Essay On Homelessness

Homelessness : The Problem Of Homelessness

Homelessness Awareness

At some point in their life, a person has seen or heard of an individual who lives on the streets. The individual who lives on the streets and holds a sign that says they need money for food is consider homeless. Sadly, these individuals are everywhere and the amount of people under this title is slowly increasing. However, in this nation we have the ability to begin decreasing that number. By providing the necessary amount of assistance required to place these individuals in permanent housing, the number of homeless individuals will begin to decrease. To solve the problem ofhomelessness, people must understand why individuals become homeless. Some individuals struggle to find a job that will help pay for their...show more content...

The issue of physical problems can also have an effect on the homeless individual. Endhomeless says that because the homeless are not able to afford medical care, they can suffer from a number of health issues. Those issues can be colds and flu, skin diseases from not being able to bathe properly, nutritional deficiencies, and sleep deprivation. In addition, "diabetes and heart diseases are also found at high rates among the homeless" (endhomeless).

Homelessness can also affect the individual spiritually. These individuals suddenly may lack hope and their purpose for life. Finding purpose while they struggle to meet their daily needs can leave them feeling hopeless and deprived from their abilities. Somerville also points out that homeless individuals have been deprived territorially because of their "lack of privacy" from living on the streets. This could leave the individual feeling vulnerable to anyone who sees them in their state and walks away. Consequently, they may feel that the world has abandoned them because there is no one helping or reaching out to them. Lastly, homelessness can affect an individual emotionally. Somerville describes this as lacking the emotion of "love or joy". At one point of their lives the person might have been employed or had a place of residence and a feeling of self–worth. However, homeless can cause so many difficult emotions that can lead the individual to abusing substances, believing they do not

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Homelessness

Homelessness as an issue in today's society is largely ignored. To many, the problem of homelessness is invisible or barely noticed. When these people do see the homeless it is found in the form of beggars who need to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" or mentally ill people who "just can't help themselves". In either case the central pointremains; the homeless must be people who are incapable or unwilling to help themselves. After all, wouldn't they stop being homeless if they just tried? These sorts of rationalizations cover a more disturbing truth; that for many in today's society, the spectre of homelessness is more pressing of a problem than helping those who are already on the...show more content... Nevertheless, the poor most often remain poor. This creates a jaded population of impoverished citizens. This is not to say that people are happy being poor, but that when one is taught by popular culture that they deserve better they become a victim. Someone or something has caused them to be poor; therefore, it is ultimately not their fault. One effect of this victimization is that it can breed complacency. Through whatever means, some reason, I will get what's coming to me. I am owed. Instead of using what meager opportunities are out there some will simply wait for their piece of the pie. Another effect of this idea of being a victim is the homeless are different than the mere poor because they must have done it to themselves. As they are owed just as much as everyone else, they must have done something to cause them to be homeless. This helps to calm the fear that perhaps being in America does not guarantee success or even a decent shot at it. If there were a support system in place to truly help those who are in poverty and cannot support themselves and their families, then perhaps the population could attempt to do better for themselves. Given real opportunities instead of self–serving token attempts from the rich, those in poverty may have a chance to break the generational cycle that poverty and the threat of homelessness creates. The jobs in this new service–based economy often do not allow for a living wage; that is, a salary that

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Homelessness Essay

As the years have gone on, the rise in homelessness has increased. Especially for New York and Los Angeles, people walk down the streets seeing more and more homeless people. According to Social Solutions, almost 600,000 people are living without a home in the United States ("2016's Shocking Homelessness Statistics."). Holland and Smith from the Los Angeles Times concluded that the homeless rate in Los Angeles has increased 23% in just one year. This is a serious problem as large cities are now becoming more populated with people living on the streets. Though the problem of homelessness has always existed, the increase in the past few years has been eye opening to the point where something needs to be done about it. Several solutions can...show more content...

People volunteer at food shelters and donate money, food, and clothes, but these acts of kindness only provide temporary solutions to the homeless. We have yet to actually stop the rise in homelessness.

Underlying Causes

There are many reasons as to why homelessness exists. Job loss, divorce, mental illness, natural disasters, and poverty are all factors as. to why people are living on the streets. Although there are several explanations for the increase in homelessness, one is due to rent increasing. According to the Department of Commerce, monthly rent has increased $111 from 2012 to 2015. In order to pay for rent, one needs to have a steady income. As rent continues to increase, individuals or families cannot afford to stay in their house. This becomes especially hard if there is a family with several members to it. Mental illness and substance abuse are also large contributors to the rise of homelessness. Weinberger from Standford University states that about one third of the homeless population have severe mental disorders These people are generally incapable of finding a job for themselves which forces them into homelessness. Many psychiatric hospitals have closed over the years because of lack of funding, making it more difficult for patients to receive treatment. Without seeking the necessary help, it is almost impossible for one to become motivated and determined to find a job. Policy

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Homelessness Intervention Essay

Descriptions of Problems

Homelessness has shown that in 2014 over 500,000 individuals have been homelessness at least one night, but the major of the count were children (henry, Coretes, Shivji, & Buck, 2014). In addition, this include 26.5 percent of individuals that were unsheltered, 33.2 percent sheltered families, 36.2 percent sheltered individual, and 4.2 percent unsheltered families. Furthermore, the count for Alabama showed that 3,115 were considered to be homeless. Disabilities individuals that may have been in psychiatric and correctional institutions are at risk for homelessness when they cannot obtain aid in housing. This will make them a target for activitiesprevention. Individual with disabilities may include substance abusers, acute mental illness, posttraumatic stress, or cognitive impairments (Cooper, Knott, Schaak, Sloane, & Zovistoski (2015).

Prevention Tertiary

Certain prevention interventions can provide reports to document the...show more content...

In addition, tertiary would be considered the target for those with different types of disabilities, families, individual, veterans, and mental illness to help them regain housing that is stable. Moreover, the goal is to allow services before households become homeless. In essence, implementing tertiary prevention activities in a community to prevent homelessness by documenting the strategies effectiveness. It would be also vital to implement legal, mental health, corrections, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and child welfare to help prevent homelessness. Furthermore, when it comes to addressing tertiary interventions, researchers should understand that prevention is not considered all of the time, but interventions may have it advances when it comes to success in the end stage of chronic homelessness that may prevent homelessness to

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Ending Homelessness Essay

Homelessness is a growing epidemic across the country. This terrible misfortune has led to many unsuspecting people leading impoverished lifestyles, and facing the horrific and heart–wrenching tragedy of abandonment. The purpose of this essay is to not only persuade the readers to get involved in ending homelessness on local and national efforts, but to embrace new and creative ways of helping to end this rapidly growing problem, by taking action to end this catastrophic situation. Also, I will demonstrate the causes and effects of the homeless resorting to violence, by using comparison and contrast to examine the views and standpoints on helping the forgotten, so that we might end this calamity once and for all. In an increasingly...show more content...

It is crucial that we find new and creative ways of helping the homeless, through education, recreation, religion, and the revamping of homeless shelters. I implore you to help the destitute, so that we might end this travesty once and for all. To employ to my viewpoint, it is important that you open you mind to gain a wealth of fascinating information, that will help you to understand that the homeless should be able to receive an education, in pursuit of a better life. Education is as old as civilization, and aims at producing intelligent, responsible, well–informed citizens, who take an active interest in the world around them. Education includes a variety of learning experiences. Acquiring knowledge, skills, habits, values, and attributes, can better help our homeless to become useful and productive members of society, and shape their character in hopes that it will remain with them throughout their lives. Education is more important today than ever before. It provides them with the specialized training that they will need, to prepare for a job or career. Education also helps people adjust to change. This benefit has become increasingly important, because social changes today take place with increasing speed, and affect the lives of a great many people.

Recreation is something that not only gives us pleasure, but also helps to renew or recreate the mind and body.

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Essay on Homelessness and Children

Around the world millions of children are found homeless, sleeping in the streets, under bridges, or on deserted properties. Their days are spent hustling by prostitution or petty crimes. They prey on each other as well as people passing by that they manage to steal from. Yet still this is home to these children, where they are deprived of the most basic human needs, housing, food, and clothing. Since they have no family or relatives and no hope for the future, they have been tagged "Nobody's Children" or "Throw away Kids", living each day as if it were the last, causing them to become outlaws, which as a result is a threat to the security of the community we live in. There are various reasons that children are found homeless, ranging...show more content...

However some parents are irresponsible in caring for their children. Some parents beat them, sexually abuse them, or throw them out of the family into the streets to fend for themselves, resulting in the child feeling that he or she is better off by his or her self, even living on the streets. Statistics show that sixty percent of the homeless children between eight and seventeen years of age use hallucinating substances, forty percent use alcoholic beverages, sixteen percent are drug addicts, and ninety two percent use tobacco products. In an effort to belong and be loved many of these homeless children find themselves becoming family members to gangs promoting further negativity in their lives. Since they don't have any marketable skills, they often survive by begging, stealing, and selling their bodies for money. It is not easy to help homeless children because the majority of them are afraid, and they refuse to submit information to authorities. Some homeless children have managed to escape from the homeless condition because of help from kind people and their own willingness to learn and work to overcome the anxieties and insecurities that homelessness offered them. There have been efforts on the part of organizations to solve the problem by means of charities, foster homes, orphanage, and reform. But in spite of these efforts and funds expended by the government the problem continues to rise because solving today's housing problems and meeting

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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. Many people find themselves in a predicament when they are living with a partner and the two decide to go their separate ways. Some people may not be able afford the cost of living on just their income alone, so when two people terminate a relationship where one depends on the...show more content...

There are many effects that a homeless person may suffer from. Other than the obvious change in the person's life style, such as the type and quality of clothing they wear or their mode of transportation, homeless people are subject to various health effects as well. In recent studies it has been found that one out of every three homeless people suffers from some sort of mental illness. The mental illness may have been the reason the person became homeless or they may have acquired the illness from living on the streets. When a person loses everything they have worked for it may affect them mentally. Another common effect that homeless people suffer from is Nutritional deficiency, better know as malnutrition. A homeless person's diet is considerably different than that of someone who is not homeless. Since they cannot afford to eat out or make a home cooked meal, they often have to dig in trash cans to find left over food from restaurants or other people. A lot of the food they eat is spoiled or rotten and is not healthy for them, but rotten food is better than no food. In addition homeless people are also subject to abuse, both physically and sexually. It is estimated that homeless females are twenty times more likely to be sexually assaulted than a female who is not homeless, and many of these crimes will go unreported as well. Most homeless people do not have family members or someone who will check up on them. So they might be abused or even

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Homelessness After studying the topic 'Homelessness' I have discovered that being homeless does not just mean you do not have a house to live in, it could mean that someone does not have a secure and well established home. Maybe that someone doesn't feel like they have a loving family and would be better off else. Before studying this topic I also did not realize some of the many reasons why people live on the streets. I always thought stereotypically that homeless people were either drug abusers or just didn't earn money so therefore couldn't afford a home. I discovered by studying this topic that it is...show more content...

Not only would they almost be helpless to stop what was going on but who would they have to turn to? The loneliness these people must suffer from is probably the worst thing overall. Worse than being cold, and sat in the dark. If they were cold and sat in the dark with someone to talk to they probably wouldn't even notice they were cold and in the dark. Imagining having nobody to talk to or turn to with problems is just unthinkable. During our Drama lessons we were told to go home and sit outside our houses on then concrete ground for up to half an hour. I attempted this for just 15 minutes before I gave up and went back inside. I had the choice to stay outside or go back inside into the warmth of my house. Homeless people don't have that choice. Their home is on the streets. Whilst sitting on the concrete ground I began to realise how unpleasant it must be to be sat on bitter concrete for hours on end. The numbness they must feel would be incredibly hard to handle. After just 15 minutes outside, in a thin coat also I was already frozen throughout my body. My fingers were numb and my teeth started to chatter. A night on the streets for me would be my worst nightmare. At the beginning of the assessment period the class read a newspaper article about a 14–year–old boy called Chris who ran away from home

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Astonishingly, 564,708 people are currently homeless in the United States, according to Social Solutions (Social Solutions, 2016). The topic, "Living Poor," has only become much more apparent in the news and in everyday life. Two essays, On Compassion by Barbara Lazear Ascher and On Dumpster Diving by Lars Eighner, can be evaluated as discussing two different aspects of the homeless situation in America. After close reading, On Compassion more effectively achieves its purpose of defining compassion than On Dumpster Diving, which describes the wasteful nature of mankind. On Compassion begins by describing the appearance and thoughts of a homeless man as he encounters other people along a street. When offered money by a young woman, his...show more content...

Today's population being a waste generation is difficult to derive from the definition of dumpster. In addition, the motivation to capitalize such a simple word as "dumpster" seems absurd. In other terms, this essay did not establish educated ethos like that of the first essay. Coherent use of vocabulary and figures of speech led to a cohesive flow in the essay On Compassion, which contributes to its effectiveness. Words such as "rummages," "navigates," "stave," and "expulsion," to name a few, are robust words found within the essay that help it to appear as logically–based and well–written. Moreover, these words aid in creating the aura of compassion and gratitude, which is the purpose of the essay. Figures of speech, for instance, "Like a bridegroom waiting at the altar, his eyes pierce the white veil," are used to make the essay more easily relatable and also provide a witty comparison to an idea that is more common. Although Eighner's essay does display strong word usage in some instances, the overall phraseology is lesser than that of Ascher's essay. Appearing words like "discarded," "scavenger," and "qualms" do increase the professionalism of the essay, however, many other phrases found in On Dumpster Diving lack the scholastic nature for the essay to achieve its purpose. One would think that the words and phrases found within this essay would signify the waste generation and not just the

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There are many different obstacles for the homeless population, but there are numerous services and resources that they can gain access to in the community. The most significant obstacle is having a lack of education to these resources. In the community of Warwick, Rhode Island there are two homeless shelters with sufficient space to protect the homeless from the elements of weather and harmful environments. There are also two food banks available in the town of Warwick and one that serves the Oakland Beach community exclusively. Kent Hospital, a community teaching hospital, has many services to offer such as medical treatment, mental health, and detox services to the community. Aside from Kent Hospital, there are two other detox treatment centers that are in Warwick but there are many other facilities in the surrounding neighborhoods. Mental health services are sufficient in Warwick, these include hospital services, private practices, and services within the community that work towards helping low income and uninsured population. Unlike most chronic conditions, homelessness can be cured, and the side effects of treatment (increased medication...show more content...

A., et al. (2016), it outlines an evidence–based practice study on the attainability and results on an intervention called Maintaining Independence and Sobriety Through Systems Integration, Outreach, and Networking (MISSION). This project looks to provide permanent housing for the homeless population and portions of the community who suffer from mental illness, drug addiction, or both. This took place in two cities in the state of Massachusetts which included one hundred and seven people that participated in the study. The most remarkable finding in this study was there was a high success rate with providing housing for twelve months to the participants. There were some participants who were found unable to maintain sobriety during the study although resources for detox were made

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HOMELESSNESS AND MENTAL ILLNESS: THE RELATIONSHIP

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Homelessness and Mental Illness

Introduction

A housing policy can be thought of as the efforts put in by a given government to transform a housing market(s) for the purposes of achieving social objectives. In most cases, a housing policy is meant to ensure that the general population has access to a home that is affordable. For instance, the British Conservative/Liberal Democratic coalition's housing policy is aimed at increasing the number of affordable housing units; fostering homeownership; making social housing flexible; tackling homelessness (especially for the...show more content... Other housing needs for the mentally ill include specialized in– house primary care, health promotion programmes, open access mental services (accessible to all at any time, missed appointments are also tolerated), assertive management, street based service provision, holistic and generalist support apart from just clinical diagnosis, talking therapies and full access to mainstream services. Most importantly, the housed mentally ill persons have to be shielded from becoming homeless again. Such assurance that they will forever have a comfortable place to stay will relax their minds. This will go a long way in promoting their mental well being (Randall et al. 2006).

What the Government has done and is doing The most comprehensive government intervention dealing with homelessness and mental illness was first witnessed in 1990 when the Homeless Mentally Ill Initiative was launched by the UK Department of Health. This initiative was meant to identify and offer health services to the homeless mentally ill persons that were not under statutory health services. Specialist hostels were also

funded so as to provide high level care for these persons. The Housing Corporation was also required to provide move on housing to these persons. The team that was appointed to undertake these tasks had agreed that home provision as well as mental health service provision were needed if the government was serious about dealing with homeless persons with mental health problems. This

Essay On Homeless Mental Illness

I.INTRODUCTION

Every year more and more people become homeless here in the United States. Some choose the option of staying in a shelter and others prefer to stay and live outside. As we all know, the winter in New England can be very cold. Unfortunately, in our area, the homeless individuals don't always have the option of staying outside. Once winter approaches, the homeless individuals need to go stay in a shelter, since New England winter temperatures can be deadly for them. The following report will outline why people become homeless and what the most common mental illnesses are, that homeless individuals are suffering from.

II.DEFINITIONS

Definition mental illness

"A mental illness is a condition that affects a...show more content...

People use substances because of these effects, which include increasing feelings of pleasure or decreasing feelings of distress. Substance use disorders include abuse of alcohol or other drugs which lead to work, school, home, health or legal problems and dependence on alcohol or other drugs. Approximately 8% of the population 12 and older has a substance use disorder in any given year. Substance use disorders tend to begin in adolescence or early adulthood whit a median age of onset of 20 years, and 75% develop substance use disorder by age 27. Substance use disorders are more than twice as common in males as in Get

Solving Homelessness

Nationwide homelessness is a growing epidemic across the country. There are many ways an individual can become homeless, for the most part it is poverty. There are also different concentrations of homeless in different types of environments, 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. A way we can help find the solution to this problem, is to know the facts about this lingering subject. People become homeless not because of lack of effort for success, but because of poverty, drug addictions, mental illness and financially unstable times in their lives. The biggest reason people are homeless is because of...show more content...

At that time many of these mental patients were reaching their 50's and couldn't work to afford housing. Luckily, only 5–7% of the mentally ill have to be institutionalized, and most of them can find community programs and housing to help their conditions (National Homeless). Another factor can be domestic violence. Many women have to choose between abusive relationships and homelessness, and nearly 25% of single homeless women said they became homeless due to an abusive relationship in their previous place of residence (National Homeless). Health care affordability is a minor reason for homelessness, but a reason none–the–less. More than half of people living in poverty or homelessness had no health care of any kind (National Homeless). The reason for homelessness is an easy question to answer, how many homeless there are in the United States is a harder one. Although it is very hard to estimate the number of homeless people in the US, we can get very close using massive amounts of studies and the census. These methods are our best ways to estimate. 52% of requests for emergency shelter for families were denied in the last year, a 22% increase from last year (Weingart). Homeless families in rural areas have very little or nothing to fall back on if they are faced with homelessness. They are often forced to live with friends or

Homelessness is a serious problem in our society. Every night in our nation thousands of people are on the streets. This type of behavior is considered deviant because it does not reflect the norms and values of our society. In many cases the homeless people in our country are treated as total outcasts. Many of these people have severe mental disorders. Some are victims of an economy that has failed them. One may ask how such harsh situations exist in such an advanced society. With all the money and programs created to help people it seems ridiculous that this behavior exists. In a society where people have so much how is it possible that there are still people that have so little. The homeless are humans, no different than anyone else....show more content...

These things are taken for granted by the people who have them. These seem as necessities for most adults, but even more so for children. Children that do not have homes grow up at risk for diseases that are not a threat to the general part of the nation. Illnesses such as whooping cough or tuberculosis that seem so rare in society are commonly found in homeless shelters. These children have not been given their vaccines over the years and therefore are not allowed to attend school. The homeless children that do attend school are sometimes as far behind as two grade levels. Many of the children are very hungry and tired which makes it almost impossible for them to concentrate. Other children are embarrassed to go to school because the other children know their situation and ridicule them. Sometimes a teacher might even keep away from a child that they believe to be dirty or may be sick. Most of these children are. They do not smell good because they do not take baths. They grow up being outcasts (Connolly, 2000). The National Health Care for the Homeless project showed that children up to twelve years of age that are homeless, are twice as likely to come down with an ear or upper respiratory infection. They are three times as likely to have a gastrointestinal problem and four times as likely to have a skin problem and ten times more likely to have bad teeth. For children thirteen to nineteen there

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Homelessness in our society.

The existence of homeless people in our society is still evident today. Everywhere you look around our cities, parks and streets it is likely that you will witness a homeless person struggling to survive. This is most certainly a social justice issue, every Australian deserves a secure and comfortable place to dwell, not left on the streets to perish.

In society the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. People today are far to driven by work and money to see the problem of homelessness surrounding them.

Those very reasons explain why I chose this topic to create an advertising campaign. On the 23rd of June, 1987 the Hawke government promised us this. "For our next term, we are setting achievable...show more content...

There are many aged Australians living in poverty. Homelessness is also a problem in Australia's aged community. Statistics prove that over twenty thousand elderly Australians are at risk of becominghomeless, or already are homeless. War Veterans are also included in this number, and that equates to approximately two thousand, five hundred homeless War Veterans.

Agencies such as the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) are set up to help get homeless people off the streets. Derived from the 1996 census, there was an estimated one hundred and five thousand homeless people across Australia. Twelve percent or twelve thousand nine hundred homeless Australians use the SAAP. It is estimated that one hundred and sixteen thousand requests for SAAP could not be met by the organization alone. Indigenous people in the SAAP program made up fourteen per cent. This is a high rate, as Aboriginals make up two per cent of the Australian population.

The target audience for my campaign is Australian adults living the high life. I am trying to appeal to these people, with the hope that they may begin to donate to organizations such as SAAP. It is a campaign to open the eyes of Australians to the reality of homelessness in our societies and communities. The full severity is not known to the Australian population.

As you can see, more needs to be done about the prevalence of homelessness in our society. I

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Homelessness : A Social Issue

Introduction

I have been asked to write an essay on a Social Issue. I have chosen Homelessness. I chose this because it is a very serious issue not only here in Australia but all over the world. In Australia there are is about 105,000 Australians that are homeless on any given night, all of which are either living in a makeshift home or sleeping on the streets. In my essay I am going to look at whom homelessness affects the reasons why, and what is being done to help and raise awareness

1.0What is homelessness?

1.1Homelessness the social issue: Homelessness is a serious social issue that affects different people and different groups in a variety of ways. Many different factors contribute to homelessness. Homelessness is not gender, race or age specific and can affect anyone at any given time depending on their circumstances. People aren't necessarily homeless because of choices they have made although sometimes that can be the case. More often than not they find themselves in that situation because of circumstances beyond their control. Being homeless means you have no fixed place to call home.

2.0Who does homelessness effect and how?

2.1Homelessness, who it affects: Homelessness can affect anyone such as single mothers, families, Indigenous and Torres Strait islanders, teens, single males and females, people with drug/ or Alcohol addictions and victims of abuse. There are all kinds of reasons that people in these situations find themselves without a place to

Homelessness affects families ways of living. Many within the country are faced with the challenges of homelessness. They have to suffer from many challenges physically and mentally. It affects the whole family from before they were born until the day they die. Homelessness affects their jobs and education also. Homelessness has a big impact on their life. Homelessness affects a vast number of people. In the United States over 100 million people are homeless (Stearman 9). In fact, between 600,000 and 760,000 people are homeless every night (Hurley 31),and 1.3 million people are homeless at some point each year ("Impact of Homelessness on Children" 1). Unfortunately, homeless people are forced to live on the streets, in abandoned premises...show more content...

Homeless parents are typically very young, between twenty–five to thirty years old (Levinson 150).Homeless families have little or no money, so they have very few resources to keep them healthy. Some tend to sell their bodies or drugs to get money. When they do have resources, they get robbed at night and lose everything they had. No matter if they have resources or not they are still in bad condition. Some of the effects of being homeless may be a physical condition or health issues. Since they are homeless they sometimes have to share their resources with their family or other individuals living around them. Many people have addictions which lead to health issues, such as drinking alcohol, sniffing glue, injecting heroin, and gambling. Sometimes they had to share dirty needles. Eleven percent of them get drunk at least three times a week (Levinson 152).

Poor nutrition can contribute to their health issues. They tend to go hungry twice as often as housed children because they don't have the resources to purchase food("Impact of Homelessness on Children" 2). They sometimes have to go to hotels and ask for the leftover food there. Poor nutrition increases their rate of stunted growth and anemia. They are also at a very high risk of infectious diseases. They suffer five times the rate of diarrheal infections, which cause fatal illness(Hart–Shegos 6). They also suffer from many respiratory infections at twice the rate(Hart–Shegos 6). The homeless are most

Homeless Youth

Homelessness is defined as having no fixed place to sleep at night. This includes people staying in motels until their money runs out, those staying with friends, those staying in shelters, and those sleeping inside or out whatever space they can find to protect themselves. The number of homeless people has been growing and it has become a serious problem in our society. Every night in Canada there are thousands of people living on the streets. This type of behaviour is considered deviant because it does not reflect the norms and values of our society. In many cases the homeless people in our country are treated as total outcasts. Many of these people have severe mental disorders. Some are victims of an economy that has...show more content...

The primary causes of homelessness can be there are a lack of affordable housing and the limited scale of housing assistance programs. Other causes can be insufficient income when people are frequently unable to pay for housing, food, childcare, health care and education. This means that difficult choices must be made when limited resources cover only some of these necessities because of financial reasons. Some homeless people end up on the streets because they may be physical, psychological, sexual abuse, neglect or abandonment. A study done in 1992 found that 75 percent of street youth were victims of abuse and others were youths that left home when neither parent wanted custody of them after a divorce and some youth leave to escape parental restrictions that they consider to be too cruel. In 2000, an American study estimated that 20 percent of homeless youth had been in foster care before they moved to the streets and over 50 000 children run away from home.

Being homeless presents many challenges for youth that they normally live day to day, unable to develop plans for forming a productive life structure. Since many homeless youth don't have money so they start begging or selling drugs or start prostituting to earn money to cover their basic needs. The basic problem of homelessness is the human need for personal shelter,

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When we were first introduced to this assignment, I was both excited and nervous. I was excited because it gave me the opportunity to step of my comfort zone. I was also excited to be able to get out into the community and practice some of the social work skills that we have learned in class. I was nervous because I knew it would be hard to hear the struggles of a single–parent experiencing homelessness. As someone who was raised by a single–parent, I also know how easy it can be to fall into homelessness. Overall, I think I was more excited about doing this assignment because I truly did want to hear the stories that single–parents experiencing homelessness wanted to tell.

Experiences Related to Homelessness

I certainly have a different...show more content...

My thoughts have stayed the same about homelessness; however, I certainly have started to acknowledge that homelessness is a very real thing. I also try my hardest to recognize that these individuals are people; therefore, I now make it a point to at least make eye–contact with them on the street.

Social Justice

As I stated before, far too often our society ignores that homelessness is a struggle for many people. Additionally, our society often thinks these people choose to be homeless. Terra talked about an incident at a gas station, and how one of the employees at the gas station said all the people at across the street are drunks and addicts. She talked about how upset she gets when people have these misconceptions about people that are struggling with homelessness. Hearing her talk about this broke my heart because our society should not shame people for being homeless; instead, we should be looking at solutions to end homelessness. It is a human right to have basic human needs, yet our society continually provokes their unjust agenda. Our society also tends to ignore domestic violence, which is something that my mother and Terra both faced. Terra could not get any help with service providers because her children and her were not in immediate danger; although, Terra certainly knew they were in danger. Social justice is helping

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Reflection About Homeless

In today's world, homelessness seems to be everywhere we go. Sometimes, homeless people even confront us to ask for money or due to their mental state. I believe that even though this can be scary or uncomfortable, we should still treat them with respect and kindness. As someone who is very curious about everything and everyone there is one thing that sticks out the most. That is homelessness. When I see a homeless person a million questions rush through my head. I think why might they be homeless, do they have a family, but there is one main question that I think. The big question that I ask myself is how do people treat them if they are approached for some reason. I have had a personal experience with having a homeless person approach my family and me.

My family took a trip to Asheville, North Carolina. While walking around downtown, I noticed many people who appeared homeless. Some were sleeping, some were begging, and one even started yelling angrily at my family, although he wasn't making much sense. He followed us for about a hundred feet, yelling the whole time. My mom and sister ignored him, but my dad got in his face and yelled at him to stop. After what seemed like several minutes, but was probably only 30 seconds or so, one of the shopkeepers ran up to my dad and the homeless man and calmed the situation down. The shopkeeper explained to us that the homeless man is well–known in the area and that he is harmless. We were also informed that the homeless man is