In the USA, often called "Land of Opportunity," the lack of affordable rental housing is seldom publicized. While increasing numbers of citizens have fallen from the middle class in the past 10-20 years, rental rates have not only remained excessively high, but increased in price, high rise condos usurping up urban areas where housing was barely affordable but people could still scrimp by, and making old as well as young homeless. Many live in tent "cities," forced to hide from the view of wealthier citizens.
And when housing vouchers are offered, tenants are forced to fill out reams of paperwork, acquire doctors' and pharmacy notes, just to be put on a waiting list. Others are treated miserably, subjected to management and workers knocking on their doors and yelling at them, brushing by them when they enter the apartments and nearly knocking them over, remodeling (hammering, painting, installing carpets, and doing woodwork, and installing sewers) daily -- while the helpless tenant is left with no protections, no options for peaceful enjoyment of their living quarters -- because this does not exist except for the wealthy, those who can afford city condos or gated communities. Tenants' requests for help, for peace, are ignored. And the lack of affordable, peaceful housing leads, inevitably, to illness, illness to medical debt, and medical debt to worry and further illness, eventually leading to the rampant, unpublicized US homelessness.
Yet this glaring inadequacy and injustice in what was once "the land of the free," is usually overlooked, as is the fact that it has existed for years. The only thing that has changed is the restrictions have diminished, not increased.
