Need to address plight of homeless

The plight of the homeless has not received the attention it deserves from the international community. Millions of people around the world still suffer from lack of housing facilities and face deprivation. A world where everyone has a decent place to live in is an undeniable need.

Domestic violence, drug abuse, job losses, unaffordable rent and issues with family are known to be among the significant contributing factors.

The show of solidarity when hundreds of people gathered in Times Square recently, rugged up and ready to bunk down in freezing temperatures, in a campaign to raise funds for what organisers said was record homelessness globally, raises hopes that human values still hold firm.

People in over 50 cities around the world slept on the streets to support the World’s Big Sleep Out campaign.

In New York City alone, more people are now said to be homeless than at any time since the Great Depression.

Oscar-winning British actor Helen Mirren rightly hit out recently against the “exponential rise in homelessness” as she slept out in central London as part of a global charity appeal to fight the scourge.

“What’s disturbing, profoundly, to me is the exponential rise in homelessness that I’ve noticed... in every city in Los Angeles, in New York, in London,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

She is correct in saying that the line between having a home and homelessness for many families is so thin.

Will Smith still feels “emotional” about homelessness years after playing a destitute man in one of his most acclaimed film roles, the Hollywood star told charity campaigners braving a fierce New York winter night to sleep rough.

Smith told the crowd that his Oscar-nominated role in “The Pursuit of Happyness” — a 2007 biopic of a salesman forced to live on the streets of San Francisco with his young son — was a “life-changing experience” that had allowed him to understand the misery of poverty.

To not have a place to go and to be able to lay your head down with your children at night is a horrendous tragedy, as Smith pointed out.

Homelessness has been increasing in England for nearly a decade amid rising rents, a freeze on welfare benefits and a social housing shortage.

“There are thousands of people sleeping on our streets ... and tens of thousands of families - including 135,000 children — trapped in temporary accommodation,” as per Polly Neate, head of British homelessness charity Shelter, who called the crisis a “national emergency”.

Most European countries have also seen a rise in homelessness in the past decade, fuelled by fallout from the global financial crisis and an influx of international migrants.

In Britain, the introduction of the homelessness Reduction Act in 2018, has prevented some 58,290 households from becoming homeless in the last year, according to the government.

Homeless people may find it difficult to document their date of birth or their address. They usually have no place to store possessions, often lose their belongings, including identification and other documents, or find them destroyed by police or others.

The problem is acute in developing and poor countries. Homeless people face many problems beyond the lack of a safe and suitable home. They are often faced with reduced access to private and public services and vital necessities.

Housing is a basic need and even if one person on earth is denied a roof, it reflects poorly on the rest of humanity.