Talk:Homelessness

Homelessness defined

I changed the definition of homelessness to reflect something of the consensus view defined by a number of governments or social organizations and included two cites. I specfically quoted Swedish and US government definitions, but this is not exhaustive and there may be slightly better or universally accepted definitions by other authorities, but I do feel it's necessary to put CITED sources for the definition of the term and I hope perhaps others will edit or modify or add to this definition with other sources. The previous "definition" provided reflected a point of view as to why homelessness exists "because they cannot afford, pay for, or are otherwise unable to maintain...." (which presumes without citing that homeless people want or can not pay for some form of housing) Jasoncward (talk) 03:02, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Homelessness in Australia

Can you please update the definitions section with the following:

Homelessness in Australia The most accepted definition of homelessness in Australia is Chamberlain and Mackenzies’ ‘Cultural Definition of Homelessness.’ This definition breaks down homelessness into three catagories, primary, secondary and tertiary. Homelessness policy in Australia aims to tackle all three levels.

Primary Homelessness refers to people without conventional accommodation, and it includes people living on the streets and in other public places such as parks, sqatting in buildings or using vehicles, for temporary shelter.

Secondary Homelessness refers to people staying in emergency or transitional accomodation and people residing temporarily with other households because they have no accomodation of their own. It also includes people staying in emergency or transitional accomodation provided by governments and non-government organisations and people residing in boarding houses for 12 weeks or less.

Tertiary Homelessness refers to people living in boarding houses on a medium- to long-term basis for over 12 weeks.

Can you please update the homelessness in Australia section with the following:

The response to homelessness in Australia is currently undergoing major reforms. In 2008, the Australian Government released The Road Home, outlining a new approach to reduce homelessness in Australia. The largest shift in thinking on homelessness in Australia in more than two decades, The Road Home mandates better integrated service delivery, national targets on homelessness and reforms in sectors including child protection, mental health and alcohol and other drugs. Riding on the back the strongest ever commitment to tackling homelessness in Australia, The Road Home sets impressive goals, calling for a 50 per cent reduction in overall homelessness (defined using Chamberlain and Mackenzies’ ‘Cultural Definition of Homelessness’) and an elimination of primary homelessness (rough sleeping) by 2020. To achieve these ambitious goals, the Australian Government announced AU$6.6 billion in funding for homelessness over its first five years of operation; a commitment that Australians hope will be continued in the lead up to 2020.

To monitor progress towards these goals, The Road Home sets thee headline interim targets to 2013, these being a 25 per cent reduction to primary homelessness, a 20 per cent reduction to overall homelessness, and a 25 per cent reduction in the number of people seeking specialist homelessness service support more than three times a year. Requiring an average reduction in primary homelessness by 750-1000 people per year to 2013, achieving these targets will be challenging for the various levels of Government in Australia as well as the community and health care sectors.

As no effective method currently exists to measure homelessness on a year by year basis, The Road Home proposes eight clear Australian state and territory interim targets that break down achievement by sectors and target groups. For example, The Road Home mandates that states and territories must reduce the number of people exiting care or custody into homelessness by 25 per cent and must increase the number of people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness receiving legal services by 25 per cent as well as six other similar targets. The Road Home implies that if these eight targets are met and if social housing stock is increased then there will be a 25 per cent reduction to primary homelessness, a 20 per cent reduction to overall homelessness, and a 25 per cent reduction in the number of people seeking specialist homelessness service support more than three times a year by 2013.

The Road Home outlines 55 distinct reforms that the Australian Government will undertake in collaboration with the states and territories in order to facilitate the achievement of these targets, and these include social and indigenous housing reforms as well as measures targeted at reducing homelessness directly. For example, Australian states and territories must deliver additional prevention and early intervention services for up to 2,250 families at risk of homelessness.

The policies in The Road Home will be implemented over the next 11 years.

Can you please add the following to External Links.

Homelessness Australia is the peak Australian body on homelessness. It's website has links to homelessness data and issues in Australia.

Homelessness Australia (talk) 01:44, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

List of foreign terms for homeless?

Why is this list necessary or even relevant? Wikipedia is certainly not a translation tool. Foreign words are already linked in the interwiki list. Is there any reason why this should stay? OrangeDog (talk • edits) 04:41, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. Also, 'haweloos' is surely literally 'habour-less' not 'homeless' ('hawe' is 'harbour', though it related to the English word 'haven', so perhaps 'haven-less') Booshank (talk) 01:07, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Contributing causes of homelessness ... work aversion?

The following had been added twice by 98.218.42.10 (talk · contribs) to the section Homelessness#Contributing causes of homelessness:

• Work aversion, responsible for 45% of homelessness cases<ref>http://books.google.com/books?lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html&as_brr=3&id=gGCqJic8ms4C&dq=%22work+aversion%22&pg=PA318&lpg=PA318&sig=ACfU3U3V_N4sg_ytCrvZotyN56m1fAZsig&q=%22work+aversion%22</ref>

The problem with this addition is if you look at the source, it actually states that in a 1987 telephone survey of 293 random persons in Nashville, 45% of those surveyed thought that work aversion was a contributing factor. The source does not state that this was an actual cause - only that it was thought to be a cause by a small random sampling used in the survey. As a reliable source is not yet available to show this to be an actual cause, I've removed the mention from the article. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Good catch. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 00:46, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

The same anon re-added the same content, citing the same source. I've re-removed it for the reasons stated above, and placed a warning on the user's talk page with a request to discuss the addition on this talk page. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:34, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Great. Thanks. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 01:03, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Worldwide view

It seems that this article mostly deals with the United States. Is there problem of homeless in other countries? For example, I know that in Europe in some countries there are special 'social' apartments for those who cannot pay for shelter. And also for example in the USSR there was no homeless at all (citizenship was strongly associated with a propiska and nobody could be stripped of it without substitution).--MathFacts (talk) 11:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

You're right, and that's why there's a maintenance tag at the top of the article explaining that. It would be great if you could be bold and expand the article, but please remember verifiability and, if you can, provide reliable sources for any content you add or else it may be reverted as original research. -- OlEnglish ^(Talk) 06:53, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Linguistic titles for the homeless around the world

I think we should remove the section "Linguistic titles for the homeless around the world". It's not encyclopedic, it's something you'd expect to find in a dictionary. Any objections? delldot ∇. 17:15, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Whoops, hadn't noticed the same topic above. I'll get rid of it now, if there's any problem with that let me know. delldot ∇. 17:16, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Recommend Transwiki to Wiktionary to preserve information. -- OlEnglish ^(Talk) 06:09, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The Homeless Guy

I would like that my blog on my homeless experiences be included within the references of this article. I have been in and around homelessness since 1982. I have been writing about homelessness since 2002. My blog has been the subject of numerable newspaper and magazine articles, from USAToday to Wired Magazine, Salon.com and the Utne Reader. I have been involved with government and homeless shelter agencies. I have been on the board of directors of the Campus for Human Development in Nashville. I have sat on the Mayor's Taskforce on Homelessness, and the Metro Homelessness Commission in Nashville Tn. I once created my own homeless street newspaper and was a member of the North American Street Newspaper Association.

I believe a link to my blog would be suitable for this article. My blog is http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com Thanks. The Homeless Guy (talk) 00:24, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

After taking a look at the blog, I disagree with adding it to this article. It may be more appropriate to submit it to dmoz.org, which is currently linked to from this article. I see it's already linked from dmoz.org, which is linked to from this article. That's a far more appropriate location for linking it. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:32, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Title

WP:ADJECTIVE says to use the noun form instead of the adjectival form, so this article should probably be renamed "homeless person" or "homeless people". I prefer the latter. Although WP:NAME says that the singular form is usually preferred, the plural form can be used when discussing classes of objects.

(there are other proposed alternatives such as "urban outdoorsman", but that wouldn't do for the main title) --Underpants 00:38, 7 October 2009 (UTC)