Homeless: A Cause or Effect?
An internal dialogue, if you’re one of the remaining few. More often than not, the cries of the little angels sitting on our shoulders go unheard. The strings pulling at our souls eventually wear down, until all elasticity has faded and our hearts no longer feel pangs as robustly as they once did. As is in the nature of being desensitized. One turn on the highway, two hands open in desperation, and three cardboard signs quickly escalate into thousands upon thousands of tents under bridges providing makeshift shelters for 100 million homeless.
Homelessness affects people in every country around the globe. Its levels ebb and flow, increasing in some areas while decreasing in others. A very complex issue, its roots connect “public health, housing affordability, domestic violence, mental illness, substance misuse, urbanization, racial and gender discrimination, infrastructure, and unemployment.”
While some propose a blanket approach to solving the global problem of homelessness, this approach ignores the varying issues homelessness stems from on a national basis, let alone locally. Instead, we should approach the mitigation of homelessness on a city-by-city basis, tailoring each plan specifically to the unique complexities and underlying problems in every metropolitan area.
Let’s narrow this down. A cause of substantial amounts of homelessness seen specifically in the youth is due to the marginalization and vilification of LGBTQ minors. In fact, “in the United States, the percentage of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) youth experiencing homelessness is at least three times greater than the percentage of LGBT youth in the general population.” What does this mean? An approach targeting the LGBTQ youth in homelessness would be far more effective in the United States with 5.6% of its populations belonging to the queer community than in, say, Columbia with only 1.2% identifying with this marginalized group.
A national solution would have you applying a one-size-fits-every-country approach to solving this problem, giving more funds to aid the LGBTQ youth in America than in Columbia. However, it’s necessary to break it down even further. San Francisco’s LGBTQ population is twice the size of Birmingham’s, meaning the allocation of resources between these two locations would have to vary drastically, directed towards vastly separate root problems.
See, that’s the key — solving the root problem in each local area, separately. Another such well-researched root cause of homelessness is substance abuse and its accompanying effects. In Melbourne, Australia, 43% of the homeless struggle with substance abuse while only 20% of the homeless in America reported substance use disorder. To further complicate matters, whether or not this substance use is a direct result of homelessness or if homelessness is the result of substance use also differs based on location. While a location suffering from homelessness as a result of substance abuse should target minimizing substance access and dependence, an area that faces substance use as a result of homelessness, in general, should work to determine the causes of homelessness in their specific location, instead.
Now that we’ve established that the causes of this global issue vary so vastly even between cities, you’re likely left wondering how a global approach to homelessness would even work. Those in favor of a global approach propose a housing-first solution to homelessness. Essentially, it includes increasing the availability of affordable or free housing in areas with high rates of homelessness, proposing that, naturally, the solution to a lack of homes is through providing more homes.
At first glance, this approach sounds very reasonable. Logically, it makes sense — increase accessible homes because there aren’t enough to supply the demand. However, a deeper investigation of the issue proves otherwise.
A study by Dr. Sam Tsemberis concluded that the homeless population can attain stability in permanent housing only if it is accompanied by specific services directed towards the newly housed. These include access to healthcare and medicine, social support, and employment opportunities. Simply put, an all-around increase in housing availability will not create long-term solutions that will enable the homeless to adapt and latch on to their new lives. Instead, it will only provide a short-term solution to a long-standing problem.
As long as the world’s governments are not serving their constituents to the level that they require, homelessness will continue to be a long-standing problem. The state of homelessness in a particular area is incredibly indicative of the social problems present in those locations. A lack of available “low-cost housing, poor economic conditions, and insufficient mental health services” drive people out of their homes and into the streets, leaving them without safe shelters. As such, homelessness is, and has always been, an issue.
In the end, it’s clear that the issue of homelessness isn’t really the issue itself. The tents on the street are merely a result of a lack of fully functioning societies. A man on the turn of a highway is the result of the lack of accessible care, two hands are only open in desperation because no one held onto them in the first place, and three cardboard signs are only written, over and over again, since the cries and pleas of the people that wrote them were not heard. That just leaves the question: When will institutions in power own up to the lackluster systems we live in and stop chasing after the results of their failed attempts at leadership?
