Summer Economics/ CS 2006

The History of Global Homelessness (Written by Shaun Chang)

What is the current situation regarding global homelessness? (Written by Myrel Agbayani)

Picture found at: http://www.takingitglobal.org/images/understanding/topics/Homelessness.jpg

Homelessness is found all over the world, and the homeless population
grows continuously every day. According to a 1996 United Nations
report, 500 million people were homeless or residing in low-quality
housing and unsanitary conditions in 1995 (1). In 2005, the rough
estimate of global homelessness was down to 100 million people due to
the difficulty in measuring it. Also, over 1 billion are living in
inadequate housing, which would lead to a huge increase in the homeless
population once the housing is not suitable to live in. It is
difficult to attain the exact number of people in the global homeless population
because there is limited or non-existent data provided for every
country. Also, every country has its own definition of homelessness
and its own approach to service provision. Because of these
differences, it’s much harder to combine or compare data accurately (3).


Global homelessness is caused by the same factors that lead to local
and national homelessness. These factors are poor decision-making,
health problems, mental illness, drug or alcohol addiction, domestic
violence, lack of education and job skills, environmental disasters, or
just bad luck. There is also the usual problem of housing cots and
their availability. Because of this, the number of households in a
single home are increasing rapidly (3). Homelessness is also caused by
breakdowns in traditional family support systems, continued urbanization
and the effects of structural adjustment programs and civil wars (1).
According to the Special Rapporteur on Right to Adequate Housing, “The
driving forces behind homelessness are poverty; rapid economic
globalization, which has worsened inequality in housing and land
ownership; increasing tends towards privatization of public services
and land speculation; lack of affordable housing options; unplanned and
involuntary urban migration; large-scale development and infrastructure
projects, including dams that have lead to mass displacement; and
ongoing conflicts around the world” (4). Due to the lack of nutrition,
homeless children and adults suffer many medical problems. The
children may suffer from chronic and recurring physical ailments,
higher rates of fever and colds. They have a greater incidence of
infections, fatigue, headaches and anemia. For the adults, their
problems include, anemia, gastric ulcers, hypertension, acute and
chronic diseases, diabetes and malnutrition (1).

There are things being done to resolve this problem though.
Organizations such as the Food Research and Action Center, America’s
Second Harvest, the Center on Hunger and Poverty, Bread for the World,
World Hunger Year, and the Food Industry Crusade Against Hunger
coordinate with other food banks and food assistance programs and
encourage policy makers to expand and protect programs aiding the
homeless (1). Also, there is something known as the Homeless World
Cup. 48 countries and 500 homeless people look forward to this event
each year. This year it will be held in Cape Town from September 23rd
to the 30th (5). Due to this event, many are greatly affected. 38%
already have regular employment and 40% have improved their housing
situation. For more percentages, click here: http://www.streetsoccer.org/_pdf/44a28c403e57c.pdf

(1) http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Hea-Irr/Homelessness.html
(2) http://www.takingitglobal.org/understanding/poverty/homeless
(3)
http://www.homebaseccc.org/site_extras/11.18.05Global%20Homelessness.pdf
(4) http://www.hic-net.org/articles.asp?PID=223
(5) http://www.streetsoccer.org/
(6) http://www.streetsoccer.org/_pdf/44a28c403e57c.pdf

What should be done about global homelessness? (Written by Traci Aoki)

According to a United Nations report, currently five hundred million people around the world are either homeless or living in low-quality housing and are in danger of becoming homeless (4). With so many people being affected by this problem, something must be done to fight it. Homelessness is a tremendous problem, and there are many steps that must be taken if it is to ever end.
First, more affordable housing must be built. In many countries, prices of homes are rising rapidly as a result of other problems such as economic inflation and overpopulation. However, obtaining permanent housing is a crucial step for those trying to get their lives back on track and improve their futures. Once they have secured homes for themselves, they can focus on fixing other problems in their lives holding them back. Furthermore, in many developing countries, it can be difficult for homeless individuals to find and maintain a job when they have no phone number or permanent address, not to mention a place in which to change their clothes and bathe. In order to change their lives around, they need to obtain some sort of home. Therefore, governments must grant more funding to the construction of subsidized housing. They can raise money for this by increasing taxes. Now, as mentioned in the national portion, taxpayers may complain about having the pay raised taxes to finance the building of affordable housing. However, in many developed countries, a large portion of taxes is used to pay for services for the homeless and poor such as Medicaid. If these people obtained homes and became stabilized, taxpayers would actually save money. Therefore, paying taxes now to help fund the construction of supportive housing will ultimately benefit them as well. Furthermore, the governments can also decrease military spending and use some of it to fund the housing. War is one of the major causes of homelessness throughout the world, destroying homes and villages, and tearing families apart (1). Moreover, a tremendous amount of natural resources and funding is put into military expansion, something that can only lead to more homelessness. The government should take a portion of these resources and money and put it to better use: funding the construction of more affordable housing. As for undeveloped and developing countries, as much money as possible should be set aside by governments to help pay for more housing for their citizens. Individuals can help by donating money to organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, which builds simple, affordable housing all around the globe.
In addition to housing, more money should be used to build transitional and emergency shelters. People living on streets are extremely vulnerable to changes in weather and in some places, can actually freeze to death. For example, in Ireland people die on the streets weekly as a result of a lack of housing and services (5). Homeless people are also often targets of violence and abuse, and would be much safer in shelters, where they are also given food and access to services and programs. Federal grants should be used to help fund existing shelters, as well as the construction of additional ones. The money used for this could come from increased taxes as well as decreased military spending in developed nations. As for undeveloped and developing countries, many of them are ridden with debt to foreign nations and are therefore unable to fund the building of housing and shelters for their homeless citizens. Perhaps developed nations, especially the G-8 nations, could consider canceling these debts and even give countries with serious homeless problems long-term, low-interest-rate loans to help finance the construction.
Next, some cities in developed countries have laws prohibiting such things as “loitering”, “pan-handling”, and “vagrancy”, and allow police to arrest individuals who break these laws (2). In other words, homeless are prohibiting form residing outdoors and from begging. However, by arresting homeless people and giving them criminal records, all police are doing is making it even more difficult for them to secure and maintain jobs. Rather, these laws should be revoked, and instead of putting homeless in prison, police should guide them to shelters where they can receive the attention and assistance they need to get their lives back on track. Police, shelters, and service providers should all work together to help homeless populations as best as possible.
Another important step in the fight against homelessness is understanding. In order to get to the “root of the problem” and find the best solutions, the government must grant additional funding for research and data collection on this issue. Doing so will also allow organizations to better meet the needs of the homeless population and tell service providers if they need to update certain services. Besides this, data collection can give organizations a better idea of the main factors that lead to homelessness and how to prevent the problem.
One of the factors leading to homelessness is the inability to afford both food and shelter. When faced with a choice between the two, people will usually choose food, considering shelter the lower priority (4). More money needs to be given to food banks and shelters so that homeless and potentially homeless will be provided with adequate meals. If they no longer have to worry about scrounging up enough money to pay for their next meals, they no longer have to make a choice between food and shelter, and can focus all of their efforts on securing and maintaining housing. However, besides relieving homeless individuals from having to make a choice between food and shelter, extra funding for shelters and food banks is needed because having a good diet is extremely important. According to the Institute of Medicine, there are about 100,000 children homeless in the U.S. every night (4). There are millions more around the world. Many of these children rely on shelters and food banks for most of their food. Unfortunately, these meals are often very limited in nutritional value and are usually “high in salt, fat, preservatives, and empty calories” (4). Moreover, according to studies, a poor diet during childhood often causes long-term health and cognitive problems, which can compromise the children’s ability to find and maintain employment in the future. Therefore, shelters and food banks need additional funding so they can provide the homeless with better quality food. They can get this money from either private donations from individuals and organizations, or from the government.
In addition to food and housing assistance, other services for the homeless and the potentially homeless are essential in helping them. However, the services needed by homeless populations vary in different areas, as the conditions being experienced by them are also different. For example, in the U.S. and other developed countries where some of the main causes of homelessness are domestic violence, mental illness, and addiction disorders, needed services include counseling, mental health facilities, and substance abuse programs. For these services, governments should increase taxes to help fund them, as they are crucial in helping people re-build their lives. Furthermore, as I mentioned before, taxpayers will ultimately save money by helping to fund these services now. In sub-Saharan Africa however, there are currently twenty five million orphaned children, twelve million of which were orphaned because of the AIDS epidemic (3). In addition to these kids, many millions more have parents who are ill and are unable to work, leaving the children the responsibility of providing for the entire family. As a result, kids have to drop out of school to get jobs and care for their sick parents (3). This is wrong; children should not be giving up education to watch over their parents. African countries should provide the needy families with services such as free education, access to free health care, food, and water. Kenya has tried out an idea in which cash grants were given directly to children most in need of the extra assistance. In this “project” five hundred households are given about $6.50 per “vulnerable or orphaned child” each month. While that amount may seem extremely small to us, it had a tremendous impact on those receiving the payments. Families had “better access to education and health care and improved nutrition” (3). Their standards of living rose from being given just that small amount of money. The other sub-Saharan African countries should follow Kenya in enacting this plan. However, funding for all of these services will be difficult to obtain. Hopefully private donations from individuals and organizations will be given to help pay for them. The governments of the countries themselves should create larger budgets to address these problems as well. Finally, as previously mentioned, wealthy developed countries should relieve these poorer nations of their past debts. This will allow the governments more money to spend on these services.
Finally, in order to solve worldwide homelessness, the homeless problem must first be tackled on a local and national level. How can we solve global homelessness when we currently have three million homeless individuals in our own country? Sure, we can help undeveloped and developing nations by lending and donating money to help them out. However, if homelessness is ever to end, each country must take responsibility for their own citizens and take adequate action to improve their living situations. Only once a country has eradicated its own homeless problem can it fully focus on helping others.

1) http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1309/is_n3/v25/ai_6811552
2) http://www.nscahh.org/hunger.asp?id2=8800
3) http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/4631911.stm
4) http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Hea-Irr/Homelessness.html
5) http://www.focusireland.ie/htm/housing_homelessness/facts_figures/causes.htm

Realistically, what can be done about the issue of global homelessness? (Written by Tierney Morikawa)

"On paper, [adequate housing for all] is...one of humanity's priorities. 'Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health & well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing & medical care, and necessary social services ...'

These words, from Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, were written 50 years ago. Yet, as we approach the end of the 20th century, at least one out of five members of the human family doesn't 'have a proper home to live in."
(From the September 1998 issue of Share International) (1)

What are the "powers at be" not doing?

When we look at global homelessness, we see that there is a lot more that should be done to combat the issue. However, part of the problem lies in the fact that the global homeless population is substantially large. In fact, the poverty level is so high in some third-world countries that the majority of the population could be considered homeless (on “American” standards). Many countries do not have the government infrastructure and money to aid their own citizens, and many that do have the resources are faced with other social and economic problems (in addition to the issue of homelessness) that also require government funds. Just like the U.S. government, these governments also have to make decisions as to where the money should go, and many governments place homelessness and international aid low on their priority list. The United States government, above all, spends a tremendous amount of money every year on its military. The U.S. Federal Budget for the 2006 fiscal year appropriated $410.8 billion to the “Defense-Military”, where as the “Housing & Urban Development” and “State & Other International Programs” funds were only granted $34.1 billion and $30.2 billion respectively (2). Yet war, itself, is a major cause of homelessness, driving innocent women, children, and families from their homes each year (3). Therefore, we are, in effect, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a war that is exacerbating the problem of homelessness and causing thousands of innocent people to become refugees. In actuality, are we not creating more problems in our world?

Picture found at: http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20040504_73.jpg

Moreover, through warfare we create homeless problems internationally, but we and other wealthy nations fail to provide sufficient monetary aid to other countries in need of assistance. A report written by Anup Shah entitled The U.S. and Foreign Aid Assistance states that “there was an EU pledge to spend 0.56% of GNI on poverty reduction by 2010, and 0.7% by 2015. However, the donor governments promised to spend 0.7% of GNI on ODA (Official Development Assistance) at the UN General Assembly in 1970—some 35 years ago as of writing. The deadline for reaching that target was the mid-1970s.” Shah further states that “almost all rich nations fail this obligation.” He says, “Even though these targets and agendas have been set, year after year almost all rich nations have constantly failed to reach their agreed obligations of the 0.7% target. Instead of 0.7%, the amount of aid has been around 0.2 to 0.4%, some $100 billion short.” One can see from the charts (below) for 2005 that the U.S.’s dollar amount spent on ODA is significantly higher than all other countries. However, looking at the percentages of GNI, we see that the U.S.’s grant is lower than every other country’s but Portugal’s, and far lower than the UN target of 0.7% (4).

Click on the thumbnail below to see the enlarged graphs of the Official Development Assistance Numbers and Percentages in 2005:

Charts found at: http://www.globalissues.org/i/aid/netoda2005.png

(To view the full report entitled The U.S. and Foreign Aid Assistance click here:http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp)

Therefore, perhaps our nation (and other nations with high military budgets) should be spending less money on war and more money on homelessness programs and international Official Development Assistance. Who knows? Maybe our international relations would improve, if we were dropping monetary grants on our neighbors’ soil rather than explosive weapons. Maybe we wouldn’t “need” such a large military budget, if we cared enough to reach out to people in need on a global scale.

What impact could you have to change the current situation?

- You can give monetary donations or volunteer some of your time to the American Red Cross (year-round or during emergencies). You can also join their mailing list to receive monthly news, tips, and disaster updates. Visit http://www.redcross.org/ for more information. (*Note: The Red Cross consists of several chapters and operates worldwide.)

- If you are handy with a hammer and saw, (or are willing to learn how to become handy with a hammer and saw), you might consider building houses for the poor and homeless with Habitat for Humanity. This organization operates on the local, national, and global levels. To find more information about this organization visit http://www.habitat.org

- If you are a compassionate, dedicated person who is willing to devote himself/herself to fighting international poverty and homelessness for an extended period of time, you might consider joining the Peace Corps (http://www.peacecorps.gov/).

- If you are eighteen years of age or older, you can also have an impact politically. Let your voice be heard through your vote. If you care about stopping the spread of homelessness, vote for candidates who have homelessness and international aid as high priorities on their agendas.

For more information on homeless relief organizations or on how you can help to end global homelessness, visit one or more of the following websites below:

http://www.bread.org/learn/links.html

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatyoucando/act_now/fast/sponsors

http://www.homeless.org/sp/Homeless+Resources

http://www.homeless.org.au/directory/

What might the future global homelessness problem look like if conditions continue in their present state indefinitely?

While we might never be able to eliminate homelessness completely, we do have the power to taper the problem. If our world population continues to grow at its rapid rate and we do not address the issue of homelessness, our problems will only worsen. As a student Homeless Resource Guide stated, “Another cause of national and international homelessness is that of overpopulation. The earth might seem large and unlimited, but the natural resources needed to sustain human life are finite. This problem becomes clear when there are too many people living in one place… If you were to visit Calcutta, India’s capital city, you would see millions of thin, sickly people who sleep in the streets and beg for food” (2). As cities grow, so does the problem of homelessness. A country can undergo development; but if it does not have a firm foundation to support its poorer citizens, the country can only progress so far. Moreover, as a country develops, property values increase, and it becomes increasingly difficult for people to obtain affordable housing. Therefore, the housing issues must be addressed now before countries attempt further development.
Executive Coordinator of Habitat in Nairobi, Kenya, Daniel Biau, says, “International agencies have not yet understood that the 21st century will be the century of cities. Poverty and homelessness will more and more be concentrated there, and the international community has to do more to help developing countries” (1). If we do not address the international homelessness problem now, we are failing as human citizens. We have a responsibility to take care of one another. Richer individuals and nations have the responsibility to aid poorer ones. This is our opportunity to express compassion on a local, national and global level. This is our opportunity to prove that adequate housing for all is one of humanity’s top priorities.

Sources:

(1) http://www.shareintl.org/archives/homelessness/hl-mlaroof.htm

(2) http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/pdf/07msr.pdf

(3) http://www.state.ia.us/educate/ecese/is/homeless/middle/lesson6_middle.html

(4) http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp