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I stopped at the North Carolina welcome center rest area on I77 northbound from South Carolina. There were approximately 50 old cars, pickup trucks and vans parked along the shoulder of the ramp leading from the highway to the welcome center, and in the welcome center parking lot which were obviously being lived in by homeless people.

I spoke to one of the employees in the welcome center. He said there are usually over 100 vehicles parked in the welcome center overnight. People sleep in them even when temperatures are below freezing. He said many of these people are working in nearby Charlotte, NC but can’t afford to rent an apartment. He said quite a few are young singles or couples struggling to get by. He also said a large number have no drug or alcohol program, they are just down on their luck.

It was an extremely sad thing to witness. I thought of the many times the NC governor is on television cutting a ribbon for some corporate project the state has given millions of dollars in incentives to land. I thought of the big churches in the Charlotte area so proud of sending missions to Africa or Central America while a few miles away their fellow Americans are shivering through the night in a car at the rest area and taking a sink bath in the rest area restroom. I thought about the millions of foreign poor who are streaming across the border and being given government paid housing, food, and medical care, while the homeless working poor US citizens sleeping overnight in a cold vehicle are struggling to survive.

Our country is broken. The political system is corrupt, our institutions are not serving the people, our infrastructure is crumbling, and the social welfare agencies are obsessed with race and gender issues, not given the working poor a hand. We are rapidly losing our humanity.

“I thought of the many times the NC governor is on television cutting a ribbon for some corporate project the state has given millions of dollars in incentives to land.”

Now THAT is “welfare abuse”.

Plus such “corporation welfare” is siphoning jobs from the NE US at an alarming speed.

Just the mere mention of “North Carolina” by PA corporate executives makes Pennsylvania politicians roll over and offer 20 years of no property taxes.

In the past three years I have seen any number of small landlords sell their property and get out of the rental business. These were people who owned three properties or less. Most were retirees but a few were deployed military. I specialized in property management for them. When the eviction moratorium hit about a third of the renters took ruthless advantage of it by not paying their rent for months. They did this even if they were still working or they were getting unemployment. When the moratorium ended and they were served with Notice to Quit they screamed like scared bunnies. How could we be so mean? Judging by what we cleaned out of the properties they had spent their money on pricy electronics. Many that they did not even bother to take with them.

The sad part is that many of the landlords decided to quit as well. We were told by most to put their property up for sale when the lease ran out. The renters who had kept paying the rent were hurt as well as they were told that they had to find some place else to live when their lease ended.

A few of them managed to buy the rental. Most did not. The houses were snapped up in days of being put on the market.

The same story happened again and again all over the country.

The contraction of the rental market and the number of renters who suddenly had to find new housing had a hand in creating this current problem.

And worse those people who got out of the rental business are not getting back in. They can not afford to do so.