41 Million Americans Are Living In Poverty This Christmas

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Even though the stock market continues to set new record high after new record high, poverty is exploding all over America. 

It is being reported that 41 million people are living in poverty at this moment, and 9 million of them do not receive a single penny of income from anyone.  Once you have been unemployed for long enough, you don’t qualify for unemployment payments any longer, and once you are on the street there is nowhere for other governments programs to send a check to.  I have previously discussed the rising epidemic of homelessness in our nation, but most people don’t want to think about that sort of a thing these days.  Even though New York City has the most homeless since the Great Depression, and even though homelessness in Los Angeles is at an all-time record high, most people want to pretend that everything is just fine.

Well, the truth is that everything is not just fine.

A reporter from the Guardian recently traveled with a special UN envoy to some of the most impoverished areas of the United States.  His report is extremely eye-opening, and I wanted to share a short excerpt from his story.  This portion of his article is about a 41-year-old woman named Ressy Finley who is desperately trying to stay alive on the mean streets of Skid Row in Los Angeles…

Ressy Finley, 41, was busy sterilizing the white bucket she uses to slop out in her tent in which she has lived on and off for more than a decade. She keeps her living area, a mass of worn mattresses and blankets and a few motley possessions, as clean as she can in a losing battle against rats and cockroaches. She also endures waves of bed bugs, and has large welts on her shoulder to prove it.

 

She receives no formal income, and what she makes on recycling bottles and cans is no way enough to afford the average rents of $1,400 a month for a tiny one-bedroom. A friend brings her food every couple of days, the rest of the time she relies on nearby missions.

 

She cried twice in the course of our short conversation, once when she recalled how her infant son was taken from her arms by social workers because of her drug habit (he is now 14; she has never seen him again). The second time was when she alluded to the sexual abuse that set her as a child on the path towards drugs and homelessness.

Los Angeles has declared a state of emergency because the number of homeless is rising so rapidly, and so have nine other cities along the west coast.  For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “As America Gives Thanks, Homelessness Continues To Set New Records In Major Cities All Over The Nation”.

The sad thing is that there are more than a million homes sitting empty in America right now.  As economic opportunities have dried up, many communities in the middle part of the nation are becoming “ghost towns”, and it is getting worse with each passing day…

There are nearly 1.4 million vacant residential properties across the country — abandoned, not for sale, mostly unoccupied homes. With vacant properties comprising as much as 30% of residential properties, some neighborhoods are starting to feel like ghost towns.

Many believe that the answer to the decline of the middle class and the growth of poverty is even more socialism.

But if you want to see where that road leads, just look at what is happening in Venezuela.  People are eating cats and dogs, and just today there were a whole bunch of mainstream news articles about how children are literally starving to death.

No, the real answer is to do what made our economy so great in the first place.  Between 1872 and 1913, we didn’t have an income tax or a central bank, and it was the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history.

What we have today is not free market capitalism.  We have gone very far down the road toward government-controlled socialism, and it has created a giant mess.

If we want to have a healthy middle class again, we need to have a society that promotes entrepreneurs and the creation of small businesses.  Today we are literally choking the financial life out of entrepreneurs and small businesses, and when I am elected to Congress I am going to fight as hard as I can to change that.

*  *  *

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.

World"s First Vending-Machine For The Homeless To Be Unveiled In UK In December; LA, NYC Next Year

This is a first, a new charity in the UK called Action Hunger plans to install a vending machine for the homeless in December. The organization describes itself as a charity with a “new approach to combating homelessness.” The initial plan will be installing a machine in the town of Nottingham in the December time-period, then a second machine in Manchester sometime early 2018. If all goes well, Action Hunger plans to do a full release across the UK in attempt to alleviate poverty and hardships– something the government is having trouble in doing.

Action Hunger is working with Tesco and other partners to stock the machines with water, fresh fruit, energy bars, crisps, chocolate, and sandwiches, as well as socks, sanitary towels, antibacterial lotion, toothbrush and toothpaste combination packs, and books. A majority of the food will be provided by a localized network of regional food vendors who will donate excessive food waste.

The charity has partnered with The Friary, an outreached centre in the city, to oversee the people’s access to the vending machines. The machines will operate 24-hours a day accessed by a special card given out by the Friary and can service up to 100 homeless people per day. Key cards are programmed to permit up to three items per day, which offers a low-cost automated solution in dealing with the poor.

Action Hunger explains how the process works: 

According to the Independent, homelessness has increased 34% per cent since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, partly due to benefit cuts and welfare changes. A new study reveals that 300,000 people in Britain are now homeless, with the crisis growing as much as 13 per cent last year alone.

Number of rough sleepers across England on a given night

Number of homelessness applications made to local authorities

Action Hunger is targeting Nottingham and Manchester, two areas where homelessness is out of control.

Across England, housing market affordability is once again above 2006 to 2008 levels— signaling that house prices are once more outpacing income.

Besides the exploding homelessness situation in the UK, there is an even larger market in the United States, where Action Hunger will be installing the vending machines next year in Seattle, New York, and LA.

In August, we reported 1 in 7 New York City Public-School students is homeless. On top of that, NYC shelter officials have admitted a record number of homeless to shelters each night.

In a preview of things to come, automation in the form of vending machines seems to be the short term solution in dealing with the homeless in the UK. The next step for Action Hunger appears to be a multi-city rollout in the United States targeting a much larger homeless population as the middle class deteriorates.

For our American audience, an automated vending machine for the homeless is coming to a town near you. The dying middle class will no longer be able to shop at the Dollar Tree nor Walmart, as they will resort to automated vending machines. The future is bleak.

San Diego's Deadly Hepatitis A Outbreak Turns "Statewide Epidemic" As "Outbreak Could Last Years"

A few weeks ago we highlighted the staggering outbreak of Hepatitis A in San Diego that had infected 400 people and killed more than a dozen.  The outbreak was first identified in early March, according to the county, and declared a public health emergency in September.

But, as the LA Times points out, the hepatitis A outbreak that started in San Diego is now on the verge of reaching statewide epidemic status, as cases have spread through homeless tent cities all the way north to Sacramento.

California’s outbreak of hepatitis A, already the nation’s second largest in the last 20 years, could continue for many months, even years, health officials said Thursday.

At least 569 people have been infected and 17 have died of the virus since November in San Diego, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles counties, where local outbreaks have been declared.

Dr. Monique Foster, a medical epidemiologist with the Division of Viral Hepatitis at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Thursday that California’s outbreak could linger even with the right prevention efforts.

“It’s not unusual for them to last quite some time — usually over a year, one to two years,” Foster said.

Hepatitis A is commonly transmitted through contaminated food. The only outbreak in the last 20 years bigger than California’s occurred in Pennsylvania in 2003, when more than 900 people were infected after eating contaminated green onions at a restaurant.

California’s outbreak, however, is spreading from person to person, mostly among the homeless community.

The virus is transmitted from feces to mouth, so unsanitary conditions make it more likely to spread. The city of San Diego has installed dozens of handwashing stations and begun cleaning streets with bleach-spiked water in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, the outbreak has made its way to Santa Cruz and L.A. counties, where 70 and 12 people have already been diagnosed, respectively, as public health officials warn that the worst is likely far from over.

San Diego County declared a public health emergency in September because of its hepatitis A outbreak.

Since November, 481 people there have fallen ill, including 17 who died, according to Dr. Eric McDonald with the county’s health department. An additional 57 cases are under investigation, he said.

Officials from both counties say they’ve vaccinated thousands of homeless people and will continue to do so.

New cases linked to the outbreak might not appear for weeks, because it can take up to 50 days for an infected person to show symptoms, said Santa Cruz public health manager Jessica Randolph.

“I don’t think the worst is over,” Randolph said.

Of course, as we pointed out earlier this year (see: Shocking Video Footage Of Sprawling California Tent City), sprawling tent cities have been popping up all over California for years and are called home by 1,000s of residents in even the most posh cities from Newport to Santa Cruz.  All of which has prompted a wave of vaccinations and a "review of sanitation protocols for homeless encampments"...which we"re sure will be followed very rigorously by residents.

In Orange County, which has had two hepatitis A cases linked to the outbreak, public health workers have given out 492 vaccines, mostly to homeless people, officials said. County nurses have also been visiting shelters and parks to vaccinate people.

Some officials, including in Riverside and Sacramento counties, also said they were reviewing their sanitation protocols for homeless encampments. An L.A. councilman recently called for more toilets in neighborhoods such as skid row and Venice in light of the local hepatitis cases.

In Oakland, city workers, represented by SEIU Local 1021, sent a letter to City Hall last month saying they feared a hepatitis A outbreak in the region’s homeless community. So far, there haven’t been any cases in Oakland or the rest of Alameda County, but city safety steward Brian Clay said he believed the city has allowed unsanitary conditions in homeless encampments.

“There’s syringes, there’s human feces, there are dead animals, rats alive, and dead rats … pee bottles, five-gallon buckets used as toilets,” Clay said. “We’re definitely concerned about this added threat of hepatitis A.”

As Breitbart points out, California"s tent cities are the direct result of "proactive" legislation that forbids police from dispersing homeless people living in tent cities between the hours of 9pm and 5:30am.

California homeless advocates have been successful across the state in forcing cities to accept the homeless living in large tent communities on public property. The advocates refer to anti-homeless ordinances as the modern-day equivalent to post-slavery Jim Crow and Depression era anti-Okie laws that allowed police to disperse people deemed “undesirable” after dark.

The City of San Diego was forced to sign the Spencer Settlement in 2006, which forbids its Police Department from enforcing the city’s “Illegal Lodging Enforcement Guidelines” between the hours of 9 pm to 5:30 am.

California, with 115,738 homeless, now accounts for about 21 percent of America’s total homeless population. Due to legal settlements against vagrancy laws, about 72.3 percent of California’s homeless are unsheltered, usually living in tent cities.

If you like your socialist utopia, you can keep your socialist utopia.

Staggering Number Of Homeless In LA Shows How Tough It Is To Get By

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

The number of homeless people in Los Angeles is skyrocketing. In just one year, the figures revealed that the homeless population in the city grew 20% while the numbers for the wider Los Angeles County were even higher at 23%.

As if looking at those numbers isn’t cringeworthy enough, The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported Wednesday that 6,000 homeless young people were tallied across the county in January, a 61% increase over the 2016 total. Most of the young people are ages 18 to 24. All the youth shelters have waiting lists and affordable housing is tough to find, even with a rent voucher, according to Heidi Calmus of Covenant House California, an international youth homeless services agency with a branch in Hollywood. “The system is overwhelmed,” Calmus said Tuesday night as she and a colleague, Nick Semensky, delivered toiletry bags and sandwiches to young people living in the streets.

Despite efforts to combat the problem, the number of homeless continue to go up. In 2015 authorities declared a public emergency as the numbers sleeping on the streets soared. City officials committed $100 million to tackle the problem. It’s safe to say that whatever is being done right now is not working.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn described the figures as “staggering.” “Homelessness in LA County has grown at a shocking rate,” she said in a statement. “Even as work is being done to get thousands of people off the street and into housing, more and more people are becoming homeless. It is clear that if we are going to end the homeless crisis, we need to stem the overwhelming tide of people falling into homelessness.”

But it isn’t that easy. Experts are placing the blame on soaring rents and a high cost of living as the two major factors. According to Expatistan.com, a 900 square foot furnished apartment will cost over $2400 per month.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said there was “no sugarcoating the bad news”. “It’s impossible to wrap your head around the numbers,” he told reporters, adding that soaring rents and the city’s high cost of living were partly to blame. “We can’t let rents double every year,” he told reporters. Average rents in Los Angeles County have increased by 32% since 2000 while average household incomes for people renting have fallen by 3% when adjusted for inflation, according to the California Housing Partnership.

Mayor Garcetti is correct in that you cannot sugarcoat these numbers. In its latest report, the LAHSA said there were 57,794 people homeless in the county during its survey in January, compared to 46,874 in 2016. In the city there were 34,189 with no permanent roof over their heads, the report said, compared to 28,464 the year before.

The solution, according to the politicians in Los Angeles, is of course, to throw money at the problem. The county needs to build more than 550,000 affordable rental homes for low-income households, the LAHSA says. Los Angeles recently approved new measures to raise $1.2 billion in bonds to build 10,000 new units of housing for homeless people. There are also plans to raise about $3.5billion over 10 years to pay for other homelessness projects.

When the number of homeless increases this dramatically, it’s easy to see that the nation is in a bit of an economic bind.  It’s getting harder and harder to get by, and any sort of financial issue, no matter how small, could easily cause homelessness for those living paycheck to paycheck.

A Record 67% Of Low-Income Americans Are Worried "A Great Deal" About Hunger And Homelessness

Something unexpected happened on the road to Obama"s economic "recovery" - according to Gallup, over the past two years, a record two-thirds, or an average of 67% of lower-income U.S. adults, up from 51% from 2010-2011, have worried "a great deal" about the problem of hunger and homelessness in the country. They are not alone: concern has also increased among middle- and upper-income Americans, but they still worry far less than do lower-income Americans.

Some details: since 2001, worry has been highest among those residing in lower-income households, likely because those with limited financial resources are more at risk of going hungry or becoming homeless. A consistent majority of lower-income adults worried about the problem before 2012, but that has only increased in the past five years. Concern among middle-income Americans in 2016-2017 falls just short of the majority level at 47%, while 37% of upper-income Americans are worried.

Rising concern among all income groups could be a result of the political and media attention devoted to U.S. income inequality in recent years. Americans may also worry more about hunger and homelessness when other issues are not dominating the national consciousness, such as the economy and budget deficit were in 2010-2011 and terrorism was in the years after 9/11.

Overall, 47% of Americans now worry about hunger and homelessness "a great deal," according to Gallup"s March 1-5 survey, tied with 2016 as the high in the trend. Previously, concern had been as low as 35% in 2004 and as high as 45% in 2001, the first year Gallup asked the question.

Concern about hunger and homelessness now ranks as high as, or higher than, concern about most other issues tested in Gallup"s annual Environment survey. The only issue with a significantly higher "worried a great deal" percentage in this year"s poll is the availability and affordability of healthcare, at 57%.

But among lower-income Americans, hunger and homelessness eclipses healthcare, making it the top-ranking issue of the 13 tested in the March 1-5 survey. Among middle- and upper-income Americans, the availability and affordability of healthcare generates the greatest worry, with hunger further down the list.

Crime and violence, as well as healthcare, also are prominent concerns for lower-income Americans. Crime is a prominent concern for middle-income Americans as well, but much less so for upper-income Americans. It does not rank among upper-income Americans" top concerns.

Lower-income Americans do tend to worry more about all of these problems than do those with higher incomes. On average, across the 13 issues, the percentage of lower-income adults who worry a great deal is seven percentage points higher than among middle-income Americans, and 17 points higher than among upper-income Americans.

But differences in concern about hunger and homelessness far exceed those norms. In fact, the 20-point difference in worry about hunger and homelessness between lower-income and middle-income Americans is higher than for any of the other issues. Similarly, the 30-point difference in worry about hunger and homelessness between lower-income and upper-income Americans ties for the highest, along with concern about crime and violence.

What, according to Gallup, are the Implications?

Americans at all income levels are expressing greater concern about hunger and homelessness, and it is the top worry among lower-income Americans, who are most likely to struggle to pay for adequate food and housing.

Curiously Gallup says that "it is unclear why Americans are worrying more about hunger and homelessness now, since it is an ever-present problem" although one can make some educated assumptions.

The polling compny the notes that "at times the issue may fade from public consciousness when other matters dominate the national agenda. It is possible that greater concern will lead to greater public pressure for action on the issue. However, President Donald Trump"s first federal budget has been criticized for deep cuts to federal anti-poverty programs. If Trump"s budget passes largely as it has been outlined, then state and local governments, charitable organizations and private citizens would need to increase their efforts to help reduce poverty and its effects -- or hope that the president"s economic policies expand opportunities for the most financially vulnerable in society."

That, or simply the economic situation for the poorest Americans - those who have virtually no savings to their name - has gotten so bad that they are worried "a great deal" because they believe they may be next...

California City Erects 'Prison Camp' To Deal With Homeless

There are two major problems that come to mind, explains SHTFPlan.com"s Mac Slavo; first, the level of homelessness, poverty and idle populations in California and across the country, and second, the divided world between the 1% and the struggling 99% is coming to a head.

Economically, things are very close to the brink, and there are far too many people who’ve given up at the individual level. This crisis has given the impetus for cities like Santa Ana to take drastic action.

The other side of the coin, is that if they can do this to homeless vagrants, and out of work families, they can do it to anyone. If civil unrest comes, perhaps in combination with mass unemployment, a crashed stock market and monetary system and great misery, those keeping society in check will feel compelled to come down with a heavy hand. People will be rounded up, some of them unfairly. Entire communities can be disrupted, or forced under an emergency to evacuate and take shelter in FEMA centers while the cities become off limits. There are a lot of things that can happen – including to hard working, employment, head-above-water American families.

When this thing starts to unravel, making do in the current atmosphere won’t cut it; in the aftermath of what is coming, many people will be desperate. Tent cities and migrating Americans looking for temporary work will return; millions more will flock to government welfare programs, and be dragged into the dregs of collectivist measure to ride out bad times. They are moving to sweep up the disarray of a society that is crumbling, and a financial landscape that is no longer survivable for a wide sector of the general population.

City Erects Prison Camp To Deal With Homeless – Cutting Off Food And Water

Authored by The Free Thought Project"s Matt Agorist,

The City of Santa Ana has come up with an innovative and despotic way of keeping their homeless population in check — imprison them. The city is now party to a federal lawsuit over unreasonable seizure, false imprisonment, and due process violations.

Heading up the lawsuit on behalf of Michael Diehl, who has lived at the encampment for three years, is the ACLU of Southern California. The lawsuit demands the immediate removal of the 6-foot-tall chain-link fences penning in 75-100 people and their belongings.

“Defendants’ actions have not only illegally restricted the liberty of the homeless people living in the encampment, but it has also cut them off from access to food, water, and medical care thus threatening their health and well-being,” the lawsuit states.

According to Courthouse News:

Diehl was shot in the head at a Tustin convenience store in 2009. He lost his right eye and doctors were unable to remove the bullet from his head. He takes medication every day to control seizures that have become more frequent with the increased presence of authorities at the encampment, he says in the complaint.

When a woman suffered a seizure at the encampment after the fence was erected, Diehl says, paramedics had difficulty reaching her because the barriers have blocked parts of the sidewalks at Chapman Avenue and Orangewood Avenue where people used to come and go.

If people living at the encampment cut holes in the fences with bolt cutters, Orange County Public Works employees repair it. For the elderly and disabled it is neither safe nor realistic to scale the fence or navigate the river to get to a steep, rocky embankment on the river’s west side, Diehl says.

“Children, people with severe disabilities, the elderly and others are deprived of food, water and access to restrooms,” said ACLU homelessness policy analyst Eve Garrow. “The county should take action to rectify this egregious violation of basic human rights.”

Naturally, the county is claiming that they are not doing anything wrong and that the fence, put in place after the homeless community began growing there, is for ‘flood control.’

“The county is aware that there are homeless encampments in the project area. Flood control channels are not a safe place to live. Sign postings and in-person notifications about the project have been provided to those encamped along the county maintenance road,” the county said in a statement.

However, according to Diehl and the others who are imprisoned in the camp, police told them that they should move there to avoid citations for sleeping in public in the other parts of town.

What this case in Santa Ana illustrates is the state’s continued war on the right of people to exist. Every time a group homeless community finds a safe spot, located out of the way, they are targeted for removal, or, in this barbaric case — imprisonment.

Earlier this month, the Free Thought Project reported on another war being waged against the homeless population in California. Known as ‘The Promised Land,’ a group of homeless people in Oakland sought to improve their situation by creating a camp that would foster sobriety and help people to get jobs. It was located out of the way, under a series of overpasses. They had running water, were growing their own food, and did not allow drug or alcohol use within the camp.

As cops and officials allowed the other heroin riddled encampments to continue, they targeted The Promised Land for destruction. 

Diehl now seeks an injunction ordering the county to provide him with “reasonable means of leaving the riverbed and being able to retrieve his property.”

NYC Homelessness Record High Despite Falling Unemployment Rate

Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Salil Mehta at Statistical Ideas investigates the homeless rate in New York City. Mehta notes the streets are flourishing with a severe homelessness problem that’s escalating briskly despite a falling unemployment rate.

Please consider a The Empire City of Homelessness.

Annual Growth Rate of Homeless

Record High Homeless

Note the huge surge in homelessness after the Great Recession ended.

Curiously, New York City is also the only place in the U.S. required to provide temporary housing to anyone needing it. Yet as homelessness rises across big cities nationally, it rose at the fastest clip in the Big Apple.

City-by-City Comparison

War on Homelessness

Mehta wisely avoids offering solutions. “We don’t provide any strong remedy for such a complex and expensive social issue,” says Mehta.

The government-sponsored war on poverty failed as have all sorts of other ridiculous wars, including real wars.

Moreover, the war on terror has turned into a war of terror.

@salilstatistics NYC Homelessness Record High. https://t.co/pAeqhU69Q0 If free shelter doesn"t work, then free shelter cannot be the answer.

— Mike Mish Shedlock (@MishGEA) January 5, 2017