Introduction
Every country in the world, no matter how abundant or easy to live in, will have some proportion of homeless people. These citizens do not have a permanent residence for one reason or another and have to spend their nights in the streets or specialized shelters when any are available. Homelessness is generally seen as an extreme form of poverty when a person is so poor that they cannot afford necessities such as a place to live. As such, governments devote considerable efforts to trying to ensure that they recover and become functioning members of society, but their efforts generally fail. This essay will analyze the primary reasons why people become and stay homeless.
The Most Common Reasons
Poverty is indeed the foremost reason why people lose their place to stay. Other events can destroy one’s residence, such as disasters, and reasons to become homeless voluntarily, but people who have money can rent a temporary place to stay. Poverty can result from different sources, both internal and external. A person’s job can disappear due to the company’s closure or staff cuts, they can be fired due to personal faults, or they can fail to find work in the first place. As a result, they will run out of resources quickly due to the high prices of housing and rent. They will then have no recourse but to take to the streets.
Following that logic, it should be possible for a person to eventually find a job and save enough money to afford basic housing. However, most of them do not think of looking for a permanent position with sufficient pay. The reason is that they are depressed due to their descent down to the lowest social class and cannot muster the willpower to try to improve. This tendency is also the reason why the use of alcohol and other drugs is so common among the group, even though it is a waste of resources. It is easier to escape one’s shame than it is to overcome the obstacle of homelessness, even with outside help.
The fact of homelessness itself presents a significant issue in a person’s job search. Most people who do not get an opportunity to clean themselves regularly become unpleasant in appearance due to dirty clothing, poor hygiene, and strong smell. As such, few people would hire an average homeless person, but even if they do and help them clean themselves up, further issues appear. Sleeping in the street is stressful due to various disturbances such as animals, noises, and other people. Combined with the pressures of a low-skilled job, which tend to be the extent of a homeless person’s qualifications, the struggle becomes extremely difficult to overcome. Most people who have the mental fortitude to do so likely never lose their homes in the first place.
Conclusion
Overall, homelessness is a function of one’s personality as much as factors such as prices, job cuts, and luck. People generally do not end up on the street because of personal faults, as many societies can provide jobs or sufficient relief for any person. However, they cannot escape their circumstances because they are too depressed to contemplate the idea of improving. The effort necessary to earn oneself a permanent residence is strenuous in itself, and so many people who try eventually give up. As such, even with governmental aid, the problem of homelessness cannot be eradicated easily.