Homeless, Young and Human
As many as 3.5 million Americans (HomeAid) become homeless each year. Of these, more than 1 million of them are children and on any given night, more than 300,000 children (HomeAid) are homeless. Homelessness can caused by a lot of thing in our lives. Job loss, domestic violence, divorce and family disputes can cause it. Mental illness, stress disorder, and physical disabilities are also responsible for a large portion of the homeless. All of these can cause homelessness but violence at home is obviously the biggest cause for youth homeless people. Because of that there are 3 important effects. These are criminal activity, barrier to education, and substance abuse.
Violence at home is one of the major cause of whether youth will experience homelessness. Among homeless mothers with children, more than 80 percent (NNCP) previously experienced domestic violence. A lot of youth in runaway category of homelessness report fights and physical or emotional abuse from their family members, compared with those without such experiences. These experiences can affect their lifestyles, maybe because of them, their characters will change and they might become immoral and irreverent people, who knows?
This cause can make these homeless youth may commit crimes. According to NCCP (National Center Of Children In Poverty) Research has shown that homeless youth are disproportionately involved in illegal activities as compared to housed youth. Many of these youth resort to illegal activity as part of their strategy for survival. For example, youth ,who are seeking shelter, might break into an abandoned building, or youth seeking income to meet basic needs, it might prostitute themselves or sell drugs.
Homeless youth face access barriers to education, keeping many of them from completing high school degrees or secondary education. Such barriers include school policies, credit problems, residency requirements, proper records and lack of transportation. These barriers can cause youth to be denied education system, youth remaining out of school for long periods of time. According to National Coalition for the Homeless, 87 percent of homeless youth are enrolled in a school, but only 77 percent of them attend school regularly. This affects a young person’s future ability to live independently, and also results in the development of learning problems and communication problems. Life story of David Boone for example, David Boone became homeless in his early teenage years. David lived in a variety of places for about 2 years until his mom secured a safe place for his family. He lived with friends, caring families and sometimes even on a park bench. Despite all of these issues, he graduated high school as salutatorian, and he will attend college next year on a full scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. David was accepted to Harvard University’s offer. After all of these achievements, he said, “Childhood is childhood. You live, you learn, and sometimes some challenges are thrown at you. When you feel like it’s getting tough you just keep riding it out. It always pays off to ride it out. It never pays off to quit”. As you can see, even if you are a homeless, you can be successful. He did not give up to get education. Why can not other homeless youth succeed too?
If youth does not receive education, they may tend to another harmful things like substances because they will not know the harm of all of them. Many homeless youth turn to substances to help deal with the stress and desperation caused by homelessness. According to HomeAid, studies show that substance use among youth increases as living situations become more stressful and less stable. Between 30 and 40 percent of homeless youth reports alcohol problems in their lifetime, and 40 to 50 percent of them report drug problems (NCH). These youth are significantly more likely to use marijuana, crack cocaine, and other harmful substances than the general youth population (NCH). Unfortunately, the number of homeless youth who turn to drugs and alcohol is high, also the number of homeless youth who find treatment is low. Drug and alcohol abuse among homeless youth are dangerous, it causes which leads to poor decision making. Homelessness without education leads problems about understanding of bad and good things that make stress and depression, then they will tend to substances things and also these abuses may lead crime and drug use. These 3 effects are connected to each others, if we try to educate them about all of these situations, they may try to be a sober people. Also, if we solve all of these 3 problems, then maybe we can find a solution to reduce homelessness.
In conclusion, there should be more homeless shelters and facilities for their needs, homeless people are humans just like the rest of us, and people should definitely sympathize to homeless people, because with the right foundations, charities, help and support, homelessness could be overcome, and homeless youth and people will be able to make a change in their lives but I think, the best thing will be adopting children from streets or child protection agency, and giving them a new lives and new chances in lives. If you ask me, how will it work? Majority of them do not have a chance to change their life but we can provide them a good education, feed them regularly so then they will not need to think about their hunger but most importantly, they can share their feelings with us and they might understand what real family is.
Work Cited
The National Center on Family Homelessness. America’s Youngest Outcasts. June 8, 2009.
Alejandro Lazo. Homeless Population in U.S. WSJ. November 17, 2016.
