Homelessness and Starving Street People

Homelessness and Starving Street People

Do you ever find that there’s nothing to eat at your house? You’re not alone, but at least you’re lucky you’ll eventually get something in your refrigerator. There are many people that don’t eat for months because they live on the street. People are starving as we speak. We use the term “starving” loosely, but do we actually know what it’s like to starve? We have approximately 35 million poverty-stricken people in America. How many does that make in the world? Too many!

Poverty has been described as the number one health problem for many poor nations as they do not have the resources to meet the growing needs. Half the world, nearly three billion people, live on less than two dollars a day (Human Development Report, 1998). That just shows how much money the government is putting into this worldwide problem. For example, there are approximately 150,000 homeless people in Britain, yet the government helped build the Millennium Dome, which cost over a billion US dollars (IPPR). That could have easily been used to help many families with children who need the food to survive. The money could also be used to help the third world countries that are over come with poverty.

To satisfy the world’s sanitation and food requirements, it would cost only $13 billion, hardly as much as the people of the United States and the European Union spend each year on perfume. (Human Development report, 1998) In fact, the total wealth of the world’s three richest individuals is greater than the combined gross domestic product of the 48 poorest countries - a quarter of all the worlds states (Overall National Production of Goods and Services). I feel that a lot of money is being put to waste in this world.

Many people say that it’s the homeless people’s fault for living on the street, but even a job at McDonalds could not earn them enough money to pay for an apartment. In the median state a minimum-wage worker would have to work 87 hours each week to afford a two-bedroom apartment at 30% of his/her income. The remaining 70% of the income, would then go to their child (if they had one), groceries, gas (and that’s if they have a car), bus fare, and miscellaneous items (National Low Income Housing Coalition, 1998).