Summary: The Importance Of Social Injustice To Homelessness

“We need to stop thinking of aged homeless people as being homeless and elderly: what we should be saying is that they are elderly and homeless.”(Lipmann, 2009, p. 280). Almost 50% of homeless elders became homeless only after battling with the risks associated with aging. Homelessness among the elderly population has been an increasing problem and is a social injustice because it violates many Jesuit values, such as Magis and Cura Personalis, as well as the ANA code of ethics principles. For this injustice to be alleviated, nurses have the duty to address it at its core. Elderly individuals become homeless due to the lack of support they receive while battling with limitless complications that arise with aging. Awareness of this injustice
According to Patricia M. Burbank (2008), some of these factors include being male, African American, having difficult childhoods, chemical abuse, mental illness, cognitive deficits, chronic health problems, abuse, limited social network, or even having a history of being divorced (page number). A specific group that is also vulnerable to this injustice is the veterans (van den Berk-Clark & McGuire, 2013). Veterans make up for a large amount of the homeless elderly. According to Carissa van den Berk-Clark and James McGuire, they are especially prone to mental instability due to combat exposure, wartime trauma, and PTSD, making them twice as likely to be homeless than any other elderly individual (p. 232). With the large amount of veterans among the baby boomers, this will continue to be a major problem we, as nurses, will need to address. The population cannot continue to slip through the cracks and be forgotten about. It is a nurse’s duty to make sure everyone gets equally cared
#). This principle is very similar to the Jesuit value Cura Personalis because it is concerned with the universal right to healthcare and respect for each person’s unique attributes and inherent dignity. Nurses need to respect a person and all that comes along with them. The elderly continually get mistreated and neglected due to their age and health status, but their rights to healthcare are just as important as everyone else’s as included in the ethical principle of justice. Cura personalis is concerned with caring for a person as a whole, including the person’s entire mind, body, and spirit. Many elderly homeless are written off due to their age and mental health, but with the proper support, their illnesses and disabilities can be maintained and hopefully their quality of life can increase. Many times, the reason they are homeless is caused by the hardships that come with aging. If they had the proper medical care and support from the community, the homelessness rates in this population would not be so