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Hope For the Less Fortunate
You have probably looked at the facts and statistics about the homeless. You may already know that, according to Homes for the Homeless, "Children and families make up the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. There are 500,000 families in shelters nationwide and 1.35 million homeless children each year. Over half of homeless families have been homeless for 6 months or more. And, the average homeless child in America is only 6 years old." You may have heard that there is a movement to call them "houseless" instead of "homeless." You might even go to school with someone homeless. But have you really imagined what it actually would be like to be homeless?
According to a non-profit organization called Stand up For Kids, which operates only in the United States, there are at least "one and a half million children, teenagers, and young adults trying to survive on the U.S. streets today." However, homelessness is a problem affecting the entire world.
How have homeless people become houseless? Here are a few possibilities: Homeless people may have had a run-in with drugs and/or alcohol. They may have lost their jobs and became unable to support themselves. They may have had expensive serious health or dental problems, which consumed all their finances and forced them out of their homes. Or they may have been abused as children and ran away from their homes. Many kids never return to an abusive home. They consider the streets, bad as they are, safer than living in their own homes. At least on the streets they can form a bond with other homeless people and feel a sense of protection from their "street family" that they did not feel at home. The longer a person has been homeless, the harder it seems to stop being homeless. Some of the homeless feel resentment towards society as a whole for making them lose their jobs, home or whatever they lost that made them resort to living on the streets. There are many homeless people who are not violent and unfortunately, there are many homeless people who are violent.
Non-homeless people sometimes have the misconception that it is easy for the homeless to regain control of their lives. Often it is not. (In the U.S., minimum wage is too low for the homeless to subsist. Think about all the other countries that have an even lower minimum wage and those who have no minimum wage at all). According to the National Coalition for the Homeless's 2004 Report on the Criminalization of Homeless in the United States, there are many laws nationwide making it illegal to be homeless. A hostile attitude towards the homeless is on the rise. The same 2004 report cites a survey done in the cities and states least tolerant of the homeless, listing Las Vegas, San Francisco and New York as the "meanest" cities and California and Florida as the meanest states. There are many homeless who work really hard and eventually get themselves off the street. There are many more homeless people out there who need help. Volunteering is a great way to offer assistance.
If you are interested in volunteering, you can check out YN's Get Local to find volunteer activities in your community. You can also go to Habitat for Humanity to help build houses in the United States, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Central Asia. Also be sure to check newspaper, magazine, and radio ads for foundations or companies that help the local poor population in your community. Remember, as the Stand Up for Kids Organization so aptly puts it: "Kids do not live on the streets. Kids are dying on the streets!"
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