Posted on 11/25/2017 11:18:48 AM PST by SeekAndFind
If the economy is doing just fine, then why is homelessness at levels not seen “since the Great Depression” in major cities all over the country? If the U.S. economy was actually in good shape, we would expect that the number of people that are homeless would be going down or at least stabilizing. Instead, we have a growing national crisis on our hands. In fact, within the past two years “at least 10 cities or municipal regions in California, Oregon and Washington” have declared a state of emergency because the number of homeless is growing so rapidly.
Things are particularly bad in southern California, and this year the Midnight Mission will literally be feeding a small army of people that have nowhere to sleep at night…
Thanksgiving meals will be served to thousands of homeless and near-homeless individuals today on Skid Row and in Pasadena and Canoga Park amid calls for donations and volunteers for the rest of the year.
The Midnight Mission will serve Thanksgiving brunch to nearly 2,500 homeless and near-homeless men, women and children, according to Georgia Berkovich, its director of public affairs.
Overall, the Midnight Mission serves more than a million meals a year, and Berkovich says that homelessness hasn’t been this bad in southern California “since the Great Depression”…
Berkovich said the group has been serving nearly 1 million meals a year each year since 2013.
“We haven’t seen numbers like this since the Great Depression,” she said.
And of course the official numbers confirm what Berkovich is claiming. According to an article published earlier this year, the number of homeless people living in Los Angeles County has never been higher…
The number of homeless people in Los Angeles has jumped to a new record, as city officials grapple with a humanitarian crisis of proportions remarkable for a modern American metropolis.
Municipal leaders said that a recent count over several nights found 55,188 homeless people living in a survey region comprising most of Los Angeles County, up more than 25% from last year.
If the California economy is truly doing well, then why is this happening?
We see the same thing happening when we look at the east coast. Just check out these numbers from New York City…
In recent years the number of homeless people has grown. Whereas rents increased by 18% between 2005 and 2015, incomes rose by 5%. When Rudy Giuliani entered City Hall in 1994, 24,000 people lived in shelters. About 31,000 lived in them when Mike Bloomberg became mayor in 2002. When Bill de Blasio entered City Hall in 2014, 51,500 did. The number of homeless people now in shelters is around 63,000.
For New York, this is the highest that the homeless population has been since the Great Depression, and city leaders are trying to come up with a solution.
Meanwhile, things are so bad in Seattle that “400 unauthorized tent camps” have popped up…
Housing prices are soaring here thanks to the tech industry, but the boom comes with a consequence: A surge in homelessness marked by 400 unauthorized tent camps in parks, under bridges, on freeway medians and along busy sidewalks. The liberal city is trying to figure out what to do.
Are you noticing a theme?
Homelessness is at epidemic levels all over the U.S., and this crisis is getting worse with each passing day. Some communities are trying to care for their growing homeless populations, but others are simply trying to force them to go somewhere else. They are doing this by essentially making it illegal to be homeless. In some cities it is now a crime to engage in “public camping”, to “block a walkway” or to create any sort of “temporary structure for human habitation”. These laws specifically target the homeless, and they are very cruel.
Many of us tend to picture the homeless as mostly lazy older men that don’t want to work and that instead want to drink or do drugs all day.
But the truth is that women and children make up a significant percentage of the homeless. In fact, the number of homeless children in our country has increased by about 60 percent since the end of the last recession.
And there are thousands upon thousands of military veterans that are homeless. For example, a 34-year-old man named Johnny that served in the Marine Corps recently used his last 20 dollars to buy fuel for a woman that had run out of gas and was stranded along I-95 in Miami…
Pulled over on the side of I-95, McClure, 27, was approached by a homeless man named Johnny. She was apprehensive at first, but Johnny told her to get back into her car and to lock the doors while he walked to get her help. He went to a nearby gas station, used his last $20 fill a can and brought it back to fill up her car.
Grateful, but without a dollar to repay him, McClure promised she would come back with something.
In the weeks since, she’s returned to the spot along I-95 where Johnny stays with cash, snacks and Wawa gift cards. Each time she’s stopped by with her boyfriend, Mark D’Amico, they’ve learned a bit more about Johnny’s story, and become humbled by his gratitude.
Deciding that they wanted to do even more for Johnny, they started a GoFundMe page for him and have since raised approximately $250,000.
So it looks like there is going to be a happy ending to Johnny’s story, but the truth is that more people are falling into homelessness with each passing day.
If things are this bad now, how much worse will they become as the economy really starts slowing down? Already, we have shattered the all-time yearly record for retail store closings, and we still have more than a month to go. The following is from a CNN article entitled “Is This The Last Black Friday?”…
A record number of store closures — 6,735 — have already been announced this year. That’s more than triple the tally for 2016, according to Fung Global Retail and Technology, a retail think tank.
And there have been 620 bankruptcies in the sector so far this year, according to BankruptcyData.com, up 31% from the same period last year. Prominent names such as Toys R Us, Gymboree, Payless Shoes and RadioShack have all filed this year, and Sears Holdings (SHLD), which owns both the iconic Sears and Kmart chains, has warned there is “substantial doubt” it can remain in business.
Sadly, analysts are projecting that the number of store closings could be as high as 9,000 next year.
Yes, there are some areas of the country that are doing well right now, but there are many others that are not.
Let us always remember to have compassion on those that are struggling, because someday we may be the ones that end up needing some help.
Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.
It has, I do admit, taken longer for the “homelessness increasing” scary headlines to resume after Trump’s victory than I expected. I was figuring two-three weeks, but - then again - Hillary’s ABCNNBCBS national presstitute corpse was distracted for 14 months.
“Prominent names such as Toys R Us, Gymboree, Payless Shoes and RadioShack have all filed this year, and Sears Holdings (SHLD), which owns both the iconic Sears and Kmart chains, has warned there is “substantial doubt” it can remain in business.”
These chains have been on life support for years.
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Check your figures WRT growing food!
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THERE WERE NO Homeless People When 0Bozo Was President!
(Where did they come from?)
Exactly.
“I’ve stumbled upon an important datapoint. Homelessness has only been rampant when a republican is President.”
Worse. Under Obama the narrative was that he had cut homelessness in half: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/11/homelessness-obama-trump/508223/ The weird thing is that all of the Obama initiated programs are still in place so why would homelessness suddenly be going up???
And then again...
Homelessness up under Obama: https://www.allenwest.com/2016/04/13/obamas-america-under-his-watch-look-whats-happened-to-schoolchildren/
Or both down and up under Obama: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/the-astonishing-decline-of-homelessness-in-america/279050/
Or who knows? https://spectator.org/34531_obamas-homeless/
End “welfare as Bill Clinton knows it” and homelessness will plummet.
Big Government actively encourages people to lay-about and become gimmedats.
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All of the afore mentioned chains are having difficulty competing with internet shopping.
For Sears, the total fault is the 1968 gun control act, which made department store sale of firearms nearly impossible. Guns were half of their profit margin.
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Take all the money being given to foreign countries as humanitarian aid, all the money being given to ISIS and governments in the Middle East, and all the money being given to the United Nations, and use it to help the poor people of this country.
As America Gives Thanks, Homelessness Continues To Set New Records In Major Cities in America
Lots of lazy ass people around, particularly in large democrat sewers called major cities. Democrats buying votes with welfare and handouts is as old as the hills. It’s what they do.
As Rush has said: “Suddenly when there is a Republican in office, the media suddenly discovers the homeless!”
The outcome of 8 years of socialist policies: the rich got richer, the poor got poorer and the middle class shrunk.
Approaching socialist Utopia:
95% dependent poor population, 5% elite overlords.
I have never figured out why the poor are fooled into thinking socialism will help them.
Democrats are truly the party of the rich elites, and Republicans need to rebrand themselves the party of the poor and middle class. It is just a matter of branding... since in reality they are already so.
Well, they haven't been seen because the media doesn't report it until a Republican President is in office.
Also, maybe they are homeless because cities encourage homelessness by giving them a free place to stay, free needles for their drugs, free meals, free healthcare and most of them are either drug addicts or alcoholics.
No mention of course about how most of them are just plain LAZY!
Provide free food and lodging for all, and they flock to your city. Add a requirement that recipients have a job and the homeless population shrinks, and those who were pushed to get jobs are better off financially and self-esteem-wise.
A friend was telling about paying for the meal of a homeless man. He bought a beer and then gave the rest of the money to the tip jar.
In my city the city council passes taxes on home builders to include “affordable” units. The homeless tax drives up the cost of new housing and the value of existing homes. Thousands of low income people put their names into a lottery and maybe 20 or 30 of them win the lottery to move into an apartment for below market rent.
I think that a lot of the homeless people in Southern California have been encouraged to move here from other parts of the country.
Homelessness has little to do with the economy or job availability. The main causes of homelessness; namely, mental illness, drug and/or alcohol abuse, lack of skills, and last, but not least, laziness, are not amenable to a good economy or the chance for a job. Many homeless, if offered a job, would refuse it.
I have noticed that too. They should just reprint stories from when the Bushes were in office.
I had almost the same experience, minus the tip jar. Walked away embittered but wiser.
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