The Cause Of Homelessness In The United States

Homelessness is an event where a person does not have permanent housing, meaning, that they are either sleeping outside, in a shelter, or in a housing program. A statistic states that report “On a single night in January 2015, 564,708 people were experiencing homelessness — meaning they were sleeping outside or in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program” (Batko). Half a million people in the United States had no place to call their home. Of these half a million people, 300,000 were families and 200,000 were individuals (Baram). This can happen due to many reasons. According to an article, the causes of homelessness are mental illnesses, losses of jobs, poverty, high housing prices, domestic violence, and substance abuse (“Homelessness

A statistic reveals that “the 2013 Housing Wage is $18.79, exceeding the $14.32 hourly wage earned by the average renter by almost $4.50 an hour, and greatly exceeding wages earned by low income renter households” (“Homelessness in America”). People are not making enough money to pay for their houses or apartments causing them to abandon their houses. Interviewed by James Baram, shelter owner Brenda Wilson says “It’s really bad. We have more new homeless people than we’ve ever had — people who lost their jobs and lost their homes via foreclosure” (Baram). According to the article published in the American Journal of Public Health, in 2010, more than 20.2 million households were spending half their income to pay for housing. This lead to an increase of about 21.8 million households who decided to share a living unit with other families (Shinn, et al.). This means that a worker making minimum wage would be unable to buy a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States (“Hunger and Homelessness”). This defeats the purpose of minimum wage because minimum means the smallest amount needed to get by; however, none of these homeless individuals are making enough to get by. Not only are the prices of houses decreasing, but the ability to get a job has also decreased. From 2014 to 2015, almost 400,000 people had lost their job. With no job these people were forced to leave their houses and find a shelter to live in (“Homelessness in America”). While these people had stability, many people were born into poverty. In 2014, “the number of poor renter households experiencing severe housing cost burden, those households in poverty paying more than 50 percent of their income toward housing, totaled 6.6 million, increasing 2.1 percent nationally from 2013, with 33 states seeing an increase” (Batko). First people are not making enough money to pay for their houses. Then,