HISTORY Homelessness has been around and recorded in the U.S. since the 1640’s. Poor safety in the 1820’s causes injury and death. The disabled and widowed often had dependent children, and couldn’t provide for themselves, or their families. 1850’s had the first records of homeless children, who were on the streets because their guardians could no longer afford to pay their expenses or provide. The Great Depression turned thousands of working men and women homeless in the 1930's United Nations estimated there were more than 100 million homeless people by mid-1980’s, Two-Three million from the U.S. alone. A 2003 study shows that nearly a quarter of homeless people were former mental patients who were released or forced from the institution they were in. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (passed in 1948 by the United Nations) says “Everyone has the right to standard living adequate for health and well-being for himself and his family.” 155 nations have agreed and signed to this declaration. England has a Homeless Person Act, passed in 1977, that says locals have to house the homeless. The U.S. enacted the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which provided basic needs for the homeless, in 1987. Homelessness has come a long way since this point in time.
"It doesn't make you want to go and rejoin society, what's lower than writing a man a ticket for sleeping on the street? If he had somewhere else to go, don't you think he'd be there?" -Gary Jones, 36, a laid-off welder, in 2003 (Stein).