Homelessness In America

Essay by binman00College, UndergraduateA+, October 2004

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Tischler had quite a bit to say about homelessness in America. It is a serious problem effecting 300,000 to 700,000 people in the United States on any given day.# It pains me to think of this many people sleeping on the streets of the U.S. at night. Although Tischler admits in his book that the demographics are hard to verify, it is estimated that families with children make up 36% of the homeless. # It was painful to realize the full number of homeless people, it is even more heartbreaking to think of 100,000 to 230,000 thousand children not sleeping in a home at night. Tischler also wrote about the problems faced by the homeless. He stated that two-thirds have infections diseases, thirty-nine percent are mentally ill, and many were abused or homeless as children.#

There are two major theory's for the rise in homelessness. One, is that people are on the streets because they have had some bad luck with a job and that there is a lack of affordable housing.#

This notion plays along with the statistics that show many Americans are only a couple of paychecks away from being homeless, because our society uses credit so much. The other theory is that the rise in homelessness is because of the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill.# In 1975 many new policies were introduced at hospitals that worked with the mentally ill, and as a result a lot of patients were released without having anywhere to go. It is most likely that the problem is growing because of a combination of these two theory's. Whatever the cause may be, we are in need as a country to step up and work towards a solution in making sure everyone has a safe place to sleep at night.

When I started...