Talk:Homelessness

Community Alternatives
Homelessness is a growing challenge for many small communities who are seeing an increase in the transient and unsheltered residents. There are many causes that can contribute to encountering homelessness and each root cause has different needs to help someone transition back into a stable lifestyle. Federal and state funding programs are currently available but, are at risk of being eliminated due to required budget cuts (Keeley & Webster, 2018). Due to the potential loss or these programs or the challenges faced to participate in these programs, communities may need to look internally to find solutions to address the issue themselves and not rely on external sources to reduce the challenge.

The increase of crime and fear that has come from the growth of the homeless community has caused the residents to complain to the local government which responds with adding additional police to focus on specific city areas. All this has done is shift the problems from one part of the city to another (Cohen, 2011).

Finding local alternatives won’t be easy but, they are not the first to deal with this so there are plenty of examples to take guidance from. Fresno, California did this very thing and elected to rezone empty plots of land to allow for tent cities and developed specific governances needs like city permits, required health and safety regulations and mandated public meetings to ensure the tent city community had the appropriate level of city structure (Loftus-Farren, 2011, p. 1064). Another alternative that has been successful is a project performed by the Employment Connections Program (ECP) where they implemented a job training and education program which partnered with local businesses to train and hire homeless residents to help provide another transition option to the homeless community (Ratcliff, Shillito & Poppe, 1996). Most cities have unfinished or pending projects that could use the help of additional resources. The city could look at implementing a program to employ their homeless residents to help provide them a transition plan while improving the city and completing many of the backlog of projects. ~C. Canavan104.129.206.68 (talk)

*Challenges: Stigma*
I added two paragraphs (starting with "The stigmas of homelessness can be divided...") detailing the types of stigmas that homeless people may encounter and research evidence underpinning the contact hypothesis and possible policymaking for reducing discrimination and changing public opinions.

Jil028 (talk) 02:32, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Proposed merge of No fixed abode into Homelessness
The page is an unsourced stub that does not indicate notability. I suggest merging unless a source is added. FAdesdae378 (talk · contribs) 19:16, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose As the article says, they are not the same thing - canal boats etc. I'd like to know in what legal systems this is a term though. Johnbod (talk) 01:11, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Closing with no merge, given the uncontested objection and no support. Klbrain (talk) 20:34, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Propose merging Street People into Homelessness
Street People currently describes a class of people who are "frequently" homeless, but it admits the term is used "somewhat loosely," and the article doesn't really discuss any street people who aren't homeless. Then it has a See Also section full of dozens of links to articles broadly related to homelessness that takes up more screen space than the main body. I can see how Street People might take a different approach to the subject than Homelessness which may be worth incorporating, but I don't think it's describing a substantively different phenomenon. 2601:448:C580:6D70:0:0:0:FE73 (talk) 17:22, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Can we change the main image?
The colors have clearly been altered to be desaturated and in my opinion it feels a little like it's meant to invoke the person in a negative light instead of just to show a simple truth. If there's another image around or a version of the image that hasn't been altered to be this desaturated, I would argue that would be preferable here. UlyssesYYZ (talk) 19:07, 22 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I agree, on the german article version the image was already removed. There it was argued, that the image has been used and pitched by anti-homeless people groups.
 * Beside the problematic portraial, I agree that the image quality with its colour editing is not fitting for the encylopaedia. Nsae Comp (talk) 12:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Landlords punitively reacting to regulation is not regulation causing said punishment
“Rent regulation also has a small effect on shelter and street populations. This is largely due to rent control reducing the quality and quantity of housing. For example, a 2019 study found that San Francisco's rent control laws reduced tenant displacement from rent-controlled units in the short-term, but resulted in landlords removing thirty percent of the rent-controlled units from the rental market, (by conversion to condos or TICs) which led to a fifteen percent citywide decrease in total rental units, and a seven percent increase in citywide rents.” You cannot say “rent control reduces quantity and quality of housing” and then explain why by saying “landlords react to rent control by reducing quality and quantity of housing.” The-fbi-killed-julius-caesar (talk) 06:35, 8 June 2024 (UTC)