The US has sent 80 billion dollars to Ukraine to aid in war efforts, while homeless people in the US suffer and winter looms for many who will freeze to death. 

With the money sent to Ukraine, every homeless person in the US could have been given more than 100,000 dollars. Instead of sending that money to Ukraine, every homeless person in the States could have been given a home.

As of 2018, there have been around 553,000 homeless people on a given night, according to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Annual Homeless Assessment Report.

The US government could have ended homelessness with the money given to Ukraine. The more than 500,000 homeless people in the US could have been given homes immediately, could have been provided with places to sleep immediately. Around a quarter of a million people completely unsheltered and facing potentially fatal conditions could have been rescued from the streets. 

Not only could that money have been used right here in the US, using it here might have actually saved the country even more money, considering the incredible expense cities have to pay to sustain their homeless populations, to send out police, in the cost of criminalizing the homeless, in the cost of emergency calls and emergency room visits and ambulance rides, jails, cleaning and sanitation and the general burden on society at large to have people suffering in this way, so unnecessarily.

Every winter in the United States, around 700 homeless people freeze to death, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless’s Winter Services report.

Photo: “Homeless” by Karim Corban is licensed under CC BY 2.0