Tent cities. In the first world West we are used to seeing them in videos of refugee camps somewhere in the second or third world. An environmental catastrophe, a war zone, a famine, the aftermath of a crisis. People clustered together with poor health and sanitation, poor quality food, sometimes generational shanty towns where the inhabitants have no hope or opportunity.
It’s always happening somewhere else, somewhere foreign, somewhere far away.
Then, in 2012, I visited Los Angeles and noticed tent encampments erected alongside the freeway.
My Angelino friend told me that the rising price of real estate was leading to a rise in homelessness. Since 2012 the level of homelessness in California has only grown worse. If the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the history of the world can’t (or won’t) assist its homeless, it’s not a good omen for the first world west.
In the last five years in Australia the level of homelessness has also started to rise (mainly due to the high cost of renting or buying secure housing). There are tents-as-housing appearing on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney and according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, one in seven people experiencing homelessness are children under 12 (ABS Census 2021).
I see similar problems on the streets of London where the homeless have been rebranded as “rough sleepers”. Both the UK and Australia do not count the death of a homeless citizen in their death statistics (if you don’t have a registered address you don’t exist). I see lots of videos and articles about the real estate affordability problems in Canada, America, Canada, Australia, and the UK.
Increased homelessness and poverty within the populations of first world nations. What’s going on?
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