A Call For Developed Countries!

Homelessness can be identified as a struggle with living, based on varied socio-economic, mental and political factors. Every country now and then is facing this deep-rooted problem, some are experiencing drastic changes. Here, the argument arises that how do those countries state themselves as 'developed' or 'industrialized while a part of their land is filled with deprived people? What kind of advancement is this that makes 40% of people accumulate all the wealth while the majority lives on the streets? Rhetorically, such queries will be addressed in this passage through exemplification of such unglorified areas in the United States of America like New York, Sans Francisco and Los Angeles that consists of a majority of vagrants since the Great Depression.

Homelessness is a phenomenon that doesn’t appear in a year or two rather, it rampages its roots gradually over time. By 2015, it increases somehow in the bay area, tenderloin of sans Francisco due to unemployment, mental health and other glitches. By the reluctance of the government, the homeless community crystallized in particular areas, as the government allowed encampments all over the city. The cherry on the top is that the district attorney Chess Boudin decriminalized tent camping, drug use, prostitution and public defecation, providing a breathing space for prisoners’ release from jails; covering the sidewalks of the city streets. As the crime rates rise, families living in San Francisco relocate themselves, meanwhile about 450 homeless people migrate from other parts of the country. This causes an increase in drug use and other vicious crimes. Initially, the government did not realize the in-take of drugs seriously as they interpret it as a medicine but it turns out into a whole drug addiction which later on causes a full-scale sales activity. The city government spends $1 billion per year on homelessness but it was too late to tackle the situation. From 1999 to 2014, they took the initiative to construct 61000 affordable housing units which ended up as a futile effort.

In the 1950s homelessness sweeps in New York’s mental health policies of excavating patients as the local communes were way better in providing medications as compared to institutions, causing more than 80,000 patients to occupy SROS’s, a cheap single-room-occupancy in the city area. In between, 1980’s to 1990s due to the tax policies, SROs starts to decline as they tried to modify their hostels into expensive residential houses. This leads to a rise in homelessness as a gap between rents and incomes of the poorest households persuade them to live on the streets. In 1961, the Vera Institute of Justice enacted the Manhattan Bowery Project, through which vouchers enable homeless people to join shelters but it failed due to the poor management of health as diseases like tuberculosis begins to spread among people. Many shelters get filled doubled because of the cold weather condition in the city. In South Bronx, ‘’PATH’’ the only intake centre for derelict obliged them to live in shelters.

Nevertheless, Los Angeles’s famous Skid Row homelessness is drastically swelling because of the greater number of unaffordable lower-class families in the regions of high residential costs. In 1968 city government invest large sums of money to redevelop Bunker Hill’s Victorian boarding houses for the rich but rejects the clearance of slums of skid row, which later results in a dumping ground in hospitals and prisons, where slum people are forced to live. In the 1980’s the issue hyped up when encampments were found under the freeway overpasses, where people were facing both mental and public service health crises. A large concentration of people in camps and tents exposed to several health risks due to lack of sanitation, throwing used injections and public defecation; leading towards the spread of hepatitis A and HIV among people. Reportedly in 2018, about half of LA’s population suffered homelessness due to substance abuse and mental illness. Around 60,000 people are reported to be homeless per day. Also, the city’s policies of releasing prisoners from jail who went upon the streets increase the risk for people living there as to overcome crime, police gave an arrest warrant for a minor thing like jaywalking. In 2015, a homeless man named Charley was shot, forced and killed by police Los Angeles Police Department. His case gains the spotlight as being a patient of mental health, he didn’t receive the treatment because of his poor status.

Conclusively, this issue should be held as a deep concern for the developed countries. They had to tackle this responsibility by involving all the sectors including mayors of the city, private sectors like civil society, NGOs or business firms, educational institutions and members of ministerial government. Furthermore, the city government should advocate for private businesses to donate a sum of money for the redevelopment of rehabilitation centres so that homeless individual could have access to all their basic needs i.e. medicines, vaccines and counselling. Secondly, the educational institutions with the assistance of the governmental sector should provide fee concessions or at least free education to homeless people for their future social mobility. Thirdly, the decriminalization of drug use should be retorted as these give criminals and drug addicts in trading it in the Black market. Fourthly, the ministerial government should assist Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Programs by properly using grants provided by the city government in order to provide a permanent living to needy families. Additionally, preventive measures should be taken for the regulation of sanitation to reduce the spread of ailments like HIV/AIDs, Hepatitis A and B.

Thus, by the execution of all the above conclusive measures, the issue of homelessness can be reduced to some extent. Because problems are solved by taking action in the course.