The concept of homelessness faces several misconceptions about the social status, mental health, and social belonging of the beggars. There are some myths concerning the sense of place of homeless people. It is believed that people become homeless not because of social constraints that prevent them from finding a place of employment and earning shelter but only because of their mental condition. The current paper discusses the issue of housing market insecurity to disprove this myth.
Homelessness has a wide range of causes, and each case is individual and dissimilar to all others. Nevertheless, while some scholars suppose that people’s characteristics are the reason for it, others claim that the problem lies in “the low-income housing shortage” (Timmer et al. 18). The point of concern is that the housing market, particularly in the United States, does not have enough low-cost living space that is affordable to the economical marginals and people with low income.
The cause of this situation is economic instability. Timmer et al. reckon that the inflations of the 1980s became a driver for the current situation (18). According to Timmer et al., the cost of housing rose dramatically while the income remained at the same pre-inflationary level (18). The rising number of homeless people not only in the USA but also in Europe proves the idea mentioned above.
The point of the impact of housing prices on the causes of homeless is debatable. It could be argued that the critical driver of the inability to purchase a dwelling is not the high housing prices, but people failing to be employed or earn enough. Homeless people are often unemployed because of their drug or alcohol addiction, low qualifications, lack of desire to find a job, and change life. There are claims that homelessness is a personal choice of people who do not want to be a part of society. They are a part of the homeless world; they socialize more with people of the same social status, and they do not believe that changes are possible.
Nevertheless, unemployment and low salaries have another explanation, and are not always connected with the individual believes of homeless people. Jones et al., in the article, show that even people who have a working place could suffer from housing insecurity (121). He calls the situation when employed people could not escape poverty “in-work homelessness” (Jones et al. 121). The inference is based on interviews with people deprived of living conditions above the minimal rate.
Such a phenomenon occurs when people, even with a full-time regular job, do not get enough money to pay the rental fees. Moreover, they are not able to rent a room and save some money to purchase their housing later (Jones et al. 126). Consequently, due to the small wage, employees do not risk changing their job for a better one because they have no money in case their attempt fails.
To conclude, the crisis of the housing market in combination with the inability of the policymakers to provide full employment and a decent salary rate are the causes of homelessness. However, the role of individual characteristics still could not be denied. People gain addictions and mental illness after being homeless for a while, and those addictions help them to escape reality. Nevertheless, the economic causes of homelessness have many more justifications over the recent period than miscaptions about the psychological well-being of the people who have no permanent shelter.
Thus, the belief that people are homeless because they identify themselves with a social group of those who are deprived of a place of constant living, and because they have some physical diseases is more a misconception than truth. The housing market crisis, in combination with meager salaries, unemployment, and lack of access to social lifts provide a ground for homelessness.
Works Cited
Timmer, Doug A., et al. Paths to homelessness: Extreme poverty and the urban housing crisis. Routledge, 2019.
Jones, Katy, et al. “Working and homeless: exploring the interaction of housing and labour market insecurity.” Social Policy and Society, vol. 19, no.1, 2020, pp. 121-132.