Homlessness - Research Paper Example

adequate nighttime residence; and an individual who has a primary nighttime residence that is – a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations … an institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized or a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings” (Federal, 2009). In other words, a homeless person is someone who does not have a regular, personal, secure place to sleep at night on a regular basis.

This definition would also include people who live in their cars as this is not a ‘fixed’ location nor is it a place ‘designed for … regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.’ This discussion will examine the homelessness issue including why and what type of people become homeless. It will also review agencies and programs offering assistance to individuals and families living on the street. Thanks to recent public awareness campaigns by private and government agencies such as the National Coalition for the Homeless and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development respectively, long-standing societal stereotypes of the homeless are gradually evaporating.

Images of creatively clothed white-bearded old men leaning against an alley wall clutching a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag have morphed into a family living in their car or a single mother and her children living in a shelter (Marsh & Kennett, 1999). This changing image of the homeless hasn’t come fast enough, though, to increase the level of awareness among the general population, creating a situation in which many of the nation’s homeless children go without necessary services and are forced to repeat the cycle into their own adulthood (Martijn & Sharpe, 2006).

It is a matter of fact that the estimated half a million children that, at any one time, is homeless in America and their mothers represent