Homelessness in America

Evelyn Perler
Homelessness in America: A Research Paper
Homelessness is the state of lacking permanent residence. This phenomenon is a result of many different factors including mental disease, illness, discrimination, loss of job, and/or inability to find work. Around 3.5 million people experience homelessness in a year in the United States of America. The homeless population includes males, females, and non-binary persons of all ages. About half of the homeless are single males. A quarter of the homeless population are single females. Children, people under the age of eighteen, make up around 39% of the homeless population. There are about three times as many homeless children in 2013 in America compared to the amount of homeless children there was in 1983, Families with children are the fastest growing entity of those who are homeless. The homeless are a neglected part of our society that deserve rights and respect. Instead of chastising these people for what many is a problem out of their control, we should help them to become more healthy members of our community. Homelessness is a social issue that affects not only the individual, but the entire fabric of society.

What is a homeless person? The Merriam Webster dictionary defines homeless as, “having no home or permanent place of residence”. When you think of homeless people, you may think of people sleeping in cardboard boxes and holding up hand-made signs with their dirt encrusted fingers begging for a dollar. You may walk past street people, nose high in the air and the reinsurance that all homeless people are lazy people who have faulted themselves into a bad situation. Many walk past street people every day, their pin money feeling like weights in their back pockets, trying to avoid eye contact with someone who doesn’t have to ability to retain residence and is struggling to rekindle their hope for a better life. However, most homeless people don’t conform to the popularly excepted stereotype of a dirty, bearded, begging pauper in rags. The woman with her children that were in front of you in the grocery store line, flipping through coupons and using pennies to be able to afford her food, is living in her car. Maybe she was laid off of her job at the accounting firm and her amount of debt made it impossible for her family to stay in her town house. Perhaps she didn’t have any educational opportunities as a young adult and her minimum wage job is unable to afford any two-bedroom apartment in the entire United States. A variety of situations could have led to this young mother’s homeless state. There is no one rationale for homelessness. The only thing all homeless people have in common is that they are unable to afford housing. There is no single cause to homelessness, and because of that, there is no simple resolution.

There is an alarming amount of laws barring the homeless. There have been many instances of cities “cracking down” on homeless people with laws that turn the homeless into criminals. In Washington D.C., it is considered a crime to sleep on a park bench. A law in Tucson made it illegal to camp out on city property. Certain cities in Indiana, Ohio, and California passed laws making “aggressive panhandling” and “abusive soliciting” illegal. These laws can be considered unconstitutional, as the First Amendment protects the right to solicit aid. Homeless people usually lack the resources to fight discrimination against them, making them easy targets for police brutality, especially if they fall into other homeless sub-populations such as being African-American, Latino, disabled, Gay, and/or Transgender. If you happen to witness police abuse to homeless people, record the incidence and promulgate the occurrence. Everybody deserves rights and respect. Many consider housing a human right. There are 18.6 million vacant homes in America. That is around 5.3 homes for every person that is homeless in a year. Should people suffer by sleeping in horrible conditions on the streets and in shelters when there are so many empty houses?

A large percentage of the homeless population is affected by mental illness and addiction. These diseases should be more readily addressed by the government and effective mental health programs need to be put in place for our society to function at the proper potential. Thirty-nine percent of the homeless population report some form of mental health problems. Thirty-eight percent have alcohol abuse problems. The amount of homeless people with schizophrenia or manic-depressive illnesses is comparable to the population of Salt Lake City, Utah. At any given time, there are more people with severe untreated mental illnesses living on the streets than there are people in hospitals receiving treatment. America’s streets have practically become dangerous psych wards.

One in fifty children in the United States is homeless. Homeless children are four times as likely to have delayed development and twice as likely to experience hunger. Homeless children are twice as likely to repeat a grade compared to other children. At least twelve percent of school-aged homeless children are not enrolled in school while they are homeless. About half of homeless do not attend school on a regular basis. The McKinney-Vento Act protects homeless children’s right to a free public education. Government-run public schools must take all students and teach them in a way that meets their learning needs. Schools have to provide transportation of homeless children. These accommodations help children and their families’ transition in and out of homeless situations.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth make up a massive portion of the homeless population. Discrimination against LGBT people in shelters and jails is common. Many times have transgender people found themselves in the opposite gender’s shelters and jails. Sexual abuse is much more probable to happen in these situations. Promoting acceptance is one solution to identity-based homelessness. Therefore, until acceptance of LGBT people is customary, rejection and disproportional poverty amongst queer youth will be disappointingly frequent.

Homeless shelters are temporary solutions to onset, provisional homelessness. They are sometimes used as transitory tools for people trying to live with family or friends, public housing, or other government residence options. Shelters are often dirty, crowded, and emotionally/physically harmful. Going into a shelter is often an invasive and disrespectful process where one has to completely surrender their self-respect. Some are too embarrassed to seek help in a shelter. People with drug addictions may avoid homeless shelters as many of them have drug-free policies. On the other hand, some drug shelters breeds drug activity and the violence that comes with it. Families frequently avoid shelters in fear of getting split up and the unsafe circumstances they may experience. The vast majority of men’s shelters do not take in children, leaving single fathers with a heart wrenching choice. Although women’s shelters take in children that are accommodated by their mothers, many do not take in teenage boys as young as thirteen. Can you imagine yourself as a homeless parent that has the choice to either have shelter for yourselves and the lack of knowledge where your child will go or be without shelter but at least have your kin with you? Some have to make this choice every night.

There are a lot of wonderful programs in place to help homeless people. Investing in solutions for the homeless is beneficial long-term, both economically and culturally. Programs like Habitat for Humanity, Section Eight Housing, welfare, and many volunteer/missionary groups help the homeless tremendously, though it would be unfair to that they completely solve the problem, or are free of downsides. Welfare and other public economic assistance can take months to get evaluated to see if you are eligible. Public housing authorities often have extremely long wait lists. Affordable housing and accessible mental health care are needed at an increasing amount. People in the community need to become more educated of the homeless problem instead of turning a blind eye. Getting out of a homeless situation, especially with children, is shown to cost less money in time because they are less likely to become involved in the justice system, and more likely to succeed in school and life. Encouraging the right to residence and teaching people the need for aid for the temporally and chronically homeless could help end ignorance against the homeless and address the need to help them.

The entirety of our society, economically, socially, and culturally, is affected by our homeless population. Different sub-populations need to have different aid to properly recover from homelessness. The commonness of homeless people is quite frightening, but many pass by street people every day without a second glance. People need to become educated on the consequences of homeless, on the individual and society. Homeless children and teenagers need more recognition to get the opportunities all children deserve. LGBT youth need to become more commonly accepted. Affordable housing needs to become more readily available. Drug and alcohol addicts need better, more effective treatment. People with disabilities, both physical and mental, need to be welcomed more by the community and deserve proper respect and treatment. Reducing the amount of people that are homeless every year is not only helpful to the individual, but to the whole of the community.

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