Homelessness, hunger and shame: poverty is rampant in the richest country in the world. Over 40 million people in the United States live below the poverty line, twice as many as it was fifty years ago. It can happen very quickly.
Many people in the United States fall through the social safety net. In the structurally weak mining region of the Appalachians, it has become almost normal for people to go shopping with food stamps. And those who lose their home often have no choice but to live in a car.
There are so many homeless people in Los Angeles that relief organizations have started to build small wooden huts to provide them with a roof over their heads. The number of homeless children has also risen dramatically, reaching 1.5 million, three times more than during the Great Depression the 1930s. A documentary about the fate of the poor in the United States today.
Poverty in the USA
In 2019, 43 million people in the United States lived below the poverty line, twice as many as it was fifty years before. 1.5 million children were homeless, three times more than during the Great Depression the 1930s.
Entire families are tossed from one place to another to work unstable jobs that barely allow them to survive. In the historically poor Appalachian mining region, people rely on food stamps for food.
In Los Angeles, the number of homeless people has increased dramatically. In the poorest neighbourhoods, associations offer small wooden huts to those who no longer have a roof.
Homeless in the City
According to a study from last year, there are around 1,000 people living in the streets of Singapore. Homeless people have always been vulnerable, and during the time of a pandemic, when each person is expected to shelter-at-home, there are individuals who still prefer to sleep rough, despite available spaces from the government and volunteer groups.
A recent story from TODAY Online featured several such individuals who are sleeping in the streets during this circuit breaker period. The article quotes Minister for Social and Family Development Desmond Lee as saying recently that there are still 400 available beds in various shelters that answered the call to help house the homeless at this time. One of the people TODAY talked to had difficulty in finding shelter due to his dependency on alcohol, another was an 80-year-old who actually has employment as a dishwasher but who has gotten used to sleeping rough as he has done this for more than two decades. Yet another homeless man, a cleaner who had been estranged from his wife for over a year, had actually been offered shelter at a church. He turned down the offer out of fear he would be brainwashed.
But perhaps the situation of homeless people in Singapore is still relatively better than in other parts of the world. As community transmissions of the coronavirus have been going down steadily—with the Ministry of Health saying this week it’s down to two per day—the homeless in Singapore have a smaller chance of getting infected.
