Summer Economics/ CS 2006

It’s been estimated that there are approximately 1 billion people around the world who lack adequate housing[1]; this includes those who live in their cars, on friend’s couches, and various other makeshift shelters. When 1/6 of the people on earth are homeless, we as a human race have a problem. The problems roots lie in various aspects of life: drugs, poor economies, an unstable government, and sometimes just plain bad luck. There was no exact point in history when homelessness became a problem. Homelessness has always affected our society in some way since mankind roamed this planet, dating back all the way from when Zog and Gurg couldn’t find a cave to cook their brontosaurus burgers in to our current situation of people sleeping on benches in parks.
In the world’s current state of turmoil, homelessness seems like a trivial problem next to nuclear warfare and terrorist organizations. Governments around the world make minimal attempts to mitigate the spread of homelessness, and put forth the same amount of effort to house the already homeless. Throughout history, stereotypes and prejudice have plagued homeless all over the world. Many people regard homeless with fear and contempt, if they acknowledge the homeless at all. Often times people will consider a homeless person to be lazy, and would assume that the homeless person had not made an effort to seek employment. In many cases this is untrue, homeless have incredibly difficult times finding a job, because of their current condition, employers will often times not employ someone if they are homeless[2].
Wars and natural disasters are also large causes of homelessness globally. In Indonesia thousands of people were killed by the tsunami that struck just a few years ago, and thousands more were left without a home. Even in America, Hurricane Katrina obliterated a good deal of New Orleans and left thousands upon thousands of Americans with no where to live. The damage caused by natural disasters is often times irreparable, and can leave scores of people with literally nothing. Wars are also a great factor in the large global homeless population. War torn countries often have high homeless populations; for example, many countries in Africa are entrenched in civil wars, when a country is at civil war there is no government, or the existing government is too focused on the war to consider the welfare of the citizens. Many villages and homes are destroyed leaving entire towns homeless, if not killed.
We as individuals cannot sway a government to change its policies concerning the homeless, but what we can do is help the homeless in our community, and improve conditions locally.