Vincent Kompany Quotes

The public thinks that homelessness is about not having any accommodation to go to.

If you look at people who seek a lot of care in American cities for multiple illnesses, it's usually people with a number of overwhelming illnesses and a lot of social problems, like housing instability, unemployment, lack of insurance, lack of housing, or just bad housing.

I don't think there is such a definition of a perfect family, but I do think that our marriages are in crisis. Our families are in crisis. And I think the African-American family is at one of the worst stages it's been at in a very long time in this country. Fatherlessness is rampant.

About one third of the people who are on the streets are mentally ill.

Of course homelessness has many causes and the solutions are often frustratingly complex.

When a mom or dad can stop worrying about where they will lay their head each night they can start climbing back on their feet and out of poverty.

Many offenders have had immensely difficult upbringings and do not have the support of loving families and friends.

Every day on our streets there are people who are facing a combination of homelessness, mental illness, and addiction. Each of these conditions is challenging alone, but when experienced at the same time it creates a downward spiral that makes it even more difficult for the person to get treated and housed.

For young people in the U.K. who find themselves without anywhere to live - perhaps they have left the family home after a relationship breakdown, or to escape abuse, or have left care - it is far too easy to become trapped in a chain of misfortune, with little help from the state.

The homeless often lose trust in people: in the hospital doctors, who had no choice but to discharge them back on to the streets, and in the family members from whom they have become estranged. Their past use of the NHS can make it difficult to patch together a full medical history.

A lot of people's circumstances can change very, very quickly, and people can move jobs, relationships can break down, something else could happen, and the next thing you know, you can't pay your rent, you can't get the support you require, and you're out on the street.

My mom moved up north to make more money to support the family, and I was left with my dad and I was just bounced around from one family to another.

Homelessness is a part of our American system. There should be nothing wrong with this condition as long as the individual is not sentenced to unnecessary suffering and punishment.

It's not that, you know, when a relationship doesn't work and there are issues, you have to somehow work it out if there are children involved.

There are five issues that make a fist of a hand that can knock America out cold. They're lack of jobs, obesity, diabetes, homelessness, and lack of good education.

Our poor children are suffering every day for want of necessities of life…All this is for the love of strong drink.

A parent who is high is unavailable to attend to the needs of a child.

We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance, and courage and determination.

There are people with no high school education who are poor. but there are also university graduates on food bank lines. There are people who are poor because they have made bad choices, gotten addicted to drugs, burned bridges with friends and family — and then there are people who have never taken a drug in their lives, who have huge social networks, and who still can’t make ends meet.

This statement of fact is an eloquent comment on the apathy with which many people regard the mental and physical health of the rising generation…A woman will lavish love and care, and attention on her pet cat or ‘prize’ poodle, and yet draw her skirts aside from the starving children in the gutter. The mew of the cat and the howl of the dog, to say nothing of the squeal of the ‘tortured rabbit’- that figment of anti-vivisectionist imagination- are far more potent to loosen the purse-strings of the sentimentalists than the wail of children.

American poverty is darkened by lonliness: poverty in so many poor countries …. Is brightened only by community. Helping people gain other people to lean on—not just offering cheaper health care and food stamps, tax cuts and charter schools—seems essential to making the American dream work …

My mum literally drives into Skid Row every day and manages teams that are assembled to walk around and engage with usually chronically homeless people and try to get them into permanent housing.

It's hunger. It's homelessness, often. It's underfunded, under-resourced schools. It's abuse beyond the chilling. It's having overwhelmed parents and caregivers. Those are the things that young people are struggling with beyond our view.

I realized eventually that when I ran out of places to stay and found myself on the D train and in Central Park, I was actually homeless.

In my family and in my community, I see people struggling with drug addiction, with poverty and the effects of generational poverty; I see people struggling with lack of access to healthcare.