Can you imagine what it would be like to not have a home? For many Americans, this is not something that they need to imagine because it is a daily reality. Nobody knows for sure how many homeless individuals there are in this country, but recent estimates range from “fewer than 600,000 to more than 1.5 million people”, and everyone agrees that the number has been growing. Even as the wealthy engage in wild bidding wars over the most desirable properties, more impoverished Americans are being forced into the streets with each passing day. There has always been homelessness in America, but here in 2021 it is rapidly becoming a crisis of epic proportions.
Ironically, the state with the worst problem is also the wealthiest state in the nation. At least 160,000 homeless people currently live in California, although many believe that official figure is way too low. The number of homeless in the state had been rising for years, and then the pandemic came along…
Tent-lined streets with belongings scattered everywhere. Infected wounds with bugs living inside. A man who hasn’t showered in over a decade. An 80-year-old woman who can’t feed herself. People who ride the metro rail lines because the trains are a safer place to sleep.
California’s homeless problem has been out of control for decades. Then came COVID-19.
In many California cities, tent cities have seemingly popped up everywhere these days. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the number of tent encampments in San Francisco alone has grown by 70 percent during the pandemic --->READ MORE HERE
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| Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images |
San Francisco is coming undone. In recent years, the city has manifested a series of visible and persistent inequalities, with a spoils-to-the-victor world for its technological elite and a chaotic, brutalized world for its dispossessed.
In the city’s Tenderloin district, men openly hawk drugs on the street corners, desperate addicts are crumpled across the sidewalks, and first responders dart through the chaos to revive overdose victims.
The city has become a web of contradictions. There are thousands of new millionaires and, by the latest estimates, 18,000 people in and out of homelessness.
The headquarters of Uber, Twitter, and Square are blocks away from the open-air drug markets of the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, and SoMa. Wealthy families attending an art opening at the Civic Center have to cross through the tent encampments that line the sidewalks.
Residents, property owners, and small businesses—who pay an enormous premium to live and work in San Francisco—have begun to erupt in frustration. Citizens tell pollsters that homelessness is the city’s most pressing issue and business owners tell pollsters that “conditions on [the] streets have progressively deteriorated.” --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to related stories:
LA residents blast proposed homeless campsites at beaches, parks
The Richest Homeless in the World
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