Waleed Qureshi
ENG 1121
Prof. Carrie Hall
05/16/2019
Homelessness
Homelessness is a problem everyone is aware of. We have seen it in train stations, trains, outside of subways, sidewalks, etc. Nowadays we see homelessness so much that it has become regular to us. So much regular that when we see a homeless person we think nothing and just walk away, ignoring them.
Homelessness is like a negative that comes with a positive. For example some addictive drugs like cigarettes are actually used for treatment but if drugs like these are used regularly, you get addicted to them. This is similar to homelessness as when cities get developed, more people move in to the city. The technology is improved and people end up getting more resources but, the more resources a city or state gets, the taxes has to be increased and that is what happens. Along with the taxes the rent for housing also increases and we all know how expensive it is to get a house in New York.
This problem began by the time of 1980’s. Before that the people in New York were able to get housing easily and never had to worry about rent. Whenever someone came into crisis, they just moved to a housing that was more cheaper or something that suited them more, something that they were comfortable with but after 1980, housing started getting more expensive at a fast pace forcing people to go homeless. Since the housing never stopped getting more expensive and hence the amount of people going homeless has also increased.
Some causes of this problems are low wage and unemployment. Today about 8 million of extremely low waged households pay half of their monthly income towards their housing. This means that the person probably has anything to spare for their saving due to other expenses for example groceries and other bills that one has to pay to survive the conditions of this world of technology that we live in. If not for that, if something bad happens for example an accident or something, you need to use your savings to handle that crisis but what if you don’t have any money to take care of that crisis, that is where a person goes homeless.
The other problem is the unemployment. This relates almost completely to the low waged problem. When people are not able to pay for their expenses or rent with low wage, how are they going to survive if they are not even able get money to feed themselves because they don’t even have a job. They don’t have a source of income. If people have some savings, they will survive but what if they run out of it eventually causing them to go homeless.
Now as students we all have something supporting us, but someday we have to be independent so we will might face similar problems to these and we will have to get through them but for now think about how you would feel if you were in their shoes so all I ask of all my fellow students is to help them in any way you can.
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