Thao-An Nguyen

Dear Mr. President, writing to you is one of your many citizens who wants a better change in a well and thriving country we call America. As much as I love where I live, there are some others out there who unfortunately can’t share the same thing as I can.

Even though America is a thriving country, we still have a large amount of individuals who are homeless, people without a home. These people have been spending their days, depending on bystanders to give them money or scrounging around for food and clothes. During the nights, while we sleep on the bed or at least something comfy, they have to sleep on the best thing they can find which is like the park bench, or on cardboards, on riverbeds, on the ground, and other makeshift beds they can find, if lucky, they can live in the backseat of the car.

Throughout the years, a lot of people of people have been laid off, been in a financial crisis, struggling with drug and alcohol and have been in trouble with paying medical bills. A huge role that plays out in homelessness is the money problem. Like when sales increase but salary decrease, especially with the low income. They don’t earn enough money to pay their house bills. Others though, are homeless because of natural disaster like tornadoes, hurricane or floods, disease/mental illness, divorce or veterans from war. There are a lot more reasons, but these are the main reasons. Lately the cost of houses have gone up, medical bills have been way too high and college tuition have been too excessive. All these things led up to poor jobs and struggling of paying of debt. How will they contribute to the helping of America when they can barely help themselves.

A lot of times when I look out the car window, I would see beggars out on the streets, scrawny looking people who looks like they haven’t taken a bath in weeks, which is probably true. It saddens me knowing that I am being driven to my house while they might never have that chance again. So sometimes, when the light turns red and they walk up to the car, my parent give them money. Most of time, they would thank us and give us a blessing, we would give them blessings too, but that is not what they need, they need immediately help which is what you, the president could do for your people.

About 643,067 people in America are without a home. Around 17% of those people are considered chronically homeless or people who has a disability and have experience homelessness, 12% are veterans who have suffered from the consequences of war, 25% suffer from illnesses, 13% are fleeing domestic violence, and a lot of the homeless population are just children, or individuals under the age of 18. So many of these individuals don’t deserve so be scrounging around the streets. They deserve to be living in a home, and working to contribute to the needs of America.

Knowing that there are people out there in America without a place to call home, please bring back more jobs into America. Make a shelter for the homeless and allow a make shift job for the homeless to depend on until they can redeem themselves a home so they can live in and enjoy for the holidays, or for the cold winter night or every day of their lives. Stop increasing the cost of everything like medical bills and raise the minimum wage and raise the salary. For the sake of your many citizens who are living their lives out in the street, please make sure that they don’t have to live like that no more, let them have a decent home to live in.