Homeless people living in cars and motorhomes across the US are being joined by a new breed: the middle class.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/26/usa.creditcrunch
Instead of solving the problem, the Republicans are attempting to make sure that people without addresses do not vote.

That is because each of those homeless people deserves their fate according to conservatives.

The invisible hand of the market place ... showing you the door.

When I first moved to where I am now I never saw people sleeping in doorways or in the parks and very few panhandlers. Now 7 years later I see people sleeping all over, in alleys, on bus stop benches, doorways tents in the park, some just have sleeping bags. There's panhandlers on almost every street corner. The majority have mental problems, they are the ones who were released from the mental institution when they closed to save money. A lot are from downtown Vancouver that were evicted from low rent hotels so they can renovate and have space for the 2010 Olympics.

When I was a kid there were basically almost no homeless people. There were the few "bums" and "hobos" and the like but you certainly did not see them sleeping on the street - then in the early 1980s there was an explosion of homelessness that has never really since subsided. Turns out, in the case of homelessness, government wasn't the problem, it was the solution.

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/11/reagan_and_the_homeless_epidemic_in

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=DQn&q=homeless+1980s&btnG=Search