About homelessness

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar, it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring...A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Profiles

What Americans say

What could make you homeless?

"Homelessness is in part about a lack of affordable housing for the very poor and disabled. But it's also about a 20-year mental health policy of deinstitutionalization that was severely underfunded at the local level. It's about the continued need for more research in the field of addictions (especially alcohol) and its effects on human decision making. It is about the violent nature of our society, especially violence within the family unit. It is about the shift from the industrial revolution to the information and service revolution, and the slowness with which our public education system has made the shift. It is about the military build-up of the 1980's, which created a "borrow and spend" mentality in Washington, D.C. and has bankrupted our government's ability to respond to virtually any social problem. And the list goes on."

"The answers, therefore, will require the coordination of many disciplines: housing production, alcohol and drug treatment service, mental health services, domestic violence services, employment and retraining services, etc. But most of all, we must have the public understand that homelessness is the cancer in our society, not the homeless people themselves."

Another view on "A Nation in Denial"
John W. Wilson-Bugbee
Marin Housing Center Sonoma County Task Force on the Homeless Reporter
Vol. 5, No. 5 Oct./Nov. 1993

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Profiles of homeless people

I am a 20 year old man. My wife is pregnant. My father first abused me when I was two years old, and beat me and sexually abused me until the State got me into a foster home. I didn't get along in that place, and was moved to another, and another... In never finished high school. I have trouble controlling my temper and keeping a job.

I am a 32 year old woman. I have two boys, ages 9 and 6. Our house was damaged in an earthquake. We didn't have any insurance. The authorities said the damage in our area wasn't bad enough for it to be a disaster area, but our house is unlivable.We've been living in a tent for two months.

My husband beats me. I love him, but me and the kids are on the run from him. I need him--I don't have any job skills, and most of the time he's O.K.

I'm a 30 year old woman, but you'd think I'm 60 to look at me. I ran way from home whenI was 13, because my father kept making me have sex with him. I've slept under cars. I became a prostitute to support myself, and it was easy to get into drugs.I'm clean and sober now. I'm making a fresh start.

I'm a 28 year old woman with 3 kids, ages 2 to 8. My landlord just raised my rent $50 a month. Between that and the cuts in AFDC, we're out on the street. I've got another year to go on my bachelor's degree.

I worked for a major corporation until about six months ago. They laid me off, along with a lot of other middle level people. God, it's awful. I can't even get job interviews. I never planned for this happening. My savings are gone. I just don't know what to do.

I got injured--really messed up my neck. Uninsured medical expenses were huge! I had to sell my house. I still owe $800,000!

I used to work construction. I was doing a roof and lost my balance. I fell about two stories. Landed on my feet, but powdered my knee, broke my fibula, and can't walk right.I just can't stay on my feet very long. I don't have any other working skills.

My husband died 18 months ago. The rent on the house was $1,200 a month. I kept up a front, and didn't want to scare the kids. All the money's gone...

I led a pretty normal life as I grew up and eventually went to college. Then I went to San Francisco to teach school. I was single and lived in a small apartment. One night, a man followed me into my apartment building. He had a knife. He raped me. After that things got steadily worse. I had a nervous breakdown. I went to a mental institution for 3 months. When I went back to my apartment, my belongings were gone. My landlord had sold them for back rent. I had no place to go and no job, no friends. The memory of that awful man is my constant companion.

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What Americans say about the homeless

• 83% Say Americans devote more time and effort to animal rights and endangered species than to homeless people
• 36% can imagine a situation in which they might become homeless
• 84% think that at least half of the homeless could be helped to reenter society
• 82% say the homeless should not be prohibited from public places, like libraries, parks and mass transit
• 77% say homeless people are not adequately assisted by government
• 69% do not want a legal procedure that would forcibly remove homeless people from the streets
• 63% would personally donate money for the homeless if there was a place on a tax return to do so
• 63% agree with the statement "the main reason for homelessness is the breakdown of the American family"
• 7% think homeless people are violent
• 56% think that most homeless people are not responsible for their situation.
• 16% say they go out of their way to avoid homeless people: twice as many whites as black and Hispanics say they do so
• 63% say government does not spend enough on the homeless
• 48% say government should build housing for the homeless
• 41% say lack of employment opportunities is the number one obstacle to the reentry of the homeless into society

Parade Magazine Survey, published January 9,1994

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What could make you homeless?