The Causes of Homelessness

[Name of the Institute]

The Causes of Homelessness

Introduction

Homelessness denotes an extreme and particular form of poverty characterized by a lack of secure housing. Homelessness is commonly divided into two groups: absolute and relative. Absolute homelessness refers to people who have no shelter at all and are forced to either sleep rough (outside, in stairwells, etc.) or stay in a temporary shelter. Relative homelessness includes many people who are able to attain some form of accommodation but for a variety of reasons are precariously or insufficiently housed. This includes those who are doubling up/couch surfing, those who are staying in a rooming house or residential hotel, and/or those who are under constant threat of losing their housing due to eviction. The definition of homelessness is politicized, as different definitions produce wildly varying estimates of the number of homeless as well as different courses of remedial action. The definition of homelessness is often either broadened or restricted, depending on the context and ideological disposition of the analyst, to include panhandlers, itinerant labourers, “squeegee kids” (who approach drivers with offers to clean their windshields), the disaster afflicted, refugees, and others. From a geographical perspective, where homeless people live and what they do there are particularly important to the definition of who is homeless(Morse, 2006).

Homelessness is not necessarily a permanent condition; people may move in and out of homelessness, often several times in their lives. Homelessness (whether absolute or relative) can be divided into transitional, chronic, and episodic forms. Transitional homelessness consists of brief experiences of homelessness, often due to family or economic disruptions, and is the easiest form to treat with preventive or emergency services. Chronic homelessness describes an experience of being homeless that lasts for lengthy periods and is interrupted only temporarily by “housed” experiences. Episodic homelessness refers to repeated forays in and out of homelessness; it is the most difficult form to address through government policy. Thus, public policy interventions tend to target the chronically homeless while neglecting episodic homelessness (Lipton, 2006).

Problem Overview

Homelessness is an important problem, not just because it is a social problem, but also because it poses drastic mental health problems to individuals, especially women. In the past, the researchers failed to assess the significance of the issue, this lack, of interest or we can say, lack of information about the mental health problems faced by homeless women has hampered the authenticity of the already available research. The contemporary trend of doing research on homeless people started in 1970s. These studies did not address anything about mental health or disability trends in women. While questions of definition of "homeless" will require special care when interpreting the data, whatever the definition, there is agreement that over the last decade has seen a sharp increase in the number of homeless people in major cities of United States.

The number of families settled by the local authorities in shelters, doubled from 23,000 in 2006 to over 40 000 in 1989 and from 1979 to 2006 the number of persons seeking ...