Public Homelessness Research Paper

Compassion can be defined as “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for someone who is stricken with misfortune accompanied with by a strong desire to alleviate their suffering.” There is also “the desire to help them and show them compassion” (dictionary.com/oxffordictionary.com. n.p.). Homelessness is a heavy burden to bear. In public homelessness, one deals with the harshness of the weather, the embarrassment of judgmental people, and the feeling of an unsafe environment. For private homelessness, the struggle of not making ends meet and living pay check to pay check not knowing if it will be enough to cover all the necessities in life. Staying in nasty, abhorring, filthy shelters just to keep from sleeping on the floor. Being disregarded
as a human being by everyone that doesn’t understand what that individual is going through. The government is fully aware of its constantly growing homelessness problem. Some have taken the initiative to take steps to aid some relief to those in need. But they can’t do this alone. Majority of these organizations that supply aid for homelessness are nonprofits. They run solely on donations given by people how understand that the world needs a change. Though the government has helped with grants and other avenues to keep some organizations going. It has yet decided to take on it homelessness problem full force. They leave it for the small nonprofit to handle. Home Aid is evidence of nonprofits that put their all inn to saving the world from homelessness. They provide food, clothing, warmth, and other necessities for the homeless. Yet, with many of organizations like this one, the homelessness rate is still increasing, still more and more people are being laid off. Still more and more people are losing their homes because of high mortgages. Shelters are still turning away thousands of people due to limited spacing. More shelters are needed, cleaner shelters are needed. The job market needs to be stronger and better equipped for people to find and keep jobs. This are all issues that no one organization can fix. No person can snap their fingers together and all these problems are gone. It’s the government’s job to fix these. They are responsible for all these issues and they need to come up with a way to fix them. It is understandable that all this will not happen overnight. The homelessness problem is a massive worldwide problem. Still, this does not excuse the fact that the rate continues to grow every year. Something must be done to make change. Athens, Greece is a prime example of government that are not doing their best to end, or even decrease their homeless rate.
Year after year people are being thrown on the streets and forgotten about. Governments like this only about money and how to get more of it. The fact that trying to fix their homelessness problem will cost them a high percentage of their money, they don’t want to be bothered. Trying to fix this problem could raise taxes and cause cuts in funding and paychecks, and no one is willing to sacrifice anything I the name of improving someone else’s
life. “Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2 n.p.). Jesus’ life is the greatest example of compassion. He asked us to have such a deep feeling for sympathy that we will want to alleviate someone’s suffering. He is asking us to show compassion to one another. The burden of homeless is enormous, but with everyone helping carry a portion of the weight it will be lighten. Jesus traveled from country to country helping people carry their burden. He made it his mission to make people’s burdens lighter. It’s one of the many things he is known and adored for. Starting and helping organizations and other nonprofits with the ambitious goal to end world homelessness is to perfect way to continue his legacy. As stated earlier, I can speak on homelessness from a personal level.
My family and I were homeless for a total of five years. The first time we were displaced from our home, my mother and father who were working class people who just couldn’t afford the rent. Once displace, we bounced from hotel to motel just trying to keep our heads above water. Both my parents had terrible credit, and having to pay a weekly fare made it nearly impossible to save money for a house. To a 13-year-old child it was hard to accept that even to both my parents have paying jobs, I still was homeless. The odds were never in our favor. We applied to house after house and was continually denied. Then finally after years of hoping around, a house decided to approve us to rent. We stayed in that house for five years living paycheck to paycheck. Never having enough, but always getting by. In the fourth year my father passed away from a stroke. Now a single parent, my mother could not afford rent alone. Thankfully the insurance helped cover rent, but once the money ran out we here back out on the street. At first we bounce from one relative’s how to another, from my mother’s coworker’s house and the finally back to hotels. It hit us hard, but we continually tried to stay thankful. My mother still had a job an even though the money wasn’t enough, it was better than nothing. Even the nights when we didn’t have enough to stay in a motel or hotel, we were blessed to have a car to sleep in. Looking at my
situation, it makes me think of those who went through what I went through and didn’t have a job. Those who did not have a steady income at all, or a car to shelter them from the harsh weather. Those who don’t have family and friends willing to allow them to stay in their homes. I don’t know how those people make it.