Reduce Homelessness

Every New Yorker has the right to a safe and affordable place to live in. New York’s shortage of affordable housing has reached a crisis point. Poor and elderly people throughout New York City are at a greater risk of homelessness and forced low-income residents do not have food or medical care to stay in their homes. A sinful structure of homelessness in New York City is New York’s shortage of affordable housing. Millions of New Yorkers are desperate to find affordable housing and tens of thousands are forced to live either in dirty shelters or on the streets. Recent data indicates that nearly 60,000 people, including more than 23,000 children, stay in the city’s main homeless shelter system (Guelpa). A small amount of poor renter households received a housing subsidy from the local government. Little assistance is being provided which means that most poor families and individuals that seek assistance

In the United States the homeless population continues to grow rapidly. Homelessness has been a public health issue for many decades. Often times these individuals feel as though society has turned a blind eye to them. This at risk population is seen by society as lazy or chose to live a life on the streets, but if one would examine this population closely would see that there is more to this at risk population than what society has labeled them as. The forces, which affect homelessness, are multifaceted. Social forces such as family breakdown, addictions, and mental illnesses are in combined with structural forces such as lack of low-cost housing, insufficient health services, and poor economic conditions. Many would

The sun rises, birds are chirping, and everyone is ready for their day at work. Some people take their cars, some, carpool. Others, take buses, trams, and ride sharing. Some however, find their method of transport less desirable, next to a homeless person who hitched a ride on the 24/7 bus. Everyone in the Bay Area has seen the increasing amount of haggard, limping, sleeping people on the streets. Groups of people trying to survive on what they can Over the past few years, the problem has been worsening. If anyone goes to San Francisco, Oakland, or some of the bigger cities, they will see crowds of people sleeping on the sidewalks. Cluttering the streets as they try to walk to their destination.

Homelessness in the United States can be ended, not just maintained. Allot of cities now have plans to eradicate homelessness. Homelessness and housing instability are large issues that afflict a diverse demographic such as: Families, youth, veterans, and chronically homeless single male adults. Ending homelessness may require specialized solutions that are specific to individual needs. Factors like these make defeating homelessness a difficult task. Although solutions exist for some of the demographics, such as housing for chronically homeless adults, scaling up best practices remains a challenge. For other subpopulations, such as transitional aged youth, evidence-based interventions need to be developed. In this paper we argue that ending homelessness is a Grand Challenge that is big, important, and compelling—one that the profession of social work should be adopt. Meeting this challenge will require a focused, organized response from social work researchers, clinicians, and policymakers. Ending homelessness will require innovation and interdisciplinary or cross-sector collaboration. Key words: Housing First, Permanent Supportive Housing, rapid re-housing, prevention, poverty. The notion that homelessness in the United States can be ended, rather than managed (Mangano, 2002; National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2012), represents a fundamental shift in expectations from the 1980s and ’90s. Since the early 2000s, researchers, policymakers, advocates,

The United States has over 3.5 million homeless people a year. If the United States stopped supporting other nations food related issues, then they could start focusing on its own starving people. Once the U.S. starts focusing on its own people, then there could be many solutions to the well-known problem of homeless people in America. Who makes up the 3.5 million homeless people, a year, in America?

One of the biggest leading social issues around the world is homelessness. In the United States alone, there are more than half a million people experiencing homelessness. There are different factors that led a person to homelessness, economic, social, political issues, and natural disasters. But in the United States, homelessness is often caused by system failure, and people and with related issues. A brief history of homelessness, the issues documented during the early colonial period, back then it was viewed as a character flaw in the person and not outside causes. The Great Depression hits the United States hard and millions lost their jobs result in homelessness. Comes swooping in with the New Deal policy from presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt helps save the economy by providing jobs and helps reduce homeless population (Homelessness). In the early 80’s the economy was losing jobs again due to the decline of manufacturing, causes a high-rise in homelessness. That led to many cutbacks in affordable housing, medical care that makes many mentally ill patients unable to afford housing. With that many Individuals with disabilities or mental health issues that can’t afford proper health can be in danger of homelessness. But for those who are already living on the streets don’t have access to nutrient, personal hygiene, and other serious health conditions. There is some organization across the United States that provides health care service for

Seeing homelessness develop is a process that the older generation can say they have been apart of. The young generation, on the other hand, cannot say they have seen the development of homelessness. People who are thirty years old or younger have grown up believing that homelessness was always part of the landscape. The younger generation has come to believe that there have always been homeless people sitting on park benches. When an individual is asked what they see most in a large city like Chicago or New York, ‘homeless people’ is a common response. According to the United States Census Bureau, 320.8 million individuals currently live in the United States of America. Imagine the proportion of individuals that do not own a car or even a house to live in. The National Law Center on Homelessness and poverty did studied to conclude that in America more than 3.5 million people experience homelessness each year. Those concerned with the issue of homelessness are curious as to what events had to have happened that lead to the individuals living on the streets. The reasons are different for each and every person. Some of the more major issues that contribute to this are lack of affordable housing, declining welfare assistance, and most importantly, mental illness. Resolving the issue of homelessness is very possible with new ways of housing and treatment for the mentally ill. The relation between the homeless and the mental illness has risen, and the United States as a whole

“Supporters of strict laws barring behavior associated with the homeless argue that allowing large numbers of homeless people to commit quality-of-life offenses in urban neighborhoods is unfair to those who work, live, and play in those neighborhoods” (“Homelessness”).Allowing homeless people to linger in communities is unjust to the people who live there and work there. “Proponents of housing first note that the cost of providing homeless people with apartments is far less than the cost of letting them remain on the street” (“Homelessness”).It costs less to house the homeless rather than to let them stay on the street. “Housing first, they contend, has demonstrated that chronically homeless people are not beyond help but just require permanent housing before they can properly address mental or physical disabilities” (“Homelessness”).Housing first will help address a homeless person’s problems and will have permanent housing for the

One of the simplest pieces of knowledge we acquire in elementary school (for future growth and development) are the three basic needs a living organism requires for living: food, water, and shelter. However, not everyone has access to all of these essentials. Homeless people are faced with awful conditions and suffer more due to poor weather conditions, diseases, and lack of safety. There hasn’t been much progress on this issue, and if this continues, the number of homeless people will only increase. In a few states the topic is being named as a “statewide emergency”, but unfortunately this problem is national. Instead of focusing on state programs, local programs and non-profit organizations to fix the housing issue, we must all contribute to ending this epidemic. The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) released an article stating, “In January 2015, 564,708 people were homeless on a given night in the United States” (Snapshot of Homelessness). We must develop a solution to end long term homelessness immediately. The best way of solving this issue is to provide stable long-term housing, which is a term used to describe the home’s environment and financial status.

We live in a world where it is survival of the fittest. It is hard to succeed, one wrong decision can easily lead someone into a financial struggle. This can lead to homelessness. Homelessness is not a lifestyle that one would choose by choice. In 2003, there has been "... as many as 1.3 million Canadians that have experienced homelessness...at some point during the last 5 years." Affordable housing costs less on an annual basis compared to putting the homeless in prison. Canada was the last to have an action plan towards ending homelessness and as we are understanding; the prisons are being over-populated.

Everywhere you turn in the United States people are sitting on the corners of streets asking for assistance or digging in trash cans for meals. The epidemic of homelessness in the United States has reached an all-time high since the 1990’s. Unfortunately, the adage of people chose to be homeless was not accounting for families that live paycheck to paycheck and lose their job and therefore their housing because it is unavoidable. Alternatively, many individuals that are homeless have some type of mental illness or substance abuse problem thus creating a barrier to maintaining housing. Many of these individuals are incapable to preserve stable employment and have limited support to get off the streets. However, there are several programs that the federal government fund to assist with combating the problem of homelessness in America.

The issue of chronic homelessness is not just a political or academic debate but has become evident from men and women living without homes in the streets of America. Homeless men and women

Despite millions of dollars from Congress funding services for the homeless, homelessness did not decrease in he U.S. during the 1980s or 1990s. Since then, an ideology known as Housing First has come into popularity, which will be elaborated on in the literature review section. The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) defines Housing First as “a homeless assistance approach that prioritizes providing people experiencing homelessness with permanent housing as quickly as possible – and then providing voluntary supportive services as needed” (“Housing First”). This

Just by walking down the streets of Portland, it is obvious from the roadside tents, cardboard signs begging for spare change and shopping carts overflowing with possessions that the housing crisis in America is not going to resolve itself. For hundreds of years, homelessness has been a frowned upon and ignored issue by those who have never experienced it. Overlooking and ignoring homelessness has not done anything to help the growing issue, but allowed it to continue for even longer. In the article “Homelessness” on Opposing Viewpoints.com, it explains how the homeless face discrimination and treated as outcasts, “During the colonial period, homelessness was caused by varying economic and social factors; however, this condition was widely

Addressing homelessness, regardless of its cause, requires creativity, empathy and dedication. Oftentimes, the factors that lead to homelessness are complicated and intertwined, with no clear origin. Medical catastrophes, job loss, and foreclosure or eviction can be the catalyst into a life of insecurity and chronic homelessness. Once secure, stable housing is lost, a person faces a slippery slope. In Kansas City, like many other substantial cities, efforts to combat homelessness must be creative and comprehensive in order to succeed. Social programs that focus on stable housing and address the complicated causes of homelessness prove to be the most successful.