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| Around 8:30 Wednesday morning, traffic on right, walkers on left [click for full size] |
Having no fixed abode or address has consequences large and small for people in 2024. Shelter from cold and wet and wind is one thing. Having a place to gather one's chattels is another. Personal safety, personal hygiene, personal memories/mementos also depend on having a place to call home. Being able to store food, then cook, eat, and clean up also depends on having a place of one's own. Without an address it is hard to receive deliveries and messages, as well as recharging cellphone or other electronic devices.
This picture shows somebody's private encampment on public parkland in Grand Rapids, Michigan, about a mile north of city center. The past two days have been blanketed by excessive heat (although tempered by cloud and moderated by steady wind) which is forecast to persist all of today and the Thursday and Friday, as well. It is not night chill to worry about, but distress or worse from humans, along with the burden of heat. At the moment rain is not a likely concern. But having no shelter means the weather and changing seasons dictate one's well-being.
Considering that fact that national wealth divided over the population gives a statistical "richest country on Earth" declaration, it seems unimaginable to see things like mass shootings, poor air conditions and water supply, bankruptcy by medical billing, huge illiteracy and low high school graduation rates, as well as persisting unhoused people on the streets (but also unhoused in rural counties, too). But once the "richest country" is factored by demographic segment, it is true that 1% of the population owns something like 50% of the wealth. Then perhaps the top 25% accounts for 90% of all the wealth. For the remaining 75% of people living in the USA the last 10% of the national wealth can be divided to give a figure that makes this country far from "the richest" country. Seen in that frame of reference, people living in cars and on the street and in parks or overnight shelters is not so surprising.
See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#In_the_United_States
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