As I have said in articles before, I have travelled pretty widely; I have been over most of Europe, much of Asia, Australia, Middle East as well as numerous parts of the US.? I lived in New Jersey for about 9 months and in New York for about the same, travelled to AZ, MN, CA, FL, OH, NC, SC, WA, CO, DC,VA, ME, KS, that I can think of, off the top of my head. Most states and cities I stayed in for at least a few weeks, some longer.?
I was far from a simple tourist, have many friends in the USA and was in places longer than a couple of days. I will say, I love the US and most of the people I have ever met. It’s a beautiful country, for the most part filled with decent hardworking, friendly people. I just wish you would learn to say words like Aluminium and Herb ?properly. OK on to what I found surprising and or shocking.
The biggest shock was the incredible poverty in the US and the extreme amounts of homeless people I saw in every single state I visited.
When I first went to America, driving through New York, I was astonished at the amount of people either sleeping rough or pushing one or more trolleys [shopping carts] with all they owned in them. I don’t know if I can express the visceral shock this caused me. My fellow human beings reduced to utter penury, begging and no home. Inside I felt as if something was terribly wrong, right in front of my eyes, my fellow human beings with no care, help or bed. No medical or social care, sleeping and very often dying in a modern country, the richest country in the world. How could this be?
To understand my reaction, you have to understand how the UK and Europe function with regard to the same issue. In the UK, while not perfect, you actually have to try VERY hard to be homeless [although Cameron and the Right wing are trying hard to change that]. There are SO MANY safeguards and safety nets in place that you almost have to choose to be homeless, to be homeless. In the UK on any given night homeless/sleeping rough figures are 1,247 people. The US is only just over 5X the size of the UK with a UK population of 67+ million. Yet compare figures. On any given night:
US: 700,000 homeless, compared to UK : 1,247 homeless.
It’s a basic attitude problem I think, in the UK and Europe, most western countries in fact, homeless people are seen as a failure as a society, a failure to those most in need of help. We have social welfare, social healthcare and social housing provision. It is seen as a shaming thing for society as a whole NOT to look after people who so obviously and desperately need our care. Mostly they become useful members of society again.
Please read this, The Declaration of Human Rights [signed by the USA] :
Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 10 December 1948 by the UN General Assembly, contains this text regarding housing and quality of living:?? Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
This is? basic human rights, as agreed by ALL western countries. The figures for homeless are staggering. The figures from several sources– including The National Law Centre on Homelessness and Poverty estimates — are between 2.3 and 3.5 million will be homeless in any given year with over 700,000 on any given day. Figures from 2007/8 ? 2013 [NATEH].
The mix of the homeless is also surprising as at times the number of LGBT, make up as much as 39 percent of the younger portion of Homeless people. Is this discrimination or simply falling through the cracks? Either way it is terribly wrong! 1.5 million?American children are homeless each year, how is this possible? Not immigrants, fellow Americans! As I said in my article on veterans they make up 300,000 of the homeless every night as do 92,000 Disabled people.
The Figures:
- 38% report alcohol use problems
- 26% report other drug use problems
- 39% report some form of mental health problems (20-25% meet criteria for serious mental illness)
- 66% report either substance use and/or mental health problems
- 3% report having HIV/AIDS
- 26% report acute health problems other than HIV/AIDS such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, or sexually transmitted diseases
- 46% report chronic health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or cancer
- In 2011, the reported number of tuberculosis (TB) cases decreased to 10,528 from 11,171 in 2010. Among those affected, disproportionately higher rates of TB occur among high-risk populations, especially homeless persons. In the United States, 1% of the population experiences homelessness in a given year, but 5.8% of persons with TB reported being homeless within the past year.
The classic view of homeless people is that they are white/black/Hispanic, working class who have drug or drink problems. This is simply NOT the truth. Many are professionals, hardworking Americans, people just like you and I. Never has the saying ?there but for the grace of god? been truer. There is another saying, that most Americans are only three?paychecks from being homeless.? Why is this so? Why is it so easy to fall from a decent job, decent income, healthcare, to becoming homeless? In the US the fall is not that far, fail to meet payments on your house, lose a job, become redundant at the wrong age. Economic changes, health problems, any small thing can upset the fine balance and send a family or person into a spiral that quickly ends in homelessness. If family and friends, who may help out for a while, cannot carry that burden for long, you are on the street.
I really don’t know if this is a lack of care or a lack of will to change. But the very fact it’s so close to every American it should trigger change! The social care aspects contrary to what politicians on the right here and in the US say, are not expensive. As an overall part of the Social Care Budget in the UK, which includes healthcare, welfare, pensions etc, this social care/welfare makes up less than 23% of the overall Welfare budget, including standard unemployment and disability benefits. By far the largest expense is pensions, followed by the National Health Service.? These figures are from the national audit office. A government spending watchdog. In the UK we pay an NHS stamp/levy that covers healthcare, unemployment and pensions. It’s not out of direct taxation as they would have you believe, it’s paid for by contributions, paid by every worker in the UK. We are no more heavily taxed than the US, but we have in place services to stop homelessness, illness and unemployment.
It does not take much to solve the problem, but the will and simple human compassion for your fellow Americans. What is so wrong with helping them in the first instance, stopping them becoming homeless, giving them a chance, to become proper, useful members of society again? The problem is, once homeless in the US, you are on a road to nowhere. ?It’s very hard to make that transition back to society. ?Here is a graph on UK public welfare spending, please bear in mind this is paid for by every member of the UK workforce, via Levy and NHS contributions. The US is far richer than the UK. The UK is the fourth richest country in the world, but unlike the US, we have no resources as such, no big major industries any more. Mostly we are an IT, service and related industries. So why if we can do this, is it so hard for the US? I think, or believe it’s a propaganda issue again, with the right in America screaming that this would cost XXXX dollars and, they should be able to look after themselves.? That any type of federal help is wrong. Look how long a simple healthcare bill that still leaves you way behind the rest of the west took for President Obama to push through. Until this attitude changes, I don’t really see much help for the homeless in the US, which is so shameful on so many levels!
Those figures sleeping on the streets and those people pushing everything they own on trolleys are part of America and until you decide its wrong, it will not change. The strange thing is that nominally the US is a MUCH more Christian country than the UK and much of Europe. SW
?The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.? ?Adam Smith – Scottish political economist (1723-1790)
?The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds ? where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough ? a modest living? and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities.? ?Walt Whitman – American poet (1819-1892)
Sources:
National Alliance to End Homelessness [USA] ?- http://www.endhomelessness.org/
National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty [USA]
Shelter 2.0 project ?[US] http://www.shelter20.com/homeless-statistics/
Shelter England / Scotland ?- http://england.shelter.org.uk
The Centre for Disease Contro [US] ?www.cdc.gov
National Audit Office [UK]
The Gaurdian Welfare Spending –
Department for Work and Pensions – https://www.gov.uk/
UK Public Spending – ?http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/
