FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—For many Floridians, the homeless have become more and more visible in Florida in the past year.
Impoverished individuals are more frequently seen at gas stations, parking lots, parks, intersections, and under highway overpasses.
“New faces have been exponentially increasing, and eight out of ten are brand new cases, whereas before it was six out of ten,” said Sean Cononie, director for the Homeless Voice Shelter in Hollywood, Fla.
The Homeless Voice newspaper is affiliated with the shelter of the same name, and provides distributor jobs to help people survive on the street, according to its website. Distributors of the Homeless Voice newspaper are ubiquitous.
Cononie works directly with people needing a place to live, and suggests the official numbers are almost certainly lower than reality. “For every official documented count of a homeless person out there it is counted as three, as most of them are just crashing elsewhere. The official count is nowhere near the real picture,” said Cononie.
He said it is common for poor people to avoid staying in a shelter. “Many who are considered a normal, functional person will not go to a shelter as there are rules, regulations, and classes that they are required to participate in, and some will get the sense of being in prison,” Cononie said.
Since the beginning of the 2008 recession, Florida has experienced the largest increase in poverty, according to a report from the Research Institute on Social & Economic Policy (RISEP). Mississippi has the worst poverty rate in the country, at 22.4 percent. Florida is at a 52-year high, with a poverty rate of 16.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey. The national poverty rate is 15.3 percent.
