Homelessness is a major social issue faced by many communities. There are various factors that contribute to homelessness, including a lack of affordable housing, poverty, unemployment, lack of healthcare, mental illness, addiction, and domestic violence. While homelessness tends to be more visible in urban areas, it also impacts rural communities where there are fewer resources available to aid the homeless population. Addressing the root causes of homelessness, such as increasing affordable housing and employment opportunities, will be necessary to effectively address this ongoing social problem.

1. Running head: HOMELESSNESS 1
Homelessness is a major problem
Thomas Gouard
Kennedy King College
Author Note
This paper was prepared for Social Service 101, taught by Professor Susan
Buckner.

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Abstract
Homelessness is a major issue that social workers face. This issue is a never ending
issue, and there are many factors that contribute to people becoming homeless: lack of
affordable housing, domestic violence, mental illness, and addiction. Homelessness is
often assumed to be an urban phenomenon because homeless people are more
numerous, more geographically concentrated, and more visible in urban areas.
However, people experience the same difficulties associated with homelessness and
housing distress in America’s small towns and rural areas as they do in urban areas.

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Homelessness is a major problem
A serious social welfare policy issue faced; slowly declining, but continuing to
sharply rise in larger cities is homelessness. More than 500,000 people were homeless
in the United States at the end of last year, according to a report by the Department of
Housing and Urban Development. Despite various public and private efforts to provide
decent low-income housing and temporary shelter, including the 1987 Stewart B.
McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, the National Coalition for the Homeless believes
the number of homeless people in America continues to grow .52 Estimates of
homelessness vary, in part, because the definition of what constitutes “homelessness”
varies. The National Coalition for the Homeless uses a broad definition, claiming that
people who live in unstable housing arrangements and lack a permanent place to stay
are, in fact, experiencing homelessness. Although the National Law Center on
Homelessness and Poverty estimates that as many as 2 million people experiencing
homelessness during a given year in the United States, the National Coalition for the
Homeless, because of the difficulty in counting the homeless, chooses to cite the
shortage of available services for the homeless. According to the coalition, in 1998, 26%
of requests for emergency shelter in 30 U.S. cities went unmet due to a lack of
resources. What is more, another study showed that in 50 cities around the United
States, the individual city’s official estimated number of homeless typically exceeded
that city’s available number of shelter and transitional housing spaces. Rural areas of
the U.S. generally have even fewer resources for the homeless. Thus, in a nation that
has never adequately housed all of its people, homelessness continues to be a serious
policy issue.

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According to Homeless.org, a lack of affordable housing and the limited scale of
housing assistance programs have contributed to the current housing crisis and to
homelessness. Recently, foreclosures have also increased the number of people who
experience homeless. Homeless and poverty are inextricably linked. Poor people are
frequently unable to pay for housing, food, childcare, health care, and education.
Difficult choices must be made when limited resources cover only some of these
necessities. Often it is housing, which absorbs a high proportion of income that must be
dropped. If you are poor, you are essentially an illness, an accident, or a paycheck
away from living on the streets.
• In 2011, the official poverty rate was 15.0%. There were 46.2 million people in
poverty.
Two factors help account for increasing poverty:
• Lack of Employment Opportunities – With unemployment rates remaining high,
jobs are hard to find in the current economy. Even if people can find work, this
does not automatically provide an escape from poverty.
• Decline in Available Public Assistance – The declining value and availability of
public assistance is another source of increasing poverty and homelessness and
many families leaving welfare struggle to get medical care, food, and housing as
a result of loss of benefits, low wages, and unstable employment. Additionally,
most states have not replaced the old welfare system with an alternative that
enables families and individuals to obtain above-poverty employment and to
sustain themselves when work is not available or possible.
Other major factors, which can contribute to homelessness, include:

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• Lack of Affordable Health Care – For families and individuals struggling to pay
the rent, a serious illness or disability can start a downward spiral into
homelessness, beginning with a lot job, depletion of savings to pay for care, and
eventually eviction.
• Domestic Violence – Battered women who live in poverty are often forced to
choose between abusive relationships and homelessness. In addition, 50% of
the cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors identified domestic
violence as a primary cause of homelessness (U.S. Conference of Mayors,
2005).
• Mental Illness – Approximately 16% of the single adult homeless population
suffers from some form of severe and persistent mental illness (U.S. Conference
of Mayors, 2005).
• Addiction – The relationship between addiction and homelessness is complex
and controversial. Many people who are addicted to alcohol and drugs never
become homeless, but people who are poor and addicted are clearly at
increased risk of homelessness.
There are three types of homelessness – chronic, transitional, and episodic – which
can be defined as follows:
Chronic Homelessness - Persons most like the stereotyped profile of the “skid-row”
homeless, who are likely to be entrenched in the shelter system and for whom shelters
are more like long-term housing rather than an emergency arrangement. These
individuals are likely to be older, and consist of the “hard-core unemployed”, often

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suffering from disabilities and substance abuse problems. Yet such persons represent
a far smaller proportion of the population compared to the transitionally homeless.
Transitional Homelessness – Transitionally homeless individuals generally enter the
shelter system for only one stay and for a short period. Such persons are likely to be
younger, are probably recent members of the precariously housed population and have
become homeless because of some catastrophic event, and have been forced to
spend a short time in a homeless shelter before making a transition into more stable
housing. Over time, transitionally homeless individuals will account for the majority of
persons experiencing homelessness given their higher rate of turnover.
Episodic Homelessness – Those who frequently shuttle in and out of homelessness
are known as episodically homeless. They are most likely to be young, but unlike those
in transitional homelessness, episodically homeless individuals often are chronically
unemployed and experience medical, mental health, and substance abuse problems.
Unsurprisingly, larger metros like New York and Los Angeles had bigger
populations of homeless people than smaller cities, but homelessness is a problem in
towns of all sizes. In Honolulu, with a population of less than 400,000, there were
nearly 5,000 homeless people. Orange County, California; Nassau and Suffolk
Counties on New York’s Long Island; St. Petersburg, Florida; and Springfield,
Massachusetts, all had homeless population above 3,000. While all states had some
people living in shelters or on the street, overall, half of the 564,708 homeless in the
U.S. lived in just five states: California, New York, Florida, Texas, and Massachusetts.
Homelessness is often assumed to be an urban phenomenon because homeless
people are more numerous, more geographically concentrated, and more visible in

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urban areas. However, people experience the same difficulties associated with
homelessness and housing distress in America’s small towns and rural areas as they
do in urban areas.
In urban areas, estimates commonly rely on counts of persons using services.
However, by this measure, homeless persons in rural areas are likely substantially
under- counted due to lack of rural service sites, the difficulty capturing persons who do
not use homeless services, the limited number of researchers working in rural
communities, and the minimal incentive for rural providers to collect data on their
clients.
Rural homelessness, like urban homelessness, is the result of poverty and a lack of
affordable housing, and research has shown.
• The odds of being poor are between 1.2 to 2.3 times higher for people in non-
metropolitan areas than in metropolitan areas
• 1 in 5 non- metro counties is classified as a ‘high poverty’ county (having a
poverty rate of 20% or higher), while only 1 in 20 metro counties are defined as
such
• Homeless people in rural areas are more likely to be white, female, married,
currently working, homeless for the first time, and homeless for a shorter period
of time.
They myriad issues surrounding poverty and homelessness create major relational
strains. People exhaust their personal relationships in the same way they exhaust their
financial resources. By the time a person is living on the streets, camping, or staying in
a shelter their relationships are damaged, adding loneliness to their other problems. A

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simple friendship can be a meaningful starting place in helping a person to recover
from being homeless. Entering a shelter, seeking mental health treatment, going to
twelve step meetings, applying for help with housing --- these can be daunting tasks.
Walking with someone, believing in them, encouraging them, and listening can give
them strength to address problems in other areas of their life.
With all the research shown in this paper; this is proof that homelessness is a major
issue that many in the social work field face, and it will continue to be a major issue if
these problems aren’t addressed in such areas listed. Homelessness can easily affect
any of us, if we are exposed to the risks of it, but after doing the research I found that
some have a greater chance than others. I had the pleasure of doing a report on a
social service agency in Uptown called “Cornerstone Community Outreach”. Their main
focus is people who experience homelessness, with their primary mission being
providing shelter, accepting people, and helping them find a home. Cornerstone
Community Outreaches programs consist of Hanna House, Sylvia Center, Naomi
House Shelter, Epworth Shelter, Friendly Towers, and Leland Permanent Housing.
These programs are designed to shelter or house families whether you are a woman
with children, man with children, single, or elderly. Cornerstone Community Outreach is
one of the many jewels that we have in Chicago with the primary focus of those that are
affected by homelessness.

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References
Taylor, A. (2016, February 11). America’s Tent Cities for the Homeless. Retrieved
October 04, 2016, from http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/02/americas-tent-
cities-for-the-homeless/462450/
Marx, J. (2016). Current Issues and Programs in Social Welfare - Social Welfare History
Project. Retrieved October 04, 2016, from
http://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/recollections/current-issues-and-programs-in-
social-welfare/
Homelessness in America - national coalition for the homeless. (2014). Retrieved
October 9, 2016, from National Homeless.org, http://nationalhomeless.org/about-
homelessness/
Elliott, M., & megan-elliot. (2016, July 29). Poverty: 10 cities with the most homeless
people. Retrieved October 9, 2016, from Culture,
http://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/cities-with-the-most-homeless-people.html/?
a=viewall
Good Works, Inc. (n.d.). Retrieved November 18, 2016, from http://good-
works.net/articles/why-do-people-become-homeless-2/

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References
Taylor, A. (2016, February 11). America’s Tent Cities for the Homeless. Retrieved
October 04, 2016, from http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/02/americas-tent-
cities-for-the-homeless/462450/
Marx, J. (2016). Current Issues and Programs in Social Welfare - Social Welfare History
Project. Retrieved October 04, 2016, from
http://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/recollections/current-issues-and-programs-in-
social-welfare/
Homelessness in America - national coalition for the homeless. (2014). Retrieved
October 9, 2016, from National Homeless.org, http://nationalhomeless.org/about-
homelessness/
Elliott, M., & megan-elliot. (2016, July 29). Poverty: 10 cities with the most homeless
people. Retrieved October 9, 2016, from Culture,
http://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/cities-with-the-most-homeless-people.html/?
a=viewall
Good Works, Inc. (n.d.). Retrieved November 18, 2016, from http://good-
works.net/articles/why-do-people-become-homeless-2/