Rural Homelessness

Rural Homelessness
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Abstract
Homelessness has been a thorny issue in the US over the last few decades. A homeless person can be defined as one who does not have a primary housing structure, or more precisely, as an individual whose sole residence for a night is a supervised public or private shelter. As such, most homeless individuals reside and depend on transitional housing. Therefore, homeless persons live in the streets, abandoned building or vehicle, and even under trees. As of June 2016, it was approximated that about 565, 000 Americans are homeless; and about 14.9% are estimated to be experiencing chronic homelessness. Further, these statistics elude that 8% of the homeless population constitutes of Veterans. On a general view, these statistics elude that there are more homeless men than women, and, the percentage of homeless persons aged 18 years and below sums up to 58%. Indeed, this is a worrying state of affairs. Therefore, this paper seeks to identify the factors that influence homelessness, the extent of rural homelessness, effects of homelessness, and how homeless individuals strive to cope up with this condition.
Key Words: Homelessness, Rural homelessness, housing.
Thesis Statement
Homelessness has been identified to be the leading problem in micro and mezzo social work. This paper will look into the struggles of homeless persons in rural areas, family relations between non-homeless and homeless relatives, and th…