A Homeless Struggle: A Devastating Tragedy

The social issue that I picked is homelessness. Homelessness is a real issue, even if we don’t always see it. Homelessness doesn’t just mean you don’t have a roof over your head, it means you don’t have food, a good education, a healthy lifestyle, or a warm place to sleep every night. Some people don’t think very highly about homeless people, they think that it's their fault that they are where they are in life. Homelessness is going to end up becoming a bigger problem.

Homeless: Choice or Chance? Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle is a story of one unparalleled family who constantly is moving from one place to another. The family seeks shelter in abandoned houses in extremely slipshod conditions.

Homelessness is one the most ignored problems in the United States with citizen and politician. Homeless people are walked by and ignored. Nobody ever thinks that they will be homeless. Due to the economy, people live paycheck to paycheck making house payments very difficult. Most people will want to believe most homeless people are drug addicts or alcoholics, but most people will be surprise to know that it is no all true.

While circumstances can vary, an individual’s first choice is rarely to choose homelessness due to the inability to afford housing or other unforeseen circumstances. The support of friends, family, and community programs/shelters are first suggestions when a person becomes displaced. When these suggestions become inadequate, living on the streets is the next favorable/affordable option. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, on a night in January of 2015, there were 564,708 people homeless in the United States (para 3).

In my experience, my homeless clients have engaged in high risk health behaviors and neglected their health. These high risk behaviors include substance abuse, criminal activity, incarceration, and unsafe sex practices. As a result these individuals experience high disease burdens and mortality rates. Boston Health Care for the Homeless estimated that the total annual expenditures from ER visits was $16,011,738 annually (Thakarar, Morgan, Gaeta, Hohl, & Drainoni, 2015). “Multiple factors have been identified as predictors of frequent ER use in homeless persons such as older age, previous hospital admissions and emergency room visits, multiple primary care visits, perceived inadequate mental health care, poor health status, and HIV” (Thakarar, et al., 2015).

When people think of others who are poor and less fortunate, they assume that it is people who are living on the street, don’t have a family, and are classified within the homeless population. What they don’t recognize is that is not completely wrong or correct because it is known that not all homeless people live on the streets or don’t have family to support them financially and more. The first time I recognized this was when I volunteered at the Our Daily Bread Employment Center in Baltimore. After observing and interacting with some of the families and individuals who attend the hot meal program year round, I not only recognized that most of the people came from stable homes and have jobs but also that 1 out of 10 people were homeless by

Homeless in America has been growing over the past 20-25 years. over a million people are homeless all over the world. 643,067 people experiencing homelessness of any given second. Most people are spending the night either in homeless shelters or in some sort of short-term transitional housing. Slightly more than a third are living in cars or under bridges or are in some other way living unsheltered.

In the passage, Homeless by Anna Quindlen the central idea is our idea of home has changed. First, homes are no longer what they used to be because now they are real estate. This sentence itself is not opinion it’s fact because homes did you used to be about living there, but now it’s about price. Next, there was a time when where you lived is where everything happened like eating,grew and buried.

Area of Conflict Homelessness can be understood in the perspective of conflict theory, which holds that capitalism is one the main reason for homelessness. “Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned” (Ayn Rand). There are many reasons why a person becomes homeless, an increasing number become homeless each year, with up to 5,000 people becoming homeless every year. Generally the experiences that lead to homelessness are determined by poverty and structural inequality.

During the recent years homelessness has increased eminently. Although homelessness is not a new phenomenon it has become a huge social issue in today’s society. In urban areas homelessness is visible by the masses but ignored by society’s negative perception. Characterized as unstable individuals, alcoholics and criminals by society, these negative stereotypes have only escalate the issue. Homeless can occur at any stage of life for multitude of factors.

The issue of homelessness in America has been evident since the early 1600’s. Across the country men, women and children spend their nights on the streets not knowing when or if they will ever find a permanent home. States and federal officials or city councils have tried to alleviate or at least reduce the number of homeless over the last several decades at a city, state or national level but it continues to be an ongoing problem. There is a multitude of factors that account for the growing homeless population that affects each state in the country differently. Though there are many contributing factors that contribute to the amount of people living on the street at any given night in the U.S.

Goodman 4 Richard Goodman English Comp II S. Cravens 5 March 2018 Ending Homelessness Homelessness is everywhere and it’s a growing problem in America. There are many reasons in which become homeless, and many of us ask ourselves should we help the homeless. We must remember that they are people too, and some time or another in life we all need help, even then homeless. In order to end or prevent homelessness, there are a number of things we must fix, the main thing being the affordable housing.

The idea behind the creation of this project, as previously discussed in person, has been with me for awhile now. Based on my habit of sleeping with light clothing on, even during the winter time, I started to ponder and picture the idea of the layered separation between those people, like me, who are privileged enough to have a wall separating them from the cold, and those who, no matter how many layers, are still victims of every year’s bone chilling temperatures. In addition, these individuals end up relying on inhumane last resorts, like pissing their pants to stay warm for as long as they nearly freeze again. The concept behind this project is to break people’s common lack of empathy for those living on the streets, which in my opinion, is due to the fact those at advantage, take for granted, the fact they have a roof and four walls around them at the end of the day. Not only do these individuals on the streets have no other option other than that, but they are also struggling with drug addiction, another method some find effective to stay warm.

As the war in Syria raged on and dropped a bomb near their home, they were forced to flee or face death. They had to leave everything behind, their friends, the neighborhood, the place where they spent their whole lives. For the next two years, they lived in a safer part of the city, but the living conditions were getting worse.

You would n    ever know by looking at me or talking to me that my family and I have been homeless before. For the kids that have been homeless before it doesn't make you any less worthy, or intelligent than anyone else. There  are  many things you can do not only to help yourself with the feelings of being embarrassed or ashamed but you can also help others like you, be apart of organizations, and volunteer your time to others that have been in our situation of being homeless so they can feel better and know it ’s okay.