Homeless or Hopeless?

Homeless or Hopeless?

Karina Rubio

Grand Canyon University:  UNV-103

October 12, 2017

Homeless or Hopeless?        

        In today’s society, being homeless has become more common than people would like it to be. In 2016, 550,000 individuals were homeless in the United States (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2016). Homelessness is an issue that people have yet to find a suitable solution for and in the mean time it is having a negative effect on our communities, has an economic impact on society, and increase crime rates. Reasons vary when it comes to why or how one ends up homeless but it is an issue that needs to be addressed, researched and fought for.

        It is the American dream to live and build a life for yourself worth living where your children can grow and live a comfortable life, but homelessness can have a negative on a community over time. Not only does an overpopulated homeless community bring safety issues to light but the drug use surrounding these communities can have a negative impact on the children and teens surrounding it as well. Additionally, childhood physical and sexual abuse are associated with elevated dissociative symptoms in homeless veteran populations and younger populations including homeless teens (Young, 2017). This is where lower income communities or homeless populations suffer and the negative effects on a community begin to be a vicious cycle. The communities experiencing homelessness not only have to deal with the smell and negative visual impact in one’s community but the chances of drugs reaching children and having long lasting effects like addiction as well due to traumatic experiences like sexual abuse.

        Although homelessness at first glance seems to affect the individual’s economic wellbeing, it also has an economic impact on society as a whole. Laws for and against the homeless community have been made but with that goes time and tax payer dollars to make state funded programs to sustain them. Some of these laws include it being illegal to sleep or loiter in public spaces and making it illegal to store personal belongings in public (Aykanian, 2016, pp.5). Along with laws and enforcing them comes health services, the homeless account for a large proportion of frequent emergency department users—nearly 40% according to one study leading to a specific interest in understanding the dynamics between frequent emergency departments use and other health care service use in this population (Mitchell, 2017). Meaning that 40% of bills and resources used go unpaid for.

        With the dishonesty and need for resources society can see an increase in crime rates throughout the nation. One’s need to feed themselves or clothe themselves and their families can lead them to theft, or sell drugs or do whatever they need to do with no regard for the consequences of their actions. Survival crime is a necessary part of the ‘reordering of political, moral and economic possibilities’ that is forced by being homeless (Pain, 2004). Circumstances or mental health can bring one to commit crimes but regardless of the reasons, our society suffers. It is important for the community to invest time into our homeless populations and inform them of resources such as Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous and other free resources.