Homelessness is a very large problem that America has come to face with.
children, families, babies, veterans, and the elderly live day by day without food, water, a roof over their .
head, or love. People that are mentally ill also have to tough it out on the streets, which can be very .
confusing to them, and dangerous to us. This problem must be solved soon, because it's not getting better .
fast enough. .
People have not always had to suffer with homelessness. Though the problem has almost always .
existed, it had not reached a severe level until the early 1970's. With every war there has been a small .
trickle of homeless veterans to follow, but the Vietnam war and Korean war left a wave of many people .
without anywhere to go. This was just the start of the problem. Many homeless people lived in places .
called Skid Row. A place with cheap bars, entertainment, and very cheap housing in buildings called SROs, .
or Single Room Occupancy. They could be rented from .50 to .90 cents a night. Then cities started to .
grow, and in the mid 1970s One million SROs were replaced with parking lots, buildings and apartments. .
Skid Row eventually vanished. Then the government decided to decriminalize drunkenness, loitering, and .
vagrancy. That means there were a great many homeless people that would normally be arrested under .
these conditions, still roaming the streets. Women and children started to f!.
ilter in to the homeless scene, and then in a huge recession in the 1980s 11,000,000 people were laid off .
(9.7% of all jobs). The numbers of homeless people soared. It didn't stop here though. President Reagan .
and Bush dropped public housing funds from 30 billion dollars to 6.7 billion, a net loss of 37,800 houses .
per year. By the beginning of the 1990s, over one million people were on waiting lists for homes.
Homeless people can be categorized into four basic categories, families, lone, transient, or bums.
A person in a family is usually a man and wife with one to many children living on the streets.
