Homelessness and Hypo-Weather: A Recipe for A Human Rights Disaster
We are putting people at risk of preventable hypothermia death every year we haven’t completely ended homelessness. Hypothermia can strike vulnerable homeless populations at temperatures as high as the 50’s. With much of the country already experiencing highs far closer to freezing.
Even under the best of circumstances homelessness dramatically elevates one’s risk of injury, illness and death, with middle aged men and woman at the most risk when compared to their housed counterparts. On average those suffering from homelessness are three times more likely to die prematurely in all age groups compared to their housed counter parts.
The difficulties of getting rest in a shelter or on the street, maintaining medications, staying clean and the mental stress of trying to survive on a daily basis can make even curable diseases deadly for these populations.
Add to this the increased risk of death caused by exposure to extreme condition such as heat stroke or the risk of hypothermia faced by homeless populations during the winter months makes homelessness all the more deadly. Homeless people with a history of frostbite, immersion foot or hypothermia are eight times more likely to die from these conditions then their housed counter parts.
Even with these statistics and advice from organizations that specialize in homelessness and homeless healthcare the vast majority of cities will not declare a hypothermia alert until temperatures hit 40 degrees or lower, with some cities refusing to issue an alert and open up addition shelters until temperature reach 13 degrees with a wind chill.
When emergency shelters are made available such as the “Cafes” in Philadelphia, these shelters fill to capacity very quickly, leaving the most vulnerable to suffer and die out in the cold.
It is estimated that an average of 153,000 Americans will go without shelter of any kind on any given night many of them mentally ill, people with a physical disability, and children.
On average there are around 2.5 million children that will experience homelessness during a given year. The country experienced an increase in child homelessness of 8 percent in 2012, 10 percent in 2013, and 3.2 percent in 2014. Where affordable housing, unemployment and underemployment weren’t a factor many of them became homeless due to family disputes or domestic violence.
In 2014 22 percent of the demand for shelter went unmet, 73 percent of cities surveyed had to turn away families with children and 61 percent had to turn away unaccompanied people in need of shelter due to a lack of available beds.
The number one cause of homelessness is a lack of affordable housing. It’s not that there is a lack of available housing more generally, the problem is affordability. In cities like Baltimore where entire neighborhoods are abandoned, with block after block of boarded up housing units people are denied the most basic right to housing.
There seems to be no end in sight as city after city, state after state, continue to put their money into criminalizing the homeless, by making it illegal to perform everyday living activities such as eating or sleeping. Where criminalizing the homeless directly isn’t done, those who wish to help the homeless are criminalized. Each of these approaches are more than just counterproductive to ending the problem and unethical they are criminal.
The right to housing has long been codified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under article 25(1) which states. “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, and housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
Yet, the U.S. and much of the western world hasn’t been able to end this Human Rights atrocity, or even significantly decrease its causes. Even with the availability of resources, statistics on policies that do work, politicians refuse to allocate the resources and policies needed on a sufficiently large enough scale to provide the housing for all which international law mandates.
The fight for housing first and housing for all policies have a long way to go before they are in a position to fulfill the aspirations they have proven are possible on the small scale, nationally.
Until they are countless lives will be lost to a whole host of preventable problems like hypothermia and other exposure related condition, the real question is how long until we truly hold the policy makes accountable for the human lives they are taking through their inaction and counterproductive policy choices?
