It doesn’t matter what city or town you visit in this country, at some point you have seen a homeless person. In most major cities, the downtown area has many homeless people walking around, and sometimes asking for money. When you see the homeless, it may make you feel uncomfortable. Some may question how these people allowed themselves to come to the point of homelessness. We rationalize our negative attitudes toward the homeless by saying “they are probably drug addicts or alcoholics, so they brought this situation on themselves.” There are probably a number of homeless people who are addicts of some kind, but the homeless also consists of families. Families like yours and mine who had a job loss, family illness, or some sort of misfortune that led to their homelessness. Many of the homeless are single mothers who have jobs, but don’t make enough in wages to afford a home for their children. There is always a reason why a person is faced with homelessness.

When people become homeless, the first thing they attempt to do is find shelter. They will most likely attempt to get into a local homeless shelter. We might think that it is an easy task to show up at a shelter, and you will have a place to rest your head for a while, but this is just not the case in most cities across the country. There is an availability issue is most homeless shelters, and if you are fortunate enough to find a shelter that is available, there could be a nominal fee. There are people that may not be able to afford the fee. There is also the issue of the safety of some of these homeless shelters. You have people from all walks of life staying at these shelters. You may have people with drug addictions, undocumented child predators, people with mental illnesses staying at these shelters. Another issue homeless people face when considering staying at a shelter is the health concerns. Some shelters are not very clean, and you may have to deal with a number of insect infestations, and people with communicable diseases, but if you are homeless your only alternative is to live on the street. This option is just as dangerous because you may face being assaulted, robbed, even murdered when you live on the street. You also have to contend with inclement weather. One reason why you see so many homeless people on the streets during the day is because a lot of shelters force the homeless out of the shelter during the day, and allow them to return at night. Finding shelter is no easy task if you become homeless.

The issue of homelessness is a serious one, and it affects everyone because not one of us knows what could happen in our future that could lead us to being homeless. This is why it is so important that we should all care about this issue, and do what we can to bring awareness to the plight of the homeless.