Homelessness in the United States

Introduction 

The issue of homelessness is a very huge social crisis in the United States of America. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act describes the homeless people as those who do not have fixed, regular and enough residence for night-time use. It is vital to note that the issue of homelessness started rising in the United States of America during the 1870s. During this time, a lot of people resided in the emerging urban cities like New York City. However, the Great Depression that happened sometime into the 20 th century led to a huge level of poverty in the country. Consequently, people could not even afford to have residences and food. The state of homelessness became an epidemic issue in the United States of America (Abbott, Pelc & Mollen, 2016). In fact, people started migrating from the United States of America as a result of the worst state of the economy and hardships in life. The problem of homelessness in the U.S. was then increased by the de-institutionalization of the patients from state psychiatric healthcare centers. This move led to an increased population of the homeless people in the United States of America. With the increase in the housing as well as social service cuts rose, the problem of homelessness increased exponentially. Later on, the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act was signed into law in the year 1987. Its intended purpose was to oversee the funding of direct services to the homeless population in the nation. This paper analyzes the issue of homelessness in the United States of America with respect to the relevant bill of rights under the American Constitution. 

The state of homelessness in the United States of America 

In the year 2015, statistics indicated that 564,708 people experienced homelessness every night in the U.S. The implication of this statement is that these people slept outside a house, stayed in emergency shelters or were under a transitional housing program. Data for the year 2015 indicate that 33 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) had an overall decrease in homelessness. However, 16 states were able to report increase in the level of homelessness. It is vital to note that the states, which reported high levels of homelessness, were concentrated in the South and Midwest. The total number of people who currently experience homelessness in the United States of America is over 3 million. The level of homelessness decreased in the year 2015 when compared to one for 2014. It has been established that poor people are the ones who are the highest risk of becoming homeless. Most of them find it very difficult to afford housing.   

Reasons for homelessness in the U.S. 

Various factors lead to the high size of homeless population in the U.S. The primary reason for homelessness is poverty. People who are poor are the ones who are always at the highest risk of becoming homeless. Poverty means one has no money to afford the highly-priced houses in the United States. In this case, people are always left homeless. Some end up staying in emergency shelters during the nights. 

The second reason for homelessness in the United States of America is failure of the federal urban housing projects. These projects are the ones that have to provide safe, secure and very affordable housing to the poor people. Moreover, a lot of employees in the U.S. are not able to stay where they work over the nights. Therefore, they depend of the public housing facilities, which the state and federal governments have to provide for them. 

The other reason for homelessness in the United States of America is the deinstitutionalization movement that happened from the 1950s. This deinstitutionalization movement chose to take the mentally ill people from hospitals to community-based treatment programs. Therefore, the long-term commitment of the mentally ill people in the healthcare institutions was stopped as they were taken out into the community. This move has led to a very high level of homeless mentally ill patients, who mostly stay on the streets of urban areas. Most towns in the United States of America have the mentally people who throng the streets and sleep outside in the cold all nights. In fact, the mentally ill people make up the largest share of the homeless patients who sleep in the cold. 

Homelessness in the United States of America is also caused by redevelopment and gentrification activities, which are normally instituted by the cities all over the country. During the construction of these projects, the low-income neighborhoods are normally demolished in order to create space for the buildings. Such projects are preferred over the low-income neighborhoods because they normally generate higher property taxes as well as revenues. This move usually creates the problem of housing shortage for the low-income working families, who cannot afford the new highly-priced real-estate properties. 

It is understandable that many veterans are also homeless in the United States of America. The reason for the homelessness of the U.S. veterans is the failure of the Department of Veterans Affairs to give them effective mental health care as well as good training for jobs. Most of the homeless veterans are the ones who participated in the Vietnam War. This federal department has left this task to the related non-governmental organizations whose capacity is not sufficient enough to deal with the needs of the veterans. 

There is also the reason of deprived normal childhood. The foster children become homeless when they are released at the age of 18 years old. Such children usually have no direction to go and no place to call home. It is important to note that when they are released at the age of 18, the common thing is that they do not even the means of getting a job or securing a rented house. They end staying outside in the cold during nights. 

Many reasons still exist and can be cited as the causes of the high rate of homelessness in the United States of America. The lack of parents is also another reason for the lack of homes for many young children (Bunds, Newman & Giardina, 2015). There are children who lose parents through accidents or natural death. They are left with no one to take care of them and this factor makes them to end up homeless. Some children are born to divorced parents who eventually deny them. They are thrown away and left to survive independently at the tender ages. The outcome of this situation is a high number of children who are homeless. These incidents commonly happen in various place of the U.S. 

Other reasons for the presence of the high rate of homelessness in the United States of America include people hiding from incarceration on accounts of criminal offences and evictions from the rented house property. These are the major reasons for homelessness in the United States of America. 

The Homeless Bill of Rights in the U.S.A 

Rhode Island passed the very first Homerless Bill of Rights for the mainland in 2012. Later on, the legislatures of various states in the United States of America like California, Hawaii, Illinois, Connecticut, Oregon, Vermont, Missouri and Massachusetts went on to pass the Homeless Bill of Rights. It is quite important to note that currently Connecticut and Illinois have also joined in this trend by enacting their homeless bills of rights. Many other states are quite active in evaluating the possibility of implementing these legislations. Understandably, the homeless bills of rights usually state the very strong diverse rights and relevant remedies. However, the provisions of these homeless bills of rights vary from one state to the other (Borg, 2014). Some of them provide the right to shelter, healthcare and sustenance. Others guarantee the right against the discrimination at the place of work and harassment from the police. For those homeless people whose statutory rights have been violated, the bills of rights provide the civil remedies that they are entitled to as citizens of the United States. Some counties have vested the role of creation, enforcement and review of the homeless bills of rights in a formulated administrative body. 

It is important to observe the fact that the overarching purpose of all the homeless bills of rights is simply to ensure the people with homelessness do not suffer in the inhuman living conditions. 

Notably, the many homeless bills of rights expressly provide the civil remedies for those who feel are offended by another party. However, other state homeless bills of rights oppose the judicial enforceability to the attainment of the right provided. These particular bills of rights emphasize the need for realization of a right through the agency implementation (Rankin, 2015). The rationale behind this perspective of the homeless bills of rights is that the judicial rulings always do not translate into agency implementation hence there is no need of using them in the realization of a homeless right. Many argue that the judicial enforcement may be ineffectual. Moreover, it may lead to the legislative repeal of the law. The major concern in this case is, thus, whether the homeless advocates should use huge resources in order to ensure the homeless bills of rights have the civil remedies provisions. Debate has also been advanced on the effective ways of ensuring there is implementation and realization of the rights of all the homeless Americans. 

The nature of the homeless bills of rights makes them to invite strong rights-based inquiries. Normally, the value of a homeless bill of right is evaluated based on its contribution to the quality of a life of the victim of homelessness (Milbourne & Cloke, 2013). An effective homeless bill of right is seen as part of the effort to naturalize a normative vision. 

Homeless victims need to be given high attention through the use of these bills of rights. Despite the fact that there is statistics, which indicates a significant reduction in the size of the homeless population in the United States of 4% between 2012 and 2013, the same time period shows huge increase in the level of homelessness in many states. The U.S. Conference of Mayors reports that 60% of the cities surveyed reported a 7% average rise in the overall level of homelessness. Statistics also indicate that the number of homeless families rose in close to 71% of the cities. This increase was estimated to be 8% (Robinson, 2017). Many cities continue to expect rise in the number of homeless people over time in to the future. It is a worrying kind of data, which calls for special action. It is important to empathetically imagine the kind of life this population experiences every night outside houses. The homeless bills of rights must be made effective in order to be of great value to this group of people in the United States of America. 

It is important that the homeless bills of rights focus on addressing the major reason for homelessness. Notably, a lot of scholars have not concentrated on pointing out the major cause of homelessness in their research works (Bailey, 2015). They tend to constantly blame it on personal conditions of the homeless victim, which is not correct because it even makes the policy makers to miss the real target in the efforts of solving this social issue through the bills of rights. The proved main reason for homelessness, as explained above, is the lack of affordable housing in the country, particularly in the urban areas. It is vital to observe that close to 17% of the adult Americans who are homeless have jobs, but the challenge is they cannot afford the existing housing facilities. 

While making the homeless bills of rights, it is necessary to consider the fact that emergency shelter facilities given to the victims of this social issue do not solve the lack of affordable housing. It is the reason there is a very huge population of the unsheltered homeless people. These people experience conditions that put them right in to the risk of getting diseases and death. For most men who are homeless, they tend to turn to acts of violence in order to survive and crime (Ruth, Matusitz & Simi, 2016). For those who live on the streets, they are always penalized and criminalized, particularly in public places. Therefore, the homeless people in the United States are burdened by inhuman conditions. They have to be considered and a solution established. The move towards adoption of the homeless bills of rights is the correct one. However, there are significant barriers on the way of accessing the rights. These barriers are always experienced by the homeless victims themselves. 

The fact that homeless people are hated and feared on the account that they are scary makes it impossible for them to realize their rights. The prevalence of societal hatred towards the people who are homeless is the biggest impediment to the realization of the rights enshrined in the bills of states. The homeless Americans are viewed by the housed people simply as things, but equal human beings. Most people who are housed usually react to the state of homelessness with great revulsion instead of empathy and sympathy. This unfortunate societal disdain against the homeless people is normally justified by the assumption that homelessness is an entirely self-induced condition. However, there must be an understanding that there are quite a lot of families and children whose state of homelessness is completely not an outcome of their fault. 

The efforts aimed at eliminating homelessness have to deal with the barrier of criminalization of these victims by the law enforcement officers (Bunds, Newman & Giardina, 2015). This barrier must be addressed through the homeless bills of rights that states have been passing. Currently, there is a growing trend of state statutes as well as the city ordinances, which criminalize homelessness. Surprisingly, 73% of the cities in the United States have ordinances that prohibit basic activities of the homeless people like sleeping, begging and eating (Vissing, 2015). This mistake is done despite the fact that most of these cities do not have a secluded area specifically for the use of the homeless people. These limitations are executed based on laws commonly referred to as the "quality of life" laws. The laws simply criminalize the homeless people for visibly staying in public places. It is vital to observe the fact that the criminalization laws are not a good effort at addressing the issue of homelessness. What these oppressive laws always seek to do is making the lives of the housed people comfortable. The laws try to comfort the housed people by minimizing the visibility of the homeless population through mans such as incarceration or even dislocation. 

These ordinances that criminalize the homeless people continue to increase in the United States of America. Among the 234 cities that were surveyed by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP), it was found out that 53% of them prohibited begging in public places. Moreover, 40% of the cities had ordinances, which forbade camping in the public places. Additionally, 33% of the cities surveyed had ordinances that prohibited sitting and lying in the public places. On the enforcement of these laws, they authorize the police to perform clearance of the public places and ensure no homeless person is these locations. The operations by the police sometimes turn out to be brutal since they even destroy and confiscate the personal belongings properties of the homeless people. These victims of homelessness end up losing their personal identification documents that even make them unable to access services meant for them. Therefore, it must be noted that criminalization simply worsens the situation for the victims of homelessness. The criminalization measures used by the cities in the United States of America perpetuate homelessness since the lost documents of the homeless people in the course of the police operations impede them from also accessing employment opportunities, housing, social services and benefits. Furthermore, if a homeless person breaches the "quality of life" ordinance, she or he may face criminal penalties like arrests as well as fines. For the many employers, they always perform investigations to establish the criminal background and record of job applicants. Therefore, arresting the homeless people makes them unable to even access job opportunities in the future since they are rejected for their criminal record. 

The homeless bills of rights must address these excesses that are committed on the homeless people. Through homeless bills of rights enacted by the legislatures of many states in the United States of America, the people with homelessness can expect a bright future since the chances of getting jobs and accessing other fundamental services in the United States are high. The homeless bills of rights protect the human and civil rights of the homeless people. According to these laws, the homeless people also have equal rights to medical care, free speech, movement, association, assembling, voting, privacy and chances for employment (Sheffield, 2014). They bar cities from implementing ordinances, which oppress and humiliate the homeless people. 

Conclusion 

  Homelessness comes from a set of hardships people encounter that require them to choose between food, shelter, and other basic needs. Only a concentrated effort to ensure jobs that pay a living wage, adequate support for those who cannot work, affordable housing, and access to healthcare will suppress homelessness. Also they are human beings who also have rights and should not be treated differently due to their complex circumstances. It is important to re-iterate the fact that most people tend to misunderstand the reasons for the existence of homelessness. A lot of the housed people tend to think that the homelessness of individuals is entirely self-induced. Therefore, they start vilifying and hating them. The cities implement policies meant to eject them from the public places acrimoniously and instill the comfort of the housed people. Homeless bills of rights are the most effective solution to the social problem of homelessness. These laws that guarantee the basic civil and human rights of victims of homelessness can put an end to the criminalizing state statutes and city ordinances. The whole of the United States of America needs to embrace and adopt the idea of homeless bills of rights. 

References 

Abbott, D. M., Pelc, N., & Mollen, D. (2016). Toward a Human Rights Agenda: Social Issues That Have Shaped Psychology in the United States. Psychological Specialties in Historical Context , 232. 

Bailey, J. (2015). Food-Sharing Restrictions: A New Method of Criminalizing Homelessness in American Cities.  Geo. J. on Poverty L. & Pol'y ,  23 , 273. 

Borg, M. B. (2014). Homelessness During Adulthood. In  Encyclopedia of Primary Prevention and Health Promotion  (pp. 1705-1715). Springer US. 

Bunds, K. S., Newman, J. I., & Giardina, M. D. (2015). The Spectacle of Disposability: Bumfights, Commodity Abjection, and the Politics of Homelessness.  Critical Studies in Media Communication ,  32 (4), 272-286. 

Milbourne, P., & Cloke, P. J. (2013).  International perspectives on rural homelessness . Abidgon-on-Thames: Routledge. 

Rankin, S. K. (2015). A Homeless Bill of Rights (Revolution).  Seton Hall L. Rev. ,  45 , 383. 

Robinson, T. (2017). No Right to Rest: Police Enforcement Patterns and Quality of Life Consequences of the Criminalization of Homelessness.  Urban Affairs Review , 1078087417690833. 

Ruth, T., Matusitz, J., & Simi, D. (2016). Ethics of disenfranchisement and voting rights in the US: convicted felons, the homeless, and immigrants. American journal of criminal justice , 1-13. 

Sheffield, J. J. (2014). Homeless Bills of Rights: Moving United States Policy toward a Human Right to Housing.  Geo. J. on Poverty L. & Pol'y ,  22 , 321. 

Vissing, Y. (2015).  Out of sight, out of mind: Homeless children and families in small-town America . Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.