Homelessness
Perceptions or Misconceptions?
People who are homeless are lazy.
 Common reasons people become homeless:
Violence or sexual abuse at home
 Mental illness
 Addictions
 Poverty
 Rarely do people choose to live on the streets.
 In a study of street youth in 2002, 45.7% reported being
physically attacked.
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 “The worst thing was not knowing where you were going to sleep.
Who knows what’s going to happen to you.”
(Mean Streets, p. 41)
People who are homeless just
don’t want to get a job.
 It’s hard to get a job, if :
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you don’t have an address .
you don’t have a phone.
you don’t have transportation.
you have little education or training.
 “If you don’t have an address, employers, I mean, they take a look
at you and they think, if you’re not responsible enough to have an
address, then you wouldn’t be responsible enough to be working.”
Pierre (Mean Streets. P.212)
People who are homeless can
stay in shelters.
 Homeless Count Vancouver March 15, 2005
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For women who are escaping violent family situations, there
is a 66% shortage of safe houses or transition-home spaces.
Shelters, safe houses and transition houses turned away
169 adults and 6 children on count night.
Homeless persons can be turned away if they are too young
to stay in an adult shelter, or there are no beds available for
their gender.
 44% of street homeless said they did not stay in shelters
because of cleanliness, rules, noise, theft, restrictions on length
of stay and other issues.
People who are homeless are
alcoholics or drug addicts.
 Some homeless people suffer from addictions to alcohol and
drugs.
 Sometimes addiction is a cause of homelessness.
 Sometimes homelessness is a cause of addiction.
 Recovery from addiction, without a place to live, is unlikely.
 “she's 18 and has been homeless and on the streets of Vancouver
since she turned 16 and was kicked out of a foster home...Unable to
qualify for social assistance, she's turned to prostitution for income
and multiple drugs to forget…” —Interviewer On our streets and in our shelters…Results
of the 2005 Greater Vancouver Homeless Count
People who are homeless are crazy.
 Some homeless people suffer from mental illness.
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Sometimes mental illness is a cause of homelessness.
Sometimes homelessness is a cause of mental illness.
 “Once the mentally ill are on the street, it's nearly impossible to
treat them... "You can't bring their medication to them because you
can't find them."
(Housing is) the key . "It transforms them. Housing heals."
“A soft place off the mean streets”, Chronicle Herald, The (Halifax, NS);
11/17/2006, pA5
Homeless people are easy to recognize.
 Many homeless people do not look or act like the stereotypical
homeless person.
 “We are sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, grandmothers,
grandfathers. The look of hatred is very hard to take.”
(Woman, Calgary 1999) Homelessness, p.34
People who are homeless
aren’t my problem.
 Cost of homelessness

The average homeless person uses $4,714 a year in
healthcare - the average Canadian citizen, $2,633.
CBC: The Fifth Estate – No Way Home http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/main_nowayhome.html
 Community Decline
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Homelessness and poverty discourage participation in
a community. As a community declines, addiction,
crime and violence grow.
 Homelessness affects all of us.
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“You can house people who are homeless either because it's just
the right thing to do—from a humane, compassionate
approach. Or you can do it because it's the smart thing to do.”
Sam Tsemberis, Pathways to Housing http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/305.html
Change Your Perceptions
Hannah Taylor’s Vision.
“No one will have to eat out of a garbage can;
everyone will have a home.”
Sources
 "A Soft Place Off the Mean Streets." The Chronicle Herald 17
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Nov. 2006, sec. A: 5. EBSCO.
Hagan, John, and Bill McCarthy. Mean Streets: Youth Crime and
Homelessness. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
Layton, Jack. Homelessness: the Making and Unmaking of a
Crisis. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2000.
"No Way Home." The Fifth Estate. CBC. 29 Apr. 2007
<http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/main_nowayhome.html>.
"Pathways to Housing." NOW. PBS. 29 Apr. 2007
<http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/305.html>.