The Star Market

This is a poem published in the New Yorker:

The Star Market
by Marie Howe
January 14, 2008

The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday.

An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout

breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps.



Even after his bags were packed he still stood, breathing hard and

hawking into his hand. The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them:

shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay, as if the Star Market



had declared a day off for the able-bodied, and I had wandered in

with the rest of them—sour milk, bad meat—

looking for cereal and spring water.



Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself, looking for my lost car

in the parking lot later, stumbling among the people who would have

been lowered into rooms by ropes, who would have crept



out of caves or crawled from the corners of public baths on their hands

and knees begging for mercy.



If I touch only the hem of his garment, one woman thought,

could I bear the look on his face when he wheels around?

Better If We Just Don't See Them

Statistcs About Homelessness

The number of people in the U.S. who were in poverty in 2005:
38,231,521

The percentage of those people who were children:
36%

The estimated number of people in the U.S. who are homeless for any period of time in a given year:
3.5 million

The number of people who were homeless in a night in October 1996:
444,000

The number of people who were homeless in a night in February 1996:
842,000

Percentage of homeless that have been homeless for less than two years:
70%

Percentage of homeless that have been homeless for less than six months:
40%

Percentage of homeless that live in vehicles:
59.2%

That live in makeshift housing (tents, cardboard boxes, etc):
24.6%

Percentage of homeless that live in the same city in which they became homeless:
75%

Percentage of homeless people that are employed:
13%

Estimated percentage of homeless diagnosed with a mental illness:
16-22%

Percentage of the overall U.S. population diagnosed with a mental illness sometime in their lives:
40%

Estimated percentage of homeless that are substance abusers:
26-40%

Percentage of homeless men that are veterans:
40%

Percentage of U.S. cities whose estimated homeless population is much greater than number of beds in emergency shelters:
100%

Percentage of homeless who are single men:
51%

Families with children:
30%

Single women:
17%

Likelihood to have a personal or property crime committed by a homeless person than by a housed person:
10% less likely

Percentage of homeless people that receive Social Security or General Assistance (food stamps):
20%

Percentage of homeless that report having no health insurance:
55%

Percentage of the general U.S. population that reports having no health insurance:
16%

Average amount a homeless person receives in income a month:
300 dollars

Resources: The National Coillition for the Homeless; National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Homelessness in the United States, Wikipedia.