Over the weekend my wife and I were downtown to have dinner, walk around to see the decorations and enjoy the various festivities that were going on.
Now where I live in southeastern North Carolina we have a pretty large homeless population. Not as large as some cities, larger than others but still large relative to our area. And the thing that both struck me then and now is that every single one of them that we saw was a man.
Now I’m not saying there aren’t homeless women there is and that’s tragic but the truth of the matter is the overwhelming majority of the homeless population is male. The statistics show that men make up 75% of the homeless population across the US and it’s an issue that to be fair, does get talked about, but also to be fair isn’t seeing much done to resolve it.
A friend of mine works with the homeless outside of Chicago and one of the things he tells me is how little funding they actually get. Think about it, we can send hundreds of billions of dollars to the war in Ukraine every few months, but spend a fraction of that money to address the homelessness issue… Yeah no, we can’t afford that.
So let’s talk about change.
I’ll be the first to say I don’t really have any idea on how to meaningfully address it. Locally the solution is to spend millions and millions of dollars to create low cost housing. Yet recently they spent millions of dollars and only created about a dozen units. That’s great for those dozen who got housed but that’s a fraction of the number of people living on the streets.
My friend who is in the field says the biggest issue, especially for the men, that needs to be addressed is to deal with the mental health crisis. Something in his experience is prevalent in almost every case. He is the expert so I have no reason to doubt him but again how do we get politicians to put forth the money needed to address the issue and just as important get them to do it in a way that works for the men who need the help.
As is often the case these programs end up getting watered down or designed to deal with the women’s side of the issue which as has been found time and again turns off the men from seeking help.
Again I don’t know but I thought I’d throw it out to all of you…
• What do you think is the solution?
• What are the steps you would suggest?
• What should I say to the politicians I meet with to get them to see it’s a predominantly male issue and needs to be addressed from that perspective?
Let me know