From My Fox NY:
If you think you’ve been seeing more people sleep on city streets, statistics back up the perception. The homeless population living on New York City streets has gone up 50 percent in the past year, according to city statistics reported by the HellsKitchenLife.com blog.
The New York City Department of Homeless Services conducts a yearly survey of the streets of the city to count the number of homeless who are not in shelters. The HOPE survey was conducted in January 2010…
The “good” news is that the number living in the streets is not as bad as it has been in the past – but my bet is that it’ll get increasingly worse. We’re at the tail end of the support we can easily provide. States and local governments are going broke; charities are feeling the pinch; people have less to give. And, furthermore, the increase is not in the number of boozers and druggies on the streets – that remains fairly constant, but in the number of regular folks.
We’ve seen it out here in Vegas – where other places have rooms for people to warm up in winter time, we have rooms for people to cool down in during the summer heat. During our very hot July, the cooling rooms were swarming (which isn’t 100% an indicator of homelessness – some of them were probably people who couldn’t afford to turn on the air conditioning…but, you get the picture).
A bankrupt government – a dying economic and political settlement, is now leaving the most vulnerable in a lurch. The welfare state has failed – I write more about this over at Noonan for Nevada where I actually get in to an argument with a man facing eviction.
Blogs For Victory 