The median worker would have to work 87 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment. There are also parks with timed watering schedules so that the sprinklers go on every half hour to discourage the homeless from sleeping there. We say so casually, as if it were the easiest, most logical thing in the world, that they should get a job and get out of their situation. The article mentioned a couple of other outrageous efforts to keep out the homeless, like the Phoenix legislator who actually drafted a bill to add cyanide to the garbage so that the homeless couldn't rummage through it. Go to a shelter, you say.
Many shelters only allow people to eat three meals a week there.
I don't mean to imply that those of us who aren't feeding the homeless amid our mess of midterms and work are shirking some sort of societal responsibility. But what does infuriate me is when we walk by a homeless person and can't look them in the eye, like they don't even exist. For all we know, we could all be one stroke of a magic wand away from being born into poverty. As of 1997, the Census Bureau showed that 13.3 percent of the U.S. population was homeless. It's very difficult to count a homeless person in a census, because he or she doesn't have an address.