You may want to grab the box of tissues for this one. Rethink Homelessness, is a ?strategic, creative grassroots initiative? addressing homelessness in Central Florida.
I really don’t have many words to follow that video, as its message is poignant. So, I’ll just provide a bit more information to place it in context.
Who are the homeless in the United States?
Here are some facts released from The National Alliance to End Homelessness in a report titled The State of Homelessness in America 2014.
- At the last count there were 610,042 homeless people living in the United States, which equates to 19 homeless persons out of every 10,000 persons in the general public.
- 92,593 people were considered chronically homeless as individuals.
- 58,063 were homeless veterans.?The national rate for homeless veterans is 27.3 per 10,000 people. Five state and the District of Columbia have a rate higher than the national average; Alaska (29.2), California (81.7), D.C. (159.5), Florida (35.3), Hawaii (47.7), and Massachusetts (32.8).
- 222,197 accounts for the people in families that are homeless.
- California has 15,469 homeless unaccompanied children and youth, of which over 10,000 are unsheltered.
- In 2012, 48,760,123 persons lived in poverty in the United States.
- The total homeless population on a given night in 2013 exceeded the number of beds by nearly 184,000 beds.
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Elizabeth Preston is a thirty-something wife and mother of three living in Florida. She is a fierce liberal with a passion?for equality and justice. She is a skeptic by nature and often the Facebook friend that rains on the urban legend parade with fact checking. Give her?Facebook page?a?like, follow her on?Twitter?and check out her personal blog,?My Four Ha? Pennies.
