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A Call to Action
Feven Berhane
Honors 1000 Thursday Seminar
December 1, 2011

America promises so many opportunities and wealth, that here, a homeless man like Chris Gardner could become a millionaire. Yet when one walks down the streets of a city, it seems that this amazing story is, rather, an extremely rare occurrence. This idea set with the backdrop of a picture perfect suburb can perhaps hold true. However, when it is juxtaposed with makeshift homes made of tents and a couple of personal belongings, this promise seems nothing but shallow. There are many homeless individuals, and now a growing number of families, living on our streets, and their future is bleak. This is a terrible reflection of a country that has so great to offer so something must be done to try to solve this issue. In Detroit, through services like transition homes and shelters, Detroit Rescue Missions Ministries, though not perfect, is doing an efficient job dealing with homelessness.
To understand the impact Detroit Rescue Missions Ministries (DRMM) has had, it is important to understand homelessness and its causes. There are “643,067 people experiencing homelessness on any given night” in this country and 37% are families (End Homelessness). Homelessness is caused by poverty and the inability to afford housing. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) “calculates that a family with one full-time, minimum-wage worker can't afford a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country” (Katel). Poverty is another issue, especially in Detroit. Due to the foreclosure crisis and high unemployment rate “first-time homeless citizens are flocking…to near-capacity shelters” (Oosting). CEO of DRMM, Chad Audi, says there has been a wave of people who would never have thought they would be jobless let alone homeless, coming to the shelter. "What we are seeing now is more and more of

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