Surge Seen in Number of Homeless Veterans

In this article, “Surge Seen in Number of Homeless Veterans” clearly outlines the underlying problem of US veterans, which is being homeless after military service. Veterans who return from the war often ended up suffering from critical problems like depression, drug and alcohol abuse Indeed, it is the accumulating problems like special traits of the current wars, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, poverty and high house costing that push them into the streets. The article has also stated out that the number of homeless women has increased, as they are now more women serving in combat zones and this has also raise another risk factor for homelessness which is being sexually abused. To try to resolve the problems, the government has introduced a new policy to bring the long-term homeless directly into housing, attempting to prevent homelessn1ess.

After reading this article, I really feel compassion for the veterans as I realize how hard it is for the veterans to actually fit back into the society after returning from the military service. It is in fact quite hard for them to behave normally after experiencing mortar attacks and saw mangled bodies of soldiers and children. Personally, I think the government should maybe create more jobs to help the veterans when they finished their military service. Moreover, perhaps the government could also give them some practical help like social care. For example, helping veterans who are suffering from PTSD and depression to recover from their sickness, so that they could live independently in the future.

Cities Due With A Surge in Shanty Towns

This article “Cities Due With A Surge in Shanty Towns” has shown that USA is currently suffering on an increasing number of homeless people caused by the poor economy. Due to the recession of the economy, many of them have lost their jobs and houses. In the past, people who are homelessness are usually people who are affected by the up and downs in seasonal and subsistence jobs in agriculture. However, nowadays, due to the global recession, jobs like hitchhikers to truck drivers to electricians has made up the number of hundreds of the newly homeless. These people used to be capable to house themselves based on their income but not anymore. They are now forced to live in tent on the streets forming tent-cities and shantytowns. In addition, these new tent cities have taken root and have been a part of the landscape in big cities like Los Angeles and New York. However, the city has planned to help the encampments by providing essential services and permanent housing. Additionally, they also adopted a 10-year plan to address homelessness. However, they are still some weaknesses to their plan like homeless people waiting too long for help.

In my opinion, after reading this article, I was quite shock about the disastrous impact that the recession has brought to the society. I did not know that the recession has brought such serious issues until I read this article. Hopefully with the help of the government, the current situation will gradually improve.

Attacks on the Homeless Rise, With Youths Mostly to Blame

The statement “National violence against the homeless is soaring” would best summarize the whole content of this article, I believe. It deals with serious discrimination towards people who are homeless. A specific case has been introduced: Warren Messner, he was sentenced to have killed Michael Robert, an innocent homeless man when he was 15. Across the country, similar circumstances were also found and investigated. Mr. George Silleti, who is a homeless person, sadly shared his experience of being brutalized and humiliated consistently throughout his entire life. It seemed to be like nowadays we “do not treat homeless people as people”, especially the criminals in these situations are the youth, who are supposed to be the bright future of the country. The issue is actually so serious that it caused violence and deaths to homeless people, captured the public attention for a long time with shocking, painful facts and figures, and presented such a shame that existing in our community. Therefore, the government started to establish educational programs, which aimed to teach students respect to the homeless. Younger students were involved in making posters and the older wrote essays expressing their views towards the problem. Hopefully, justice for the homeless all over the country will be returned soon.

I admit this is the most shocking article among the three I read. In my opinion, the government's response in this case is completely appropriate and essential. Educating the youth would be a difficult task to accomplish, but it is necessary for training young people how to live ethically and sensibly. This issue is clearly a type of discrimination, which must be eliminated in such a modern age like the 21st century, since it is unforgivable and displays an unacceptable, irrational, disrespectful point of view towards the homeless.

Counting the homeless to help end their plight

This article, which was published on The New York Times last February, describes what has been going on with the homeless people in New Haven and discusses related social issues happening around this area, such as: counting practice, rapid increase in the number of homeless people and even the problematic economy situation at that time.

There are many real – life examples introduced in the first part of the article: Mr. Joe, the man collecting cans on the Chapel Street, Victor… They are all homeless, but encounter very different experiences. Some actually desire to be categorized as being homeless, like Victor, who “has been sleeping outside for 14 years”. He finds his life more comfortable when he can live in underpasses and avoid being spotted by the government. Some others strongly refuse to be claimed as homeless, and do not want to be taken to shelters, such as Mr. Joe. He believes he can manage to stay warm and survive. Similar circumstances create a lot of difficulties for people from Health Center to conduct accurate surveys, as well as offer helps for the homeless in New Haven.

On the other hand, the second part of this article presents a variety of social problems occurring throughout recent years in this region. The total number of homeless people in New Haven now reaches 778 individuals, while the local charities are running out of place and resources to help. Although school gyms, churches, shelters are always full and volunteers are kept busy all the time, the demand for homeless services is still too high to be completely satisfied. Moreover, the downturn in the country’s economy has rapidly raised all of the living costs; results in more people cannot afford basically necessities and become homeless every day. Social evils hence increase, as the homeless have to find their ways to live.

In conclusion, homelessness in New Haven relates to many serious issues. Unless the government immediately starts to take actions, the consequences may be unpredictable.

I find this article very informative, as it looks at homelessness in a specific area from the aspects of the government and charity organizations, not the homeless people. I believe the writer is implying an undeniable truth: public help for homeless people is limited. Hence what the government needs to do is sufficiently solve the economic problems of the country, giving their citizens a chance to afford the life they are supposed to have. Otherwise, the number of the homeless shall definitely increase, and may lead to serious consequences like massive increase in crime rate and negative attitudes towards the government.

Who is homeless?

The article “Who is homeless?” was published by the National Coalition for the homeless in July 2009. By reviewing definitions of homelessness and categorizing homeless people into distinct groups, the article reveals different demographic characteristics of those who do not have a home.

At the beginning of this article, the writer lists two definitions of homeless according to the Stewart B. McKinney Act and the McKinney-Vento Act. Basically, they both define “homeless” as being lacked of a regular, stable and competent place to stay at night – time. Being homeless can also mean frequent sharing accommodations with others due to long – term economic disability. In addition, the Department of Housing and Urban Development states that homeless people in rural areas do not tend to live in shelters or stay on the streets. They rather live with relatives in inadequate houses, unfortunately.

The second part of the article focuses on looking into statistics of surveys, mostly conducted by the U.S Conference of Mayors. Therefore, the writer can briefly analyze and give summaries about these figures, which enable him to classify the personalities of homeless people into nine different categories: age, gender, family, ethnicity, victims of domestic violence, veterans, persons with mental illness, and persons suffering from addiction disorders and unemployment factors. Those are what mostly make a person loses his home, and they clearly indicate it is not always the homeless’ fault that got them into such a harsh situation.


Thanks to these illustrations, interesting facts about homelessness have been confirmed and generally discussed, I believe. Personally, I find the part about defining homelessness the most compelling. It could be because I have never thought of how to scientifically identify a homeless person before, I did not imagine there are that many factors required to consider a person being homeless. In addition, the statistical figures in the surveys were shocking to me, since I have always assumed that people become homeless because they are indolent or incapable of finding a job. Now I realize those are not the only reasons; the person’s background will help define who he is and where he is able to live. This truth hence makes me feel much more sympathetic for homeless people. I understand sometimes we do not have a choice, but to cope with life in every possible way we could, even though they are much bitterer than we imagine.

Shanty Towns

The article mentions the increase in number of shanty towns in the USA. The economic stage of the country has led jobs redundancy, resulting in low income and homelessness. Some people have to leave their home to big cities to look for jobs and make a living, though, there are not many available. As a result, people with no job started to camp and live on the streets in tents, forming shanty towns. Furthermore, many problems such as using drug and violence have also risen in these areas. Despite US government’s efforts in trying to help reduce the rate of homelessness by placing additional public facilities, permanent housing and social services, there are still some weaknesses in their plan.

After reading this article, I‘ve learnt that rate of homelessness has become very concerned. It’s unbelievable that the USA is also facing this issue. It is very important to reduce the rate of homelessness as well as enhance the landscape of the cities.

Homeless articles_

Article 1

This fact sheet specifically defines what homelessness and uses numerous facts and figures to analyse the trends and common characteristics of homeless people. To start with the definition, the definition provided by the fact sheet can be simplified into “a person who lacks a fixed night-time residence and has a primary night time residence that is either public or private shelter.” However, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines homelessness slightly differently by stating that it only includes people on the streets or in shelters and have no alternative residences or resources to obtain housing. If this definition is applied in urban areas, a large number of people will be considered homeless and if this is applied in rural areas, it would not be able to include those who are living with relatives in substandard housing. The facts show that homeless population consists of a large number of children, male, families with children, African-American, people who suffered from domestic violence, veterans, people with mental illness, people addicted to drugs and unemployed people.

This article allowed me to consider the importance of specific definition. I used to have a very vague definition of homelessness in my mind but if that is applied to researches undertaken to find out about homeless people, the results would not be accurate enough. I also

Article 2

This article is based on an astonishing story about negative attitudes towards homeless people. It starts with a story of Mr. Messner who killed a homeless person when he was 15. However, the problem in the article is not limited to Mr. Messner’s murder; it deals with the prejudices against the homeless people that are causing other people to shamelessly attack them. In fact, the number of attacks on homeless people is rapidly increasing and there was even an occasion when one hit the homeless person’s head with a baseball bat. The fundamental reason for these actions is simply lack of awareness of these people, which is leading to lack of respect and thereby not treating them as humans. In order to reduce these attacks on people, there should be an education on the homeless people in order to eliminate negative attitudes towards these people.

When I first read this article, I was shocked that homeless people were attacked without any reasons. I was vaguely aware of the difficult situations of these people but I did not know that these people were suffering from prejudices. I wholeheartedly agree with the plan on education, which intends to raise awareness of these people, thereby increasing respect towards them. If this is achieved, I believe that the occurrences of cruel and brutal attacks on homeless people will reduce to a significant extent.

Article 3

This article depicts lives of homeless people on the streets. It deals with a variety of issues and one of them is related to the definition of homelessness. This is because people find it difficult to count exact number of homeless people because many of them are on the border line of homelessness. The article also contains interviews with homeless people, which describe how they became homeless and what kind of situations they are in. According to the interviews, the biggest reason for becoming homeless was poverty, which was caused by worsening economic conditions that people could not afford housing. On top of this, the article describes how the shelters for homeless people are becoming full, meaning that the spaces intended to take care of homeless people are becoming smaller and smaller while the number of homeless people are increasing.

After reading this article, I became more familiar with the situations of homeless people. I have only encountered few homeless people when I was in Korea and when I saw them, I was not aware of their situations and their backgrounds. This article allowed me to become aware that the homeless people need care and that it is not their fault that they became homeless.