It is this naivety and stubbornness that has served to enable the growth of homelessness and will continue to do so if we do not finally reckon with poverty in this nation. (8).
Homelessness can be caused by a variety of problems. The main cause is unaffordable housing for the poor. The largest cut was from 1993 through 1995, when there was a loss of 900,000 or 10 percent of affordable housing units. In order to find an explanation for the shortage, we can simply look to Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) budget in 1995, which is one-third of what it was in 1980. (3) Secondary causes include mental illness, physical illnesses, substance abuse, lack of incentives to work, poor work ethics, and lack of a decent education. The National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty reports that over 3 million men, women, and children were homeless over the past year - about 30% of them persistently and the others temporarily. (1) In many cases people are in and out of the homeless system, which includes shelters, hospitals, the streets, and prisons. In the United States today 49 percent of homeless people are in their first experience of homelessness, while 34 percent have been homeless three or more times. For 28 percent of homeless people, their current episode has lasted three months or less, but for 30 percent it has lasted for more than two years. Persons in families are more than twice as likely as single clients to have been homeless for three months or less (49 versus 23 percent), while single clients are almost three times as likely as people in families to be in homeless spells that have lasted more than two years (34 versus 13 percent). (2) Difficulties caused by lack of affordable housing and lack of shelter space is exacerbated by restrictions on who is deemed eligible for shelter. By enforcing restrictive eligibility criteria, communities may reduce spending on homelessness and minimize the size of their sheltered homeless populations, but they also inflict physical and emotional harm to vulnerable men, women, and children.
