A Rebuttal of Brother, Don’t Spare a Dime :: Argumentative Persuasive Argument Essays

A Rebuttal of â€Å"Brother, Don’t Spare a Dime† In â€Å"Brother, Don’t Spare a Dime,† L. Christopher Awalt says that homeless people are homeless on their own accord. He believes â€Å"many of them seem to have chosen the lifestyles they lead† (Awalt))).. This article states that most homeless people would prefer to escape responsibility rather than fix their social and economic problems. Awalt uses an example of a man who had been on the streets for about 10 years. He provided this man with resources to improve his life and within four months he was making progress. By the sixth month the man had checked himself out of the hospital and was back on the streets drunk again. Awalt does show a few people are the victims of tragic circumstances and will bounce back in a short period of time. Awalt believes homeless people have become dangerous to the public, and they do not deserve our money to help them out of their predicament. We do not agree with Awalt’s assumption that the majority of the homeless people in the United States are there because of their lack of responsibility. There are many causes of homelessness that cannot be avoided, and the majority of the people that become homeless will not be on the streets for long. Awalt states that for every person who is temporarily homeless, there are many who are chronically homeless (Awalt). Yet, according to the National Resource Center (NRC) on Homelessness and Mental Illness, 80% of the homeless population is off of the streets within 2 to 3 weeks. The NRC is the only national center specifically focused on the effective organization and delivery of services to the homeless and the mentally ill. It is important to note that the NRC reports 10% of people are homeless for 2 months and only 10% are chronically homeless. This fact shows that many people want to get back to ordinary lives and will work hard to do so, in spite of Awalt’s claims. One reason why people become homeless could be due to the decline of housing units affordable to extremely low income households (National Resource Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness).