¶ … homelessness an issue that involves the general public of the United States instead of the (relatively) few victims who suffer from this condition. Nearly all of these factors have to do with the notion of the sociological imagination, a concept that was innovated by Charles Wright Mills and which essentially enables people to look beyond their a particular person's fault to understand how the larger society may have contributed to that person's circumstances (Carl, p.6). From the angle of sociological imagination, then, homelessness is a public issue and not a private one for all of the homeless people because there are several systematic factors that are responsible for people being too poor and for housing being not affordable or not in great enough demand to account for the number of people who need it.
One of the major structural issues that is responsible for these factors and for homelessness is wage-labor hierarchy, which in many occasions, may be directly responsible for the high levels of poverty that affect many homeless people (Carl, p. 3). Many people become poor because there are not enough jobs to go around. As a result, another important structural issue that affects the homeless population is the fact that there are fewer jobs than people who are able and who want to work. This issue is made even worse by the fact that there are also a number of cases in which there are people who are able to find low income jobs, but who still cannot afford the expenses to live by themselves in affordable housing and take care of the basic necessities that is a part of independent living. Even though these people may work, they have to face the facts that they w ill not make enough money to support themselves (Carl, p.3). These issues relate to the United States society as a whole, and are systematic reasons that explain why homelessness is society's problem, and not just the problem of those who are homeless.
Works Cited
Carl, John. Think Sociology 2011. Pearson: New Jersey. 2011. Print.
