Introduction
Homeless families and individuals live without adequate shelters and basic needs. The homeless is a category of people who face severe forms of economic and social conditions. There are hardly any homeless conditions that do not compromise human health or complicate their ability to access basic needs including, food, health, education and financial services.
The homeless individuals with mental illnesses particularly face a higher risk or becoming casualties of some unlawful acts. The risk factors related to homelessness commonly happen concurrently with other societal factors such as intolerance, poverty and unemployment. For example, the homeless people are denied access to formal education, health care, banking facilities and are exposed to crime and abuse among others.
Liberalists argue that homelessness results from the general nature and the poor economic structures and the manner in which finances and resources are distributed in the society (Hurley, 2002). The liberalists claim that the poor economies cause unemployment making it difficult for the affected individuals to pay for housing and other essential services.
Conversely, the conservatives view the homeless as deserving and lazy individuals given to drug addiction and as people who should not be offered any help. Conservatives believe that the society should not intervene in the conditions of the homeless population. Some extremists go to an extent of preventing people from offering help to the homeless population. They claim that many cases of homelessness occur due to personal faults and that the individuals ought to blame themselves for their condition (Hurley, 2002).
Homelessness predominantly occurs in the developing countries and cities such as Cairo and Tunis where material resources are often insufficient and underdeveloped. The increase in homelessness in the developed countries usually indicates the uneven distribution of national resources.
This is particularly evident in countries such as Canada and the United States. The condition is basically a consequence of the increasing poverty levels and lack of affordable housing which arise due to many other factors including the rise in the cost of rental housing.
This paper seeks to address homelessness as a major problem experienced in both the developed and underdeveloped nations. It then highlights the severe impacts of homelessness to individuals and the society at large. The paper then gives significant comparison between the different ideologies regarding homelessness including the liberal, conservative and extremist viewpoints. The paper also emphasizes on the major similarities and differences between homelessness in the developed and developing countries.
Background
Several definitions are used to give the meaning of homelessness. According to Tipple & Speak (2010), homelessness can be described as a housing situation that does not satisfy the minimum housing standard for an individual or a group of individuals for a period of time, exposing the affected individuals to risks and unfavorable circumstances including poor shelter, lack of food and other basic needs (p. 50).
The term home is an important concept that represents the ideas of identity, belonging, security, comfort and so on. A home provides an environment where an individual is able to set up important social relations with other people through accommodating them in his or her own premise or where the individual is able to choose not to relate to others if he or she decides to do so.
It could also refer to a place or an area where an individual is able to identify the space as his or her own property and where he is able to manage its shape and form. In the past, homelessness was described as lack of the right or freedom to gain access to secure and simply adequate housing.
Demographics
According to Thompson (2007) there are between 100 million and 1 billion homeless people in the world. In 1987, the number of homeless people in Canada was between 100,000 and 250,000 out of a total population of 28 million people (Hargrave, 2005). There are, however, no accurate statistics of the homeless people in Canada.
Canada’s National Secretariat on homelessness recently estimated the number of Canadians who are homeless as 150,000. Other reports give higher figures of up to 300,000 people. This lack of accurate data limits Canada’s ability to address the problem (Guest, 1997).
Ideological Approaches to Homelessness
Liberals perceive homelessness as a consequence of poor organization and weak economic standing of a country. Thus, the people faced with the challenge do not receive adequate services and facilities such as housing and good health care. In contrast, the conservatives claim that homelessness is a result of laziness and involvement in other evils in the society (Hurley, 2002). Hence, they desist from supporting the homeless.
Causes of Homelessness in Toronto, Canada
The CBC news census report has recently approximated that there are about 5060 homeless individuals on the streets and across the city of Toronto Canada. The homeless population in Toronto includes both the people living in the streets and those who risk becoming homeless. In 1996 approximately 26000 persons used the shelter system in the city of Toronto over the last ten years.
Poverty
Over 200,000 individuals remain homeless in Canada. The increase in homelessness is strongly linked to the rising poverty levels and lack of affordable housing. The number of individuals living in extreme poverty has increased and over forty percent of individuals are children.
The main significant reasons behind the prevailing poverty include the eroding jobs and employment opportunities as well as the decreasing wages of large segments of the workforce and the reduced public assistance. Canadian cities were considered to offer good health services, quality education and sufficient and reliable employment programs. However these have gradually faded away leading to the rise in the homeless population (Leo, 2005).
Lack of affordable housing
Homelessness is fundamentally caused by lack of housing that can be afforded by the poor individuals in Toronto. The accommodation that the poor persons can afford has not profited many in the large cities such as Vancouver and Toronto. The low rental buildings have not been created for a long time.
Many developers in Toronto together with other cities claim that construction of the low income rental apartments creates low profit and has compelled many residents of the Canadian city to choose older, inadequate and deteriorating housing. The cost of refurbishing this type of housing is unaffordable and often surpasses the market cost of the home (Leo, 2005). This has led to a severe shortage of the affordable housing.
Even though the population has drastically improved since the year 1996, in 2001, there were approximately over one million Canadians and city residents staying in homes they could not afford. In Toronto, today, nearly one in every five households experience affordability difficulties and the number is much greater in the inner cities that have worsened housing stocks with disproportionate and impoverished populations combined (Leo, 2005).
Deinstitutionalization
Several mentally ill individuals have been abandoned on the streets of Toronto and other major cities. This was particularly one of the main causes of homeless in the early 1980s. The failure by the government to maintain social support programs during the late 1970s led to the creation of health care programs to support the mentally ill patients.
Lack of sufficient funding and financial support to the health care programs however led to their ineffectiveness in taking care of the vulnerable individuals. The individuals with mental health problems have therefore been abandoned and left with no alternative other than spend their livelihood on the streets (Leo, 2005).
Evictions
Tenants are regularly evicted from rental apartments for minimal rent arrears. About eighty percent of eviction applications for arrears are much below one thousand dollars or an average monthly rent. Approximately seven hundred eviction applicants annually in Toronto are against tenants who do not owe anything but are supposed to have been indefatigably late in the past.
In several instances, in Toronto, the tenants are evicted when the Landlord owes the tenant some funds when the arrears are less than the deposit paid by the tenant at the start of the tenancy to cover the rent for the last month. The landlords have obtained greater incentives to eject tenants by means of rent decontrol which enables the landlords to raise the rent to any value once the tenants have been ejected and when a new tenancy is established. All these have resulted in homelessness each year.
Thousands of persons including children and adults are evicted regularly. Children are forced to terminate their schooling and their emotional and physical health is put at a great risk. There have also been forced evictions of the communities of the homeless individuals from squatter communities in the Canadian cities.
Many households have been dislocated from low income communities in Toronto. Most recently, for example communities of homeless persons have started to organize squatter households and communities and have faced fierce evictions from the police. Instead of getting some assistance from the government it has appeared to tolerate the eviction efforts.
A single mother in Toronto city, depending on some social support and not able to pay rent with an allowance of the average rent is compulsorily ejected by a uniformed individual and abandoned on the street with all her properties and the children. No one gets concerned to ask the evictees whether they have an alternative place to move to. Regardless of the weather conditions or environmental hazards, hundreds of individuals in the Canadian cities continue to be evicted as part of implementing the rule of law in the country.
Political decisions
Definition and approaches to homelessness in Canada reshaped by several political ideologies. The local governmental policy design, develop and execute public policies at all levels of the Canadian government. Knowledge generators, decision makers and knowledge brokers interact to enhance the rationality of the policy making process by means of policy analysis techniques (Levinson, 2004).
Local city mayors and city councils are seen as decision makers, research institutes and academics. The analytical frameworks are however often mismatched with the local policy analysis process because of the underdeveloped nature or absence of the knowledge generators and brokers in many of the municipalities.
Canada’s few urban academics could not probably act as knowledge generators for thousands of the municipalities. Where local interests are often dominant, they are hardly ever long-lived, organized or based on more than emotive responses to local policy problems. These factors have led to increased level of homelessness in the largest Canadian cities (Bistrich, 1999).
Unemployment and inadequate funds
Joblessness has landed many people into financial difficulties, causing them to be evicted and harassed by landlords from their places of residence. Mortgage arrears are said to significantly contribute to the homeless conditions. According to Bistrich (1999), some of the homeless are evicted by their landlords for rent overdue or conflict. Unemployment is the main cause of homelessness. In Toronto, job losses and layoffs have highly contributed to increased homelessness (Hargrave, 2005).
Family Breakdown
The several cases of racism, stigma and social segregation have seriously contributed to family breakdown in Canada, rendering many people homeless. Many women and children have been left homeless due to divorce or when they desert their families due to matters relating to sexual harassment (Guest, 1997)
Substance abuse
Drug abuse has been regarded as a major pathway to homelessness in the developing and developed countries. In Canada, the affected individuals remain without financial support. An assessment of some samples of families in Canada has recently revealed that families with substance abuse disorders are more likely to remain homeless than those without.
In his article, Bistrich (1999) showed that about 30% of the homeless people were raised in children’s homes or by parents who are psychologically unstable. Some of the homeless children were raised by alcoholic parents. Another 20 to 30 % have a criminal background or have been jailed in the past. These contribute to the rise in homelessness.
Solutions to Homelessness
Shelters and drop-Ins
A community based health care organization referred to as Street health in Toronto was founded in 1980s when a number of homeless individuals identified obstacles to accessing good health care and some nurses responded by providing local drop-in health services. The street health program has greatly expanded and today it provides a variety of programs and services for the homeless persons including marginalized and mentally ill individuals in Toronto city.
Other programs organized and managed by the street health institutions include HIV/AIDS prevention, identification and replacement, nursing care as well as street outreach and harm reduction programs.
The street health institutions have acknowledged the need to obtain data and to carry out research in order to build up frontline services and to construct sound evidence grounds upon which to form its advocacy efforts. Street health engages in research partnerships and carries out community based research on the significant subjects relating to the homeless community (Kirst, Schaefer-McDaniel & Hwang, 2010).
Supportive Housing
Various models of supportive housing have been used to emphasize the provision and protection of secure and non-profit housing that matches with the community development besides providing medical and psychological support programs.
The supportive housing has been used in Toronto and other large Canadian cities to provide housing coupled with the services for the individuals regarded as susceptible to homelessness or marginalized and to help them live independently.
The different forms of supportive housing differ greatly ranging from institutional arrangements for independent self-contained or shared accommodation programs.
The services may be provided on-site by independent organizations or community agencies in partnership with the housing institutions. Residents who need medical attention and services, employment and life skills training including the youth, women, and people with disabilities benefit from the supportive housing programs (Kirst, Schaefer-McDaniel & Hwang, 2010).
Government intervention
The Canadian federal administration and department of human resources develops homelessness initiatives that employ special strategies to help communities to plan long-term solutions to the matters relating to homelessness. In September the year 2010 for example the Canadian chamber of commerce backed up a policy declaration of the annual conference demanding for reallocation of the federal grant
The homeless diversion programs
The rooming house monitoring project was formed in Toronto in the year 1992 as an initiative to enhance the conditions and care in privately owned houses and to people shift to independent living in a rooming house. The project aims at upgrading substandard buildings and targets the vulnerable individuals living in the private rooming houses especially the mentally ill (Fierman, et al, 1991).
The project monitoring demands that the landlords should enter into an operating agreement with the project detailing the food, physical and personal care standards that have to be maintained. The landlords meet frequently with the monitors and tenants and plan menus as they develop relations and trust between the landlords and the tenants.
The range of support services assists the tenants to become more independent and take responsibility for their assistance rather than convey them to the landlords. Project caseworkers meet with households at the income maintenance office in the neighborhood. The team explores all potential housing options including staying with friends or relatives ensuring that the families obtain or apply all the benefits for which they are eligible (Bibars, 1998).
Community employment and enterprise development
One of the common attribute of the homeless individuals is that many of them face chronic poverty. Many initiatives have been used to create employment opportunities to help the homeless individuals to regain confidence and self esteem in their personal abilities. Many of the organizations manage to create their own enterprises to the point of self-reliance. Rideau Street Youth Initiative in Ottawa is an example which involves the improvement of downtown region.
Impact of Homelessness on Cities and Society
Challenges in controlling children
Single parents experience the psychological challenge of being homeless and a greater challenge of raising their children without the essential basic needs. In some cities, homeless parents have reported difficulty in controlling their children. There is increased conflict between children in temporary shelters than experienced by those in regular homes.
Children do not understand the dramatic events and are therefore psychologically affected by the distress (Zima, et al, 1994). Children born to homeless parents find it difficult to survive. Most of them die within the first twelve months (Fierman, et al, 1991). Academic development of homeless children is also disadvantaged. They perform poorly in schools because of the mobility challenges. Most of them change schools at least twice a year (Guest, 1997).
Sexual abuse
The young and adult females are driven into marital and domestic servitude, making them susceptible to sexual exploitation and abuse. According to YWCA Canada press release (13 March 2012), in Canadian cities, 25-30 % of the people living in the streets and in shelters are women, and teenage girls make up one-third of the homeless youth in urban centers. When women and girls are homeless, they are more vulnerable to sexual abuse. Some young homeless women end up in prostitution (Guest, 1997)
Poor health
Homelessness complicates an individual’s access to proper health care services, exposing them to poor health conditions. It perpetuates the unfavorable health conditions by obstructing an individual’s effort to treat and prevent diseases. The physical health of homeless people weakens because of exposure to the harsh environmental conditions. They suffer from respiratory diseases because of cold at night. Sometimes exposure to harsh weather condition leads to death (Zima, et al, 1994).
Increases rate of crime
Young people run away from home due to various forms of abuse such as sexual harassment. While on the streets, the homeless become exposed to the danger of participating in criminal activities such as robbery. This affects the society because it creates a great sense of insecurity and becomes a threat to the lives of the people who reside in the regions (Zima, et al, 1994).
Public Health challenge
At the extreme end of poverty, many individuals and families crowd the streets due to lack of housing. The social impact is that the overcrowding in refugee camps and on the streets exposes the affected individuals and the society to the dangers of getting new infections and diseases.
Children suffer serious health issues and experience more complications. This later creates an unemployable class of individuals with weakened coping capabilities and who cannot offer the slightest social and physical support to the community (Zima, et al, 1994).
Creates economic complexities
Funding homeless shelters, refugee camps and medical facilities are often very expensive. The taxpayers’ funds are used to fund the programs. This, in a way causes the federal government to direct a significant amount of funds toward the services aimed at taking care of the homeless.
Affects tourism
Many tourists make efforts to avoid a few small areas for example when booking rooms. They will for instance choose to avoid regions for panhandling teenagers and high poverty areas.
Difference between homelessness in developed and developing world
Correct data/census information
Many developing countries do not have the correct figures of their homeless and therefore cannot carry out proper planning to support them. Though the contrary is not always true in developed countries, most of them experience different types of homelessness and have the right statistics for the homeless (Guest, 1997).
Social and health conditions
Unlike in developed countries, homeless people in the developing world face all kinds of social abuses. They are evicted, arrested, harassed and abused (Bibars, 1998). They are often victims of crimes. In the developing world, homeless people are not given temporary accommodation. They spend time on the streets begging and asking for food and clothing (Zima, B. T. et al, 1994).
In developing countries, homeless people do not access health facilities like those in developed countries. Most developed countries have mobile clinics specifically for the homeless people. They are often provided with shelter by local authorities in industrialized countries. This is not the often case in developing countries. Homelessness in developing countries is caused by failure of housing supply systems to address the needs of the rapidly growing urban population (Springer, 2000).
Conclusions
The impact of homelessness is severe especially for women and children. The situation can be reduced if authorities develop relevant policies which cater for the poor and the homeless in the society. Some cities have developed plans to ensure that in the next few years there will be no homeless individuals (Watson and Austenberry, 1986). For example, Calgary has significantly reduced homelessness through strategies such as providing affordable housing and providing better support services for the people who move into the homes.
References
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