Switched-On Magazine

Every winter in the US, people trudge through layers of snow and shiver, if not properly covered up, as they make their journey across inches of packed white stuff and try to fend off the harshness of winter. The struggle for warmth ends when they reach home. 

For hundreds of thousands of people, among them families with children and teens and at times only children and teens, every night can be a journey to find warm shelter from the biting frigidity of winter, and to find a semblance of home amidst a world that feels largely unwelcoming.

There are shelters to serve as temporary sanctuaries, but they, too, become inundated with people. When no beds are left inside an institution already limited in its capacity to protect from the harshness of winter, it must turn away some people. Where then do these people go, those who must be turned away?

For teens who have run away from home or who have been forced out of their homes without any support from family members, the streets and abandoned buildings are the only places to find shelter when temporary shelters deny them a transient home. Alcoves under busy bridges and abandoned buildings, especially during the winter months, can act as a makeshift home for only so long.

Cities where there are large concentrations of homeless teens have responded by running coat and food drives to provide warm clothing and food for such teens. For teens who cannot find a shelter to house them because of certain policies that prohibit them from receiving temporary housing, the solution, some policymakers argue, is to build shelters specifically for homeless teens. However, at best, these both are no substitute for a safe, long-term home and source of sustenance.

Activists fighting against homelessness argue that such shelters and other solutions are temporary treatments to a problem that persists because of a society that allows it to persist. They argue that it is not simply an issue of space when it comes to finding shelter, or giving out food.

In response to critics of policies to help ameliorate homelessness, activists say that homeless teens often do try to get out of their current conditions by taking jobs. Such employment, however, especially in a struggling economy, is hard to come by and often does not provide enough financial stability. 

To ameliorate and perhaps prevent homelessness from occurring in the first place, some argue for programs that connect people who are in need to various resources (such as employment, counselling, and other such sources of help) that will prevent the conditions that often lead to homelessness to become so problematic as to force people out of a stable home.