WORK AND HOMELESSNESS
It is a common misconception that poor and homeless people do not work. The unfortunate fact is that 6.3 million of the nation's poor work full-time. The percentage of poor people working full-time in the U.S. has grown by 33% since 1979. Today, 18% of the people who work full-time are below the poverty line (in 2000, 'poverty' meant making $17, 050 for a family of four).
RURAL HOMELESSNESS
Many people think of homelessness as strictly an urban phenomenon because homeless people are greater in number and are more visible in urban areas, but homelessness is pervasive in rural areas. The number of people who experience rural homelessness is unknown, but the last national count of homeless people found that 9 percent of homeless people live in rural areas.
Fear and hunger walk hand in hand with poverty, and last year 12.6 million American households -- 11.2 percent of all American homes -- were afraid they might not be able to put enough food on the table, according to the Census Bureau. That's up more than 1.6 million households from the year 2000.
How are these families coping? They eat less varied meals, visit shelters and get food assistance from food banks and emergency kitchens. Of these families, 3.9 million said that one or more members of the family actually went hungry last year -- an 18.2 percent increase from 2000.
A recent report by the outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas found that many food banks are in "crisis mode." In Ohio, for example, the Ohio Food Bank has seen the number of people requiring assistance jump 17 to 20 percent this year, "with a significant increase in the number of working poor."
Millions of working Americans are struggling to find adequate food, health care and housing for their families. Unable to earn a living wage, many have resorted to food banks and community centers for help. But according to the Challenger report, many of those institutions say that making the increased demand even worse is the fact that "donations and government funding are at all-time lows."
Please check out the links provided below to make a difference. Do what you can, do something.
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Believe it or not the picture below was taken in the United States of America by Al Clayton.