The American dream?

The United States, the wealthiest country in the world, has some of the worst poverty rates in developed nations, something showed by the dozens of thousands of homeless people.

Although it is self-proclaimed as the land of opportunities, at the national level there are more than 500,000 individuals in that situation.

The so-called homeless are a negative postcard of that reality which doesn’t fit when they attempt to sell the “American dream.”

This sector is the lowest step of poverty affecting more than 140 million people, according to information provided by the Census Bureau.

Besides, in this prediction, 11 percent of white U.S. children live in poverty. It reaches 32 percent among blacks and 26 among Latinos, according to the Kids Count Data Center.

This scenario is surrounding homeless people, who, besides shortages, have to face the scourge of violence. Many are murdered at a horrific rate, researcher Thacher Schmid warned at a report published on https://www.jacobinmag.com.

Contrary to common perception, they are more likely to be victims of homicides than perpetrators.

Since 2010, at least 15 big U.S. cities registered more than 1,000 killings of homeless, official statistics reveal.

Las Vegas, Portland and Miami had rates in 2020 of roughly 200 per 100,000. That’s astronomically higher than the national average rate of nearly eight per 100,000.

That is not a new situation. Just before Christmas in 2021 details of a suspected serial killer named Willy Maceo, arrested in Miami for “hunting” sleeping homeless people, appeared; one among many events that occurred all over the country.

The rise in such crimes in the past five years, the Schmid report said, appears to outpace U.S. population growth.