Courtney Miller
Introduction to Sociology (Soc-210-0007)
Understanding Homelessness
To be homeless is to be living in shelters or on the streets. The causes for people to become homeless, is a mixture of reason that leads to being homelessness for an individual. Homelessness can be for any one, young, old, and families due to limited assistance and personal choices. This effect are communities, businesses, other people and the homeless themselves. Here are some of the effects of homelessness are health, personal, families, and abuse.
There are a lot reasons why people are homeless. I will include three causes. Poverty is of the Census has survey who has been homeless, employed individuals ranked the must high of the homeless. Even through they had a job their wages weren’t sufficient to enough to meet their rent, utilities, and car payment. Half of the homeless adult’s
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Domestic violence can consist of women, or men and children who have been battered (physically, mentally, and emotionally. Studies show that half of the homeless women with children have experienced domestic violence. They have shelters for women and children who have been abused. Children who have ran away from home due to abuse end up homeless. Children get abuse more on the streets than at home, because there are all kinds of people living on the streets.
Homelessness has plays a huge part on a person’s physical and emotional health. Some of the homeless people might suffer from a cold and they can’t get rid of it because they can’t afford medicine. They can suffer from vitamin deficiencies. Get exposed to unsanitary living conditions, which can lead to leg ulcers and infections. They can illnesses like HIV/AIDS, and diabetes. They can develop drug and alcohol dependency. Homeless people realizes the he/she won’t have a home, is hard to believe. Reality makes homeless people less able to act when they suffer from psychologically as a
This shows that homelessness is not a one stop shop. Significant factors and actions have to come into play for someone to become homeless. The theses goes into great detail on the lack of studies and analysis from past years. She hits hard on the fact that many homeless people are seniors or mentally ill people. These people have a hard time taking care of themselves and rely on faulty systems including, care homes, financial aid, disability and ect. General triggers from past events in life that were traumatising can also play a huge role in homelessness.
According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors (2008) there are several key factors that cause homelessness and they differ between families and single adults. For families, the causes are lack of affordable housing, poverty, unemployment, low-paying jobs, domestic violence, mental illness and substance abuse. For single adults the causes are substance abuse, lack of affordable housing, mental illness, poverty, unemployment, and low-paying jobs. The top things needed to combat homelessness is more housing for people with disabilities, better paying employment opportunities, and more substance abuse services.
Homelessness is primarily a poverty issue. The persistence of poverty in the United States reflects more than just an aggregation of individual failings. Structural factors, such as the way we understand and define poverty, the inherent features of our economic system that produce income inequality, social inequities and our policy responses to these problems shape current trends. Economic changes have had the strongest association with trends in overall rates, regardless of how poverty is measured. Poverty rate is high amongst minority groups, children and female-headed households (Iceland, 2003). According to professor Iceland’s research, rates of extreme poverty are higher among children and African-Americans and lower for whites, Asians and the elderly. Among families with children, married couples were less likely to be poor (6.9 %) than single parent male (17.5%) and single parent female (35.3%).
Here in Tahoe, we are lucky enough to experience a great quality of life, and only a few have to face the horrible life of poverty and homelessness. However, nationwide, even right outside the basin, homelessness is a growing epidemic across the country. There are many ways one can become homeless; for the most part poverty. There are also different concentrations of homeless in different types of terrain, such as urban or suburban areas. Last, there is the ever- growing homeless population, and how much money it costs us for others to live in poverty. These are the questions we ask ourselves about homelessness, and the only way we can help is to know the facts about this lingering subject.
The causes of homelessness according to Shelter (2013), depends on a number of different personal and social factors and these factors can contribute towards people becoming homeless. These factors may include one or more of the following and starting with the individual factors , this may include drug and alcohol misuse, lack of qualifications, lack of social support, debts and especially mortgage or rent arrears, poor physical and mental health, relationship breakdown, and getting involved in crime at an early age .There is also factors from ones family background which includes family breakdown and disputes, sexual and physical abuse in childhood or adolescence, having parents with drug or alcohol problems, and previous experience of family homelessness with an institutional background including having been in care, the armed force...
Homelessness can happen to anyone unexpectedly. Many poor people are at the risk of homelessness. The cost of living and trying to find affordable housing can be very difficult. Many who are homeless are in poverty, have a mental illness, or addictions. Homelessness happens from personal, as well as structural factors. Many aren’t able to make enough for rent, as well as, utilities, food, and other expenses each month. More than 6 million Americans pay more than half of their income towards rent (Reamer, 1989). The trend is once someone becomes homeless, it is likely they will be homeless repeatedly. To end homelessness, affordable housing will have to be created because it is peoples largest single expenditure (Anderson, 2013).
This can range from divorce to mental illnesses (“Factors Contributing To Homelessness”). In some statistics taken from The Homeless Resource Network, the biggest cause of homelessness is from the loss of job or income someone is bringing in. If someone were to lose a job unexpectedly, they could have trouble finding a job with the same income they were used to earning, making it hard to keep necessities in their life. Another important element that contributes to people becoming homeless is the use of drugs and alcohol. Even though most people who have one of these addictions do not become homeless, it becomes a problem when they are poor and the addictions take over their life (“Homelessness in
Being homeless is a very big problem for Americans today. Each day we see it, but what about the causes? The definition of a person who is homeless lives in public with no shelter. Homeless people must do things out in public that other people have the resources to do in the privacy of their home. Many things factor in when it comes to understanding being homeless. One problem that homeless people face is medication and sleep problems. Another situation is finding a job or income to support a shelter. Lastly, people who are homeless have types of diseases that they must face along with the troubles of no place to call home.
As the cause of homelessness has broadened and become more tied to fundamental economic changes in our nation, homelessness has become both a symptom of chronic poverty and an event that cuts across traditional defenses of income, education, and geography. According to Mary E. Hombs, author of American Homelessness, "The population of the streets has been democratized correspondingly" (Hombs 2). Many of the homeless are young ...
Homelessness has become a serious problem in today’s society. Despite the organizations that help multitudes of homeless people, homelessness is continually increasing. In recent years, America’s culture has been changing due to economic, political, and social issues. These issues have caused a lot of stress on America resulting in abject poverty in several cities. Poverty is not nationwide, but if dealt with lightly, the affects can be catastrophic. Homelessness is increasing more than ever, and research proves that changing culture contributes to rising amount of homelessness.
Economic problems such as being laid off work, or the rise in the cost of housing had lead people to live on the streets. Many of the homeless are women that have become divorced or have left home because of physical abuse. These women have no education because they have not been given the chance to go and get the education that it takes nowadays to get the job, so they are forced to live on the streets. They have no family to help them and they are left with no other choice. People with mental illnesses also become homeless quite often. These people are incapable of handling the stress of living on their own. These people get kicked out of their homes and are to ashamed to go to their families because of their illness, so we see them on the streets struggling to stay warm. Teenage mothers are also forced to live on the streets because their families will not help them. The fathers are not there and that forces them to live on the streets. So they must resort to prostitution to pay for the food that their young ones need to stay alive. There are many other people that become homeless for many different reasons. Some of these people can not help becoming homeless. Some of these people are the illegal immigrants that come here from other places to get a better life but end up not having enough money to make it in this hard world that we live in.
A recurrent belief among politicians, journalists, social scientists, and the public is that homelessness is a consequence of personal disabilities. That is, homeless persons tend to suffer from chronic alcoholism or from chronic physical or mental disorders and these disabilities explain their homelessness. This is a myth with damaging consequences. Although some homeless persons suffer from alcoholism, most do not. Some suffer severe mental or emotional disturbances; most do not (Timmer 81). This is shy it is necessary to provide these people with the resources they need to survive in their every day life.
Instead, they exacerbate the problem,” which is exactly true. One of the main reasons for homelessness is an economic crisis. During the recession of 2008 many cities saw an increase in the number of homeless individuals, with over 300,000 people being evicted (City Mayors). According to City Mayors, during the recession, of twenty-five cities being studied, nineteen of them had a rise in the numbers of homeless. The issue with sudden increases is that the cities have no way to handle the new influx of people. In 2011, the poverty rate for the United State was at 15%, meaning there were over 46 million people in poverty (National Homeless). While being in poverty does not mean that the person is going to become homeless, it greatly increases the chances of becoming homeless in the future, because any unexpected incident could push them over the edge. When people get pushed to this extreme, housing costs are often the first major things to be cut out of the budget, forcing an even greater number out onto the
Although homelessness is widespread and almost next to the catastrophic global hunger problems, it can be brought under control and its effect reduced to a greater percentage. By simply tracking the root causes of low wages and the lack of affordable housing as well as improving other support systems like housing vouchers and health care, homelessness can be solved.
Homelessness is a problem virtually every society suffers from. There are many things that cause people to become homeless, such as unemployment, relationship problems, and being evicted from ones domicile either by a landlord, friend or even a family member. However, with every cause there must be an effect. Some of the effects of one becoming homeless, besides the obvious change of lifestyle, are various health problems which often times may lead to death.