Homelessness Housing And Urban Development - 891 Words

homelessness, when you think of a homeless person the first thing that might pop into your head is some old man on the side of the road with a sign, or a dirty drug addicted mental case loser, or someone pushing a shopping cart full of junk. However, homelessness is more complex than you would think, and a tremendous problem in America, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Although homelessness has been documented in America since 1640, it did not become a problem until the 1980’s, when housing and social service cuts increased and the economy deteriorated. Now, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, 564,708 people in the United States were experiencing homelessness on a single night, January 2015. Despite this number being high, it has decreased 26% since 2005, increasing once in the past 11 years. (See Graph 1 Below) What does it mean to be homeless? The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) places a homeless person into one of fou r categories. The most commonly known type of homelessness is categorized as â€Å"literally homeless: An individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence.† Apart from being literally homeless, there are also people who fall into a category called â€Å"imminent risk of homelessness,† which is â€Å"an individual or family who will imminently lose their primary night-time residence.† The last two categories one can fall into are â€Å"homeless under other Federal statues, orShow MoreRelatedHomelessness : Poverty And Lack Of Permanent And Stable Housing1244 Words   |  5 PagesHomelessness is the situation where individuals lack safe and adequate housing resulting in sleeping in the streets, their cars, and family or friends homes or in shelters. According to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a homeless person is an individual who does not a have a permanent residence place, but rather has a temporary nighttime residence which is not designed for the accommodation of human beings (National Health Care for the Homeless Council, n.d.) SuchRead MoreHomelessness Is A Basic Need And All Human Beings Essay1137 Words   |  5 Pagesshelter, they not find a home. Homelessness has become rampant throughout the US population. Each day more and more people are reported not to have this basic need, sleeping in the streets and wandering all day long. This has become a major area of concern for the government, social services providers and social policy makers. The government through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has put in enormous efforts to combat the annual rise in homelessness but the situation has not significantlyRead MoreHow Homelessness Has Changed Since The Great Depression843 Words   |  4 PagesThe image of homelessness has changed since the Great Depression, when many homeless people were elderly and white. Today a growing number of women and f amilies, including young children, are homeless because of insufficient housing and resources (Bassuk Rosenberg, 1988). As the number of homeless people has continued to rise over the past decade, homelessness has become a central feature of life in America. Homelessness tends to be associated with images of people who sleep in the streets, parksRead MoreHomeless People Are Dependent On Their Resident City s Shelter System1210 Words   |  5 Pagesareas across the nation– even the warmer areas in California and Florida– experience wind chills and temperature drops. According to Rebecca Sturgis and Neil Denovan of the National Coalition for the Homeless, 700 people at risk or are experiencing homelessness are killed by hypothermia in the United States, despite the fact that the ailment can be easily treated. Though there are numerous shelters across the nation to support the troubled and homeless, the National Coalition for the Homeless forecastsRead MoreFive Myths About America1082 Words   |  5 Pagesadministration released a plan designed to end homelessness in 10 years. The goal reflects new optimism among academics and advocates that homelessness is not an intractable feature of urban life, as it has sometimes seemed , but a problem that can be solved. This belief is fueled by recent research debunking a number of long-standing myths about homelessness in America -- and showing that many of our old policies were unwittingly making the problem worse. 1. Homelessness is usually a long-term condition. ToRead MoreHomeless Shelters, A Lack Of Resources Essay1598 Words   |  7 PagesThirty-two percent of families facing homelessness were rejected by homeless shelters because of â€Å"a lack of resources† (Gerges 19). If city officials don’t formulate concise response plans, homeless shelters won t be able to accommodate the influx of people without access to other shelters. Some of these people are forced to stay in the cold or other harsh weather conditions. As a result, numerous homeless people suffer from conditions like frostbite and hypothermia during the winter due to theRead More How Many People are Homeless? Essay1591 Words   |  7 Pagesis misleading. In most cases, homelessness is a temporary circumstance -- not a permanent condition. A more appropriate measure of the magnitude of homelessness is therefore how many people experience homelessness, not how many people are homeless. Studies of homelessness are complicated by problems of definitions and methodology. This fact sheet describes definitions of homelessness, methodologies for counting homeless people, and recent estimates of homelessness. Additional resources for furtherRead MoreHomelessness : The Logical Solution1246 Words   |  5 PagesGrowth Homelessness: The Logical Solution Abstract: Homelessness is an issue, which plagues millions of Americans on a daily-basis. The current mainstream method of dealing with this issue has proven to be inefficient and extremely expensive, a burden which is passed onto society, despite the plethora of alternative methods which have a proven success rate and also have a much larger cost when compared to that associated with general homelessness in the country. Introduction: Homelessness in NewRead MoreThe Problem With Homeless Today1209 Words   |  5 Pageswere living in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs and 35 percent were living in unsheltered locations â€Å"(Cortes, Morris, Henry, 2013, p.1). While this is a decrease from last year in which there were, â€Å"633,782 people experiencing homelessness on one night in January 2012. This translates to a national homeless rate of 20 per 10,000 people† (Cortes et al., 2013 p.1), there is still over half a million people suffering from homelessness in America. Homeless people represent every demographicRead MoreSolution Of Homelessness In Canada1102 Words   |  5 Pagesthe U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (Henry et al., 2016), over 500,000 people were homeless in the United States on one given night in January 2016. The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness reported that 35,000 people were homeless in Canada around the same time and that at least 235,000 Canadians experience homelessness at some point in a year (Gaetz et al., 2016). Although both the U.S. and Canada have made some effort toward reducing and ending homelessness, it clearly still remains