Bill Theobald, writing for the Gannett News Service has an article entitled ’05 study is a snapshot of homelessness. The first study in a decade puts the number at “744,313” but notes it’s an estimate and that measuring homelessness is inherently difficult. The last comprehensive study, performed a decade ago, put the number at 440,000 to 842,000. The Urban Institute also noted that the number was a snapshot at a particular point in time and further estimates that, within any given year, between 2.3 million and 3.5 million people are homeless at some point in time.
Some other figures:
• 44 percent of homeless people, or about 300,000, live on the streets. The rest are in shelters or transitional housing.
• 59 percent were single adults. The rest were families.
• 23 percent were considered chronically homeless.
The report also measured the number of homeless by state and found Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington had the highest percentages of their population who were homeless.
The District of Columbia has the highest rate with 5,518, or 1 percent of its population.
Arizona has an estimated 1,351 to 12,264 homeless people, about 0.21 percent of the population.
This is too bad.Some of these people are probably victims of substance abuse but many are probably not.The homeless and the number of legal U.S. citizens who do not have health insurance in the wealthiest country in the world is a shameful thing.Meanwhile president Bush will appear on TV tonight and announce another billion dollar economic give a way to the Iraqi government tonight.
While it is true the troops must be funded these economic give a ways to this country are rediculous and have had no effect on stopping the violence!This whole escapade into nation building while noble (getting rid of a dictator) has been a failure of epic preportions.There has been fraud and misuse of funds,everything you name it.What sense does it make to spend our money on building infrastructure in Iraq that in a short amount of time will be blown up or destroyed again?
Check out TrueMajority.org and their “cookie” video to be ashamed at how much we truly blow on the military in this country. Its more than most large countries combined. (I think my budget pen with pull-out budget says 410 Billion, and that’s NOT including all of these special expenditures for the GWOT.)
On top of that, much of the funds are borrowed from our possible next greatest threat, China. Brilliant. And instead of pulling back and building our economy, we’re overspending across the board and having to sell off our personal assets (like the Toll Road) to foreign companies.
Imagine if the U.S. were a person. He’d have the best and biggest Big Screen – a whole cache of automatic weapons – the best food in the world (most of which just ends up in the garbage) and everything else he wanted. Meanwhile, he owes as much as he’s worth to his credit card companies and the banks. But instead of stopping his spending spree, or maybe trying to balance his checkbook, he’s ripping out his copper plumbing and selling it off to his neighbors to pay for his habit.
That is us.