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Homelessness : The Structural Factors And Causes Of Homeless People

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Homelessness is one of the tragedies that one can face unexpectedly as well as where one can choose. Being homeless is often defined as “sleeping on streets” and most people in the society only regard homeless people to be uncouth, uneducated and drug addicts that are epidemic in the community, where many do not put into context any other reason as to why people become homeless. However, individuals who chose to live on streets have placed this kind of bad reputation to homeless community and thus the society cannot be fully blamed for the judgment they give a person that is regarded as homeless.
Understanding how people become homeless is quite difficult as it can be caused by several reasons but generally fall into the two categories of “structural factors” such as unemployment, poverty and benefits issues. The other category is “personal factors” such as drug and alcohol abuse, family breakdown and physical issues as well as mental health problems (Shelter 2007, Butcher et la 2007). The number of vagrant individuals is almost impossible to accurately count due to the wide existence of “hidden homelessness”, who are considered to be homeless but non-existent on the streets or in the official statistic (Crisis 2007).
Additionally, there are wide ranges of definition Homelessness and it varies from country to country or among different institutions in the same country. According to, Liddiard M. 2001, “the immediate sense of the term as regularly employed by the mass media

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