This week the National Center on Family Homelessness released A Report Card on Child Homelessness—America’s Youngest Outcasts. They found that one out of thirty children were homeless in our country in 2013 – one out of every thirty. This number is so large it baffles the mind.
Eskenazi Health and Horizon House in Indianapolis, Indiana has opened a Health Center for people experiencing homelessness, the first of its kind in the state. This facility now helps hundreds of homeless individuals by offering mental health, primary care, and day care services—all free of charge.
Homelessness is devastating. First, it is a painful, often terrifying, traumatic experience for people who become homeless and for those who love them. Second, homelessness is an overwhelming social problem—one that weakens us as a nation and lays bare the underlying injustices that erode our country’s foundation. Homelessness does not represent a type of person or a set of bad decisions by an individual. Instead, it reflects the crossroads of all that is broken in our society: poverty; lack of affordable housing; unemployment; jobs that don’t pay livable wages; poor health care access; inadequate services for mental health, substance use, and trauma; an educational system that allows too many young people to slip through the cracks; fragmented families and dangerous neighborhoods; violence and victimization; racism; and social exclusion.
