Good Evening. I am Muinat Lawal, a 2016 Parkdale High School Graduate. This upcoming fall I will be attending Prince George’s Community College. The only way for my siblings and I to attend college is through financial aid and scholarships. Without these opportunities, my parent would be more in debt and become homeless just to send one out of five of us through to college. But one does not become homeless just because they cannot afford the rent. Other reasons such as domestic violence, job loss, substance abuse, mental illness, or just because their parents disown them due to their sexual orientation all play a major impact on being homeless. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Development, over 50% of young people on the streets report that their parents told them to leave or did not care if they left; 1 of every 4 homeless women is homeless because of violence committed against them, 47,725 veterans become homeless because …show more content…
According to Amnesty USA, There are more vacant homes in America than there are homeless people. Just think about that for a minute, there are more vacant homes than there are homeless people. There are 3.5 million people in the United States that are homeless while there are 18.5 million vacant homes in the country. For every one homeless person, there are six empty homes. Now, do those statistics sit well with you? Because it does not sit well me that’s why I plan to create a program that matches homeless people with vacant homes around their area by working with people, banks, organizations who own vacant homes that are willing to let a homeless person live in it for a few weeks or months. Now you may be thinking are vacant home owners really going to agree with that? The answer is yes, in fact, some states already passed laws to give government-owned vacant home to the homeless. How