Campanile 1

Taite Campanile

Mr. Carlyle

English 4 / Period 3

March 24, 2023

Rapid Relapses: A Global Epidemic

Millions of people globally are impacted by the rapidly expanding social problem of

homelessness. It is a circumstance in which people or families live in makeshift shelters, on the

streets, or even in their vehicles because they lack a stable place to live. Living on the streets, in

shelters, or Couchsurfing are just a few ways that homelessness appears. Homelessness has many

different root reasons, some of which are poverty or drug and alcohol abuse, or mental health

issues. Numerous social, economic, health issues, abuse problems, and mental health issues

frequently are brought on by homelessness. Despite the efforts of government and nonprofit

organizations, homelessness is still a major problem in almost all of the US. The topic of

homelessness is critical, as everyone should be able to live a healthy life and not have to be in

shelters or on the streets. Furthermore, more institutions should be in place to give people a

second chance at life since society is just leaving the homeless behind as we advance.

The causes, effects, and solutions to homelessness are substantial and need to be

addressed and examined due to the extensive factors contributing to homelessness. There needs

to be more programs that can address homelessness at its root cause, and teach everyday people

how they can help homeless people out of their situation. Furthermore, people need to be taught

their individual and communal roles in reducing the outbursts of homelessness. Overall, people

need to learn about homelessness and how they can help stop the epidemic. Some questions

about homelessness that everyone needs answered are; what is the main root of homelessness?
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Moreover, how can society prevent /stop the spread of homelessness while reducing the current

homeless population?

First, we need to give an essential, in-depth background of homelessness. According to

the University of Victoria’s running study of homelessness, “Home was not defined as a private

space for family life until about 1800. People without homes (and those living in poverty)

became increasingly associated with terms such as ‘homeless,’ ‘friendless,’ and ‘destitute.’

Those in poor economic circumstances, through no fault of their own, might be viewed as

deserving help. Paupers (people living in extreme poverty) were often viewed as not deserving

assistance because it was assumed, they were lazy or chose not to fit into society. Hobo often

described men who traveled to follow work opportunities during the Great Depression of the

1930s. In the past, homelessness was implied to have an element of choice and, therefore, not

necessarily deserving of material support.” (HomelessHub 2). We can tell that homelessness was

never taken seriously by people throughout history, and they brushed it off as people being

“Lazy” or unwilling to work as if it is a choice for them to be homeless. The things people

believed caused major problems with how we have addressed homelessness in the past; this

made people not take homelessness as it is, a severe problem society faces today. The mindset of

thinking that homelessness is a choice created an ever growing issue due to overcrowding in

shelters, and cities being overrun by homeless encampments. Our ignorance towards

homelessness has brought out a staggering number of homeless people nationwide.

There are many causes of homelessness, and it is an ever-growing problem. In a USA

Today article by Wendy Koch, we find the statistic that over 1.6 million people are receiving

shelter in America, and the percentage of homeless people in shelters jumped from 23% to 32%

(Koch). From these statistics, we conclude that there are more homeless people flooding shelters
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than there were in 2007. We have a larger population of homeless people in shelters, but we still

have the same amount of homeless people, at 1.6 million. These statistics show that more people

are going into shelters, which can reduce the population of homeless people on the streets in the

short term. However, it will cause damage to the support system in the long run, especially if we

do not expand the number of homeless shelters around the US. A solution to the problem of not

having room to shelter all of the homeless people in America is to start by building more shelters

for those in need or emergency shelters. At the same time, we can start implementing new ways

of treating homeless people by having the homeless shelters equip themselves with more

psychiatrists and doctors. By having psychiatrists and doctors on standby, we will be able to help

solve their chronic mental and physical ailments. In doing so, we will be able to make them

physically and mentally healthy, which leads to the homeless being able to steer themselves to

new opportunities and start their lives over with their minds and bodies fully healed. Suppose we

can get the homeless people out of the shelters and into subsidized housing. In that case, we will

be able to reduce the number of homeless people on the streets drastically, which will help us

treat homeless people more consistently and thoroughly.

To get a first-hand experience of homelessness, I talked to a middle-aged businessman

from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints named Buzz Black, who used to be

homeless, Couchsurfing in his friends' houses. I asked him what caused him to become

homeless. He responded with, “I was probably 18 years old . . . I didn’t have a place to stay. The

reason why that was the case was because I was making some poor decisions as a young kid with

drugs and alcohol, and it got to a point where my mom had kicked me out of the house, and my

aunt and uncle had kicked me out of their house. So I was roaming for a little while, without a

place of my own or a place that I was welcome” (Black). From his story, we can tell that he
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became homeless from drug and alcohol abuse. Buzz falls into the largest population of reasons

to become homeless, but he was never in a shelter, which contributed to him staying homeless

for a longer time. Once Buzz was able to receive help with his addictions, he was able to pull

himself out of the hole he had dug for himself. He saved himself by turning to religion; during

the interview, he said, “I had hit rock bottom, and I was ready to change and was willing to

accept anything anyone told me to change. I took it super seriously. I did everything they told me

to do, leaving my friends, getting a job, even looking to a higher power for help, and even could

hear something in the back of my mind, telling me to serve a mission (I didn’t know what a

mission was, as it had been 6 years since I was at church last). In the end, I was able to come

clean, and cleanse myself of all of the things I had done through the church, and I was ready to

give up everything to have god help, and by going on a mission, I was able to become a better

person, and change my view on life.” In the specific example of Buzz Black, he returned to

church, and served a mission (a 2-year excursion in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day

Saints that has you and a companion go out and share the gospel with as many people will hear).

Many others the same way, by seeking a higher power. Buzz was able to turn to a higher power

to help him, and he was able to get himself through the tough times by giving all he had and

getting out of his horrendous situation. When looking for hope to get out of poor situations, it

does not always have to be God that people look up to; it could be anything that can motivate

them.

According to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, an organization dedicated to

helping end homelessness, they stated that, “In January 2020, there were 580,466 people

experiencing homelessness on our streets and in shelters in America. Most were individuals (70

percent), and the rest were people in families with children. They lived in every state and
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territory, and they included people from every gender, racial, and ethnic group” (NAEH). These

statistics can help us see that the homeless population is substantial. Our main target should be

homeless individuals since they are the largest group of homeless. However, we only focus on

providing for the homeless families, as stated earlier in the article, when they said that there are

programs in order to help families receive shelter. Another article, from Gale in Context tells us

about how severe the problem of homelessness really is, “The National Law Center on

Homelessness and Poverty indicates that, on any given day, approximately 840,000 people in the

United States are homeless or living in temporary shelters. Approximately 3.5 million people in

the United States will meet criteria for homelessness within a given year, and 1.35 million of

them are children. It is estimated that 7.4 percent of U.S. residents, or as many as 13.5 million

people in the United States, have been homeless at one point in their lives” (Darity). The

statistics of how large the homeless population is and how it is ever changing, due to people

constantly falling in and out of homelessness. We need to provide for and help the homeless, so

they can at least live a decent life and not be on the streets. These statistics are essential to

understanding the homeless population because they give us a spectrum of homeless people and

will help us understand how we can help the homeless population, by knowing what kind of

condition specific homeless populations are in and how they live their lives. By knowing

whether they are on the streets or in shelters or whether they are homeless with their family or

alone, we will learn how to help them since we will be able to give them help tailored to their

needs and not apply the general treatment that already does not work appropriately for helping

the homeless population.

As stated earlier, homelessness has many causes, ranging from financial reasons to

mental health issues and drug abuse. According to The Brentwood Gazette, in an article about
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the rise of homelessness and what causes homelessness, they state, “We must look at the reasons

that people become homeless in the first place and provide interventions at crisis points. The

most common time people become homeless is when they lose their job, have relationship

breakdowns or when their tenancies end” (Brentwood Gazette). In the article, it tells us that the

main reason for people to become homeless is when they reach a “crisis point” which is

generally a large change in their life. Losing a job or loved one are crisis points since humans are

very vulnerable and susceptible to losing their possessions since they will not be mentally stable.

Helping people at the crisis point is vital to help stop the epidemic that homelessness has become

since it is a way to try and stop homelessness at the source, helping combat or remove crisis

points that cause people to fall into homelessness. Suppose we can stop homelessness at the start.

In that case, we will be able to drastically reduce the number of homeless since there will be

more space in shelters for the chronically homeless (about a person who has a long-standing

disability that impedes their ability to live independently or has been unhoused continuously for

a year or on at least four occasions within three years). Later in the article, they talk about how

poor mental health is a reason for homelessness, “The third factor is around mental health

support. In 2015, 32% of single homeless people reported a mental health difficulty, and yet the

government continues to fund mental health provision inadequately” (Brentwood Gazette).

Having the government fund mental health research would undoubtedly keep more people off of

the streets. The current government has “committed” to tackling homelessness’ but in reality, are

not even scratching the surface. Goodwill alone and promise will not help people. It takes

funding, interventions, and support for those trying to tackle this issue. If we can change how

government officials look at homelessness, we will get more people off the streets since we can

combat it before homelessness takes its toll on more and more US citizens every day.
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In the newspaper article from USA Today, Charisse Jones writes about rising

homelessness among college students and how it has drastically increased over the past few

years. She states, "A combination of factors, including rising tuition, financial aid packages that

fail to keep up with the costs of food, gas and child care, and an overall lack of affordable

housing have fueled the homelessness crisis among college students” (Jones). Jones states in the

article that nearly 18 percent of students in college have experienced homelessness or housing

insecurity at some point during college due to rising costs for everything to support themselves,

including tuition, housing, and food. Due to the increased prices, there has been an increase in

homelessness, and instead of helping the students by subsidizing food and homes, they are

implementing places where students can park their cars and sleep in them, which would still have

them considered as homeless. An example of how homelessness affects people is in the same

article. The news interviews Kyshawna Johnson, a 23-year-old student who was pursuing an

associate’s degree at Citrus College in Glendora, California, while also being worried about

where she would sleep that night, since she lived in her 2014 Chrysler 200 from September 2016

until the following March. Kyshawna said, “‘that journey was a little traumatic for me,”’. . . “It

affected my grades a lot. It affected my mental health. It affected my emotional stability. I was

having different doubts about my future” (Johnson). When people are homeless, it makes life

extremely difficult since they have to worry about whether or not they will be able to sleep in a

safe location that night or not, which gives people extreme anxiety. The housing anxiety from

being homeless, brings along mental illness. Suppose this anxiety goes on for a long time. In that

case, it can build up and cause people to become a different person, leading to mental illnesses,

which can lead to chronic homelessness since they cannot receive or reciprocate help from

trained professionals.
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There are solutions to homelessness, and many have been implemented in countries

worldwide. For example, Norway has implemented strategies to end homelessness through

housing-based solutions to homelessness. They reduced the number of homeless people in their

country by almost 50 percent, from 6,259 to 3,325 homeless people in their entire country

(Halseth). This reduction is mainly due to how the Norwegian government is run, with a more

welfare-oriented approach to governing their nation. However, they implemented affordable

housing across the country, drastically reducing the number of homeless people in the country.

This process is a straightforward way to address homelessness by building more small apartment

structures instead of luxurious 3-bedroom condos, as we will be able to get all of the homeless

people living on the streets due to poverty. If we can help the homeless who need a roof over

their heads, we can address the more severe cases, those chronically homeless due to addiction

and health issues. A study run by 12 different federal agencies stated, "The data, which also

included information from representatives of 11,909 programs that serve the homeless, were

collected by the Census Bureau and the report was prepared by the Urban Institute. It found that

60 percent of the homeless living alone and 76 percent of those living in families were able to

leave shelters for permanent housing when they received needed services, including housing

subsidies, health care, substance-abuse treatment, education, and job training” (Yahoo! News).

There is a simple way to address the homeless population; we can implement more systems to

give homeless people more support, through medical and monetary support. If we are able to do

this, it will reduce the number of homeless people in shelters, which can help allow more

homeless people on the streets to go into shelters to try and fix their problems. This is the best

way to address homelessness; we must first build more affordable housing to help those who

need monetary support. After we can get all of the homeless people with health issues separated
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from those who need help with affordable housing, we can address the people with said health

issues, and get them physically fit to live independently.

There have been efforts to end the homelessness epidemic in America, including the

National Alliance to End Homelessness’s 10-year plan to end homelessness. They intend to

provide “emergency assistance to persons in danger of being evicted” (Marr). They will follow a

“housing first” model of combating homelessness to do this. They will help by immediately

placing individuals into subsidized housing, then providing an ever-changing amount of support

to help the homeless become as self-sufficient as possible. This approach is an excellent way of

addressing homelessness, since it will help separate the homeless into different groups according

to their reasons for homelessness. If they are separated, we can have much more specialized

treatment for them, to help them become a functioning member of society. The National Alliance

to End Homelessness also plans to implement more social infrastructure changes to keep the

ex-homeless off the streets. They will “Increase the stock of affordable housing, provide more

living wage employment, and expand access to welfare and social service programs” (Marr).

These social services will include substance abuse and community-based mental health

treatment. These treatment programs will help reduce mental illness and substance abuse among

homeless people. These services will tackle the problem head-on, and not have mental illness as

their second goal, as many institutions have done in the past.

The questions about homelessness that need addressing have long gone unanswered. As

many people know, there are a multitude of causes to homelessness, and so far there has been

minimal effort put in to help the homeless population. This is mainly due to institutions not being

able to address homelessness correctly, or take it at face value. More institutions need to be in

place to shelter homeless individuals and help clean them up mentally and physically. First, there
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needs to be more help for the people who are on the verge of homelessness, and institutions need

to help these people at “crisis points.” There also needs to be a more direct approach to solving

homelessness. One way to do this is by having institutions separate the homeless people by what

they need, and not have them all be in one place. A reason for this comes up in an interview with

Buzz Black, he states, “They say that a rising tide lifts all boats, I was not around people who

were rising tides, I was not around people that were improving their lives, so I sunk to the level

they were at too, and I helped them sink down to the level that I was at as well” (Black). Suppose

all of the homeless individuals are together, ones with mental health issues, mixed with ones with

drug issues, mixed with the poverty-stricken. In that case, any of the programs institutions are

trying to implement will dwindle. All of the homeless individuals will fall to the same level,

lowering the likelihood of their ability to get out of homelessness. Institutions must first weed

out and separate the mentally healthy from the mentally ill. We can then help the ones with

minor needs, by putting them in subsidized housing; after that, we can help the mentally ill by

having them see therapists and other health professionals until they are healthy. Doing so will

lower the rate of people falling back into homelessness, since they can contribute to society and

live independently. This will drastically lower the number of homeless nationwide, while also

helping stop people from falling into homelessness.

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Works Cited

1. "Homelessness." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, edited by William A. Darity,

Jr., 2nd ed., vol. 3, Macmillan Reference USA, 2008, pp. 498-500. Gale in Context: Environmental

Studies,link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3045301042/GRNR?u=acalanes_dit&sid=bookmark-GRNR&x

id=8c522962. Accessed 24 Mar. 2023. (Darity)

2. Homelessness In Norway - The Sucess of Long-Term Housing-Led Strategies, Liv Halseth, 2020,

https://www.feantsa.org/public/user/Magazine/Spring_magazine_2022/Homelessness_in_Norway_

-_The_Success_of_Long-Term_Housing-Led_Strategies.pdf (Halseth)

3. "HUD: Programs for Homeless Do Work." SIRS Discoverer, ProQuest, 1999,

explore.proquest.com/sirsdiscoverer/document/2250583195?accountid=41498. (Yahoo! News)

4. Jones, Charisse. "Homelessness Becomes Crisis among Students." USA TODAY, 10 June 2019.

SIRS Discoverer, explore.proquest.com/sirsdiscoverer/document/2404161168?accountid=41498.

(Jones)

5. Koch, Wendy. "Homelessness in Suburbs, Rural Areas Increases." USA TODAY, 9 July 2009.

SIRS Discoverer, explore.proquest.com/sirsdiscoverer/document/2265723040?accountid=41498.

(Koch)

6. Marr, Matthew. "National Alliance to End Homelessness." Issues: Understanding Controversy

and Society, ABC-CLIO, 2023, issues.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/974941. Accessed 24 Mar.

2023. (Marr)

7. Norman, Trudy, and Dan Reist. "Homeless, Mental Health and Substance Abuse: Understanding the

Connections." Homeless Hub, Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, 2021,
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www.homelesshub.ca/resource/homelessness-mental-health-and-substance-use-understanding-conne

ctions . Accessed 24 Mar. 2023. (HomelessHub)

8. "State of Homelessness: 2022 Edition." National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2022,

endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/.

Accessed 24 Mar. 2023. (NAEH)

9. "What Causes Homelessness and how can we Solve the Problem: THE BIG QUESTION:

Homelessness in the UK is Estimated to have Risen on Average by 15% in the Last Year, what

Steps Need to be made to Reduce this Figure?" Brentwood Gazette, Mar 14, 2018, pp. 20.

ProQuest,https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/what-causes-homelessness-how-can-we-solve-

problem/docview/2013493487/se-2. (Brentwood Gazette)

10. Black, Buzz. Interview. Conducted by Taite Campanile, 20 Mar. 2023. (Black)