More handpicked essays just for you.
The effects of homelessness on housing
Economic consequences to society of homelessness
The effects of homelessness on housing
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The effects of homelessness on housing
What the locals are not taking into account in any of their plans is the resources or lack of when it comes to people trying to get housing. The families I help have a hard time finding housing because of personal barriers that are hard to fix and overcome. Landlords tend to not rent to people who have been evicted. Landlords tend to not rent to people with poor credit scores. Landlords tend not rent to people whose income is less than three times the rent. These barriers are going to keep them homeless unless a landlord is willing to give people a chance.
Imagine if you could see a whole city from your home; it stretches as far as the eye can see and has just house after house. Some houses are white, some are red, some are blue, and so on. This seems fairly normal and you might think I’m describing a housing development or something like it. The only problem is that those houses are not as they appear, they are actually tents and they are being inhabited by the poverty stricken population of your city. These “tent cities” have popped up all over the United States. Many different people live there, and have all have lost their homes some way or another. If Yakima can break down these barriers of poverty, we will never become one of these “tent cities”. We must figure out ways to help the low-income population to get jobs they need to support their families. If you are in some kind of post-high school education you must have some source of money and ambition to do better than your parents before you. According to the story “Shadowy Lines That Still Divide”, by Janny Scott and David Leonhardt, in the book Class Matters; “the economic advantage once believed to last only two or three generations is now believed to last closer to five.” This means that what you decide to do with your life and well off you are determines what other generations of your family will do.
The last big effect that comes from the urban housing reform is that it makes it difficult for people to get out of those areas. Living in urban projects is not a place where many people wish to be but they have no choice if they can’t afford to get out of the area. Some people re only able to afford living in those areas or cannot get a job that pays high enough to move to someplace else. This has created a vicious circle of the areas becoming more run down and more
the cost of living in Toronto has come to a record high, we need to start doing something about it now before no one can afford to live at all. There are more than 30,000 women, men and children in the city's homeless shelters annually. Many of thousands more sleep on the streets or considered the “hidden homeless”. About 70,000 households are on Toronto’s social housing waiting list and on the brink of becoming homeless because of the skyrocketing prices of owning a home in Toronto. The Federal Government and the province have begun a slow reinvestment in housing in past years, the number of affordable housing being built now doesn’t even compare near the levels of the early 1980’s. Habitat for Humanity has been building houses for low income
Obviously a question that will arise is where the funding will come from, well mainly from the lovely thing called taxpayers’ money. Its time they put a stop to seemingly wasteful projects and integrate it to ones beneficial to the society as a whole. Thereafter, once they are housed the assistance program will continue their support by linking them with employment, and attaining rapid access to other needed services such as Medicaid, and food stamps. Some people simply require a little push to get them back on their feet. Once affordable housing is made more available along with the assisting that helps maintain it, all excuses should be out the door.
In order to be radical about poverty, we need to understand the difference between wealth and income. Income is a transfer of money by working or by gifts. On the other hand, wealth is more of a total of accumulated assets that has been stored for a period of time (Conley, pg. 253). Wealth is not distributed equally among the public. (NCH, 2016, http://nationalhomeless.org/about-homelessness/). Declining wages has also caused a lot of stress and increase people’s inability to pay for their housing or other needs. If there are affordable housing, it’s usually in an unsafe and polluted environment or it’s extremely overcrowded that people have a higher chance of being homeless or inadequate housing arrangements than getting their applications accepted (Why Are People Homeless Research, 2016, NCH). Also, privatizing housing will increase the accumulation of wealth of the power elite or those that own property and lands by their pricing in rents. Most people go through depression because of loss of home, jobs, or a sense of self. Often times, the lack education about health and they don’t receive adequate support for medical care if they are homelessness. Poverty is also treated as a criminal offence and if people were to ask for public assistance, they have to prove their eligibility. If they have a criminal record, they are
In the early hours of the morning on Thursday, January 3, 2013, James G. Fulmer was found frozen to death on the steps of a Nashville Church. James Fulmer was 50 years old, homeless, and physically handicapped (wsmv.com). His tragic story is just one of almost 1,000 homeless men and women will suffer death caused by hypothermia each year. (nationalhomeless.org). Every night in the United States, over 600,000 people encounter homelessness. Their stories are diverse and their paths to homelessness, varied. Many have found themselves on the streets due to domestic violence, job loss and mental illness (npr.org). Some were teachers, accountants, musicians, painters, and even doctors. So many of the homeless population once lead normal lives. Yet, there is a social stigma that views the homeless as lazy, unwilling to work, uneducated and even untrustworthy. In a Capitalist society that places the highest value on image and the almighty dollar, there seems to be little desire to interact with these “outcasts”.
In the word homeless there are two root words, home and less. Home is what most people would define as the place where they live, or grew up. Less, simply means not as much as. When you combine the two together homeless equals someone who grew up in a home that was held to less standards than what they would normally be held up to. For example, someone who is homeless could live in a box, it sounds terrible but unfortunately it is a part of our reality. Not everyone can afford to live in a house, pay mortgage, and all the other expenses that come with the responsibility of owning a house, or home. Today homelessness still has an affect on many people.
?Over the past year, over two million men, women, and children were homeless? in America. (NLCHP) Homeless people face an intense struggle just to stay alive despite the fact that society turns its head from the problem. The government makes laws that discriminate against homeless people, which make it, illegal for them to survive. The mistreatment of homeless people is an issue that is often ignored in our community. When you see a homeless person on the streets how do you react? Do you turn your head and ignore them? Do you become angry that they are living on the streets? Do you feel frightened and avoid the situation all together? Or do you see these people as human beings and treat them in that way? Homeless people are ?subjected to alienation and discrimination by mainstream society?. (NLCHP) Most alienation and discrimination comes from the lack of education about homeless people. There are numerous untrue myths about homeless people. Many people believe that homeless people ?commit more violent crimes than housed people.? (NLCHP) The reality is that homeless people actually commit less violent crimes than people with homes do. Dr. Pamela Fischer, of John Hopkins University, studied arrest records in Baltimore and discovered that even though homeless people were more likely to commit non-violent and non-destructive crimes, they were less likely to commit violent crimes against people. (NLCHP) The crimes that these people are committing are necessary to keep them alive. These crimes include sleeping, eating, and panhandling. Making it illegal to perform necessary daily activities in public when homeless people have no where else to go makes it impossible for homeless people to avoid violating the law. (NLCHP) Another myth about homeless people is that they do not work and that they get their money from public assistance programs. A study done in Chicago discovered that ?39% of homeless people interviewed had worked for some time during the previous month?. (NLCHP) Many of the people who do not work are actively trying to find jobs, but are discriminated against by the work force. In an interview done at the River Street Homeless Shelter I found many people who have experienced this discrimination. ?People can?t get a job without an address. When they use the shelter?s address they get turned down.? (Mike) Speaking...
Terner presents the beginning of a solution to the affordable housing problem in his article Affordable Housing: An Impossible Dream? in The Commonwealth, published June 1994. His company founded from an anonymous $600,000 donation is a non-profit organization that builds quality, affordable housing for low-income families. Its effects, however, are limited. One project just opened in San Francisco with 3,000 applicants and 108 acceptances, which can be looked at as pretty dismal statistics. “This is just a drop in the bucket,” writes Terner, ‘the real question is how to expand and replicate.” (Terner, p. 392) It is this expansion that the bulk of the article argues for. Terner values a fair chance for all citizens at the “American Dream” and this chance involves the whole community. Terner mentions the “NIMBY” syndrome, or Not-In-My-Back-Yard Syndrome, where communities support the concept of affordable housing, but none that are to be built in their community. Ideally one could turn to the government for help with problems such as housing, but National, State, and local governments have proven themselves to be ...
It is often easy to castigate large cities or third world countries as failures in the field of affordable housing, yet the crisis, like an invisible cancer, manifests itself in many forms, plaguing both urban and suburban areas. Reformers have wrestled passionately with the issue for centuries, revealing the severity of the situation in an attempt for change, while politicians have only responded with band aid solutions. Unfortunately, the housing crisis easily fades from our memory, replaced by visions of homeless vets, or starving children. Metropolis magazine explains that “…though billions of dollars are spent each year on housing and development programs worldwide, ? At least 1 billion people lack adequate housing; some 100 million have none at all.? In an attempt to correct this worldwide dilemma, a United Nations conference, Habitat II, was held in Istanbul, Turkey in June of 1996. This conference was open not only to government leaders, but also to community organizers, non governmental organizations, architects and planners. “By the year 2000, half the world’s people will live in cities. By the year 2025, two thirds of the world population will be urban dwellers ? Globally, one million people move from the countryside to the city each week.? Martin Johnson, a community organizer and Princeton professor who attended Habitat II, definitively put into words the focus of the deliberations. Cities, which are currently plagued with several of the severe problems of dis-investment ?crime, violence, lack of jobs and inequality ?and more importantly, a lack of affordable and decent housing, quickly appeared in the forefront of the agenda.
...ojects one at a time and assist individual households threatened with eviction. Resources should be divided between short-term and long-term actions. Finally, anti-gentrification advocates should develop a comprehensive approach to slowing down gentrification. ?A combination of relocation assistance, homebuyer programs, affordable housing development, land use planning, community organizing, and small business support must occur to address gentrification on all fronts? (Alejandrino 47). These are just some recommendations to help rescue those negatively affected by gentrification.
This paper will explain approaches to resolve the social issue of homelessness in the state of Delaware. It will also explain a few reasons why homelessness should be addressed the correct way to potentially end it. I will describe the correlations of homelessness and health, the crimes involving and against the homeless, and lastly the families subjected to homelessness. A few solutions will be recommended in this paper also to optimistically achieve the goal of assisting the homeless and improving the assistance already given.
The United States is divided into three different classes when classifying a group by their income. The classes are the High class, the middle class, and the low class. People who live in the high and middle classes have every day struggles similar to people living in the lower class have; but one thing that fluctuates is the types of struggles people in poorer class have to face proceeding on an everyday basis. For example, not knowing if they will have food on the table for their children, heat for their house in the winter, or have a roof over their head by the end of the month. Unfortunately to every difficulty there is always a gray area over looked. When dealing with poverty, children are often the ones left in that gray area with no
...e that these three solutions can be a main source into helping those in need for desperate help financially. I also feel that these plans can be a major part in developing a better economy and society for the “slum” and middle class communities. It will uplift many neighborhoods and people and to show that we can do something about this problem. Instead of us sitting and looking at the problem getting worse, we have to attend to the problem at hand.
In 1987, the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act was put into law. (Burger, 68-83) However, our government has moved away from the need to address the causes of homelessness. Instead our government has focused on the individual responsibility of those who become homeless, blaming their misfortune as their own fault. (Baum, 5-9) It is this belief that has helped to increase the homelessness of our nation, and it is this belief that will continue to do so if our government does not take a closer and more realistic look at the causes behind homelessness in our nation. Unless our government commits to ending homelessness through public education, policy advocacy, and technical assistance, homelessness will become a national disaster for the United States. Right now our government is not doing all it can towards putting into place the necessary solutions to combat homelessness. Who are/where the homeless people are many of the homeless have completed high school. Some have completed college. Some are AIDS victims, many are the elderly, many are children, some are disabled vets, some are illegal immigrants, and many of the homeless hold down full-time jobs. (Berger) They are found not only in cities, but in small towns, rural areas, and affluent suburbs. (Christian). Some even make up the “hidden homeless” (Christian), or people who are one crisis away from losing their homes for a variety of reasons, such as sudden medial emergency or unforeseen h...