Lily Philips- "Treasure Hunters" in San Fransisco

San Fransisco is a place with a growing economy "full of young, affluent people" and even more available trash. This city is known for their recycling, but it also consists of many people who have low-attention spans and are always throwing out lightly used items. After talking with Mr. Ortega, The New York Times has learned about the fairly large trash scavenging business all over America. Mr. Ortega is a veteran who is apart of the chronically homeless veterans program in San Fransisco. He goes around the neighborhoods of the city picking up valuable trash to later resell to earn money he would not otherwise be able to make. He must gain about $30-$40 a day to survive with around $300 a week. He can find anything from a gently used pair of jeans to electronics like iPhones or iPads. While some may see this as wrong, others see it as a "civic service". They consider them to be helping the city by taking these items of value out of the landfills and in the ownership of someone who would actually use them.
This is an article written by Thomas Fuller who is the NY Times Bureau in San Fransisco, and it was published in The New York Times which is reliable source for news and information. The article's audience is the people of America to inform them about a growing and controversial topic. I believe this can be seen as a positive thing, and these people are selling items that was intended to be trash anyway. They do not have a source of income and are not able to get a job, own a place to live, or even have money to buy food. This is an important issue to be aware of because it is a very current and recent matter that is increasingly popular in our country. This can be connected to people in the United States during World War II who would recycle materials such as steel, paper, rubber, etc. to raise money for the war.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/us/trash-pickers-san-francisco-zuckerberg.html