Homeless
There are too many homeless people; the government is not helping, and there
are
not enough shelters. Today there are some thirty thousand children living
on the
streets of New York City. With this many homeless children on the
streets, the
government should be helping more by building more shelters. The
government is
not helping in the building of shelters, so the people of our
country must help.
"A federal takeover of the homelessness problem, with
gushing federal
dollars ... will do little to help" (Berne 100). "(The)
Government
creates homelessness and shelter dependency when it provides too
little money
even to pay the rent" (Rossi 106). The government needs to help
the
homeless people so they (the homeless) can get off the streets. Today,
the
homeless shelters that we do have in this country are filling up very
quickly
and forcing those not lucky enough to be in one to live on the
streets.
"The shelter system does little to reduce either sources of
homelessness or
equip the homeless to achieve independence" (Hoch and Slayton
123).
"The problem is not too few houses - rather, it is too
much
government" (Mehrten 156). This saying means that there are houses but
the
government will not provide funding for them. The problem of homelessness
is not
strictly a United States problem, but is a major problem throughout
the world.
All governments, not just the United States government, need
to become more
active in taking care of this problem. A beginning would be
the funding of more
shelters throughout the world. More shelters would mean
less homeless on the
streets. Who are the homeless? The homeless in this
discussion include people
who are on skid row (most of who are men), the
mentally handicapped who have
been discharged from mental institutions before
they are ready and any person
who does not have a regular site for shelter.
The newest population among the
homeless are children, women, the elderly and
whole families. Skid-row
alcoholics account for only about twenty percent of
our nation's homeless.
Patient discharged from a mental institution, also
known as the mentally ill,
have had a tremendous influence on the numbers of
the homeless. In the past two
thousand community mental health centers have
been proposed, but of these only
eight hundred have ever been funded. People
who are among the ranks of the
unemployed are the newest members of the
homeless. Without employment they are
unable to provide a permanent shelter
for themselves and so enter the world of
the homeless. Two million people
under the age of twenty-one make up another new
part of the homeless. Many
are homeless by choice, because they have run away
from home while others
have simply been forced out of their homes. Still others
have outgrown the
foster care system that we have in our county. Very young
children, under the
age of ten, are homeless because their families are
homeless. Women make up
approximately twenty to twenty-seven percent of our
nation's homeless
population. There are many factors that lead to women becoming
homeless.
These include the loss of inexpensive housing, spousal abuse, and
economic
hardship from sex and age discrimination. The homeless family is
mainly
comprised of a woman alone and two to three children. Some homeless
families may
include a father figure but they are few. Most families become
homeless from
loss of their homes either through fire, eviction or the
escaping of an abusive
environment. Many homeless children are poorly
nourished, clothed and educated.
Elderly homeless are perhaps less
noticeable in our society than other homeless
individuals. Many elderly
homeless are ashamed to ask for help as they have
always managed to take care
of themselves. For an elderly person to be in the
homeless position can be
especially demeaning for them. Social groups working
with the elderly
homeless base this group on the homeless who are fifty-five
years of age or
older. There are too many homeless people; the government is not
helping, and
there are not enough shelters. Homelessness is a major problem not
only in
our country but throughout the entire world. Evidently the government
has
tried to help in the past, but either their help is not working or it is
just
not enough. Maybe our government really needs to go into our society and
see
just how extensive the problem of homelessness is and how it affects
our
society. More shelters need to be built but more than shelters have to be
built.
Our nation's government needs to establish programs that will
actually help
solve the homeless problem. The building of more shelters would
be a good thing,
but it is only a temporary fix. The homeless of our nation
need programs that
will give them back the means of taking care of themselves
and incorporated back
into our society in a useful way.