Our Neighbors: Those without homes in Nashville
Doan Phuong Nguyen
Issue date: 11/30/05 Section: features
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Beyonce is a 26-year-old African American woman with three young kids. Max has just turned three, Sandy is six, and Jason is ten. She and her kids are staying at the Nashville Safe Haven Family Shelter tonight. She has just escaped an abusive relationship. Last night, her boyfriend of two years, Michael, came home drunk and hit her with a broomstick because she failed to keep the house clean while he was out with his friends. Little Sandy tried to intervene and was hit in the process. Half of Beyonce's face is now bruised and you can still see the purple marks on her arms that Michael left last week. She has nowhere else to go. Her family is in Cleveland and she is too embarrassed to call them for help. She only makes $6 an hour working at the local grocery store as a bagger, which isn't even enough to pay for rent in an apartment. She worries about her future and her kids' future. This is the first time she's been homeless.
Although we typically think of homelessness as the intoxicated man huddled under a bridge, in reality the homeless come in all different shapes, sizes, views and walks of life. Currently, the fastest growing population of homeless in Nashville is families, especially like Beyonce's-women with children. Families with children make up 40 percent of the homeless population in the United States.
Like Beyonce, some of the women coming into the homeless shelters are escaping from domestic violence. They have low paying jobs and cannot make ends meet to pay for housing. There are also women who are not escaping from violent relationships but are homeless because they have some mental illnesses or drug or alcohol addiction. Of course there are also homeless single women too.
Being homeless also has damaging effects on children. First, homeless children are more likely to have poor health. They have four times as many respiratory infections, five times as many stomach and diarrhea related infections, twice as many emergency hospitalizations, six times as many speech and stammering problems and four times the rate of asthma than non-homeless children. Also, because homeless children are confronted with stressful events, these can be painful and the stress from these events can have emotional and cognitive affects on these children. Thus, these children tend to experience more developmental delays and mental health problems such as anxiety or depression. In addition, homeless children have more behavior related problems at school.