Solomon
is a graduate student at the University of Southern California, and lives in Temecula.
Did you wake up in a warm, safe environment this morning? Many Americans did not. The U.S. Department of Urban and Housing Development, in its 2020 Annual Assessment Report to Congress, said that 580,466 people experienced homelessness in the nation on a single night in 2020, an increase of 12,751 people from 2019. According to a study published in 2017 by the Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 25 percent of homeless individuals suffer from a serious mental illness, a stark contrast to the 4.2 percent with such issues in the general population.