Struggles of the Homeless

Issues Affecting Homeless People

Mar 7, 2007 Sandra Williams

Simple things like finding a job, taking a shower and answering the phone are things we take for granted, but are problems for many homeless people.

Did you ever think about how a homeless person goes about getting a job? What address and phone number would they use as a contact? How do they obtain housing if there is no recent reference with an address and landlord?

A lot of these things we take for granted, but they are real concerns for the homeless. There are some working centers sprouting up offering bus tickets, resume help and a message system for retrieving job calls, but there needs to be more.

• Food is also an obvious issue and if this isn’t taken care of first, everything else takes a back seat. Some people have started community gardens offering their land in plots to whoever would like to grow food, but don’t have the land.

• Frequently unemployed homeless people are simply tagged as lazy, but there are a lot of homeless people who want to work, but face numerous stumbling blocks. When their appearance is unkept and their clothes are weathered, they are often shunned from simple restaurants where they may be seeking a meal as well as the privilege to use the washroom.

• There are some homeless people who face mental illness issues, but they often fall through the cracks of the system and have a harder time accessing health care. They can be seen as scary and crazy, but a rich artist or movie star with mental health problems is often described as eccentric. Addictions are sometimes a problem as well with similar dynamics in attitudes between the rich and the poor.

Here we do not have a caste system, but some homeless people can get treatment similar to the untouchables. This sort of banishment treatment can add to the homeless feeling of despair and reinforce issues of low self esteem and unworthiness.

Help

If you would like to help, consider volunteering time in your area. This is how people can make a difference addressing the homelessness issue. There are various opportunities in such things as access to technology, affordable housing and literacy and education.

Sometimes people don’t want to donate financially to the homeless because they don’t know where their money is going. This is a valid concern, but bus tickets can be given in place of money as well as gift certificates for food. Also research what resources are offered in your area that you can trust to donate to such as food banks or working centers.

For more information on this issue, see Directory of National Housing and Homelessness Organizations.

The copyright of the article Struggles of the Homeless in Poverty/World Development is owned by Sandra Williams. Permission to republish Struggles of the Homeless in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.