Transgressive Purpose

There are many factors which have contributed to the state of homelessness in the city of New York. One of the factors is the rising costs of rental flats: most people are not in a position to afford or rent the houses and thus are effectively rendered homeless. This is especially hard when one has a large family which needs more space. Other factors include substance abuse and lack of decent jobs which can enable one to get a good amount of money to enable the purchasing of a house or rent one. The city of New York is obligated to provide sleeping places for those who are homeless. This has been a challenge because of the few places which are available for such purpose (Webber, 2002).

Yoshida (1995) claims that alcoholism has been the major factor causing the  homelessness status.  He quotes statistics from the National Coalition of the Homeless (NCH) which shows that fifty percent of the homeless are adults who have had a problem with a drug or alcohol problem. The statistics also implied that the state of alcoholism of an individual determined how easily he or she could secure a job. This implies that a homeless person who is alcoholic is likely to remain more in the homeless status because it will take relatively a long time for them to secure a job (Yoshida, 1995, par. 3). He also notes that since the homeless receive some kind of assistance from government whether they are employed or not they may be tempted to remain homeless so as to continue getting the assistance. Yoshida (1995) concludes that homelessness is caused by a host of factors and one factor can not be viewed as the main cause of homelessness. The causes usually act as reinforcement to each other.

There are steps which have been taken to alleviate the pain of those in the status of homelessness which if viewed from some perspectives can be said to encourage the state of homelessness. For instance in the city of New York, the mayor is obligated to provide sleeping places for the homeless. The federal government offers financial assistance to those who are the poverty line where of course the homelessness belongs. These factors will act as motivational factors especially for the low earners who will view it as a financial burden to rent a house because what he/she earns might not be enough to allow house renting.  

Under such circumstances where the homelessness stand a chance of benefiting from not paying rent to getting some extra financial assistance it becomes very likely that homelessness becomes a normative. It becomes a normative because it the better option due to the conditions attached to it.

Homelessness is a transgressive state. It is a situation which is quite rampant in the City of New York. Homelessness can be said to be a state in which a person has no place to sleep and depends on the sleeping places provided by the city. The state of homelessness is viewed as transgressive because of the causes associated with it. It is not caused by one particular factor but a number of them which include unemployment, drug abuse, alcoholism, and federal assistance.

It can be argued that the provision of sleeping places for the homelessness and the federal assistance given to the homeless can somehow act to support the state of homelessness. This is because the beneficiaries of these programs due to the fact that they are low earners will stand a chance of benefitting more from the state of homelessness than otherwise.