The Homeless

The Homeless

Heather Gustafson

BSHS/442

January 16, 2012

Linda Latson

The Homeless

Today, more than ever, Americans are experiencing being homeless or on the verge of becoming homeless. To help put a dent in this issue America needs more people to help advocate on the homeless behalf and to help guide the homeless to a better tomorrow. In the paper it will discuss the meaning of an advocate and ways to help on behalf of the homeless to help solve the issue.

An advocate works on peoples behalf and helps them find necessary resources and fights for them to get the necessary acknowledgement they need. An advocate for homeless needs to first start looking at the reasons people become homeless. To figure out the reasons that cause people to become homeless, will help an advocate to find the resources that would help people prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place. For the people that are already homeless, an advocate needs to have useful resources that will help homeless people go from homeless to have a place to call their own again. An advocate would first need to find them a place to stay temporary, if at all possible, and help them find resources to make sure they can have their basic needs meet. Once that is in place you can start to help them figure out a plan and information to help guide them on a path to get their life and their needs back on track.

Another important part of being an advocate for the homeless is to fight on their behalf. To have resources available for the homeless you have to let the problem be known because, all the different resources out there it takes money to help keep them operate or to have new resources available that will work for the homeless. To be an effective advocate you would need to do all you can to fight for homeless and write to your legislation about the huge problem people are facing by being homeless or on the verge of being homeless. Also, an advocate should always be looking for available grants...