Summary: The Issue Of Homelessness

A famous line from The Wizard Of Oz is “there is no place like home”, but what if you don’t have a home? According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, “In 2009, an estimated 656,129 people experienced homelessness in the United States”. Since then the number has only grown. That isn’t the issue at hand though; the issue is that there are children who are homeless. In the 2010-2011 school year, 939,903 children were classified as homeless. That was a 38% increase from the year before (APA 6). The numbers keep rising and even though action has been taken, not much is showing for their efforts. Being homeless has been an ongoing issue from day one and has only grown in numbers, now increasing in the number of children. These children are not given the choice of whether to be homeless or not, they were more or less born into it. In fact most of the times that they are born into it, most of the mothers don’t stick around. In 2013, 70% of the homeless children were motherless and only about 25% of those kids were in foster care and not out on the streets (Zlotnick 2). That means that 45% of

So many families are being thrown onto the street and even though precautions are being taken to help prevent that, many families are still ending up without a home. In some studies, over 50% of children who end up homeless are under the age of 6 (Kim 1). The question that needs to be asked here is why are you having kids if you can’t take care of yourself? Homeless children also face problems in school, if they go to school. Teachers often try and reach out to these kids and help them through means of schooling. This can help if the child feels like they have someplace to go other than their cardboard box on the side of the road. School almost becomes their home away from “home”, or a safe place where they are safe from the outside world for a few