Homeless: Homelessness and Program Essay example

Submitted By Carolena123
Words: 734
Pages: 3

As stated above the reasons people become homeless could be due to the lack of affordable housing for low income people in our city. Fact is that people tend to become homeless out of situations that are out of their control. There are people who do have work hard but they earn so little income that they can’t pay for rent, electricity, water, and other housing expenses. If by some terrible misfortune the person loses his job, then they have no way to pay for anything at all. So where does this leave them, homeless. At this point the homeless and low income becomes a social issue. The City of Dallas needs to focus more on building more affordable housing for low income people, protecting women and children from abuse, helping drug addicts fight their addictions and giving people with mental illnesses affordable healthcare. The major program that the City of Dallas relies on is the Section 8 Housing program.
The section 8 program in Dallas provides about 75 percent of funding for household living at or below 30 percent of the area median income (EndHomelessness). This program I crucial for the homeless rates to stay low in Dallas. There are so many people relying on the service of the section 8 Program that without it the number of homeless would triple. A prime example of the need for more Section 8 housing is June 15, 2011, The Section 8 voucher program reopened in Dallas County after being closed for 5 years. There were at least 8 people injured when a crowd of 15,000 ran to the doors of the Dallas Housing Authority to receive a voucher for living assistance (WFAA.com). The news came that the city would give out more vouchers and the citizens went crazy. People were lined up as early as 11 pm the three days before and the lines did not open until 8:00 AM on June 15, 2011. When the doors opened up the mayhem began. The people were pushing and shoving trying to make sure that they were one the ones that were able to sign up or the rent subsidized vouchers. It is sad that this has to go on within a city so huge. The city needs to come up with different alternatives that don’t leave the low income citizens in danger when help becomes available. I did some research and there is in fact a lot of programs that the city did offer but no longer does because of funding issues. One such program is the Housing Choice Voucher program. This program is ran by the City of Dallas and is no longer in force (dhadal.com). The program allows for homeless and low income residents of Dallas County to find the housing of their choice instead of the transitional housing that the