Homelessness: How Many Will Reach That Condition?

Kelly Thomas, 37 years old, passed away on July 10, five days after being attacked with shock sticks, torches, leather straps and kicks by six police officers from Fullerton, California.

After that incident, Thomas was sent to a nearby hospital, but arrived in a coma. Her face showed multiple bruises, scratches and minor cuts.

Thomas was part of a currently growing army within the United States, which many identify as the homeless. Without a home, these people are viewed as misfits within a system that, day by day, degrades them as human beings.

In 1986, near the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, a middle-aged man survived in the open with an ulcerated face because of the cold. He lived on public charity.

That man became the public image of a persistent problem in a country that claimed to be all in for human rights.

Maybe without knowing, he integrated the ranks of an army of almost 40,000 people who, just like him, didn’t have a place to live in that metropolis. Tunnels, bridges, underground train areas and sinister shelters were their homes, at best.

Almost thirty years later, the number of homeless people in the U.S. has risen. The economic crisis, unemployment, drug addiction, discrimination and the lack of aid to veterans are among factors that have pushed thousands of Americans into this situation.

It is said that there are 500 million homeless people worldwide. It is easy to get there, but many times there is no way back, many social organizations argue. According to sources within the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, it is hard to know how many people are pushed into that situation in the country.

In 2004, some calculations about the number of Americans without a home established that the number was between 600,000 and 3.5 million, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Nowadays it is difficult to calculate the exact number because of the nature of the homeless themselves. Some people become homeless temporarily, a situation that has worsened since the unemployment rate has been close to two-digit levels.

For other people, especially drug addicts and those with mental disorders, the lack of a home is a chronic problem. According to the Coalition, in the United States there are plenty of materials that show episodes of persecution of the helpless by law enforcement, as well as abuses committed by the police connected with confidential databases.

Another affected homeless subgroup are victims of domestic violence. A study by the Ford Foundation claims that 50 percent of women who live in the streets do it to escape from violent partners.

It’s not only about single men, addicts, the mentally deficient, war veterans or the long-term unemployed anymore. The problem is becoming increasingly chronic as the cycle of economic crisis gets shorter.

At present, 10 percent of people who recently became homeless are families: men and women with good jobs and children who simply couldn’t keep paying their mortgages.

Eighty-one percent of homeless people are women aged 25 with children under the age of five.

Without being comprehensive, a report from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, despite not doing an in-depth analysis of the causes of this disaster, claims that even if the average rise in the number of homeless people was 10 percent, in some regions it rose more than 56 percent in one year.

Although the Obama administration destined $1.5 million to fight the housing crisis, it is probable that it will be affected as a consequence of the Republicans’ tax “adjustments” to increase the debt ceiling and reduce the deficit.

A few years ago, New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced a wide plan to eradicate homelessness in Manhattan by 2010, because in the streets of the Big Apple alone there were over 40,000 people wandering without a home, 16,000 of whom were children.

The picture is depressing, and it reflects another example to decorate the showcase that Washington tries to hide from the eyes of the rest of the world.