Homeless Issues

Affordable Housing
If people cannot afford a place to live, they are at risk of becoming homeless. Families with children are losing their housing at unprecedented rates. A lack of affordable housing and the limited scale of housing assistance programs are the primary causes of homelessness. The growing gap between the number of affordable housing units and the number of people needing them has created a housing crisis for poor people.

Livable Incomes for the Able, a helping hand to work 2 jobs
"Wages should be high enough for people to afford" housing, food, clothing, medical care, and other necessities of life, is a dangerous statement that falsely blames "Wages" for creating poverty or "the rich". People working 60 or more hours weekly are not homeless. People buying the 40 hour work week lie instead of the Biblical "6 Days shall man work" command fall victim to the Liberal Lies, and pay the price. People who are truly not able to work need help to afford housing, food, clothing, medical care, and other necessities of life, in transition if nothing else. 60% of homeless persons work every week. Most homeless work at something. The issue is people do not want to work 60+ hours weekly, or they are unable to sustain that work load. Homeless life drains a person quickly of every motivation to fight, after getting bloody nose after bloody nose day in and day out. They may not show it, but they know it. Homeless persons need to be caught as soon as possible after they hit the streets and get them back to work before their will and spirit is broken, when they become chronic homeless, a death sentence to die young.

Alcohol & Drug Abuse

More than 17 million Americans -- 8.5 percent of the population -- have alcohol-use disorders, and 4.2 million meet the criteria for other drug-use disorders, according to a new survey from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

Results from the 2001-2002 National Epidemiology Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions showed that, overall, 9.4 percent of the U.S. population, or 19.4 million adults, have diagnosable alcohol or other drug disorders. The study also found that roughly the same number of Americans -- 19.2 million adults -- have independent mood disorders, such as major depression or manic disorder. Moreover, 23 million adults meet the criteria for independent anxiety disorders, the study found.

"Independent mood and anxiety disorders exclude transient cases of these disorders that result from alcohol and/or drug withdrawal or intoxication, conditions that usually improve rapidly without treatment once substance use ceases," NIAAA noted. "The distinction is important because the diagnosis of current mood and anxiety disorders among active substance abusers is complicated by the fact that many symptoms of intoxication and withdrawal from alcohol and other substances resemble the symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders and thus, the additional psychiatric disorder may be overlooked."

About one in five people with addictive disorders also has a cooccurring mental disorder, NIAAA reported.

"It would be incorrect for healthcare professionals to assume that the majority of mood and anxiety disorders are due to substance intoxication or withdrawal, and will remit when the patients stops drinking," said NIAAA Director Ting-Kai Li. "These findings suggest that treatment professionals should be prepared to treat or refer patients in stable remission from substance use for comorbid mood and anxiety disorders. Earlier research has demonstrated that, left untreated, such disorders may lead to substance use relapse and other negative outcomes."

The study was published in the August 2004 edition of the Archives of General Psychiatry.