Ghost Ship, Sky-Rocketing Rents, and Homelessness

     Warehouse occupancy crackdowns following the tragic "Ghost Ship" fire continue to thwart solutions for an enormous housing crisis.
     The United States has a dire need for affordable rental housing, a need which has increased yearly but has been ignored by almost everyone except the 60% of Americans who are experiencing it.
      Here is not only the greatest poverty level in the developed world, but also vast homelessness and the weakest "safety net."
      In most US cities, there are only 20 affordable safe, available rental units for every 100 renters. On frigid nights, shelters lack space for burgeoning numbers of homeless.
      This began long before gentrification forced long-term residents to leave apartments and homes. With US minimum wage less than in 1968, it is almost impossible for workers to rise above low-income.
    

Pervasive United States Poverty

Wonder why Americans are angry enough to vote for Donald Trump?  In one of my blogs I write about U.S. poverty. In the past 16 years, wages have stagnated, often dropped. The homeless problem has burgeoned, something most cities do their best to conceal, shuffling those who have fallen on hard times off to "unseen" hideouts, beneath bridges or tent cities. Gentrification is at an all-time high.
       The wealthier who benefited from years of reduced taxes mandated by the Bush administration, often return to cities to reside in high rise condos, or live in gated communities. Often it is easy to blame the poor for their own circumstances while politicians call for reduced benefit "handouts" for so-called "freeloaders," many of whom try to patch together two or three part-time jobs.
      The school loan problem is not new. Trying to pay for college has hampered students and graduates for over a quarter century.  Even government school loan programs have harassed and threatened students many years after they've graduated.
      Rents, the cost of which has always been far greater than the recommended 30% of income, skyrocketed after the 2008 economic meltdown, one of many so-called "recessions" in my lifetime.
     Most people I've known have not been affected by these conditions and are often unaware that there are countless hard-working citizens who will never know the ease of not worrying about homelessness, or living in safe neighborhoods, or having new cars (or any car at all), or healthy food, leisure, trips to Europe.
     Most cannot understand that poverty is usually a condition of circumstance -- not choice, not laziness, not mental illness -- but rather -- a broken system favoring select few.
     And this is just the tip of the iceberg in the increasingly corporatized US. There's the expense of privatized health care for those who do not have employment health care benefits. The list goes on and on...
     All of this brings me here. At the risk of following "Godwin's Law," some of us are trying to point out that this is not the only time in history when the population has not taken an interloper seriously, or understood the public's discontent enough to realize they may have good reasons for voting for an "outsider"who may not have anyone's best interests at heart.
     The irony here is that many of these voters are at cross-purposes: many Trump voters are in the higher $70,000+ income bracket, yet are frustrated with their own lives and cite ending "entitlements" (already paltry benefits to the poor) as one solution. And while the actual poor would like to believe Trump is as pro "the little guy" as he purports, he continues to propose policies like "childcare for all" from which only those affluent enough for tax deductions could benefit.