8,000 North Dakotans Fear Becoming Homeless in the Next Few Months
Even though $350 million in rental assistance is available to North Dakotans, many fear becoming homeless.
Yesterday, I wrote a story about the approximately $350 million still on the table for North Dakotans in need to use for rent. The money is not being used because of red tape and the fact that people may not have access or have any idea the money is available. We have been dealing with this COVID-19 pandemic for about a-year-and-a-half and we could easily have a homelessness pandemic next.
Typically, there are about 541 people homeless in North Dakota per day.
In the next couple of months, around 8,000 North Dakotans are reportedly concerned about becoming homeless. Before we shut down nearly everything because of the pandemic, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness stated that "As of January 2020, North Dakota had an estimated 541 experiencing homelessness on any given day." If you do the math, the amount of homelessness could potentially skyrocket up to about 1,379%!
While 1,567 people died from COVID-19, 8,000 fear losing their lives to homelessness.
According to The New York Times, out of the nearly 111,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases North Dakota, 1,567 people died. Now, because people were forced to shut down their lives to "fight the invisible enemy," a very visible enemy is looming. Eight-thousand North Dakotans (and 3.2 million Americans) are fearing for their lives because they can't pay rent on the places they were forced to shutter into for the last year-and-a-half.
Will homelessness become the next thing to cripple the functionality of the human race?
Look, I understand that the thought was to help the "greater good" of the world when COVID-19 hit. But, as many have been saying since this started, life cannot be put "on hold" as it has been and bounce back to normal. It is no surprise that we are potentially facing a worse crisis now than we were at the start of the pandemic. And how do we solve the crisis like widespread mass homelessness?