March 2015
Billie Silvey
The fastest-growing and most persistent
problem in this decade is homeless families
with children.  Some 23% of the homeless
are in this category

Some assume that the homeless are
unemployed and lazy, but 44% of the
homeless populaton worked in the previous
week, 13% have regular jobs, 58% receive
less than $300 a month income.

And not all homeless people have been
homeless for long.  Eighty per cent of the
homeless have been homeless for less than
three weeks.

Some of these "misconceptions" seem to be
ways we try to justify our own indifference
toward people who aren't able to live the way
we do.  We need to stop justifying ourselves
and start trying to help them.
Why
Homeless?
Los Angeles has become one of the ten U.S.
cities with the greatest number of  
homeless.

Since the
Great Recession, Los Angeles has
also become one of the ten U.S. cities with
the greatest gap between the incomes of rich
and poor.  The top five percent of LA
residents earned more than twelve times
what the bottom 20% made.

The
income inequality gap is even worse in
San Francisco, Atlanta, Miami and Boston.
According to USC demographer Dowell
Myers, “We hoped we would bounce out of
the recession, but the impacts are
accumulating and escalating."

One in six Los Angeles County residents
was living below the poverty line last year.

Low wages coupled with the high cost of
housing in Los Angeles is forcing many out
of the housing market.  A full-time minimum
wage worker in Los Angeles would have to
work from 69-174 hours a week to pay for an
“affordable” two-bedroom rental.

Other causes of homelessness include
domestic abuse, disabilities and substance
abuse.

There are numerous other
misconceptions
about homelessness.  Many think the
homeless are mostly older people, but
actually one in three was 24 years or younger
in 2014.