Homeless population grows, supplies shrink
Brian Lofton
Issue date: 10/3/08 Section: News
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The 1,170 homeless in Northwest Arkansas contribute to a much larger 850,000 homeless people in the country.
"For one of the richest countries in the world, it just doesn't fit," said UA sociology professor Kevin Fitzpatrick, one of the key contributors to the PIT census.
Fitzpatrick's main focus as a sociologist has been to recognize and better understand the "disadvantaged populations," he said.
Fitzpatrick said he first was involved with calculation of the homeless population at Birmingham, Ala., in the early 1990s. When he arrived in Fayetteville, he noted that something needed to be done about the awareness of homelessness.
"When I arrived to Fayetteville, there really was no one working in the area," he said.
Some people might stereotype the typical homeless person as an unshaven drunk in battered-down clothing on the side of the street, but this is an over-generalized misbelief, he said.
"Normal people don't realize that homeless persons are no different than you and I," Fitzpatrick said.
He gave a list of examples such as high school dropouts, college graduates and people who are falling behind on their mortgage and are forced to foreclose. All of these people are normal people who simply cannot afford a place of their own.
Of the 1,170 homeless, 308 were surveyed during the PIT census in January 2007. Those surveys have helped reveal profound finding of the homeless population in NWA.
Of the NWA homeless population, 60 percent of homeless occupy Fayetteville. The majority of those surveyed were Caucasian and African American: 84 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
Almost 61 percent of the homeless surveyors were men, and 83 percent of the homeless were alone. More than half of the surveyed had been homeless for more than 3 months, 6 percent had been homeless for more than two years and more than half of them had been homeless more than once.
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