Homelessness In The United States

The Department of Justice estimates that every year, over 1.7 million teens experience homelessness in the United States. While the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, values of capitalism in America are, in some ways, creating economic inequality. Economic inequality leads to high divorce rates, single mothers, kids running away from home, drug and alcohol abuse, and more. More times than not, youth homelessness is caused by a greater desire to be on the streets than in their abusive, violent, neglected home environments. Throughout the course of this research paper, I will explore how economic inequality leads to issues that result in a high youth homeless populations across the United States. The root cause of youth …show more content…
What used to be well paying jobs are not minimum wage service jobs. (Weinberger) Many people hesitate to help the homeless population in the United States because many people believe it is that person’s fault, and theirs alone, that they are homeless. However, there are so many other contributing factors to why people become homeless. Economic problems arise for many families across the United Stated, and homeless youth are an unfortunate outcome of that, which is very far from their fault alone.
One economic factor that contributes youth homelessness is popular media’s approach to get rich quick schemes and how youth can become wealthy through criminal activity. For example, many youth today start dealing drugs, prostituting themselves, or stealing, as a way to make money. There are many examples on the media and in society that show these youth how cool it is to have a lot of money, and that it is okay to result to making money in these illegal ways. This leads to criminal records, which make it all the more difficult for young people to get high paying jobs and end the cycle of …show more content…
Thousands of youth are placed into the foster care system in the United States, and this creates for a very unstable environment. These youth can go back and forth between homelessness at an earlier age, and are affected by not having a real “home” for a longer period of time. There are also issues with temporary housing, institutional housing, or shelters for homeless youth. For example, I was explaining Crosswalk earlier and how they help provide shelter and education for homeless youth. However, Crosswalk can only provide their services for youth under the age of 18. Many times, youth will have to be discharged from the program or housing arrangement because of their age, even though they are not ready to be on their own financially or have any way of finding shelter. For many homeless youth, 18 is a difficult age to be discharged from programs like these, because they have just graduated high school, may have plans for college, but are all of a sudden lacking shelter and necessary funds for finding these important resources. This is an extremely likely time for these youth to start living on the street again, getting involved with drugs or old addiction

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