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Americans skipping meals to cope with rising costs – poll

American economy news

A new survey has found that half of US homeowners and renters are struggling to afford their housing payments.

Half of Americans are struggling to afford their rising housing costs, and the financial squeeze is so severe for many that over one in five skip meals to get by, a new poll has revealed.

The survey, commissioned by Seattle-based real estate brokerage Redfin and released on Friday, showed that 50% of US homeowners and renters have had difficulties making their housing payments. Many respondents said they had to make sacrifices to cope with inflationary pressures. For instance, 22% reported that they had skipped meals, 21% sold some of their belongings, and a combined 37% either worked extra hours or took on additional jobs.

“Housing has become so financially burdensome in America that some families can no longer afford other essentials, including food and medical care, and have been forced to make major sacrifices, work overtime and ask others for money so they can cover their monthly costs,” said Redfin’s economic research chief, Chen Zhao.

Home prices and rents have risen sharply in many US cities, and mortgage rates remain elevated after reaching a 23-year high last October. Redfin said the typical US household income is about $30,000 a year lower than the level needed to afford a median-priced home.

Nearly 35% of poll respondents said they were taking fewer vacations, or none at all, to keep up with their housing payments. About 18% borrowed money from friends and family or dipped into their retirement savings. For 16%, the cash crunch was so difficult that they had to delay or forgo needed medical care.

The US inflation rate rose to the highest level in more than 40 years in June 2022, prompting the Federal Reserve to boost interest rates in an attempt to tame prices. The pace of inflation has slowed since then, but price growth rose to 3.2% from a year earlier in February, higher than economists expected. The increase dimmed hopes that the US central bank will soon begin pushing interest rates lower.

Many young Americans have had to give up their apartments and move back in with their parents. A Harris/Bloomberg poll last September found that 45% of 18- to 29-year-olds are living at home with their parents or other relatives, the highest level since the 1940s. Most of those had moved back home within the past two years.

Image credit: Thought Catalog

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Source:RT News

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7 COMMENTS

  1. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered….”

    -Thomas Jefferson (the original “conspiracy theorist”)

  2. Might come as a blessing for most:
    Percent of US adults age 20 and older with overweight, including obesity: 73.6% (2017-2018)
    Source: Prevalence of Overweight, Obesity, and Severe Obesity Among Adults Ages 20 and Older: United States, 1960-1962 Through 2017-2018

  3. Yesterday on Al-Jazeera, there was an on-site report both in Oz & Aotearoa exposing the only two main wholesalers running the food distribution there, and that we are suffering the HIGHEST food prices in the West and OECD!
    This is readily apparent with regards to the disabled, the elderly, and those struggling with two minimum-wage jobs in their quest to find affordable food (note; there isn’t any…!).
    Most of the food pantries are empty or unable to afford to operate now, and today we received a notice from our electric company that our electricity bill will be going-up by $64.00!
    Couple this with the flyers we found in our mail boxes regarding the rising Council Rates that are going up 34.8% over the next three years, to over 106% over ten years, and one can see that the populations are being pushed into the literal death zone via the unaffordability of food, rates, taxes, petrol, medical care, the end result of Covid vaccines, and hyper inflation.
    We also have the warmongers who have been hard at work to kill as many people as possible via regional wars, genocides, war crimes, and the same ending with nuclear war on a global scale!
    The bottom line here is that they want us DEAD!! They want to replace the majority of the First World Populations with Third World Populations (the latter if any of those survive…!) as they can be paid minimum wage and don’t mind living in disease-laden squalor.
    We are going to be priced-out of existence by the PTB until there is an uprising on a global scale.
    What type of civilisation that emerges from this current fascist, corporate mess remains to be see.
    & BTW- we have NEVER received a response from Luxom, Peters and Seymour with these concerns, so this confirms that a Globalist Government is going to continue to do the bidding of the WEF, WHO, and NWO to the point of us all going…extinct by methodology, gradualism and design!

  4. I remember 30 years ago when I lived in the ‘Good Ol’ U.S. of A.’ of going without meals just so my young child could eat!!!
    I bought second-hand clothes at the Salvation Army’s Op Shop…and slept on a used second-hand mattress from a hotel.
    I struggled with high rent (we lived in what was basically a mould-laden 1-bedroom apartment for 6 years…) and if a relative had not been nearby, we would have been on the streets!
    I served in the military for just under 20 years until a service-connected disability arose, and had to leave the service.
    It took 10 years to get compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs. I was unemployed and unemployable as a result of my service-connected disabilities.
    Once I obtained my legal and lawful compensation, I tried buying a home, but was denied the purchase of the same by the vendor who, from what I could gather, had been instructed NOT to sell to me by a then-hidden third party.
    I had a car payment, but I paid that off ASAP and then I put my 12 year old Ford Mustang in the shop for a top-overhaul, and had it painted , so that I could last another 10 years. Then, on 4 July it was bombed in my relative’s driveway!
    The Veterans Affairs Doctors put me on SSRI’s to ‘take the edge off’…but all that did was numb-down / dumb-down the effects of my disability. Medication did not solve any of my external problems…!
    In the late 1990’s, I was visited by the U.S. Secret Service, accused of planning to assassinate a former President. They received an anonymous phone call, worked-up a PRISM profile, and I noted that these were the same men who had been following me around for at least three years!
    I called my lawyer, and she agreed that someone was harassing me and my then 16 year old child.
    After three months, the case was closed, and no charges filed. Still, they would show up in the supermarkets, at the church, and at the VA Clinic.
    After I left the state that I was living in, I moved to Florida, and I was basically steered into a 1 bedroom condo after being denied a home that the vendor refused to sell to me and found myself surrounded by Masonic informants and several Alphabet Agency Police-types.
    Five months later, a drug addict and dealer showed-up as a neighbour, and things decayed.
    I sold-up and got out!
    The druggie had been placed above me deliberately to cause noise, problems, visiting traffic, and a confrontation.
    It has often been noted that in order to see where a country is headed historically, socially and economically, one should go to the place where they were happiest as a child.
    I did that, and stayed only eight months (the same place where I was denied the purchase of a home…) before doing room and board with a cousin at another location.
    I met a gorgeous woman from New Zealand- we did a road trip and noted the many times we were followed, photographed in public, and the nastiness that we encountered from so-called ‘friends and family’.
    I sold everything I had and came home with her to New Zealand. Been here for 22 years now.
    What is the jist of this rant?
    What happened to me in the U.S. thirty-plus years ago is now happening to many all over the world, and especially in the U.S.. Those who doubted me sniggered and ‘had a good laugh’ at their vile and vindictive behaviours are now suffering the effects of the Police State, the deliberately engineered poverty, hyper inflation and the unaffordable cost to live, just as I did back then!
    & BTW- I did an inquiry under the FOIA / PA, with the FBI, and was shocked to discover that they have a a file on me with 556 pages!! I have never been arrested nor charged with a crime! I was also shocked and saddened to discover that family, so-called ‘friends’ and co-workers / past supervisors were also informants.
    Had I stayed in the U.S., I would be profiled as a ‘Domestic Terrorist’ by the Alphabets for being conservative, (BTW- I quit the church- read the book ‘Stasi in the Pews’..) a Veteran, and voted for Trump twice, but in retrospect, no one is going to ‘save America’ at this point in time!
    Under the NDAA, I would have been placed in ‘indefinite detention (illegal & un-Constitutional, BTW). Noteworthy is that Obama was the President who brought this into law, and no one has ever really challenged it in Congress. One need only look at the J-6ers to know that the U.S. is now on a path to a Police State GULAG as noted by John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute, and many other astute writers.
    Everyone should be preparing for the worse- as because, by the social engineering from a group of psychopaths, it ain’t gonna get any better anytime soon.
    Look for World War Three based on the trends that we are now seeing, and the fact that the rule of law went out the window via gradualism.
    Look for many Western Nations to go the way of beta-tested Gaza and the West Bank, and the’Elites’ responsible for the mess that we’re allin currently!

  5. This is where the corrupt anocracy that is the USA, ultimately leads. To the enrichment of the few and the impoverishment of the many. In spite of all the fools who lambaste Socialism, the US is Socialist but in a corrupted way that see’s the elite bailed out by the long suffering tax payer, when things go sour. Examples are rife, from banks to automotive bail outs, whilst everyone else gets to “enjoy”, user pays capitalism, which is just the “greatest system ever”. You pay taxes and then pay again, for everything from healthcare to education. Of course, we see how this works, in practise, when massive amounts of taxpayer money is wasted on wars, for example. This would not be possible if people were not compelled to pay “twice”. So much for US CAPITALISM, what a bad joke. Its getting just as bad here in NZ, where the morons line the pockets of, for example, the Ukraine regime at the same time failing to use tax money to fund healthcare and education.

  6. Americans have to also pay tax on their earned income if they are also working in New Zealand. They get taxed both here by the IRD and over there by the IRS. The U.S. and I believe Eritrea are the only two countries in the world that do this methodology of financial rape and oppression.
    Trying to renounce U.S. Citizenship never used to cost $, but Obama and his Communist handler Bill Ayers and wife Michael made sure that;
    1. The illegal and un-Constitutional NDAA was enacted that allowed for ‘indefinite detention’;
    2. Brought in the illegal FATCA Act, violating the 4th and 8th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and the illegal ‘excessive fines clause’.
    3. Insured that a fee to renounce U.S. Citizenship was implemented;
    4. Continued to tax post-renunciation.
    Even after Obama left office, Trump had every opportunity to eliminate FATCA and FBAR, but did not.
    Many Americans living overseas in remote areas have no idea that they are now ‘criminals by default’…and even if an accountant never knew about this or never mentioned it to their clients, their clients still get treated like criminals. Before Obama arrived in the White House, no such law(s) existed.
    Senator Rand Paul and another Senator from North Carolina challenged this, but the IRS had it repealed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, DESPITE THE FACT THAT BOTH FORMS OF DOUBLE TAXATION ARE ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL! The cost to keep these illegal programs have maximum outlay and a very minor return.
    (This comes as no surprise based on the number of cases proving vote fraud in 2020, and a SCOTUS that was gutless to overturn the election…).
    Will Trump stop this crap? I doubt it…like many other items and ideas that he never acted on, despite being advised by the inner circle to stop some appointments and activities.
    In the meantime, Yanks living overseas are staying put, lest they be arrested upon re-entering the U.S.,and suffering the consequences of indefinite detention under the illegal NDAA (GULAG) similar to the J-6ers who exercised their right to protest a stolen election!
    One person who changed how the IRS operated when they were abusing the Citizens of the U.S. was Congressman George Hanson, who, like what the PTB did to Congressman Jim Traficant, charged Hanson with a trumped-up crime, , sent him to jail, and abused his body with shackles and diesel therapy, while violating his Civil and Constitutional Rights.
    Look for nothing to change except more money to Israel and the Ukraine until the U.S. collapses into either Civil War ll, World War lll or both.

  7. Thank you for above comments high-lighting what the USA has really become.
    And IMO we here in Godzone are not far behind.

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