Many families face the challenges of public housing. Not only it is the struggle to get access to the public housing, but it is also very difficult to get out of public housing environment. The reasons that people find themselves in a situation when they need public housing are economic and social. Poverty is a complex prevalent social issue throughout the United States. Most citizens consider personal deficiencies to be the primary cause for poverty. One belief is that individualistic factors are the major reasons for poverty and another belief is that structural factors are the primary reasons for poverty, while others believe them to be a combination of both. According to Greenberg , 37 million Americans were living below the poverty line …show more content…
The ability of an individual or a family to get out of a dangerous cycle of entrapment in subsidized housing and perpetuating low income depends not only on person’s or a family’s ability to motivate themselves and achieve better situation, but also requires significant help from the government and public organizations. Shin notes that the solution to the problem involves giving subsidized families realistic opportunities such as becoming educated, opportunities to get trained, and opportunities to find sustainable employment; and fostering the motivation to take advantage of them (341). In many cases, it is the task of government and public organizations to provide effective intervention and psychological help to the people in subsidized housing. Policymakers need to provide housing aid programs which take into account a diversity of homeless population and their conditions instead of providing unconditional shelter for anyone who applies for it. Policymakers also need to recognize that homeless and low-income people are ordinary people down on their luck who are in variety of difficult situations. Shin proposes that a possible solution can be a creation of community service-based, tenant-operated, government-supervised business operations by conditioning tenant housing assistance on monthly participation quotas (342). Subsidized residents should be motivated to work for and with each other to overcome their situations and improve their quality of life. Community-based programs may offer training and practice in attaining practical job skills and abilities to start up and maintain small business. At the same time, community programs need to provide effective childcare facilities so that parents have more time to seek jobs and