Houston Homeless Get Little Respect: “It Should Not Hurt to Be Homeless”

By: Darwin Campbell, African-American News&Issues 

In a city where oil industry giants rule and business is booming, it hurts to be homeless in Houston. Homelessness is a still an issue in 2014, but is the city trying to hide one of its worst problems? 

Whether its a large business convention markets, the annual Houston Chevron Marathon and development and construction progress knocking at the door, the homeless seem to be the ones hurt the most, being pushed out, swept away or shuffled around. Is Out of sight is out of mind? It appears that in the city’s zeal to be a world class technological center and high roller, it has done a poor job not completely solving it’s Third World problem.

According to the homeless coalition statistics, there are 29,739 homeless people in Texas. Of those, 7,366 homeless individuals live on the streets of Houston, Harris County and Fort Bend each night. Of that number 1,007 are currently sitting in jail. Another 27,728 people are registered by the Homeless Coalition as accessing homeless services. Conditions for the homeless are not that encouraging either. About 32-percent are chronically homeless, 65-percent experience some form of mental illness and nearly 50-percent have no source of income. One of 7 homeless people are military veterans and 1 in 4 is a family with children. [READ MORE]