Talk:Homelessness

Community Alternatives

    Homelessness is a growing challenge for many small communities who are seeing an increase in the transient and unsheltered residents.  There are many causes that can contribute to encountering homelessness and each root cause has different needs to help someone transition back into a stable lifestyle.  Federal and state funding programs are currently available but, are at risk of being eliminated due to required budget cuts (Keeley & Webster, 2018).  Due to the potential loss or these programs or the challenges faced to participate in these programs, communities may need to look internally to find solutions to address the issue themselves and not rely on external sources to reduce the challenge.  

    The increase of crime and fear that has come from the growth of the homeless community has caused the residents to complain to the local government which responds with adding additional police to focus on specific city areas.  All this has done is shift the problems from one part of the city to another (Cohen, 2011).  

    Finding local alternatives won’t be easy but, they are not the first to deal with this so there are plenty of examples to take guidance from.  Fresno, California did this very thing and elected to rezone empty plots of land to allow for tent cities and developed specific governances needs like city permits, required health and safety regulations and mandated public meetings to ensure the tent city community had the appropriate level of city structure (Loftus-Farren, 2011, p. 1064).  Another alternative that has been successful is a project performed by the Employment Connections Program (ECP) where they implemented a job training and education program which partnered with local businesses to train and hire homeless residents to help provide another transition option to the homeless community (Ratcliff, Shillito & Poppe, 1996).  
    Most cities have unfinished or pending projects that could use the help of additional resources.  The city could look at implementing a program to employ their homeless residents to help provide them a transition plan while improving the city and completing many of the backlog of projects. 

~C. Canavan104.129.206.68 (talk) 20:14, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

References

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Policy Analysis

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 March 2022 and 30 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jil028 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jil028. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jil028 (talk • contribs) 22:03, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Can we change the main image?

The colors have clearly been altered to be desaturated and in my opinion it feels a little like it's meant to invoke the person in a negative light instead of just to show a simple truth. If there's another image around or a version of the image that hasn't been altered to be this desaturated, I would argue that would be preferable here. UlyssesYYZ (talk) 19:07, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree, on the german article version the image was already removed. There it was argued, that the image has been used and pitched by anti-homeless people groups.

Beside the problematic portraial, I agree that the image quality with its colour editing is not fitting for the encylopaedia. Nsae Comp (talk) 12:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done. Totally agree, I switched it to one that's nonjudgmental. - WikiFouf (talk) 14:12, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2025 and 8 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ND902329644 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: ND902303211, Cgt221.

— Assignment last updated by ND902303211 (talk) 16:30, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

"Medical condition" infobox?

It seems odd to me that the infobox for this article is the "medical condition" template. I get that there are many medical conditions associated with it, but is homelessness itself a medical condition? Having a "symptoms" section is weird. Joyous! Noise! 01:31, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with you, it is really weird. No one goes to a doctor and describes their symptoms and then gets diagnosed that their disease/condition is "Homelessness". Is this somehow the best template someone found/kludged for this article? ---Avatar317^(talk) 23:19, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Here is the edit that installed the userbox, from an IP that has never made any other edits to WP. I'm inclined to boldly remove it. Joyous! Noise! 23:49, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I see what they were trying to do, but I agree with you the removal is better. The infobox also leads to oversimplification of the causes/effects, and really is not appropriate for this article. ---Avatar317^(talk) 00:17, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

It's gone. Yeah, it was an interesting idea, but in practice, you're right about the cause/effect issue. I'm going to leave it to someone else to decide on an image. I personally don't think the one with the Japanese man sleeping on the shopping cart is the best we have. Maybe I'm off, but the awkward position he's taking distracts from the topic. But if someone else likes it and thinks it's great, I won't argue. Joyous! Noise! 01:22, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Popculture inclusion criteria

The "popular culture" section has grown to be an indiscriminate WP:CATALOG with too many subsection (13!), and has attracted minor and peripheral works. It is time to curate the list with tightened inclusion criteria. The size of the section is over 16,000 characters of code, and over 10,000 of reader-facing characters in an already over-sized article.

Per MOS:CULTURALREFS, "Cultural references about the article's subject should not be included merely because they exist. Cultural aspects of the subject should be included only if they are supported by reliable secondary or tertiary sources that discuss the subject's cultural impact in some depth."

I recommend removing entries tagged as "episode" (there are 10 of them) as too minor for mention here, and reducing the number of subsections.

Any entry that fails to show its relevance to the topic of homelessness, should either have context added, or be removed from the list.

We can debate what to do with entries that fail to provide any "reliable secondary or tertiary source"—a common violation of Wikipedia policies, though unfortunately a fairly normal practice. We can also debate if it is time to WP:SPLIT this section out into its own standalone article. A properly curated list of entries would be preferable to a separate article which will inevitably attract further trivia entries.

Homelessness should be central, not incidental, in the work. Preferably, there should be reliable secondary sources which discuss the work's treatment of homelessness. The work should have cultural significance, and be contributive to the encyclopedia.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 21:32, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree with the trimming, and I agree with you here: "Homelessness should be central, not incidental, in the work. Preferably, there should be reliable secondary sources which discuss the work's treatment of homelessness. The work should have cultural significance,".

I agree that trimmed section here would be better than a standalone article which would be a dumping ground for any random movie in which some character is homeless at some point in the story. ---Avatar317^(talk) 23:58, 24 July 2026 (UTC)