The famous English essayist and novelist Aldous Huxley once said, "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored". This simple statement expresses the very essence of the attitudes towards homelessness in America. Homelessness is one of the most devastatingly overlooked crises of our time. Maria Foscarinis, the Director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, tells of how overlooked homelessness in America is in her letter to the editor that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. She states, "It is important to note that the Census Bureau, the federal agency responsible for population data, has not attempted to enumerate the nation's homeless people" (Foscarinis). The homeless have been, are, and will continue to be a greatly disregarded population in our country. Obviously, this problem has not just occurred overnight. It's been happening since the seventeenth century without much intervention. There have been many definitions and misconceptions about homelessness. The stereotypical thought of a homeless person is someone who has no home at all. This is somewhat true, but there are other categories of homelessness that go beyond that. The Report from Secretary Tommy G. Thompson's work group on Ending Chronic Homelessness on the United States Department of Health and Human Services website offer some answers:.
Temporarily Homeless- Persons who experience only one spell of homelessness, usually short, and who are not seen again by the homeless assistance system.
Episodically Homeless- Those who use the system with intermittent frequency, but usually for short periods.
Chronically Homeless- Those with a protracted homeless experience, often a year or longer, or whose spells in the homeless assistance system are both frequent and long. (9).
Numbers on homelessness vary so much due to people's definition of homelessness before they do their survey. Their bias may skew their numbers so that their argument, for whatever cause they may be fighting for, sounds legitimate.
