Sunday, January 7, 2007

10th Annual Homelessness Marathon

The Homelessness Marathon is a 14 hour radio broadcast featuring the voices and stories of homeless people from around the U.S. The Homelessness Marathon features live call-ins all night long via a national toll-free number. You can listen to excerpts from Marathons past at the link above.


Below are some insights from the founder of the Homelessness Marathon from his essay regarding why there are so many homeless people today and also his answer to the always prevalent theory that those people choose to be homeless.

There are plenty of homeless people who aren't bums, by which I mean, they're clearly not doing everything they can to stay in the same miserable situation. Think of it this way. More than 750,000 people are homeless at any given moment, which represents as many as 3.5 million people cycling on and off the streets every year, which represents at least 20 million people homeless since the early '80s when the crisis began. Just do the math.

750,000 represents less than four percent of 20 million, which means that more than 96 percent of all the people who have ever been homeless have gotten out of homelessness (as will most of the people on the streets today). That's a statistic you won't hear from Bill O'Reily who regularly portrays homeless people as unable to get their lives together. Maybe because once you've heard it, you have to wonder how come this obviously motivated more-than-96% wound up on the streets in the first place.

No comments: