of the biggest is the fact that housing in the U.S. is now more unaffordable than it has ever been before…
High housing costs continue to be a financial stressor for the poorest Americans. In recent years, more people in the U.S. are rent-burdened, according to HUD, meaning they spend more than 30% or even over 50% of their income on rent.
Of course, just about everything is less affordable these days.
For example, just check out what a new Ford F-150 will cost you these days…
For the 2024 F-150 XLT, in the two-door rear-wheel-drive base-everything configuration, the MSRP before “destination and delivery charges” is $47,620 per Ford’s website today. The “destination and delivery charges” of $1,995 give the truck a total MSRP of $49,615.
The average transaction price for all new vehicles sold is about $46,000, according to J.D. Power. A fully decked-out high-end F-series 4×4 Crew Cab can be well over $100,000.
Ouch!
A new truck is out of reach for most Americans at this point.
And actually “a middle-class lifestyle” is out of reach for most Americans at this point.
The numbers that the government gives us say that we aren’t officially in a recession at this moment, but to most of us it certainly feels like a recession has already begun…
That’s according to a recent survey conducted by Bankrate, which found 59% of U.S. adults feel like the economy is in a recession, defined by two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
Regardless of income, households said they are feeling the pressure at about the same amount. Sixty percent of respondents in the lowest-income households, making under $50,000 a year, said the economy feels like it is in a recession. Of those in higher-income households making more than $100,000 annually, 61% agreed.
I wish that I could tell you that economic conditions will improve in 2024 and beyond.
But I can’t do that, because the truth is that they are going to get worse.
The U.S. economy really is plunging into an abyss, and so much pain and suffering is ahead.
So if you have a warm home to sleep in tonight, be thankful, because there are countless others that do not.
“Without significant and sustained federal investments to make housing affordable for people with the lowest incomes, the affordable housing and homelessness crises in this country will only continue to worsen,” warned one campaigner.
On a single night in January 2023, “roughly 653,100 people—or about 20 of every 10,000 people in the United States—were experiencing homelessness,” with about 60% in shelters and the remaining 40% unsheltered, according to HUD. That’s a 12% increase from 2022 and the highest number of unhoused people since reporting began in 2007.
…HUD found that roughly 186,100 people who reported experiencing homelessness, or over a quarter, were part of a family with children, a 16% increase from last year. Additionally, more than 1 in 5 people were age 55 or older, 35,574 were veterans, and 31% “reported having experienced chronic patterns of homelessness.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/homelessness-data
The number of people in shelters, temporary housing, and unsheltered settings across the United States set a new record this year, “largely due to a sharp rise in the number of people who became homeless for the first time.”
That’s a key takeaway from an annual report released Friday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
On a single night in January 2023, “roughly 653,100 people—or about 20 of every 10,000 people in the United States—were experiencing homelessness,” with about 60% in shelters and the remaining 40% unsheltered, according to HUD. That’s a 12% increase from 2022 and the highest number of unhoused people since reporting began in 2007.
“We must address the main driver of homelessness and housing instability—the gap between low incomes and rent costs.”
Jeff Olivet, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness—the federal agency behind President Joe Biden’s plan from last year to reduce homelessness 25% by 2025—the Associated Press that extra assistance during the Covid-19 pandemic “held off the rise in homelessness that we are now seeing.”
Research and advocacy groups responded to the HUD report by also highlighting the positive impacts of federal pandemic-era relief including emergency rental aid, a national moratorium on evictions for nonpayment, and the expanded child tax credit.
“The historic resources and protections provided during the pandemic kept millions of renters stably housed, and the success of these resources is shown by the decrease in homelessness over that same period,” said National Low-Income Housing Coalition president and CEO Diane Yentel. “Just as these emergency resources were depleted and pandemic-era renter protections expired, however, renters reentered a brutal housing market, with skyrocketing rents and high inflation.”
“Eviction filing rates have now reached or surpassed pre-pandemic averages in many communities, resulting in increased homelessness,” she noted. “Without significant and sustained federal investments to make housing affordable for people with the lowest incomes, the affordable housing and homelessness crises in this country will only continue to worsen.”
Olivet said that “while numerous factors drive homelessness, the most significant causes are the shortage of affordable homes and the high cost of housing that have left many Americans living paycheck to paycheck and one crisis away from homelessness.”
National Alliance to End Homelessness CEO Ann Oliva called for funding “urgent and overdue investments in affordable housing and rental assistance to keep people housed, as well as in proven housing and supportive service models that rapidly reconnect people experiencing homelessness with permanent housing.”
Peggy Bailey, vice president for housing and income security at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, also stressed the need for a funding boost, saying that “we have the tools to ensure everyone has a safe, stable place to live, but we’ve failed to invest in them.”
“Homelessness is unacceptable,” Bailey declared. “We must address the main driver of homelessness and housing instability—the gap between low incomes and rent costs. That means expanding rental assistance for all people with the lowest incomes.”
HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge similarly said Friday that “homelessness is solvable and should not exist in the United States.”
“From day one, this administration has put forth a comprehensive plan to tackle homelessness and we’ve acted aggressively and in conjunction with our federal, state, and local partners to address this challenge,” she continued. “We’ve made positive strides, but there is still more work to be done. This data underscores the urgent need for support for proven solutions and strategies that help people quickly exit homelessness and that prevent homelessness in the first place.”
Academics and advocates have long criticized the department’s approach, which relies on reporting from a single night each January. Samuel Carlson, manager of research and outreach at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, told The Washington Post last year that “the HUD data is just catching a fraction of the people.”
For that night in January, HUD found that roughly 186,100 people who reported experiencing homelessness, or over a quarter, were part of a family with children, a 16% increase from last year. Additionally, more than 1 in 5 people were age 55 or older, 35,574 were veterans, and 31% “reported having experienced chronic patterns of homelessness.”
“People who identify as Black, African American, or African, as well as Indigenous people (including Native Americans and Pacific Islanders), continue to be overrepresented among the population experiencing homelessness,” the report notes. “People who identify as Asian or Asian American experienced the greatest percentage increase among all people experiencing homelessness,” while the largest numerical increase “was among people who identify as Hispanic or Latin(a)(o)(x).”
The report adds that over half “were in four states: California (28% of all people experiencing homelessness in the U.S, or 181,399 people); New York (16% or 103,200 people); Florida (5% or 30,756 people); and Washington (4% or 28,036 people).”
While progressive lawmakers have introduced federal legislation to help tackle the issue—from Congresswoman Cori Bush’s (D-Mo.) Unhoused Bill of Rights to the Housing is a Human Right Act led by Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Grace Meng (D-N.Y.)—such measures are unlikely to advance with a GOP-controlled House and divided Senate.
Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.
Homelessness has risen sharply in the United States, with a report from House and Urban Development (HUD) indicating that around 653,000 people were homeless, the highest number on record.
Inflation combined with the end of pandemic-era protections against eviction were the key culprits identified in the HUD report, released on Dec. 15. Another major factor noted in the report was the housing supply crunch.
HUD’s annual 2023 Point-in-Time Count, which measured homelessness on a single night in January 2023, showed a 12 percent rise in homelessness (or by 70,650 individuals) compared to a year earlier. This sent the total to 653,104 homeless people, the highest since the agency launched the point-in-time gauge in 2007.
“For those on the frontlines of this crisis, it’s not surprising. People across the country are struggling to pay skyrocketing rents,” Ann Olivia, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a statement.
The sharpest rise in homelessness was among people in families with children—this measure rose by 15.5 percent. Next was homelessness among unaccompanied youths, which increased by 15.3 percent.
Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who is running for the U.S. Senate, blamed President Joe Biden’s policies for fueling homelessness.
Our society is absolutely teeming with predators, crime rates are soaring all over the nation, millions of Americans are afraid to leave their own homes, and hordes of drug addicts are literally pooping in the middle of our streets whenever they feel like it.
Michael Snyder
Dec 4, 2023
Unlike so many people around the world, those of us who live in the United States were fortunate enough to grow up in a relatively civilized society. Unfortunately, we have turned our backs on the values that our forefathers handed down to us, and so now we are starting to find out what is beneath the thin veneer of civilization that we have all been taking for granted all these years. Our society is absolutely teeming with predators, crime rates are soaring all over the nation, millions of Americans are afraid to leave their own homes, and hordes of drug addicts are literally pooping in the middle of our streets whenever they feel like it.
In some of our largest cities, highly organized groups of criminals are constantly invading homes. Of course, when these thieves encounter a homeowner that is actually armed it can result in a deadly confrontation…
A homeowner shot and killed a home invasion suspect in Los Angeles early Saturday morning while a grandmother and toddler were in the house in the fifth such crime reported in the area in the space of 10 days.
Officers were called to a home in the Granada Hills section of the San Fernando Valley, north of Beverly Hills, around 5am on Saturday after someone reported a ‘hot prowl’ – a burglary where the homeowner is present.
‘The officers’ preliminary investigation determined that approximately three to four armed males in their 20s entered the home with the intent to burglarize the location,’ according to LAPD officials.
Once upon a time, Los Angeles was such a beautiful city.
But now it is covered from one end to the other in filth, trash and drug paraphernalia.
Of course, much of this degradation is being fueled by drug addiction.
We are in the midst of the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our country, and many addicts have made theft a lifestyle in order to fund their addictions.
In addition to robbing homes, these addicts are constantly smashing into vehicles, and they are one of the biggest reasons why retail theft has soared to unprecedented heights…
New York City has led the US with the sharpest increase in the number of reported shoplifting incidents since before the pandemic, according to a study.
The Big Apple saw a 64% increase in reported incidents of retail theft during the four-year period between mid-2019 and June of this year, while Los Angeles experienced a 61% surge in the same metric, according to the Council on Criminal Justice.
This is not what a civilized society looks like.
In Bellevue, Washington, so many vehicles are being stolen that the police are literally giving away steering wheel locks in a desperate attempt to bring auto theft down…
The Bellevue Police Department is giving away steering wheel locks Sunday, December 3 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Bellevue Crossroads Substation.
“The effort comes as auto thefts have been on the rise in Bellevue and across the region,” said BPD.
BPD said Bellevue has had a 29% increase in car thefts in 2023 through October.
BPD has seen a 762% and 730% increase in theft of Kias and Hyundais.
I honestly do not understand why people still want to live in these big cities.
According to one recent survey, 40 percent of Americans are now “afraid to walk alone at night near their home”.
Millions of Americans live in a constant state of fear because our nation is absolutely teeming with predators and drug addicts.
During his recent debate with Gavin Newsom, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pulled out the infamous “poop map” that shows reports of human feces on the streets of San Francisco…
During Thursday night’s debate between Gavin Newsom (D) and Ron DeSantis (R), the Florida governor busted out the San Francisco ‘poop map’ created by OpenTheBooks.
The map, created in 2019, plotted nearly 120,000 case reports of human feces on the streets of San Francisco between 2011 and 2019 using the city’s open records portal and 311 call information posted by city officials.
Well, now that map has been updated, and despite everything officials have tried reports of human feces in the streets have been coming in faster than ever…
It’s been updated…
According to Adam Andrzejwski of OpenTheBooks, here it is in all it’s brown glory – only now it’s got an additional 125,506 cases in just three years – more than double the amount reported in the initial eight-year period.
This is our country now.
We live in a country where hordes of mindless drug addicts pull down their pants and defecate in the streets whenever they feel like it.
And thanks to the open border policies of our leaders in Washington, more drug dealers and more drug addicts are pouring across our borders with each passing day.
It is being reported that the foreign-born population in the U.S. has now reached a whopping 49.5 million people…
The nation’s foreign-born population has hit an unprecedented 49.5 million, the largest ever recorded in American history, under President Joe Biden.
Analysis by Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) revealed that in October the foreign-born population reached almost 50 million, increasing by 4.5 million foreign-born residents since Biden took office in January 2021.
How do you think the drug cartels in Mexico make so much money?
They make millions upon millions of dollars by selling drugs to us.
And our leaders refuse to secure our borders year after year.
It is infuriating.
We are literally committing national suicide, and the stage is set for an epic eruption of societal unrest in our major cities which will be so bad that it shock the entire planet.
Decades of incredibly bad decisions have brought us to this point, but even at this late hour, our leaders continue to make some of the stupidest decisions imaginable.
Average rent for one-bedroom in Canada reached $1,906 in October; in Vancouver it was $2,872
More than 600,000 people were at least temporarily unhoused in the EU state last year, a report has said
A sharp rise in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Germany has contributed to a more than 50% rise in homelessness in the EU state in the past 12 months, according to a report by an emergency housing assistance organization.
https://www.rt.com/news/586990-germany-homelessnes-rise-refugees/
11/11/23
Tents belonging to the homeless are seen in the government quarter of the city during the snowstorm on January 11, 2017, in Berlin, Germany © Getty Images / Maja Hitij/Getty Images
A sharp rise in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Germany has contributed to a more than 50% rise in homelessness in the EU state in the past 12 months, according to a report by an emergency housing assistance organization.
Increased rents, a lack of social housing and soaring costs of living have limited accommodation options for about one million refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine, The Times newspaper reported, citing new data from the Federal Association for Aid to the Homeless (Bag W). Additionally, about 148,000 non-Ukrainians applied for asylum in the EU state in 2022, further compounding the country’s scarcity of available housing.
“Inflation, elevated costs and rising rents are bearing down heavily on households in Germany with weak incomes,” Bag W’s director Werena Rosenke told The Times. The most vulnerable, Rosenke added, are “low-income single-person households, single parents and couples with many children.”
Last year, about 607,000 people were at least temporarily homeless in Germany, Bag W said, compared to 383,000 in 2021. This was the highest count since 2018, with asylum seekers making up 411,000 of the figure (71%). While the homeless statistics were not broken down by nationality, January data from the country’s Federal Statistics Office said that Ukrainian nationals accounted for just under a third of the homeless population.
EU state seeks to slash €1.5 billion Ukrainian housing bill
About 50,000 of Germany’s homeless were forced to sleep on the streets, according to Bag W’s analysis. The rest were able to find temporary accommodation, such as shelters or at the residences of friends or acquaintances.
Last weekend, a poll conducted by Der Spiegel concluded that about 40% of 125 local authorities in the ‘safe haven towns’ alliance –sometimes known as ‘Sanctuary Cities’– are close to reaching their immigrant-reception limits. Another survey, this one by Hildesheim University, found that about 40% of the 600 districts polled were “overwhelmed” or “in emergency mode.”
Bag W’s report also noted that a large drop in the social housing sector has exacerbated Germany’s homelessness problems, particularly as the amount of publicly-funded accommodation has halved to just over one million in the past two decades.
“The lack of affordable accommodation remains the main cause for the housing shortage in Germany,” Rosenke said. “For this reason, German and non-German homeless people alike cannot be adequately provided with accommodation that is suited to their needs.”
The number of people expected to seek asylum in Germany in 2023 is expected to pass 300,000, The Times said.
A shortage of affordable housing, the opioid crisis and the lingering effects of the pandemic have contributed to a rise in visible homelessness. Ten Montrealers share their stories.
https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/unhoused
Sept 25, 2023
Story and photos by Verity StevensonSep. 25, 2023
At the camp where Conrad has spent the last three years of his life, everything has its place. A fuzzy red bath mat, a towel and a couple of sweaters hang on a clothesline outside his tent. A barbecue sits on top of some bookshelves. The earth has been swept with a broom and a small drainage ditch draws a circle around the tent.
“It’s a lot of work,” he says. He tries to keep the tent warm with an insulated tarp. “I’ve got my heater, my Coleman stove. It’s not hot but at least, with the tarp, the cold doesn’t really get in.”
Conrad, 61, wants to apply for subsidized housing and an outreach worker who visits him on this day in early September assures him he’ll get it. Conrad smiles and thanks the man, but he’s skeptical. “Five different people like you have told me, ‘You won’t spend the winter there!’ But I’m still here.”
The number of unhoused people in Quebec nearly doubled from 2018 to 2022, according to a provincial survey released earlier this month.
The survey found that about 10,000 people in the province did not have a home, a 44 per cent increase from the previous survey four years ago. More than half of them are in Montreal, though the survey showed a growing proportion of unhoused people are now spread out across the province.
The issue isn’t in Quebec alone. Cities across Canada have seen increases in homelessness. The rising cost of living, a shortage of affordable housing, the opioid crisis and the lingering effects of the pandemic have all contributed, experts say.
“There’s certainly more visible homelessness and what we’re seeing right now in the ecosystem is more complex situations,” says Sam Watts, the director of Welcome Hall Mission, an organization that serves people experiencing homelessness in Montreal.
CBC Montreal interviewed people in unhoused situations over a week this month in Montreal. These are their stories.
Yves Saintil
In March 2020, Yves Saintil’s cleaning business was thriving. He had four employees and was juggling nearly 20 clients, most of them bars.
“I was about to buy my own house. I was about to buy a car for two of my kids,” Saintil, 44, says. “Everything was going great.”
He remembers getting the first notifications on his cellphone that bars and restaurants were closing: “I was like, ‘What the f— am I going to do now?’ Sorry.”
Saintil let his employees go and, by the time the second shutdown came, Saintil was burning through his savings. He lost the apartment he and his girlfriend had recently moved into in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. She went to stay with her parents and Saintil (whose mother died years ago and whose father lives in Florida) opted to sleep on friends’ couches until he figured out a solution.
In the meantime, rents were getting higher and the cost of living was going up. Months passed. He spent some nights outside, though he says that only happened a couple times. During the day, he’d go to Café Mission — a day shelter operated by the Old Brewery Mission shelter.
Last winter, he finally asked if the mission had a place for him to live 24/7. Saintil now sleeps in a dorm with two dozen other men. He says it’s not always peaceful but he’s grateful to have a place to stay while he figures out his next steps. Asking for help has been difficult. The shelter’s workers barely have time to chat or take their own breaks.
“I don’t like asking people to help me search for jobs because I know I’m capable,” he says.
Some former clients have even reached out, asking if he’d come back to clean for them, but he’s worried they’ll find out about his living situation.
“Can I tell somebody that I’m living here?”
Saintil says this is first time he’s made his story public. “Not everybody understands it and that’s a big issue in our society.”
Caroline
Caroline has been at the Old Brewery Mission’s women’s shelter for a few weeks and she’s hoping it won’t be for much longer. When Covid hit, she lost her communications job at an events management company. Faced with the stress of losing her job, the isolation wrought by the pandemic and an injury from a bike accident that prevented her from doing her usual marathon training, Caroline relapsed on an alcohol addiction she thought she’d left in the past.
“Being alone during Covid was horrible,” she says, sitting in a small room at the brightly-painted shelter. CBC has agreed not to use Caroline’s last name because she fears speaking publicly about her situation could affect her future employment. After the relapse, she returned home to France to undergo free public addictions therapy and take care of her ailing father.
But in June of this year, it was time to return to Quebec, “mon pays de coeur” — the country that stole her heart. Plus, she wanted to get her permanent residency after years of wading through bureaucracy to get it. When she got back, Caroline says, “everything had changed in a year and a half. The cost of life, the difficulty of finding a job, all of it.”
She began to have conflicts with her roommate, relapsed again and was hospitalized. Caroline says that’s when she realized she needed to be somewhere with supervision. She spent two days making 40 calls a day until she found a bed at the Old Brewery Mission.
“I noticed there were a lot more shelters for men than for women,” Caroline says. “I feel really lucky to be here until I find myself again, stabilize.”
The week after we spoke, she attended a five-day employment workshop.
Azeez, Joseph and Kazeem
Azeez, Joseph and Kazeem arrived at the Montreal airport from Nigeria within weeks of each other this summer. They are among a growing number of asylum seekers coming to Canada by air instead of by foot, since the unofficial border crossing known as Roxham Road was closed after changes to the Canada-U.S. Safe-Third Country Agreement. Dozens of people still find their way to Canadian airports every day.
Their welcome was far different from what they’d anticipated, given Canada’s reputation for housing asylum seekers upon arrival. CBC has agreed not to use the men’s last names as all three say they faced threats in Nigeria.
Joseph says he spent 47 days sleeping outside and in the city’s Metro network.
“I didn’t have any money on me. So I have to beg to eat,” Joseph says.
Azeez slept outside a church downtown for two weeks, heading into a nearby Metro station when the cool night air or rain became unbearable.
“Talking about it is bringing it to my head and it’s making me feel—,” Azeez says, putting his palm to his forehead. “It’s been hell staying outside. It’s really been hell.”
Kazeem heard early on about the YMCA on the western edge of downtown Montreal that houses asylum seekers, but when he got there soon after his flight, he was told the shelter was full. He slept on benches at the park across the street for five nights. All three men say they would often try to approach Black people on the street on the off chance they were Nigerian, too, or knew where they could go.
In Kazeem’s case, the effort paid off. He encountered a Nigerian man who is a nurse and speaks his native Yoruba. The man brought him food and a jacket, and referred him to Siari, a group offering language and administrative help to refugees.
Siari then connected Kazeem to the Welcome Hall Mission, which has set up a separate dorm for asylum seekers, where the three men have been staying.
The dorm only has nine beds, so some asylum seekers will spend time in the regular shelter, says Fequiere Desir, who runs the mission’s building near Griffintown. The mission wants to avoid newly arrived refugees from falling into drugs and becoming unhoused long term, Desir says.
Conrad and Geneviève
images expand
To Conrad, the next best thing to an apartment is his little plot of claimed land bordering a bike path and some train tracks that cut through the city. Conrad has two neighbours, one man in his 60s and another in his 70s. All three live in tents.
They’ve tried to keep others from setting up camp in the same spot, doing their best to avoid the fate of 224 encampments already dismantled by the City of Montreal this year. CBC also agreed not to publish Conrad and Geneviève’s last names due to the precariousness of their living situations.
Conrad worries a new encampment nearby, where people do drugs and things can get unruly, will attract the attention of police. He and his camp mates allow guests from time to time, like his friend Geneviève. Conrad hosts group dinners, too, cooking up a storm on the grill. He buys his food from grocery stores with the money he makes collecting cans.
“I take care of everybody. People who are on the streets, they’re like me so I help them.” He prefers braving the elements, even the Quebec winters, to staying in a shelter, where nights can be restless and rowdy. Before pitching his tent here, Conrad stayed in a shelter near Mont-Royal Metro station. During the pandemic, the place got busy and he’d already been there a while, so he opted to leave.
Conrad says he’s been homeless for five or six years. He moved out of an apartment his stepmother had been helping him pay for when her payments stopped coming and he didn’t want to ask anymore. “I said, ‘I don’t need you guys. No problem: tent, camping, sleeping bag. I don’t mind.’”
He adds: “I like being alone. I’m a rebel.”
Continue:
Canada has provided more than 8.9 billion Canadian dollars ($6.6 billion) since January 2022, in direct financial aid and military equipment, according to the office.
Meanwhile, we are experiencing an exceptional housing crisis where seniors, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the poor are ending up in tent cities and RV caravans. Our elitist leaders are out of touch.
Lou
FRIDAY, SEP 22, 2023
After leaving Washington, President Zelensky is in Canada, where entering the House of Commons alongside PM Justin Trudeau he was greeted to loud cheers of “Slava Ukraini”.
Trudeau said this marked a “pivotal moment in history” and said of Zelensky there’s “no better inspiration”. Amid these flowery displays of admiration, Trudeau on Friday announced C$650 million more in military aid to Ukraine, set for a three-year period.
Trudeau also informed parliament, “We are providing funding to support mental health care in Ukraine,” after which the assembly erupted in applause.
He then went after Putin, who he said has broken international norms which “protect our freedom”. He added that “Putin governs with violence and oppression,” but than Ukraine is mounting a fierce defense. “For a lasting peace we must oppose Putin,” he added.
“We are all seeing a rise in disinformation, some state sponsored, some politically motivated that twists facts and refuses evidence and science. In this era of uncertainty, rules are what will protect us,” Trudeau said.
Importantly, the Canadian leader then unveiled the “longer term multi-year commitment” to the value of 650m Canadian dollars ($482m), to included 50 armored vehicles.
He further said Canada’s military is committed to training F-16 pilots and plane technicians, fresh on the heels of the US recently announcing its own program at American bases. According to the itinerary of the rest of Zelensky’s trip:
After addressing Parliament, Trudeau and Zelensky “will then travel to Toronto, where they will meet with Canadian business leaders to strengthen private sector investment in Ukraine’s future.” Canada has provided more than 8.9 billion Canadian dollars ($6.6 billion) since January 2022, in direct financial aid and military equipment, according to the office.
https://x.com/globeandmail/status/1705280743545425943?s=20
Even though last year (Dec. 2022), Zelensky was able to address the US Congress in a major televised speech, he wasn’t given that opportunity this year, at a moment GOP resisters have voiced disapproval for issuing more unlimited Ukraine aid. But Zelensky was given the opportunity Friday to address Canadian lawmakers on Friday in a live televised event, so at least there’s that as a consolation… from Kiev’s perspective.
Since 2019, the percentage of people aged 55 and over living in homeless shelters has risen from 16.5 percent to 19.8 percent.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/15/jnnx-s15.html
The US is involved in all the wars on the planet and starts most of them. Meanwhile, it cannot take care of its own children. Cruel savage regime of dunces.
Lou
Child poverty in the US doubled in 2022 with the ending of expanded benefits
Alex Findijs
Sept 14, 2023
Child poverty in the United States more than doubled during 2022, according to new data from the Census Bureau. Child poverty increased from 5.1 percent of children in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022, or about 9 million children. At the same time, overall poverty increased by 4.6 percent to 12.4 percent, the first increase in the overall Supplemental Poverty Measure since 2010.
This sudden jump in child poverty was caused by the expiration of expanded benefits through the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which gave families up to $3,600 per child in monthly installments, as well as the elimination of expanded unemployment insurance and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments. Altogether, these programs, launched in response to the stay-at-home orders that were issued at the onset of the COVID pandemic, helped bring down child poverty from a rate of 12.6 percent in 2019.
The doubling of poverty is the direct result of a deal cut between President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans last year on a federal budget which protected massive military spending while slashing the limited social program expansions implemented at the outset of the pandemic.
On top of the end of these benefits, there has been a mass unwinding of Medicaid programs across the country, with millions of people kicked off of their Medicaid health insurance after the ending of the official COVID-19 Public Health Emergency by Biden earlier this year.
In March 2020 a continuous enrollment provision was created for Medicaid that prevented states from disenrolling Medicaid recipients. This provision ended on March 31, 2023, and states will continue to review the eligibility of the 94 million people who were enrolled in Medicaid coverage as of March.
At least 6.4 million people enrolled in Medicaid have been disenrolled as of September 13 of this year, about 36 percent of all people who attempted to renew their coverage. States run by Republican-controlled legislatures lead this trend, with Texas disenrolling nearly 900,000 people and Florida disenrolling 430,000.
Only 15 states reported data with breakdowns by age, but the trends from these states alone show a massive impact on children. Of those disenrolled, children made up 42 percent across the 15 states, totalling 1,278,000. In Texas, the share of children skyrocketed to 81 percent, while in Kansas, Idaho and Missouri the figure was 50 percent or greater.
For people who were able to re-enroll in Medicaid, only 55 percent were re-enrolled through an “ex parte” process by the state administration on behalf of the participant. The other 45 percent had to renew their coverage by themselves through a renewal form.
Compounding the evisceration of pandemic era benefits overseen by the Democratic Biden administration is a significant decline in household income as the cost of living continues to soar.
According to the Census, real median household income in the US fell by 2.3 percent from $76,330 to $74,580 in 2022, the largest decline since 2008. Since 2019, real median household income has fallen a total of 4.7 percent. Meanwhile, the cost of living rose by 7.8 percent between 2021 and 2022, the largest increase since 1980.
The data also showed that the percentage of women working full-time rose to 65.6 percent in 2022, the largest figure ever recorded, while the percentage of men who hold full-time jobs stood at 74.8 percent, potentially reflecting a rise in the number of families where both parents work (48.9 percent in 2022 compared to 46.8 percent in 2021).
As the cost of living continues to rise and real wages are eroded, more and more people face destitution and poverty. Among those suffering from the decline in living standards are an increasingly large number of aging Baby Boomers—the generation born between 1946 and 1964—who are facing homelessness.
Since 2019, the percentage of people aged 55 and over living in homeless shelters has risen from 16.5 percent to 19.8 percent. This rapid rise in homelessness for older people has been described as a “silver tsunami,” as more people near retirement age without enough savings to pay their expenses. A typical cause of homelessness for older people is the death of a spouse or a medical emergency.
The average Social Security payment is just $1,781.63 a month, while the average cost of rent is $2,038 a month. Many Baby Boomers do not have adequate pensions after decades of pension fund mismanagement and concessions given to employers by the pro-corporate union bureaucracies.
The stage has been set for a societal meltdown of epic proportions
We Have A Real Life Nightmare On Our Hands (substack.com)
SEP 11, 2023
The stage has been set for a societal meltdown of epic proportions. When the United States went through the Great Depression of the 1930s, conditions were extremely rough, but our country was able to successfully weather the storm thanks to the relatively high character of the American people. Unfortunately, several generations later we are simply not made of the same stuff. Just about every form of evil that you can possibly imagine is absolutely exploding in our society today, and there is chaos in major cities from coast to coast. If things are this bad now, while economic conditions are still at least somewhat stable, what is going to happen when economic conditions get exceedingly harsh in this country?
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Already, crime is totally out of control in communities all over the nation. According to the Washington Post, homicides are up 29 percent in Washington D.C. so far this year, and robberies are up 67 percent…
The spike in felonies — homicides and robberies are up 29 and 67 percent from the same time period last year, police statistics show — is not the only data that is causing alarm. The number of juveniles arrested for carjacking has increased slightly since last year, with 41 of the 64 charged between the ages of 12 and 15. As of Aug. 31, a total of 81 minors had been shot in the city this year, compared with 66 over the same span last year and 37 in 2021.
While a preponderance of violence occurs where it often has — in poor neighborhoods on D.C.’s eastern edge — statistics show that the geography of crime has become more diffuse, with prosperous areas less immune than before.
Those are definitely very alarming numbers, but Washington D.C. is far from alone.
A crime wave has been steadily percolating all over America, and even young women are eagerly participating in the violence…
The shocking moment three women beat an Asian man with a metal pipe before taking off with his car has been caught on camera.
Danxin Shi, a rideshare driver, is no longer able to work after his vehicle was stolen by the gang about 5:30pm on Tuesday evening in crime-ridden, Dem-led Chicago.
Footage shows the moment the Chinatown resident, who lives West 22nd Place, parking his vehicle and walking along the street when he is struck with a weapon and shoved to the ground – where he is beaten repeatedly.
This makes me so sad.
Young women are not supposed to act like this.
But now we live in a society where all of the old rules have been thrown out.
In this environment, literally anything goes. Theft is going to cost U.S. retailers more than 100 billion dollars this year alone, and “flash robberies” that are conducted by mobs of young people have become a daily occurrence…
A group of ‘flash rob’ thieves stormed into a Los Angeles Macy’s department store at Northridge Mall on Sunday morning as they filled bags with $20,000 worth of perfume.
Cellphone video of the crime showed several men dressed in dark hoodies and blue medical face masks loading up bags of what appeared to be cologne and perfume merchandise.
Meanwhile, the worst drug crisis in the entire history of the United States just continues to escalate.
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Today, the heart of the city of Benjamin Franklin looks like something you would expect to see in a third-world country…
Disturbing new video from Philadelphia shows addicts on the street in a trance like state, passed out on the sidewalk in the city’s multiple homeless encampments.
In the Kensington neighborhood, the footage shows fires burning on trash littered sidewalks as groups of people set up camp.
Drug users are seen hunched over with no control of their limbs, while others are sprawled across the garbage covered streets.
Large groups have taken over the sidewalks, turning them into homeless encampments where many people live in their own filth.
But this isn’t just happening in our large metropolitan areas.
According to Zero Hedge, authorities are having to deal with “third-world country stuff” in Casper, Wyoming…
A city in Wyoming has been overwhelmed with a growing number of homeless people, who have damaged a local hotel that would require millions of dollars to fix and left hundreds of pounds of human feces in the downtown area, according to its mayor.
Casper Mayor Bruce Knell, in an interview with local news media Cowboy State Daily published on Aug. 31, said the city’s homeless population had topped about 200 people, creating “a mess” as they roam the city’s parks and streets.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s third-world country stuff happening in Casper, Wyoming,” Mr. Knell said.
“They destroyed everything,” he added. “It’s horrible.”
With each passing day, conditions in this nation get even worse.
So what is going to happen when the economy finally tanks and people start getting really desperate?
You might want to start thinking about that because very hard times are clearly on the horizon.
When the economy slows down, there is less demand for rail transportation, and at this point, total combined U.S. rail traffic has fallen on a year-over-year basis for three months in a row…
“August was the third straight month in which total year-over-year U.S. rail carloads have fallen,” Association of American Railroads (AAR) Senior Vice President John T. Gray reported on Sept. 6. Total combined U.S. traffic for the first 35 weeks of 2023 was 16,173,208 carloads and intermodal units, a decrease of 4.9% compared to last year.
Even more troubling, credit card delinquencies and auto loan delinquencies have both hit levels that we haven’t seen in more than a decade…
This year, credit card delinquencies have hit 3.8%, while 3.6% have defaulted on their car loans, according to credit agency Equifax.
Both figures are the highest in more than 10 years.
“The increase in delinquencies and defaults is symptomatic of the tough decisions that these households are having to make right now — whether to pay their credit card bills, their rent or buy groceries,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told the Washington Post.
We had a very sharp recession during the first two quarters of 2020, and then we had another relatively mild recession during the first two quarters of 2022.
Now it appears that a new downturn has begun, and it promises to be very painful.
But our population is clearly not prepared to handle what is ahead of us.
When economic conditions get extremely harsh, I expect that we will see a massive national temper tantrum, and it won’t be pretty.
Are you and your family prepared for that?
I hope so because the months and years in front of us are going to be full of surprises.
New Republic: A Lesson From The Great Depression : NPR
During the Great Depression houses were 3x the average salary. Today it’s 8x.
Cars were 46% of the yearly salary. Today it’s 85%.
Rent only took 16% of the annual salary. Today it’s 42%
Some ask whether we are already in an unrecognized silent recession (or worse) that is being hidden by massaged data from the govt.
https://x.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1701337655886102874?s=20
Homelessness. Addiction. Surging violent crime. All in one of Western Civilization’s most prosperous societies. But how did we get here? And who’s to blame? Here’s what you need to know
Shanghai, China
Philadelphia, USA
Moscow, Russia
San Francisco, USA
We are in far more trouble than most people realize. In recent months, our rapidly growing economic problems have gotten a lot of attention, and without a doubt, our economy is heading into really hard times. The greatest debt bubble in the history of the world has started to implode, and the end of this “mega-cycle” is going to cause an immense amount of pain. But if every other element of our society was strong, we could survive that. It may surprise a lot of you to hear me say that, but it is true. If all that we were facing was an economic collapse, it would cause an enormous amount of turmoil in this country but we would make it through.
Unfortunately, we are not just facing an economic collapse.
I like to call what we are facing “the everything collapse”, because virtually every element of our society is steadily breaking down right in front of our eyes.
So once our economic and financial systems implode, it won’t just be a matter of patching them up and returning to “normal”, because “normal” doesn’t exist anymore.
Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. The president of Giant Food just admitted to the Washington Post that theft at his stores is completely out of control…
Giant Food president Ira Kress said that theft and violence have risen significantly over the past several years.
“To say [theft has] risen tenfold in the last five years would not be an understatement,” Kress noted, according to the Washington Post, which also reported that the man said that violence has “increased exponentially.”
Giant has more than 160 locations, with stores located in Maryland; Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Delaware, according to its website.
When I was much younger, I would often shop at Giant Food.
In those days, I never witnessed a single shoplifting incident.
But now systematic looting is happening on an industrial scale all over the nation. In fact, I recently wrote an entire article about the fact that theft is now costing U.S. retailers about 100 billion dollars a year.
Meanwhile, other forms of crime are spiking as well. Sadly, violent crimes are increasingly being committed by kids that are extremely young…
As soon as he confronted the masked youth who seemed to be trying to rob him with a gun last week on Irving Street in Northwest Washington, Ryan Cummins knew the assailant was young.
“When I shoved him, he weighed nothing,” Cummins said in an interview…
Police said the youth they arrested on Saturday in Cummins’s case and two nearby robberies is even younger: 11. He is among the youngest arrested in the District this year in an armed robbery…
Did you catch that last part?
That kid was “among the youngest” arrested for armed robbery this year.
So how old was the youngest?
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On the west coast, conditions are even worse.
The following is how one San Francisco resident named Seema Gokhale recently described what living in the heart of the city is like these days…
Speaking with Fox News Digital, Seema Gokhale who lives near the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood expressed, “It really feels post-apocalyptic. Something needs to be done. We have to make this a livable place. I describe it as a hellhole right now. If I wasn’t a homeowner and hadn’t grown up in the area and there wasn’t a strong job market in the area, I would leave.”
“I walk by people regularly and it feels horrible,” she said as drug addicts have “needle tracks all over their arms and legs and toes. I see people with rotting limbs because they’re living on the streets.”
“It honestly feels like I’m in a place that’s been in a zombie apocalypse. It’s like a dystopia. It really feels like a dystopian reality right now where I see boarded-up storefronts. I see people defecating on the streets,” Gokhale detailed.
Sadly, this is the direction that the entire country is going.
Up in Portland, voters are completely and totally fed up with the rampant social decay that has been steadily growing all around them…
Months of stepping past sidewalk homeless camps and open-air drug markets have taken their toll on residents of Portland, Oregon.
Voters there have delivered a stunning rebuke to officials of the Democrat-run hipster city, with three quarters calling homelessness ‘an out-of-control disaster.’
The survey, commissioned by People for Portland, a conservative advocacy group, found that more than two thirds of voters wanted to clear the streets by forcing drug addicts into rehab.
But no matter what our politicians do, the social decay gets worse with each passing year.
And that is because our entire culture has been completely transformed. According to one recent survey, only 16 percent of Americans now attend church at least once per week…
The number of Americans who attend church once a week fell from 19 percent in 2019 to 16 percent last year, says the survey of some 6,600 adults across all 50 states.
This means that 84 percent of us do not attend church at least once per week at this point.
If we could go back and tell Americans from 100 years ago this, they would be absolutely floored.
Of course, the truth is that we are a completely different country than we were 100 years ago.
Many of us like to think that we are superior to every generation that has come before us, but the reality of the matter is that just about every aspect of our society is rapidly getting worse.
If we are having this much difficulty keeping order now, what are things going to look like once our economic and financial systems have fully imploded and tens of millions of Americans are deeply suffering?
You might want to think about that, because “the everything collapse” is only going to pick up steam in the weeks and months ahead…
https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/the-suffering-is-off-the-charts
Michael Snyder
May 31, 2023
Things have taken a turn for the worse. In recent months, economic activity has been dropping all over the nation, and that decline appears to be accelerating. We just learned that gross domestic income has now fallen for two quarters in a row, and the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has now been plummeting for 13 consecutive months. Unfortunately, when economic conditions deteriorate it is the people at the low end of the economic pyramid that get hit the hardest.
Thanks to our rapidly rising cost of living, we are seeing a dramatic explosion in the number of “working homeless” that are living out of their vehicles on a daily basis even though they are currently employed.
In particular, the RV “communities” that are springing up from coast to coast are starting to get quite a bit of attention…
The owner of a party bus company, Rikers Island prison guards and an Amazon worker are just some of the eclectic bunch who have formed a community of ‘working homeless’ people living out of RVs in the Astoria section of Queens, New York.
Similar communities have formed across the US from New England to California where people have chosen a nomadic lifestyle amid a national cost of living crisis.
Most of these people get up and go to work in the morning.
In fact, the Daily Mail spoke to one man that actually “works for a New York City hospital”…
Resident Paul Reevers described himself as ‘working homeless.’ He said that he has a job but the rent went up too high and he could not longer to afford a an apartment.
Reevers, who works for a New York City hospital, said that he took out a loan and bought his RV.
If you work at a hospital, you should be able to afford a place to live.
But this is our country now.
We are absolutely destroying the middle class, and as a result we now have a massive homelessness crisis on our hands…
Insider Monkey, a finance website, revealed a list of the top 30 cities worldwide with the highest homeless population. Notably, a handful of the US cities on the list are governed by progressive leadership, which may not surprise readers. While it is evident that some unfortunate individuals are facing homelessness, a trend exacerbated by recent inflationary pressures and a drug addiction crisis, some liberal policies have enabled others to sustain their nomadic lifestyles with taxpayer funds.
Insider Monkey found New York City is number 5 on the list, with a homeless population of about 69,000. Next is Chicago, at number 7 with 65,611. Washington, DC, is number 8 with 57,416, Los Angeles number 13 with 41,980, and San Fransisco number 14 with 38,000.
No matter what you or I are facing right now, at least we aren’t sleeping in the streets.
So we should count our blessings.
Hunger is also rapidly growing all over America. Right now, record numbers of people are coming for help at one food bank in the Seattle area…
Since March, the food bank has broken its record three times for the highest number of people served in a day since 2019, when the organization started allowing three visits a month. More and more, people like Jones who haven’t been to the food bank in years, are showing up, Christian said.
“That’s hard on them; they felt they had moved above the poverty line, got some stability but, ‘Here it is 2023 and here I am back in the food line asking strangers for help,’” Christian said.
And in Boston, the line for food on one recent weekend morning “stretched the length of two football fields”…
The line outside Boston’s American Red Cross Food Pantry on a recent Saturday morning stretched the length of two football fields.
The number of people filing into the red-brick industrial-zone warehouse on some days now exceeds the worst periods of the pandemic economic crisis and in April it had the second highest monthly traffic since it opened in 1982, according to David Andre, the director.
We are witnessing so much suffering all over the country right now.
And there are so many more people that are living right on the edge of disaster.
According to one recent survey, approximately 38.5 percent of U.S. adults experienced “some form of difficulty in covering expenses between April 26 and May 8”…
A large swath of American consumers are facing financial hardship as they grapple with elevated living costs, record-high credit card use, and two years of negative real wage growth. This perfect storm could decimate financially fragile households in the next downturn.
As many as 89.1 million American adults (or about 38.5%) were found to experience some form of difficulty in covering expenses between April 26 and May 8, according to Bloomberg, citing new data from the Household Pulse Survey. This is up from 34.4% in 2022 and 26.7% during the same period in 2021.
Of course, this is just the beginning.
As I keep warning my readers, things will eventually get much worse.
One thing to watch for this week is whether or not the debt ceiling deal is able to get through Congress.
Kevin McCarthy is confident that he has the votes that he needs to get the deal through the House, but some conservative Republicans are pledging to do all they can to stop it…
Elsewhere within his party, Rep. Chip Roy from Texas called the agreement a ‘turd-sandwich’ and said he had spoken to a number of his colleagues who were not intending to vote on the agreement.
Rep. Ralph Norman, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus from South Carolina, called the deal ‘insanity’ and said he was ‘not gonna vote to bankrupt our country’.
If the debt ceiling deal is defeated, I will be quite impressed.
But it would also throw our economy into a tremendous amount of short-term chaos.
It will be very interesting to watch and see what happens.
In any event, whatever happens in Washington is not going to fundamentally alter our long-term trajectory, and that means that much more suffering is coming in the days ahead.