Homelessness In Australia

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Homelessness has increasingly become a problem in Australia over the last few decades. The rate of homelessness in Australia in continuing to rise every year with more than 100,000 people around the nation homeless every night (Bristow, 2015). For many years, Civilization has studied the homeless population trying to determine what causes someone to be homeless and the reasoning behind why someone remains homeless. The majority of society often argue that homelessness is caused by lack of resources, motivation and even laziness. However, for the vast population of homeless people, there are often valid reasons for one being homeless. These include, the loss of a job, psychological issues and unexpected financial hardships. This essay will explore…show more content…
Homeless people on the streets, asking for change or scavenging through rubbish bins has become a far too common scene in this nation. Society accepts that a certain amount of homelessness is inevitable. However someone being homeless is not a given and we can not only reduce the number of homeless people, we can completely abolish it altogether. The department of human services (2010), states, “Homelessness is not a choice. It is one of the most potent examples of disadvantage in the community, and one of the most important markers of social exclusion.” This shows that homelessness is a social problem and it is important to view it as a complex problem in order to understand it…show more content…
Homelessness, can be found in the Conflict Theory. The Conflict theory stresses the role of coercion and power in producing social order. The perspective was developed by Sociologist, Karl Marx, who viewed society as split into different groups that compete for social and economic resources. Marx claimed that Social order is sustained by domination. Placing greater power in the hands of those with the greatest Economic, political, and social resources. When consensus exists, it is attributable to people being united around common interests, often in opposition to other groups (Crossman, 2015). Marx also argues that capitalists exploit workers for their labour and do not share the fruits of these labours equally. By doing this it allows the possessing class to dominate politically and to enforce their ideology on the workers of this world (McClelland,
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