Shortened Days

I love England. It's a quirky little place where they speak with all sorts of wonderful accents and I can throw a stone in any direction and hit a shoppe that sells fish and chips. I've spent  some time there and have family there, as well. Great music and history and all sorts of other reasons for me to enjoy our British friends across the pond and be thankful for their existence. I will forgive them for the Spice Girls because they also give us Everton Football (soccer, for the Yanks reading this).

This morning I was thankful for England for a different reason. I read a report from a British university in Sheffield that stated the average homeless person in the United Kingdom has a lifespan of 30 years less than a housed person. This prompted me to do some investigation of American homelessness and I found some staggering numbers. It's hard to get concrete numbers because different studies and surveys produce varied answers, but I averaged a few sources and this is what I discovered:

I averaged men and women together, and a conservative estimate is that a homeless person in America has a life span of 54 years. The life expectancy of a housed American is roughly 77 years. I'm not a mathematician but I think that adds up to more than two decades of life for the housed. Think about that for a minute. I usually like to elaborate on an idea or offer some commentary, but I'm going to stop now because I  feel this merits a moment of silence.

...actually 23 years worth.