Every Indian must have a house by 2022. That is the dream of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. People living on footpaths is a common sight in most metro cities. According to the government’s definition, homeless or houseless people are those who live in “the open or roadside, pavements, inhume-pipes, under flyovers and staircases, or in the open in places of worship, mandaps, railway platforms etc.”
Due to decades of misguided and faulty policies, homelessness is a serious problem. Over half a million people go homeless on a single night in the United States. Approximately 65 percent are found in homeless shelters, and the other 35 percent—just under 200,000—are found unsheltered on our streets
According to a recent estimate by the Human Sciences Resource Center, South Africa is home to approximately 200,000 street homeless people, a significant portion of the nation’s population of 53.5 million (Rule-Groenewald et al., 2015). Members of the street community come from a variety of backgrounds, and this group is quite diverse in many ways.
In the State of Homelessness in Canada 2016 report, it was estimated that at least 235,000 Canadians experience homelessness in a given year. The actual number is potentially much higher, given that many people who are unhoused live with friends or relatives, and do not come into contact with emergency shelters.
Despite steady economic growth in Australia, homelessness increased by 14% between the 2011 and 2016 censuses, with 116,427 people now thought to have no permanent home. This means that for every 10,000 Australians, 50 are homeless. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), estimates that more than 43,500 homeless people are under 25.