Preventing homelessness needs community involvement

by Pat Spradley of Street Zine

Affecting men, women, and children, homelessness does not discriminate between socioeconomic groups, race, education level, or age. It can happen suddenly due to a crisis or over a period of time.

Homelessness complicates substance abuse issues, mental illness, and threatens physical health. It causes family dissolution, incarceration, and leaves its victims in despair without hope. Homeless women, children and men are in constant danger of sexual assault and physical abuse. Persons who are not substance abusers are at higher risk to become substance abusers once they become homeless because it helps them cope with the despair they are in.

Homelessness is caused by poor economic status, natural disaster, lack of affordable housing, lack of livable wages, divorce, domestic violence, and unexpected health problems. A large number of homeless individuals have a disabling condition. An inability to find work or pay rent, mental health issues, substance abuse, and lack of transportation are also included in the reasons why persons became homeless. Domestic violence plays a key role in why women and children become homeless.

While ending homelessness is a good goal and one our city and country is focused on, we also need a strong commitment to decrease the number of persons experiencing homelessness through the prevention of foreclosures, utilization of prevention services, reducing the occurrence of formerly homeless reappearing on the streets, increasing supportive services that assist people with managing mental illness and substance abuse disorders along with maintaining affordable housing and jobs that pay living wages. Education opportunities, including skills training like personal money management and parenting classes, also go a long way towards preventing homelessness before it re-occurs.

Affordable housing must be available everywhere in our city along with public transportation. Many homeless have jobs and other sources of income, but they cannot afford or cannot find a place to live. Even with support systems in place to help these persons become more stable, they need an affordable apartment or house to live in. If the city intends to continue attracting business involving service industry jobs, such as the hotel or retail industry, where wages earned from these jobs do not match the amount necessary to obtain and maintain housing in the area, they must also make sure housing is available.

Community awareness and involvement is necessary to achieve success with prevention. Awareness of the problem brings more insight into the plight of homelessness by creating more focus on the causes, how the problem is being dealt with and on the barriers preventing correction of the problem. Awareness and involvement from the community can affect the political process by demanding and expecting our community and political leaders to make homeless prevention a priority coupled along with the current initiative which is primarily focused on ending chronic homelessness.