#one issue

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One of the basic human rights outlined in Catholic social teaching is shelter. All people are entitled to a roof over their head and a place to sleep. However, hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone are homeless and it’s said as many as 1.6 billion are without “adequate housing.” 150 million are without any housing, worldwide. The problem of homelessness is often ignored or disregarded under the assumption that it’s a condition sufferers have brought onto themselves by poor decision-making. However, people can be homeless for a myriad of reasons. Some people are disabled and can’t afford to take care of themselves or work, so they end up homeless. Those disabilities can be physical or mental; about 1/3 of the US homeless population of 600,000 (so about 200,000) suffer from schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness. Regardless of whether their homelessness is their fault or not, that doesn’t invalidate the inalienable human right of shelter that everyone is entitled to. Yet, there is a very real and verifiable homeless problem in not only the US but in the entire world that isn’t given nearly enough attention.

It may seem nonsensical for homeless people to live on the streets when there are homeless shelters for them to live in. However, as well-meaning as shelters, which are a good thing, are, the actual execution and establishment of the shelters, as well as the maintenance, has been very poor. (In the US, at least.) There are many reasons for homeless people to risk the streets, rather than stay in a shelter. For one, conditions in shelters are often very poor. Shelters, no matter how clean they are, pose the risk of getting parasites like head lice, pubic lice, scabies, or bed bugs. Diseases also spread easily in close quarters, and homeless people are often sick. Shelters also become something like hunting grounds for predators (Of the human variety); people in shelters are vulnerable and easy targets for jerks who want to rape, assault, or harass someone without consequence. Police don’t often take the complaints of homeless people seriously, so they’d rather the entire situation all together. Despite what the Americans with Disabilities Act says, some disabled people will be turned away from shelters and accommodations like walkers, crutches, or braces will be confiscated during check-in if they aren’t turned away. The biggest problem is that, no matter how many people willingly stay away from shelters, there are never enough beds. Yet, sometimes people will set all of these problems aside to seek shelters, but still get turned away. Even if caregivers give paperwork to shelters stating someone isn’t a danger to themselves or others, shelters may still deny them due to mental illness. 40% of homeless teens and youth identify as LGBT and avoid shelters because them of those places, like the parents who discarded them, discriminate against LGBT people. Even if people working in shelters care about the homeless they shelter and try to keep the facility neat and clean, there’s an issue with underfunding. Sometimes facilities don’t get the proper funding to cover maintenance and accommodations or take care of enough people. These are only a few of the many reasons homeless people may choose the streets over the shelters and they all need to be addressed to help the bigger issues at large.

We are entitled to shelter, but when we lose the ability to pay for it ourselves, we become criminals, socially and legally. Once you’re homeless, you are considered the enemy, or lesser, or a nuisance. There are laws called anti-vagrancy laws which make having “no visible means of support” a misdemeanor, punishable by jail time or a fine. They make being poor a crime. There are other laws, such as loitering laws and panhandling laws. Our own Daytona Beach has been considering a new panhandling law to protect both the homeless and the homed citizens. Outside of legal attacks on the homeless, there is such a thing as ‘hostile architecture,’ where people will build anti-homeless measures into their buildings or onto public property. This could be spikes outside of store windows or bars in the middle of benches. This isn’t just a problem in America. It’s happening in the UK, France, and Germany, too. Instead of fining or imprisoning people or making it harder for them to have a place to sleep, we should be helping them get a place to stay.