Poor without being homeless
Poor not homeless:
"Charlie's exactly the sort of person Sup. Gavin Newsom wants to drive out of San Francisco, someone who would almost certainly be homeless, destitute, and panhandling for spare change in this wealthy city today.
But in 1955, in a decaying, poverty-stricken East Coast industrial town, Charlie was able to live something resembling a decent life. 'He had three things going for him,' Paul remembers. 'My dad and his friends never forgot him, and they'd hire him to do odd jobs when he was sober. They checked up on him when he was sick and made sure he had enough to eat. So he had some income and a social service network.
'And he had a room he rented for $4 a month.'
Granted, that was 1955 but adjusting Charlie's rent for inflation, his monthly housing cost today would be about $27. In other words, in Fall River 50 years ago, you could be poor without being homeless. And, just as important, the cost of housing alone wouldn't send you into poverty. "
Now, where people like Charlie (and many people who were poor but not alcoholics or drug users) used to live, there's a giant convention center and high-rise hotels and office buildings. The people who ran the city in the 1950s and 1960s called it progress.
The people who run the city today still call it progress when neighborhoods are damaged to make developers rich. And they don't like to talk about the costs of that progress – they'd rather just complain about the homeless and try to find ways to drive those people out of town.