Homeless

HOMELESSNESS
U.S.A.

INTRODCUTION

DEFINITION

Homeless people are those who have no roof over one's head, people on the streets, and vagrant, displaced, dispossessed, destitute, down-and-out … etc.
While there is no a exactly definition of what a homeless should be I’m going to use as a reference one definition originally developed as part of the McKinney-Vento Act 1986. What is theMcKinney-Vento act? It is a United States federal law that provides federal money for homeless shelter programs.
1987 federal legislation establishes and describes a "homeless" person as being:
1. an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence;
2. and an individual who has a primary nighttime residence that is--
1. a supervised publicly or privatelyoperated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations (including welfare hotels, congregate shelters, and transitional housing for the mentally ill);
2. an institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized; or
3. a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.The federal government is currently promoting a 10-year plan approach to end homelessness which targets those who are "chronically" homeless—defined as, "An unaccompanied homeless individual with a disabling condition who has either been continuously homeless for a year or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three (3) years. Many direct service providers are concerned thatsuch a definition will exclude the majority of those who experience homelessness from receiving needed services.
DEMOGRAPHIC AND GEOGRAPHIC STATISTIC

Total Number As many as 3.5 million people experience homelessness in a given year (1% of the entire U.S. population or 10% of its poor), Most were homeless temporarily. The chronically homeless population (those with repeated episodes or whohave been homeless for long periods) fell from 175,914 in 2005 to 123,833 in 2007. The proportion of this homeless people is 40% are families with children one of the fastest growing segment, 41% are single males,14% are single and 5% % are minors unaccompanied by adults. Fom this data Veterans are a big part of this homeless population. One out of four homeless people are veterans. They live withless than 300 $ per month and normally are addicted to some substance such as alcohol cocaine etc. The 30 % of the total homelessness people have problems with substances abuse. The 20 % have mental illness and the 26% report acute health problems other than HIV/AIDS such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, or sexually transmitted infections. Only the 28 % have more than high school education and most ofthem even have the high school diploma.

LOCATION
The majority homeless people live in big cities but also there are in suburbs and rural areas. The areas with most density of homeless people in USA are: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, Boston and New York.

Which are the challenges?

Reduce the number of homeless people by increasing helps from government like healthinsurance. Helps according building more housing places temporally places and permanent places. Both are important the temporally places for those people who are going through a transactional moment with no house and with this help they could face the problem, otherwise they couldn’t start never again. And the permanent places are for those who have no choice to reorganize their lives again but theyshould have the right of have a place to sleep.
Increase the communication, most homeless people don’t have any way to communicate with outside the world they have no self-phones or any access to a phone to make or receive any call or send an email. This situation of no communication complicates the helps they could receive.
Education programs, dedicate to teach homeless how to integrate again in...