Homelessness in North America 

There is a growing problem of homelessness in North America. There is approximately 150,000 - 300,000 homeless people in Canada and 650,000 in America. The majority of these are males but in recent years the largest growing population of homeless people have been women and children. There are a lot of societal factors in America that lead to the increase of homeless people for example; the changes in the institutionalization of the mentally ill; In the 1960-70’s hospitals released a large number of mentally ill patients; around 75% of these people became homeless. The submergence of drugs such as cocaine, which they called “the crack epidemic” this created an increase in drug usage and alcohol abuse. Other causes of homelessness were funding cuts to social assistance and low income housing, unemployment, poverty, natural disasters and the redevelopment of low income housing. The increase of homelessness in the north of America is particularly a problem as homeless hub (an organization that does research surrounding the issue with homelessness in Canada) display on their website; http://homelesshub.ca/…/ten-things-know-about-homelessness-…
A relatively recent innovation in helping tackle homelessness in Canada is “Housing First”. Housing First was made with the notion that housing is a basic human right that, a right that everyone has. The idea is that they don’t want to be moving homeless individuals to different levels of housing (unstable accommodation) for example; a shelter that they share with many other chronically homeless people. Their aim is for rapid rehousing; to move these individuals to more stable independent housing.