An Informative Discussion

Next year is an election year, and I've already covered the lack of exposure homelessness garners in political circles. I wish politicians would pay more attention to this issue but it rarely gets noticed because its not as trendy as the same 'ol talking points that candidates typically hammer away on, while never really telling us anything new.

Recently, I was talking to a group of high school seniors about homelessness and I was surprised how little they knew about homelessness in America. They could talk quite elegantly about immigration and foreign policy. We had a great discussion regarding national debt and national security. But after a while I thought I might throw a wrench in the conversation and introduce the topic of homelessness. The room got really quiet and no one had much to say. But I can't fault them because the issue is rarely, if ever, brought up.

They were stunned to know that homelessness is not exclusively an urban phenomenon. This perception exists mainly because homeless people are more numerous, more geographically concentrated, and more visible in urban areas. However, people experience the same difficulties associated with homelessness and housing distress in America's small towns and rural areas as they do in urban areas. Some of the students could not fathom that there were homeless people living in Kalispell.

Rural homelessness, like urban homelessness, is the result of poverty and a lack of affordable housing, and research has shown:

The odds of being poor are between 1.2 to 2.3-times higher for people in non-metropolitan areas than in metropolitan areas.

1 in 5 non-metro counties is classified as a ‘high poverty’ county (having a poverty rate of 20% or higher), while only 1 in 20 metro counties are defined as such.

Homeless people in rural areas are more likely to be white, female, married, currently working, homeless for the first time, and homeless for a shorter period of time.

We talked for a while about stereotypes regarding homeless people, covering the government-approved definitions of chronic, transitional, and episodic – which can be defined as follows:

Chronically homeless individual are most like the stereotyped profile of the “skid-row” homeless, who are likely to be entrenched in the shelter system and for whom shelters are more like long-term housing rather than an emergency arrangement. These individuals are likely to be older, and consist of the “hard-core unemployed”, often suffering from disabilities and substance abuse problems. Yet such persons represent a far smaller proportion of the population compared to the transitionally homeless.

Transitionally homeless individuals generally enter the shelter system for only one stay and for a short period. Such persons are likely to be younger, are probably recent members of the precariously housed population and have become homeless because of some catastrophic event, and have been forced to spend a short time in a homeless shelter before making a transition into more stable housing. Over time, transitionally homeless individuals will account for the majority of persons experiencing homelessness given their higher rate of turnover.

Those who are episodically homeless frequently shuttle in and out of homelessness are known as episodically homeless. They are most likely to be young, but unlike those in transitional homelessness, episodically homeless individuals often are chronically unemployed and experience medical, mental health, and substance abuse problems.

I will present the second part of our conversation later this week.

By the end of the conversation, I think these future leaders of America had a few more things to consider than when we began talking. My hope is that the future transcends the present.

*Statistics courtesy of national coalition for the homeless