Statistics documenting the extent and causes of homelessness vary widely. There is no easy answer to how many people are homeless. Some experts in the field assert there are two broad categories of homelessness which sometime overlap. The first category, episodic homelessness, refers to people who are temporarily homeless because of extreme poverty. Oftentimes, they are homeless for brief periods of time. The chronically homeless, who compromise the second category, are those for whom homelessness has become a way of life. However, there are infinite causes that lead to homelessness. (Hurley 9).
Low wages and limited employment opportunities are definitely contributing factors. One out of five homeless Americans do work either part time or full time. Minimum wage puts housing out of reach for employees because income is not sufficient to afford basic family needs. For example, under the current minimum wage, income earned by a full time worker is 85% of the estimated poverty line for a family of three. In contrast, as recently as 1967 a person working full time at minimum wage earned enough to raise a family of three well above the poverty line. In 1996, congress raised the minimum wage from $3.35 to $5.15 an hour. This has made only a slight difference in comparison to the inflation of the 1980's. In every state, more than minimum wage is needed to allow a family to afford a one or two bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, in a medium state a minimum wage .
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worker would have to work 83 hours per week to afford a two bedroom apartment at 30% of their income, the federal definition of affordable housing. The U.S. department of Labor recently reported, from 1983 to 1996 workers in the bottom one-tenth of the workforce lost 93 cents per hour while highly paid gained $1.73 per hour. .
The high-tech industry has created many new jobs paying high salaries, resulting in a decline in job opportunities for low-skilled workers.