Homeless at Home - Why Are So Many People in America Homeless?

I have a question that has been plaguing my mind lately. I'm sure that I'm not alone in my queries about this highly volatile topic and I don't know if there is really an acceptable answer that I could live with. The question is:

Why are there so many homeless people in America?

After all, we are supposed to be a wealthy nation. We are supposed to be a super power. Yet our homeless population continues to escalate and no one seems to care. Sure there are a few programs that are designed to help the homeless but so many American citizens live in their cars, hotels, homeless shelters and the streets.

With our country spending 12 billion dollars a month in Iraq, I'm sure that that money would be far better served in aiding American's. If our government would even just spend half of that, the homeless problem would be nowhere near what it has become.

Yeah, yeah, I know. If we don't fight our battles "over there" we would have to fight them over here. It's seems to be the battle cry of our soon to be ex President. It's just a smoke screen for our illegal occupation of a third world country. But Mr. President, we have a far greater problem in this country that I never heard you speak of. Why is that Mr. President?

There are more homeless people on American streets today than any other time in history. It is impossible to get a very accurate account of the exact number but experts suggest that there are more than three million homeless people in America today. I would say that was a conservative estimate. People that have fallen under hard times are now homeless and some have children. In fact, there is an estimated one million homeless children.

It is not just the skid row wino any longer. These people could be your neighbor, your family, your friends.

Or maybe even you.

It has been said that people today are one or two paychecks away from being homeless. In such a supposed great nation I find that unacceptable. Why doesn't everyone feel that way? Have we become such a calloused nation that we ignore the less fortunate among us?

The Homeless Veteran Population Needs Our Support!

24/6/2008 12:37:19 PM

Although it's hard not to feel the plight of the homeless family or homeless children, I have to confess to a special sympathy for the plight of the homeless veteran. I think it's a disgrace that there is a significant homeless veteran population in the U.S. that is without shelter, food, or most significantly, health care. My feeling is that if someone has served honorably in the U.S. military, they should be entitled to all of their military health benefits as a matter of course, and that the bureaucrats should stop trying to deny health care to the homeless veteran population. This is a national disgrace, people! We are the richest nation on Earth. There should be no homeless children, no homeless people at all! And there should particularly be no homeless veteran population in the streets without proper health care or a decent place to live. I call on our nation's people, our politicians and our institutions to work together to find a place to live for every homeless veteran, and expand the veterans' health care system so that there is a hospital bed or appropriate care for every homeless veteran.

The homeless

In my vagabond years in the 1970's I mostly saw white homeless on the streets - the so-called "bums" and "winos" such as you will see them in some of my pictures from that time. Blacks in those days often lived in the huge apartments and houses of the whites who had recently fled to suburbia. However, during the growing racism since then I have seen my black friends being more and more squeezed within the ghettos. Every time I return I see them doubling up with more family members in their homes. Eventually the weakest of them are pushed out into the streets. Somehow when the ghetto is totally down and out and suddenly visible most whites can feel some compassion. So in the 80'es I would spend all my spare time between my lectures with the homeless and let them sell my books in the streets to whites. But in the 90's white racism again worsened and the homeless in many cities such as New York were now forced out whereby I lost contact with most of them.