Family Homelessness: Lack Of Social Support

The final catalyst of family homelessness is lack of social support. In this paper, social support entails the help and assistance individuals receive from family, friends, and others in their community network that help them cope effectively in times of crisis (Hertz 2006). There are three generally recognized types of social support: emotional, the feeling of being loved, accepted, and well-esteemed by family other members within a community; cognitive, access to the sharing of information, knowledge, and advice about resources and services, and material (or instrumental), the exchange of goods or services, usually in the form of money, food, or child care (Hertz 2006). When faced with setbacks or unexpected crisis, such as loss of employment,
Not only are adults traumatically affected, but it also has a long-term impact on the lives of children in the form of emotional, behavioral, and educational problems (Gültekin, 2014). Communities and government respond to homelessness with a variety of housing and service programs, most traditionally through the provision of emergency shelters, re-housing, permanent supportive and transitional housing, emergency food assistance, etc. Yet despite this apparent assortment of social support services, family homelessness continues to grow due to the resource gap faced by many community and government servicers. A reported 41 percent of surveyed cities in the US reported an increase in the number of requests for emergency food assistance from 2015 to 2016 (Lowe et al. 2016). Among those requesting emergency food assistance, 60 percent were in families (Lowe et al. 2016). Furthermore, shelter space in DC often runs out as more than 1,000 families seek care every night, leading them to go to Plan-B of second rate motel rooms within and in the outlying areas of the city (Lowe et al. 2016). Nevertheless, DC does better than most cities, as one of six states with less than five percent of all people experiencing homelessness unsheltered, as in primarily residing in a public or private place not designated for a regular sleeping accommodation for people (e.g. the
Through engaging developers and encouraging private developers to create affordable housing, this Credit has financed nearly three million affordable apartments for roughly 6.5 million low-income households since its establishment (Jakabovics et al. 2015). Family homelessness in DC is largely an issue of affordable housing, and considering the Credit provided 32,464 affordable homes in DC alone from 1986-2014, expanding it could go a long way at addressing inequality in DC housing (Jakabovics et al. 2015). It could also be a powerful force for combatting the negative aspects of urban renewal and gentrification, such as the displacement of low-income, largely African American residents of DC to the outskirts, as evidenced in the discussion of poverty and residential segregation earlier in this paper. A major weakness of this policy solution is that it does not aid much in helping families directly with the individual issues they face with homelessness. Affordable housing is only one component in an array of factors that contribute to the