When I see a homeless person I think about how I could end up like that when I’m older. I don’t want to end up like that. Once, I saw a man screaming swear words at every car that passed by. He looked drunk and I felt sorry for him, having no control over himself. Since I’ve started reading about homelessness, I’ve learned that a lot of things I thought were true are not. People who look homeless might not be homeless and most homeless people are invisible. Also, there are lots of misconceptions about homelessness and there are answers to the problem. It is a problem that people have attempted to fix and failed, but there is a way to succeed.

A lot of the things people are told about homelessness are not true. In Vox’s “11 Myths About Homelessness in America,” they said that one of the biggest myths about homelessness is, “Getting a job will keep someone out of homelessness.” But, “The National Low Income Housing Coalition found a full-time minimum wage worker would have to work between 69 and 174 hours a week, depending on the state, to pay for an "affordable" two-bedroom rental unit.” Getting a job will not always help keep someone out of homelessness unless they get paid more than the minimum wage, and the minimum wage should be a lot higher if we want to prevent homelessness and poverty. The real causes of homelessness are not taught to enough people. A KQED article about homelessness stated, “In San Francisco during the 2017 Homeless Count, 22 percent of the respondents reported job loss as the primary cause for their homelessness. Eviction accounted for 12 percent of responses. Other people were forced out of their homes due to interpersonal tensions: arguments with family (13 percent), and breakups and divorce (10 percent)...The second most self-reported cause of homelessness was alcohol or substance abuse (15 percent).” Before doing some reading, I had thought that drugs and alcohol were the most common cause of homelessness, but now I know that other things, like arguments with family and divorce, are also as common as drugs and alcohol. The fact that job loss is the biggest cause is scary. I had never heard about job loss as a big cause of homelessness, and to me that means that we can’t trust everything we hear about homelessness.

Salt Lake City showed that fighting homelessness is possible. KQED.org reported that the city accomplished this, “...through an aggressive ‘Housing First’ program, which quickly puts people into permanent housing. There are no requirements for eligibility, such as sobriety, treatment or service participation. Over 2,000 people who were formerly chronically homeless are housed in what is described as ‘showpieces of modern architecture.’” Maybe this program worked because anyone who was homeless was allowed a home, whether or not they were addicted to drugs; or, maybe it was because the Housing First program ignored criminal records. I think it worked because when people have a home, they have time to look for a job. It also worked because, “Salt Lake City has more data on its homeless population, enabling the program to target the most at-risk people on the street.” The most at-risk are people who are going into hospitals and getting food stamps the most. Giving them housing is important because they can save more money on food and it’ll also give them time to find a job.

Other cities such as San Francisco haven’t had as much luck. KQED says, “According to the San Francisco Chronicle, (San Francisco’s Housing First program) includes about 5,000 units of supportive housing in the Tenderloin neighborhood. But why hasn’t the program seen the same success as Salt Lake City?” The reason that San Francisco hasn’t had as much luck is because they don’t have as much data on homelessness as Salt Lake City. This means that if we just kept track of homelessness then everything will be easier (and humans have done much harder things than keep track of data). Another factor to consider is how expensive it is to live in San Francisco. It is so expensive in San Francisco that if you lose your house/apartment you can’t afford a new one. “According to the 2015 San Francisco Homeless Count, of the 7,539 people counted, 71 percent lived in the city before they lost housing.” This means that most homeless people had housing and when they lost it, they couldn’t afford to live somewhere else. I think cities like San Francisco should control how much rent costs so there will be less homelessness, and I think that they should put their homeless population into housing as soon as possible.

There are a lot of misconceptions about homelessness, like how drug and alcohol addiction are the only way that people become homeless. But, after research, I learned that job loss is the primary cause of homelessness. Drug addiction is nowhere near 100%. In fact, it’s closer to 15%. Also, I’ve learned that providing permanent shelter for the homeless is cheaper than paying for all the services they need when they’re on the street. The “Housing First program,” which quickly puts people into permanent housing, has been hugely successful in Salt Lake City, Utah. People need more than jobs to prevent homelessness. They need a home. But, when they do get a job, it needs to pay more than minimum wage.