Map showing the number of homeless citizens in the USA

Total Homeless: 744,313 people

Study released in 2007 by The National Alliance to End Homelessness.

From this map you can see that California has been estimated to be state with the highest percentage of people who are homeless. Personally I find this very interesting as stereotypically California is preserved as a state of wealth and class. Many celebrities live in California and it is often said to be the home for the rich and famous. However California is one of the Border States, which could suggest that many illegal immigrates, move over to California. Texas, Florida and New York are then ranked the second states, of which a large percentage of homeless people live. In the 19^th Century a lot of the southern American states were the poorer states; this map supports this with the evidence from Texas and Florida. Florida is known as the state where many people retire to, so what does this say about the people who are homeless in Florida, are they elderly? Or are there a large number of homeless people who are of the younger generations? New York on the other hand is a city and therefore there are often a lot of people who are homeless in cities.  States such as Illinois, Washington and Oregon are then ranked third in the data of percentage of people who are homeless in the United States.  . The data shows these areas are in the middle of the scale of homeless citizens living in America; however the figures show that the percentage of homeless people is still high! The states which are estimated to be the second from last states in the estimation of homeless people living in America are; Atlanta, Arizona, Tennessee and Kansas, along with a few others. The evidence shows that these states range in percentage of the number of homeless citizens, ranging from 4,713 to 8,066 even just by crossing the border from one state to another the percentage of homeless people is increased. Finally the states which came out as the states with the least number of homeless people were; Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Utah and Washington D.C. Washington D.C is the capital of America therefore it is likely that there will be a low percentage of homeless people, as property and land will often be priced differently to other states within America. However I find it very interesting that Mississippi is estimated to be one of the states with the lowest number of people who are homeless. Mississippi in the past was one of the states in America which has a large number of people living in poverty and it is now being ranked as one of the states with the least number of homeless people.

The areas which stand out most to me are California and Florida, I was shocked to find out these two states are state of which a high percentage of people live homeless. Florida is one of the states of which many people have holiday homes, or second homes, this data shows that there are a large number of people living homeless, which seems very sad when people have properties in Florida which are just being used for vacation purposes and there is a large number of people living on the streets. The evidence from this data on the map shown could suggest that despite these are often perceived as wealthy areas there could be a large divide between rich and poor.   

I believe the number of people who are homeless, depends on a number of different factors such as;  history of the state for example if there was a high number of unemployment currently or in the past, any natural disasters which could have happened, terrorism attacks such as 9/11 in New York, large number of people living in the state without health care insurance, property value and finally, areas of which there are high crime rates.

I find the data shown in this map is very fascinating, as it is far from what I would personally predict it to be. It also leaves me with the question; what will this map look like in ten years’ time? And could the effect of a natural disaster or another disaster such as war or terrorism have an effect on the data shown in this map? I believe a number of different factors could alter this map and I would be interesting to compare this map to the number of citizens living in each state , and work out the ratio of homeless citizens to non-homeless citizens. I also think it would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between nationalities living in these states and the number of people who are living homelessly.

Data founded in 1996 by the U.S Interagency and council of homelessness shows that;

66% of homeless people are single adults, those of which ¾ are men.

11% Are parents with children, 84% of which are single women

23% Are children under eighteen with a parent, 42% of whom are under the age of five

Infomation collected from;http://homefreeorg.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/homelessness-mapped-in-united-states.html#!/2009/06/homelessness-mapped-in-united-states.html