Homeless in a Small Town

By: Antion Williams-Brown

Being homeless in 2020 is already tough. But there are some challenges that people face being homeless in a small town as opposed to a bigger city. Being homeless in a small town has some things that can be a little better and some things that end up being worse for them. I want to look at the challenges that face homeless people in small towns compared to larger cities.

In a small town you think that normally things are a lot more personal, the whole everyone knows everyone cliché. But for the homeless small towns can be a big decider on how much help they have getting out of homelessness. See in a small town it is possible that people don’t often realize there is a homeless problem. This can cause homeless people to be stuck out alone with no access to shelters or foodbanks. Another problem that faces homeless people in a small town is that often times these small towns are a decent way away from each other. Which makes it hard for the homeless community to travel. In a larger city within a few blocks there could be multiple homeless shelters and foodbanks. But when you are in a small town the homeless shelter could be in one town and the foodbank in the next town over. Saying the next town over does not sound that bad but the next town over could be a few miles away. One other thing to consider is that there are much less places for homeless people to sleep when they don’t have access to shelters. This causes homeless people to build tents out in the woods or sleep right on the street posing a lot of problems with their health and safety. There are a few things that can help the homeless community when living in a small town.

There are a few positive things when being homeless in a small town. One big thing is the sense of community that small towns have. If one of its community members becomes homeless it is possibly that the people that know them could help get them back on their feet. Then there are things like local businesses and churches that can help out the homeless community. Now this is something that happens everywhere, but in small towns I think that it is more prominent. It is more likely that small town communities will gather at a local foodbank or shelter to help their community than it is in a larger city where things are much less personally between the community.

In conclusion there are a lot of factors that can influence the homeless community. Being in a small town can affect how much help the homeless community can get in many different ways. Things like being able to travel from shelters to foodbanks or just finding places to sleep. But they can be helpful if the small town has a good sense of community they can band together to help the homeless people.