America is Homeless

America is Homeless

Part 1. The issue at hand and the one that I plan on reporting about is the reoccurring problem that seems to affect thousands of Americans every year. The increasing homelessness that has put our nation on a spike of homelessness, most of the people who still have roofs over their heads and food in their stomachs are those of upper middle class citizens and the occasional generic middle class person. Homes have become more expensive, because of the recent economic drought, and the number of people able to buy homes is quickly diminishing. The people with stable jobs are among the few that might be able to buy a home, or at the least rent an apartment. “According to the U.S. National Alliance to End Homelessness Study conducted in January 2005, there are approximately 744,313 homeless individuals in the United States, 44% of which live in the streets in 2007.” Those who have a home to go back to were actually kind enough to pitch into help those less fortunate than themselves by participating in a charity event on May twenty-fifth 1986. “On May 25th, millions of people participate in the Hands Across America charity event to help raise money for the homeless.” People now a day’s still try to help those less fortunate, only less conglomerated into one entire event. As of 2007 not only is it just unlucky people that are suffering from this problem, war veterans are also being affected. People that we owe our security too are losing their homes as well; even after the G.I. bill has been paid they still are homeless. “In early November, the Department of Veterans Affairs reports that over 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are homeless.” Those that are willing to give their lives to protect ours are homeless and the government is letting that happen. The government has done some things to aid and or prevent citizens from becoming homeless in the past. In 1937 “The Housing Act creates the United States Housing Authority, which subsidizes the cost of building low-rent housing in local communities.” This was a great movement for its time but that was when, as grandpa says, “…I could buy a week’s worth of groceries for five bucks…” those were simpler times. Also the fact that because of the most recent recession the U.S. dollar isn’t able to buy as much as it used to. Although this government activity is not enough to even get close to eradicating the homelessness issue, so simple citizens got in on the defeat of homelessness and created privately funded charity groups. “In 1889 American social reformer Jane Addams establishes the Hull House, which provides social and educational services for working class immigrant families in Chicago.” However this is just the start of what individuals have done in an attempt to help those in need. As the years went by others started to get involved in the fight to end homelessness in America. “Social worker Dorothy Day establishes the Catholic Worker Movement, which provides food, clothing, and shelter to the homeless in 1933.” Though not even this is enough to completely eradicate the homeless problem, which plagues so many around the world. There were several more attempted solutions to end homelessness and yet none of them have deleted the problem…yet. The government tried to give soldiers a fighting chance to avoid becoming homeless by giving them the G.I. Bill of Rights in 1944. “The Servicemen's Readjustment Act, commonly known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, provides military veterans with loans to buy homes or start businesses.” And yet, as I said at the beginning, soldiers are still unable to buy homes or keep the homes they already have. However, the government didn’t give up and neither did the rest of the nation. “In 1965 The Department of Housing and Urban Development is established to increase access to affordable housing free from discrimination and to support community development.”

Part 2. Recently, in our government class, we learned about the President’s Cabinet; and indecently the HUD or the Department of Housing and Urban Development is a Cabinet-level agency. “One of HUD’s central efforts is to address the decrease in housing affordability since the 1970s by developing affordable housing units and assisting low income households to purchase, rehabilitate, or rent safe and decent housing. This is incredibly similar to what I did for the first half of my community service. I joined the people of Habitat for Humanity, and my friend Nathaniel, reconstruct a house that a low income family is going to be living in. While I was there I learned that it isn’t just an almost free housing unit, it’s actually demanded that the family participate in the reconstruction as a form of down payment on all the materials and tools needed to work on the house. After they have put in a little effort (payment) they put in their own money to finish off the payment. Back to the HUD, in the 1990s Clinton developed another form of protection within the HUD. “…under the Clinton Administration in 1993, HUD developed the Continuum of Care concept  to encourage localities to coordinate their programs to provide an integrated range of services that included prevention of homelessness, outreach to persons on the streets, emergency shelter, transitional housing, and permanent housing. A core component of this approach was to provide time limited shelter with an array of such supportive services as case management, substance abuse counseling, mental and other health care, job preparedness training, and money management courses in order to address the individual needs of homeless people and push them back into the labor market.” Along with these efforts to aid the needy, other (non-profit) organizations have been created to help those that aren’t being helped by the government, or not helped enough. “The National Alliance to End Homelessness (The Alliance) is a non-profit organization that has mobilized over 5,000 non-profit, public, and private organizations into a coalition to stop the problem of homelessness in the United States. While the Alliance once focused its efforts on the provision of emergency food and shelter, today it strives to address the root causes of homelessness and challenge society's acceptance of homelessness as an inevitable by-product of American life.” The alliance’s main work includes informing federal level policymakers about ways they can possibly end homelessness throughout the nation,  provide aid to people trying to help, and educate an increasing number of Americans to the problem and ways they can help those in need. “The current major efforts of the National Alliance to End Homelessness are focused on implementing their Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness. The Plan provides broad guidelines to end homelessness within ten years. They stress the need to "close the front door" to homelessness by developing prevention strategies, "opening the back door" to homelessness by developing programs to expediently help people exit the condition, and building a social infrastructure that decreases vulnerability to homelessness.” These strategies consist mostly of emergency aid to people in danger of being evicted, and tightening up the policies of hospitals and other such establishments, foster care programs, and incarceration facilities to make sure that those released can have stable housing facilities. “Sufficient evidence has mounted suggesting that exit strategies should follow a "housing first" model that places individuals in subsidized permanent housing immediately, and then provides an array of supportive services to help them become as self-sufficient as possible. Strategies to alter the social infrastructure that produces homelessness includes increasing the stock of affordable housing, providing more living wage employment, and expanding access to welfare and social service programs (including substance abuse treatment, community based mental health treatment, and other forms of health care).” The Alliance has contributed to over one hundred plans made by states and local communities to end Homelessness because of the development and promotion of the Ten-Year Plan.

Part 3. Even with all this help from all of these different organizations the nation, and more importantly, the world still needs a lot of help if we; as a whole; are going to end this once and for all. Personally, I believe that if anything is going to be done to end; or at least make homelessness less likely; would take anything from incredible work by the entire nation to a miracle of epic proportions. Although this battle will most definitely not be easy it is possible even if it takes years of potential solutions only to have them end in failure. I believe that the most promising solution is that of the combined forces of the HUD, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and Habitat for Humanity; each of which have their own area of expertise. Habitat increases affordable housing, and improves communities domestically and internationally; HUD is mainly used to increase homeownership, support community development, and increase access to affordable housing free of discrimination; and the National Alliance to End Homelessness focuses on  informing policymakers at the federal level about ways in which they can help to end homelessness across the nation; providing assistance to service providers, advocates, and public officials in developing and implementing plans to end homelessness in their communities; and increasing the number of Americans educated about the issues, causes and solutions of homelessness. While I was working for Habitat for Humanity I learned that the Re-Store in that organization not only sells pieces of housing to people that are working on their own houses it also provides the necessary equipment and materials for the people working to fix up other people’s houses. In addition it takes into consideration its own ideas for how to end homelessness by giving a stable job to those recently released from prison to both fulfill their community service probation requirements and give them some money to put towards buying their own home. The organization also makes the people whose house we work on, work on their own houses as a form of pre payment; after which they finish of the expenses with a down payment that does not pay the organization but it does pay for more materials to help others. Even with all the help that we can give to those in need, homelessness will never truly be over and done until everyone in the nation can feel so confident in the fact that their children will always have a roof over their head and that they can afford to say in that home for as long as they need to. But that’s not all, if there’s going to be total housing for everyone, there needs to be a law that guarantees veterans some sort of asylum after they get back to their lives. It should also be illegal to force anyone related to someone, currently, enlisted from their homes because of the possibility that the person enlisted may be living with the individual that is being forced from their homes. Though another problem I learned about is that some veterans are denied jobs because of the probability that they are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and might be unstable, and therefore unable to perform in any job setting.  Joblessness is another major cause of homelessness because to some people if they don’t have a job they can’t afford a house. One cannot end homelessness without ending joblessness, which has been another lasting problem in the U.S. Although I have also learned from my work at Habit for Humanity that thirteen to twenty-five percent, and possibly more, of the urban homeless population are employed. In fact, many homeless people are stuck working with temporary work groups that offer low pay and long hours. Also it can be hard for a homeless person to get a job when they don’t have an address or a reliable way to communicate with those offering jobs. In addition to multiple job opportunities, if the government was able to get affordable health care maybe more people would be healthy enough for some of the more mentally and physically demanding jobs that pay more and they wouldn’t have to take job that don’t pay much, with no benefits and obscenely long hours. With all that I have learned and all that I have offered to those that read this we may be able to end Homelessness.