Vincent Lyon-Callo’s, Inequality, Poverty, and Neoliberal Governance, discusses some of the structural issues that cause homelessness. One particular issue that stuck out to me was the second chapter discussing “Medicalizing Homelessness”. Medicalizing homelessness basically means that homelessness is a disease that cannot be cured and that it is the individual’s fault that they are homeless. We often think that shelters are constructed to reduce homelessness; however, some of the times the shelters are perpetuating homelessness.

For example, shelters often create step by step programs for homeless who are drug or alcohol addicts. As helpful as they are to get people off these substances, they are not getting them away from the main source of distribution, which are the streets. These step by step programs are not helping these addicts get off the streets so that they can get away from the easy accessible drugs on the streets.

In addition, shelters individualize homeless by telling them that they are homeless because of something that has happened in their lives, whether it was by choice or not. For example, some homeless are being told that they are homeless because they were sexually abused. This is not something that they chose, also it is not the reason they are homeless. These shelters are saying to the homeless that they are trying to fix them.

Lyon-Callo writes, “These practices produce “the homeless” as deviant” (Lyon-Callo 59). The homeless are being individualized to the point where they are considered deviant from the rest of society. This is partially caused by the ways in which shelters are running their services.