Waleed Qureshi
Prof Carrie Hall
ENG 1121
Research Memo: Causes of Homelessness
In my research I have gained more insight on the causes of homelessness and the overall process of becoming homeless. Every city in the United States has some sort of homelessness involved in it no matter how much developed it may be, but that is the problem. The more a city is developed, the more chances it has for homelessness to increase.
This is because when a city or state becomes more developed, obviously its taxes also increase and as you follow through, the rents of houses or apartments also increases and unfortunately some people are not able to put up with the increasing rates of the city. This includes housing. According to a source, in 1970s, the community had plenty affordable housing. This meant that even when an individual or a family faced a crisis, the family or the individual just moved to another location with similar price range but then by the middle of 1980s, the count of affordable houses started to decrease significantly and has not increased ever since. Instead it continued to rise and the population of the city which did not receive enough income began to come on the streets.
Even today, 8 million extremely low-income households pay at least half of their income towards housing therefore putting them at the risk of homelessness if any unfortunate events were supposed to take place. This problem has continued to grow and even in New York city which is supposed to be the state with the highest population has not been able to avoid the problem of homelessness and about 75000 of its population is moving towards homelessness at an increasing pace just like other cities with high population due to high rent in the city.
Another reason for poverty is the lack of employment in a household. The equation is simple, and everyone knows it. The equation is that if you can’t bring money home, you got no money for rent and nobody is going to go easy on you and they will kick you out. As harsh as it may sound, unfortunately it is the truth. Even for myself I have heard this truth from my father. As I just explained, unemployment needs to decrease for homelessness to decrease.
Another reason for homelessness that is like unemployment is low-wage. As explained earlier, extremely low waged households lose half of their income goes into paying the rent. This leaves half the income for food, bills, repairs and other purchases a man must make to keep his household together.
In a recent report by Early Intervention to Prevent Persistent Homelessness presented us with two of many reasons of homelessness which were low-wage workers and the ones who lose their jobs, and the youth who get into public assistance. Now according to the researchers, while majority of these groups are able to break free of the problem of homelessness quickly, but still 8 percent of these groups tend to stay homeless.
According to another survey. A random group sleeping on the street was selected and from them who were aged from twenty to fifty-six, five of them are unemployed, one is homeless, some of them were out of work for months and some just wanted to get into a new career.
Very thorough!!