The plight of the homeless remains a problem. Indeed, some observers argue that the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 has increased the numbers of homeless people. There are no hard statistics on the homeless, but estimates of the number of people without a home on any given night in the United States range from a low of 230,000 to as many as 750,000 people. It is difficult to estimate how many people
are homeless because the number depends on how the homeless are defined. There are street people—those who sleep in bus stations, parks, and other areas. Many of these people are youthful runaways. There are the so-called sheltered homeless—those who sleep in government-supported or privately funded shelters. Many of these individuals used to live with their families or friends. While street people are almost always single, the sheltered homeless include numerous families with children. Homeless families are the fastestgrowing subgroup of the homeless population. As a policy issue, how to handle the homeless problem pits liberals against conservatives. Conservatives argue that there are not really that many homeless and that most of them are alcoholics, drug users, or mentally ill. Conservatives argue that these individuals should be dealt with either by the mental-health system or the criminal justice system. In contrast, many liberals argue that homelessness is caused by a reduction in welfare benefits and by excessively priced housing. They want more shelters to be built for the homeless. In the past decade, cities have attempted to "criminalize" homelessness. Many municipalities have outlawed sleeping on park benches and sidewalks, as well as panhandling and leaving personal property on public property. In some cities, police sweeps remove the homeless, who then become part of the criminal justice system. Because there is so much disagreement about the number of homeless persons, the reasons for homelessness, and the possible cures for the problem, there has been no consistent government policy. Whatever policies have been adopted usually have been attacked by one group or another. What does the word plight mean in the first paragraph?
a. courage
b. goal or destination
c. a promise
d. difficult situation
D
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The transcontinental railroads were built and owned by private companies but financed by the public (with one exception, James J. Hill's Great Northern). The sparseness of population between the Mississippi Valley and California and Oregon (Washington State after 1889) made it impossible to attract private investors to railroads connecting the East and West. Construction was too expensive
Building a mile of track meant bedding 3,000 ties in gravel and attaching 400 rails to them by driving 12,000 spikes. Having built that mile in Utah or Nevada, a railroader had nothing to look forward to but hundreds more miles of scarcely inhabited desert mountains. With no customers along the way, there would be no profits; without profits, no investors. The federal government had political and military interests in binding the Pacific Coast to the rest of the Union, and, in its land, the The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 granted to two companies, the Union Pacific (UP) and the Central Pacific (CP), a right of way 200 feet wide between Omaha, Nebraska, and Sacramento, California. For each mile of track that the companies built, they were to receive, on either side of the tracts, 10 alternate sections (square miles) of the public domain. The result was a belt of land 40 miles wide, laid out like a checkerboard on which the UP and the CP owned half the squares. The railroads sold the land to provide the money for construction and created customers in the buyers. Or they used their vast real estate as collateral against which to borrow cash from banks. In addition, depending on the terrain, the government lent the two companies between $16,000 and $48,000 per mile of track at bargain interest rates. According to the passage, the "right of way" granted to the railroad companies was a. 200 feet wide. b. 40 miles wide. c. 10 miles wide. d. 100 feet wide.
Complete the following sentence with the appropriate pronoun from the list below. The team considered ____ season a successful one for them
a. its b. everyone c. many d. few
¿Les vas a regalar esa cámara nueva a los recién casados?
Lupe quiere saber lo que tú vas a hacer este fin de semana en una recepción de boda. Contesta sus preguntas usando los pronombres de objeto directo e indirecto que sean necesarios.
Lucy is ________ dog
a. they're b. thier c. their d. theyre