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An estimated 100 million people are homeless; that is practically 1.5 percent of the global population, meaning, if the figure were rounded up, one of every fifty people in the world are homeless. Lack of affordable housing, faltering world economy, forced eviction from their homes, and natural, and man-made catastrophes are mainly accountable for the displacement of these people. In the glass paradise of the city, there are alleys; and in the countryside there are shantytowns, where they take refuge. Irrigation ditches, subway stations, and the outnumbered night shelters also house them, if only temporarily. Faces dark and hard, frames emaciated, they shoulder their belongings and their rectangular scraps of cardboard to town. Marked in black are their ardent pleas, and the words stand to remind us that sometimes there are no nets to catch us if we fall.

Aside from the private assistance of those who give them change, and agencies ran by global and local churches, the homeless assist themselves. They have no shelter, and sometimes no food, or clean water. They see our bridges as their roof. They see our line of trash cans as buffet lines, and thrift stores. They see our aluminum cans as their income. And unfortunately, sometimes they see copious amounts of drugs, and alcohol as their only deliverance. They process our world of rigid mores in the way a starving animal would: it means to survive, with no adherence to the rules. Some homeless are mentally imbalanced. Their frantic search for things beyond their reach is only worsened with the presence of such monsters of the psyche as schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, which ruin their adaptability to new surroundings, and alienate them from society. They run into trouble with the law for doing the only thing that keeps them alive: taking what doesn't belong to them. The prison system that awaits them usually returns them to the streets, or to the mental ward. In turn, the mental ward returns them to the streets, and the streets return them to prison. These people suffer a system lacking accountability which is callous of their best interests.

Drugs compound the issue of mendicant living exponentially. The popular drug in the nomad population is alcohol. Additionally, many homeless binge on methamphetamine. To break them of these habits is something neither the prison system, nor the mental institutions have patience for. During the 1970's, due to underfunding, the United States passed legislature of deinstitutionalization

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