HaKyung

Who is homeless?

In the article, it thoroughly examines the meaning of homelessness and who would be considered as homeless and who would not be considered homeless. The article suggests in depth description of what Stewart B. McKinney defined homelessness as and who is considered ‘homeless’. The article is split into different categories such as demographics, age, gender, employment and etc in order to clearly divide each aspect related to ‘homelessness’. According to the article, independent homeless people consists more of male compared to females. Moreover, there are many children who are homeless under 5 years old that takes up the most of the proportion of children who are homeless. The article also represented that amongst homeless people, majority are African-American and the least are Asian. Out of homeless people, there are many who are mentally ill and suffering from addiction disorders such as drugs and alcohol. This factsheet makes a clear analysis of homeless people in different categories which explore in-depth information about who is considered homeless.

After reading this article, I realized that considering one ‘homeless’ is not an easy option to do. It is clearly shown that it’s not a simple as we think to address someone ‘homeless’. Moreover, I thought that if we meticulously investigated people, some people would be considered ‘homeless’ due to their living conditions. On the other hand, we can also say that just because people live on the streets and don’t wear the most clean clothes cannot merely be classified as ‘homeless’. There are fixed ‘rules’ and ‘regulations’ that ‘qualify’ an individual as a homeless person. Moreover, through the article, I noted different proportions of aspects under each category. For example, I’ve learnt that most of homeless people are from ethnicity group of African-American, most homeless people are males, there is a large proportion of children under 5 years old who are homeless and also that battered woman from domestic violence don’t have the strength to be on their own and the only choices they have is either be battered or become homeless. Thus, from this article, my viewpoint on homelessness has become stricter and in a way, disappointed me that people have to be under certain circumstances and conditions to be distinguished as homeless.