Stories of Homelessness

In 2007, there were roughly 670,000 homeless person in the United States -- that's two tenths of one percent. Other estimates in 2009 shows higher number as much as 1% of the United States population experiencing homelessness each year.^[7] This may be due to the 2008/2009 recession. Whatever the numbers are, studies consistently show that the number of homeless often exceed the number of shelters available.

About 15% of Americans are living below the federal poverty line at any given point in time. Roughly 40% of American fall below the poverty line at some point within a 10-year time span. The poverty line for a family of four in United States in 2011 is an annual income of $22,350.

The DVD movie, "In the Pursuit of Happyness", was based on a real story of Chris Gardner and his son. Actor Will Smith played Chris Gardner.

This story shows how a average family can easily become homeless.

Fortunately this story has a happy ending, as Gardner became a stockbroker and was able to pull themselves out of poverty.

The word happiness was deliberately spelled wrong with a "y" as explained in this video.

Like in the Chris Gardner's story, many of the homeless are families. Linked here is an article showing how a dad with a daughter went from being a manager of a retail store to becaming homeless after he had a herniated disc and back problems.^[1] Also like Gardner's story, here we see child being homeless. A 2009 study indicates that as much as one out of 50 American children are homeless each year.^[5]

Families often become homeless due to lack of affordable housing, poverty, and unemployment.^[5] 19% of homeless are actually employed. But income simply cannot meet the expensive housing in some areas.^[7]

For singles, the causes of homelessness besides lack of affordable housing is also substance abuse and mental illness.^[5] A quarter of the homeless is consider mentally ill.^[7] And a quarter of the homeless are veterans of war, some of which cannot work due to physical or emotional injuries such as post traumatic stress disorders (PTSD).^[5]

Watch TED.com video of Becky Blanton telling her story of how she quickly went from writer and journalist to living in her van for a year.

The state with the most homeless people is California (in 2009)^[1] Perhaps one reason is that the homeless can actually live outdoors in California's mild weather.

A large concentration of the homeless in California are located in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 2005, Los Angeles is was known as the homelessness capital of the United States.^[1] An area known as Skid Row in Los Angeles has a large homeless population. You can find a short documentary about Skid Row by Good Magazine here and here.

The SFGate has a page of videos about homeless in San Francisco.

YouTube also has various videos of interviews with homeless, such as this one

Like California, Hawaii also has nice weather. And no doubt, there are homeless there as well. Here is video set to music about homeless in Hawaii.