Life Without a Home

736 Words2 Pages

More than 3.5 million people are homeless every night, and 1.35 million, almost half, are children. This is something that could possibly change with more awareness and education. Homelessness is a problem in society today that many communities suffer with. Homelessness is a condition where people lack access to housing. It is caused by several factors such as mental illness, drug abuse, physical or sexual abuse, or simply not having enough money. There are three trends that are mainly responsible for the rise in homelessness over the past 25 years: a growing shortage of affordable rental housing, a coinciding increase in poverty and an increase in mental illness.
Some of the causes of why people are homeless, are because of individual factors such as drug and alcohol abuse, lack of accomplishments, lack of social support, debts, poor physical and mental health, relationship mishaps, and getting involved in crime at a young age. Other reasons that may stem from homelessness are family backgrounds, including family mishaps, disputes, physical abuse in childhood, having parents with substance abuse, and previous experience of family homelessness. Some of the basic causes of homelessness are unemployment, poverty, a lack of cost-effective housing, housing policies, the structure and administration of housing profit, and wider policy developments, such as the closure of long-story psychiatric hospitals. “Advocates of affordable housing say that the employed homeless are proof of the widening gap between wages and rents — which rose in the city even during the latest recession — and, given the shortage of subsidized housing, of just how difficult it is to escape the shelter system, even for people with jobs.” (Navarro) Reasons given by...

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