Reduced access to communications , such as telephones or the internet. Violent crimes against the homeless: There have been many violent crimes committed against the homeless population. A study was done in 2007 on crime rate and it showed that crime has increase at a stagnate rate. Assistance and resources available to the homeless Most countries provide a variety of services to assist homeless people.
They often provide food, shelter and clothing and may be organized and run by community organizations or by government departments.
These programs may be supported by government, charities, churches and individual donors. In 1998, a study by Koegel and Shoeing of a homeless population in Los Angeles, California, reported that a significant number of homeless do not participate in government assistance programs, and the authors reported being puzzled as to why that was, with the only poss
...ible suggestion was that the transaction costs were perhaps too high. Income sources:
Many nonprofit organizations such as Goodwill industries maintain a mission to provide skill development and work opportunities to people with barriers to employment, though most of these organizations are not primarily turned toward homeless individuals. Many cities also have street newspaper or magazines: publications designed to provide employment opportunity for homeless people or others in need.
While some homeless have paying jobs, some must seek other methods to make money. Begging or panhandling is one option but is becoming increasingly illegal in many cities.
Despite the stereotype, not all homeless people panhandle and not all panhandlers are homeless. Another option is bucking: performing tricks, playing music, drawing on the sidewalk, or offering some other form of entertainment in exchange fo
donations. In cities where plasmapheresis centers still exist, homeless people may generate income through frequent visits to these centers.
Homeless people have been known to commit crimes just to be sent to Jail or prison for food and shelter. In police slang, this is called "four squares and a meal" referring to the four squares wall and three hot meals.
Prisoners are giving a cot to sleep on and for the homeless that’s good. Invented in 2005, in Seattle, Bum advertising, an informal system of hiring homeless people to advertise by a young entrepreneur is providing food, money, and bottles of water to sign-holding homeless in the Northwest.
Homeless advocates accuse the founder, Ben Rogovy, and the process, of exploiting the poor and take particular offense to the use of the word "bum" which is generally considered pejorative United States
Housing first is an initiative to help the homeless get re-integrated into society, and out of homeless shelters. It was initiated by the federal government's Interagency Council on homelessness. It asks cities to come up with a plan to end chronic homelessness. In this direction, the belief that if homeless people are given independent housing to start off with, with some proper social supports, then there would be no need for emergency homeless shelters, which it considers a good outcome. However, this is a controversial position.
In Boston, Massachusetts, in September 2007, an outreach to the homeless was initiated in the Boston Common, after some arrests and shootings, and in anticipation of the cold winter ahead. This outreach targets homeless people who would normally spend their sleeping time on the Boston Common, and tries to
get them into housing, trying to skip the step of an emergency shelter. Applications for Boston Housing Authority were being handed out and filled out and submitted. This is an attempt to enact by outreach the Housing First initiative, federally mandated.
Boston's Mayor, Thomas Menino, was quoted as saying "The solution to homelessness is permanent housing.
" Still, this is a very controversial strategy, especially if the people are not able to sustain a house with proper community, health, substance counseling, and mental health supportive programs. Refuges for the homeless Outdoors: A homeless person will sleep on the ground in a sleeping bag or tent, or improvised shelter, such as a large cardboard box, in a park or vacant lot. Shantytowns: Ad hoc campsites of improvised shelters and shacks, usually near rail yard, interstate and high transportation veins.
Derelict structures: abandoned or condemned buildings Squatting in an unoccupied house where a homeless person may live without payment and without the owner`s knowledge or permission. Vehicles: cars or trucks are used as a temporary or sometimes long-term living refuge, for example, by those recently evicted from a home. Public places: parks, bus or train stations, airports, public transportation vehicles (by continual riding where unlimited passes are available), hospital lobbies or waiting areas, college campuses, and 24-hour businesses such as coffee shops.
Many ublic places use security guards or police to prevent people from loitering or sleeping at these locations for a variety of reasons such as, safety, and comfort. Homeless shelters such as emergency cold-weather and balls shelters opened by churches or community agencies, which may consist of cots in a heated warehouse, or temporary Christmas
shelter.. Inexpensive Boarding house are also called flophouses, they offer cheap, low-quality temporary lodging. Residential hotels, is where a bed as opposed to an entire room can be rented cheaply in a dorm-like environment.
Inexpensive motels also offer cheap, low-quality temporary lodging.
However, for some who cannot afford pay rent on a monthly basic housing my choose to live in a cheap motel. Friends or family may sometimes provide a temporarily sleeping place for their homeless friends or family members ("couch surfing"). Couch surfers may be harder to recognize than street homeless people Underground tunnels such as abandoned subway, maintenance, or train tunnels are popular among the permanent homeless. The inhabitants of such refuges are called in some places, like New York City, "Mole People. Natural caves beneath urban centers allow for places where the homeless can congregate.
Leaking water pipes, electric wires, and steam pipes allow for some of the essentials of living. Health care for the homeless: Health care for the homeless is a major public health challenge. Homeless people are more likely to suffer injuries and medical problems from their lifestyle on the street, which includes poor nutrition, substance abuse, exposure to the severe elements of weather, and a higher exposure to violence (robberies, beatings, and so on).
Yet at the same time, they have little access to public medical services or clinics. This is a particular problem in the US where many people lack health insurance: "Each year, millions of people in the United States experience homelessness and are in desperate need of health care services.
Most do not have health insurance of any sort, and none have cash to pay
for medical care. " Homeless people often find it difficult to document their date of birth or their address.
Because homeless people usually have no place to store possessions, they often lose their belongings, including their identification and other documents, or find them destroyed by police or others. Without a photo ID, homeless persons cannot get a job or access many social services.
They can be denied access to even the most basic assistance: clothing closets, food pantries, certain public benefits, and in some cases, emergency shelters. Obtaining replacement identification is difficult. Without an address, birth certificates cannot be mailed.
Fees may be cost-prohibitive for impoverished persons. And some states will not issue birth certificates unless the person has photo identification, This problem is far less acute in countries which provide free-at-use health care, such as the UK, where hospitals are open-access day and night, and make no charges for treatment. In the US, free-care clinics, especially for the homeless do exist in major cities, but they are usually over-burdened with patients.
The conditions affecting the homeless are somewhat specialized and have opened a new area of medicine tailored to this population.
Skin conditions and diseases abound, because homeless people are exposed to extreme cold in the winter and they have little access to bathing facilities. They have problems caring for their feet and have more severe dental problems than the general population. Specialized medical textbooks have been written in order to address this issue for the providers. Many providing free care to the homeless in countries which do not offer free medical treatment organized by the state, but the services are in demand given
the limited number of medical practitioners.
For example, it might take months to get a minimal dental appointment in a free-care clinic. Communicable diseases are of many concern, especially tuberculosis, which spreads more easily in crowded homeless shelters in high density urban settings. In 1999, Dr. Susan Barrow of the Columbia University Center for Homelessness Prevention Studies reported in a study that the "age-adjusted death rates of homeless men and women were 4 times those of the general US population and 2 to 3 times those of the general population of New York City.
In 2004, Boston Health Care for the Homeless in conjunction with the National Health Care for the Homeless Council published a medical manual called "The Health Care of Homeless Persons edited by James J. O'Connell, M. D. , specifically for the treatment of the homeless population. In June 2008, in Boston, Massachusetts, the Jean Yawkey Place, a four-story, 77,653 square-feet building, was opened by the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program is an entire full service building on the Boston Medical Center campus dedicated to providing health are for the homeless.
It also contains a long term care facility, the Barbara McInnis House, which expanded to 104 beds, which is the first and largest medical respite program for homeless people in the United States. International law and homelessness: Since the publication of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Charter of the United Nations—UN) in 1948, the public perception has been increasingly changing to a focus on the human http://en. wikipedia. rg/wiki/Right right of housing, travel and migration as a part of individual self-determination rather than the human condition. The Declaration,
an international law reinforcement of the Nuremberg Trial Judgments, upholds the rights of one nation to intervene in the affairs of another if said nation is abusing its citizens, and rose out of a 1939-1945 World War II Atlantic environment of extreme split between "haves" and "have not’s.
" The modern study of homeless phenomena is most frequently seen in this historical context. Tracking and counting the homeless:
In the USA, the federal government's HUD agency has required federally funded organizations to use a computer tracking system for the homeless and their statistics, called HMIS (Homeless Management Information System). There has been some opposition to this kind of tracking by privacy advocacy groups, such as EPIC. However, HUD considers its reporting techniques to be reasonably accurate for homeless in shelters and programs in its Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress.
Determining and counting the number of homeless is very difficult in general due to their lifestyle habits.
The so-called "hidden homeless" out of sight of the normal population and perhaps staying on private property. ] Various countries, states, and cities have come up with differing means and techniques to calculate an approximate count. For example, a one night "homeless census count,” usually held in the early Winter, for the year is a technique used by a number of American cities, especially Boston, Massachusetts Los Angeles, California uses a mixed set of techniques for counting, including the point-in-time street count.
Developing and undeveloped countries: The number of homeless people worldwide has grown steadily in recent years.
In some Third World nations such as India, Nigeria, and South Africa, homelessness is rampant, with millions of children living
and working on the streets. Homelessness has become a problem in the countries of China, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines despite their growing prosperity, mainly due to migrant workers who have trouble finding permanent homes.
For people in Russia, especially the youth, alcoholism and substance abuse is a major cause and reason for becoming and continuing to be homeless. The United Nations, United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (UN-Habitat) wrote in its Global Report on Human Settlements in 1995: "Homelessness is a problem in developed as well as in developing countries. In London, for example, life expectancy among the homeless is more than 25 years lower than the national average. Poor urban housing conditions are a global problem, but conditions are worst in developing countries.
