Our country should do more to help our homeless - Essay Example

Dissolving Stereotypes Because of recent public awareness campaigns by governmental and private agencies such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the National Coalition for the Homeless respectively, long-standing common stereotypes of the homeless are steadily evaporating. Images of imaginatively clothed white-bearded, haggard, leather-faced men sitting against an alley wall holding a brown paper bag with a bottle of cheap booze inside have toady morphed into imagery that is closer to the truth such as a single mom with children living at a shelter or a family living in their car.

The estimated 500,000 children that are homeless in America at any one time and their mothers are the fastest growing sector of the homeless population in the U.S. According to existing studies conducted of homeless shelters minor account for close to 40 percent of the homeless population. More than 40 percent of these children are preschool age. (Gray, 2011). It is a false impression that the majority homeless persons really prefer that type of terrible lifestyle and could possibly adjust to it.

Studies confirm that close 100 percent of homeless persons certainly would never choose this lifestyle one more day if they had an alternative. Who would? Another universal myth regarding the homeless is that they made bad decisions therefore are responsible for their own destiny. In addition to the great numbers of homeless children who are blameless, many adults are victims of easy to understand circumstances too. Some military veterans suffer from both physical and mental disabilities resulting from warfare and cannot sustain an ‘ordinary’ existence.

Other victims of homelessness were abused as children or were themselves raised in homeless environment. Still other people fall into the destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction which decimates their family and working life. Some have become ‘unemployable’ for a variety of reasons or can find only unskilled and/or low-paying employment after having higher paying jobs and now cannot afford their house payments. Whatever the reason, the results are the same. “All homeless are victims in the sense that they do not have a place to call home.

” (“Facts and Myths”, 2007). Men, Women and Children Twenty-five percent of women who are homeless find themselves in this dangerous and demeaning situation because they are escaping abusive behavior in their home. Unsurprisingly, men seldom report this reason for being homeless but a percentage, though statistically insignificant, cite an abusive home as the central reason they are homeless. Men’s most often reason given is unemployment and the second most for women. “Although there is a 13.

4 percent difference between males and females, unemployment is also an important reason of homelessness for women.  More than one tenth of homeless women leave home because of employment” (“Women and Men”, 2001). Other than spousal abuse and to a lesser degree joblessness, the differences between the declared causes for homelessness are statistically identical for men and women. Approximately the same numbers of both genders say alcohol and drug abuse, protracted disabilities or illnesses and running out of federal aid caused their homelessness.

Recent research and