Homelessness & Poverty
covered by homeless and formerly homeless people
Homeless Not Helpless


What Causes Homelessness?

The Broken System

Ending homelessness does not mean fixing broken people. It means fixing a broken system.

There are many different reasons why each individual becomes homeless. Personal problems, lack of education, domestic violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, poor work habits, lack of social skills — all are contributing factors. But the main reason people become homeless is economic. There are people with each of these problems who are still housed. They or their families have the economic resources to deal with mental illness, alcoholism, etc. No one becomes homeless just because they have problems. They become homeless because they don't have the economic resources to deal with their problems.

Most individuals do not stay homeless for long. The majority of people who are homeless are working. They save up money, find inexpensive housing, share an apartment with a friend, or find another solution within two months to two years. There are many successful programs for helping those people with more extensive problems to become stable and self-sufficient.

But an increasing number of people become newly homeless, so the total number of homeless people is rising. People who considered themselves to be making a good income a few years ago are now at risk of becoming homeless, or have done so.

The Income Gap

Since 1979, when Ronald Reagan began deregulating corporations, the income of people earning 20‰ or less of the median has actually fallen; the income of the people earning between 20% to 60% of median income has risen moderately, and the income of the upper income brackets has skyrocketed.

Anyone selling goods — or renting housing — naturally wants to make as much money from it as possible. As some people become more wealthy and begin purchasing more, prices rise. Those whose incomes are not rising as fast are less and less able to afford the same goods that they used to be able to get — including housing.

Therefore, a rise in homelessness.

Thomas Jefferson, aristocrat though he was, warned that if the gap between rich and poor grew too wide, democracy would fail. He had a vision of every person (well, he said every man, but we´re going to give him the benefit of the doubt) owning "five acres and a mule" and a public education — and he advised a cap on how much capital any individual or group could accumulate.

There are good reasons for associating a free market with a free democracy. But a fair market is as important to democracy as a free one. The CEO of an American corporation may earn 400 times what a line-worker in the same corporation earns. Some people legitimately contribute more to the productiveness of an organization than others do, and should be rewared accordingly. But nobody contributes 400 times what anybody else does — unless you're comparing them to [insert politcal target of choice].

Until we find a way to make our economy more fair to everyone, we will continue to have increased homelessness.

On the Individual Front

In the meantime, the people in front of us now have immediate needs.

Meeting those needs has to begin with providing the basics of survival, because dead people aren´t going to get ahead in life. If we just provide survival needs, however, we are servicing poverty, not ending it.

An absolute essential, missing from a regrettable number of programs, is to respect the human dignity of each person. There is no human dignity without free will. All too many agencies, however, operate on an unspoken assumption, "You obviously don´t know how to manage your life, or you wouldn't be here. So we´re going to take over."

Almost everyone has a born-in desire to thrive. If they aren't thriving, there´s something in the way. Helping someone help themselves is usually a matter of getting the obstacles out of the way and letting them go for it.

Most people have a very good idea of what they need and what they need to do; they´re just looking for help to get it done.

Some of the most common needs are:

— Anitra L. Freeman
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Last updated November 30, 2002