If you live in a big city, you may see them around you. I’m talking about aging vans, SUVs and trailers that sit on the side of the road for months and obviously have people living in them. There is a whole class of people who live in such conditions, and there is a whole class of “businessmen” who prey on such people. When I was growing up, there were a lot of headlines about “slumlords” profiting from the poor. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a “slumlord” is “an owner who makes an unusually large profit from a poor, poorly maintained property.” Today we have a different problem. “Van Owners” park vans, SUVs and trailers on the streets of the worst areas of our major cities and rent them out to people who cannot afford permanent housing. Unfortunately, we live in a time when many people cannot afford permanent housing as homelessness rapidly spreads across the country. Efforts have been made against the vans in some areas, but when it gets too hot in one area, they simply move to another location. As long as there are vast hordes of homeless Americans who are suffering deeply, there will be “vans” who will seek to take advantage of them. Matt Feeley recently wrote a very interesting article about this phenomenon. He says things are particularly bad in Auckland’s poorest areas… But the most notorious and sinister form of homelessness in Auckland is car camps. In my North Oakland neighborhood, you’ll see a few small vehicle parking lots, lines of dirty campers, and damaged cars seeking shade under the overpass, but in poor East Oakland the situation is the worst. There, such camps took over long, busy streets, saturating already troubled neighborhoods with huge, living sculptures of ugliness and disorder: cars filled with clothes and trash; large SUVs parked for months; street drug and sex dealers; accumulation of garbage around and between cars, as well as many new crimes. City officials recently had to replace traffic lights at an East Oakland intersection with stop signs because people, presumably from a nearby parking lot, kept stealing cables to sell the copper wire inside. This is exactly how a huge number of people across the country live now. Unfortunately, most people living in RVS don’t even have one. On the contrary, most of them belong to “vans”… But the people in those Jeeps don’t own them. They rent them from people called “vans.” These eager dealers buy old trailers and SUVs and either drive or tow them into rough neighborhoods in cities like Oakland. There they enter into informal rental agreements with homeless people. This also occurs on a very large scale in southern California. For example, it is estimated that the number of people actually living in Los Angeles County actually increased by 31 percent from 2020 to 2023… The number of people actually living in all of Los Angeles County increased by 31 percent from 2020 to 2023. to the annual homeless count. An estimated 11,500 people live in approximately 6,800 SUVs. Every day more and more poor people are forced to take to the streets. And every day, more and more Americans who were once middle class are joining the ranks of the poor. Our standard of living has fallen so much that we have reached a point where even most middle-class Americans are experiencing financial hardship… Most middle-class Americans are experiencing financial hardship that they expect to last the rest of their lives. . , according to a new survey. Findings released by the National True Cost of Living Coalition show that 65% of Americans whose incomes are 200% above the national poverty line, which is about $62,300 for a family of four, often in the middle class, said they are struggling financially difficulties. In many cases, one accident or one unfortunate breakdown is enough to confuse a person. The vast majority of us struggle to make ends meet month after month, and that’s because the cost of living is rising much faster than wages… The typical American household had to pay $227 more per month in March to buy the same goods and services. , like a year ago, due to still high inflation. Americans pay an average of $784 more each month compared to the same period two years ago and $1,069 more compared to three years ago. If you are still healthy, please don’t look down on those who are suffering. Many of them were once just like you. Unfortunately, even more Americans will soon be forced to take to the streets as economic conditions continue to worsen. This week we learned that initial jobless claims hit their highest level in 10 months… The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week unexpectedly jumped to their highest level in 10 months, the latest sign that… that the labor market is starting to cool this year. in the face of high interest rates. Data released Thursday by the Labor Department showed initial claims rose from 13,000 to 242,000 for the week ending June 8, above the 2019 average of 218,000 claims. This is the highest level of unemployment claims since August 2023. The number of continuing claims filed by Americans receiving consecutive unemployment benefits also rose to 1.82 million in the week ended June 1, up 30,000 from the previous week. Almost every economic indicator we get lately tells us that the economy is rapidly moving in the wrong direction. So if you think things are bad now, just wait until you see what happens next. Personally, I am confident that by the end of 2024 the situation will steadily worsen. Soon all the vans will have even more potential customers, and that’s not good news for all of us. https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com Author’s comment: We’ve been told fairy tales that Americans are such travel enthusiasts – they buy trailers, vans, drive around and live in them. Most people simply can’t afford it, but renting caravan kennels is kind of a mess in a third world country. Mike1975https://aftershock.news Subscribe to our Telegram channel so as not to miss all the most important materials that we publish: https://t.me/russiapost
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