Author Description

Thousands of men and women in Washington DC, as elsewhere in mostly urban but also parts of rural America, are severely afflicted by abject poverty and not able to earn enough to take care of their daily needs, basically food and a place to call home. Every night the homeless, as they are called, sleep outside on street sidewalks and corners, under bridges, on sides of buildings, in bushes, on public benches, in train and bus stations and anywhere else where they can find a place to sleep at least for a night. Although this reality of total destitution in the midst of abundance occurs in the greatest, mightiest and wealthiest nation on earth, the issue of homelessness is generally met by apathy, probably because most people who walk pass the homeless every day; seem unable to relate to what it is like to be homeless. In order to awaken the consciousness of the reader and the general public about this social plague called homelessness, the author is telling his story as a homeless himself and portraying the reality of homelessness from his experience. His message is simple: Homelessness is dehumanizing and detrimental to the individual experiencing it. Homelessness should alarm society as a whole, because it has reached an epidemic proportion that is afflicting and incapacitating a considerable and non-negligible segment of the American population. There should therefore be urgency, from individuals and society to act to solve and end homelessness, so that human dignity can be restored in the lives of so many human beings who have no home and dwell outside like animals in the wilderness. Also, so many who are socially and financially stable and self-sufficient, or are just doing well enough, think that they are immune to homelessness and poverty. Truth of the matter is that, they may be mistaken because they cannot predict any affliction or misfortune that can cause them to lose everything and become indigent themselves.