After doing the Data Exercise this week, I was curious to see what other people thought the major cause of homeless was. After researching last week and reading various articles and studies I found many different causes of homelessness, but the major cause was job loss and the lack of income. Taking this into consideration I decided to ask various people what they thought was the major cause.

In response to this question I got various answers:

Drugs/Addiction

Financial Issues

Economic Region

Inability to Change

Criminal Record

Based on these answers I saw that many believed that homelessness is caused by something that the homeless individuals did wrong. In our world, homeless people are constantly stereotyped as people who did something wrong which brought them to the place they are today. One theory I thought was interesting was “economic region”. This is something that is very important because in some cities there are less job opportunities available for people, which makes it hard for people to earn a living.

After asking everyone, one person said that they thought the leading cause was drugs and addiction and that everything always comes back to addiction. This was upsetting to me because after seeing countless videos and reading various stories of homeless people, I know that not all homeless people are affected by drugs. Yes, some do turn to drugs because they feel like they have no where else to turn, but this is not something that should be a stereotype of homeless individuals.