According to the National Coalition for the Homeless statistics, there appears to be a direct correlation between the levels of unemployment and the number of those who are homeless in the United States. As jobs are lost, savings become diminished, people reach, and fall below, the poverty line, and with continued unemployment, no longer can afford a place to live. They move to their cars, to the homes of friends and family until they become a drain and have to leave. This often encourages the transition to substance abuse, mental illness and the complacency so often found within the homeless population.
Of the two types of homelessness, transitional and chronic, transitional includes those who have been recently become unemployed or underemployed, while those who are described as chronically unemployed have been displaced and without a permanent home for over one year.(Kally, 2010)
The cities with the greatest movement in unemployment tend to show similar moves in homelessness for the same periods. Those cities are: Illinois, Michigan, California, South Carolina and New York.
Despite a 15% overall increase, unemployment feel in twenty-four states since this time last year (Bloomberg, 2011). As the employment levels begin to rise, fewer people lose their jobs, more people gain jobs, more money is provided to help the unemployed and the homelesss with job training and life skills services. The homeless rate drops to some degree.
The solution, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, is to have greater governmental support of local initiatives, more prevention methods employed among institutions and to ensure that federal funds designed to help the homeless are actually being used as intended.
