The Growing Division Between the Rich and the Poor Leading to Increasingly Severe Human Rights Issues in the United States

The homeless are living in poor conditions in the United States. The website of the British newspaper The Guardian reported on February 24, 2017, that millions of people in the United States were driven out of their homes every year because they could not afford to pay the rent. Reuters website reported on November 20, 2015, that due to inadequate supply of affordable housing and weak economic recovery in most regions, more than 565,000 people were homeless in the United States, a quarter of whom were children. Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, and Hawaii have all declared a state of emergency in recent years due to an increasing number of the homeless. The website of the British newspaper The Guardian reported on December 6, 2017, that the number of homeless in New York City increased by 4.1 percent in 2016. The living conditions of the homeless are extremely poor, and many of these homeless people urgently need medical assistance or suffer from mental illness. Homeless people who live on the streets face problems such as widespread violence and lack of toilets and bathing facilities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the homeless people living on the streets have been relocated and forced to live in temporary shelters for isolation. The website of Reuters reported on April 23 that in the crowded shelters offered by the US government, it was impossible for the homeless staying there to practice social distancing, which made it easier for the virus to spread. The website of The New York Times pointed out on April 13 that the shelters for the homeless became a delayed-action bomb of a virus outbreak in New York City, as more than 17,000 people lived and slept almost side by side in those centralized shelters. The website of Nature magazine reported on May 7 that when researchers began conducting virus testing on homeless people in the United States, they found that the situation there had gotten out of control. The website of the Los Angeles Times reported on May 14 that research showed that due to the impact of the pandemic, the number of homeless people in the United States might surge by as much as 45 percent within a year, further exacerbating the public health crisis.

The poverty-induced stress makes the US people suffer from deterioration in their overall health. Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, pointed out in his report on his visit to the United States that the "health gap" between the United States and countries with the same level of development continues to widen, as the US citizens have shorter life expectancy and are more likely to die of illness. A report on the residents living in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, which was made by Agence France-Presse (AFP) on October 14, 2015, showed that 76 percent of the residents were African Americans and nearly 40 percent of the residents lived below the poverty line and that these residents are more than twice as likely to become HIV-infected and their average life expectancy is 11 years shorter than that of the residents living in the Financial District, Manhattan. The Medical News website reported on June 13, 2017, that 15.7 million people in the United States are alcoholics and 7.7 million abuse illegal drugs. The CBS website reported on June 6, 2017, that overdose had become the leading cause of death among US citizens under the age of 50. A report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in December 2017 showed that more than 63,600 people in the United States died from a drug overdose in 2016.