You are reading this from home. You've called this place home for over four years now. It has a solid foundation made of concrete or grass, depending on the weather that day. You are sitting on your stiff, cardboard cot surrounded by bags of your belongings. Your name is Arlisha, but you feel as if living on streets has shown you a new part of yourself that goes by the name of Spirit.

When asked to describe your daily routine, the first word that comes out of your mouth is miserable.

According to the 2018 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, Spirit was one of 553,000 people experiencing homelessness in the United States in 2018. Despite her living arrangements, she refuses to be seen as homeless. One of the first things Spirit said to introduce herself was, "I am out here because I am an activist." As if homeless by choice, this incredible woman continually referred to herself as an activist.

Spirit's journey to activism started in the projects where she grew up. Spirit is a lot like many people I know and love. She was born and raised in Columbia by her mother, who she tenderly referred to as her best friend, and lived with for most of her adult life. She became a mother of two daughters and moved to California to serve this country by becoming a member of the U.S. Marine Core. When Spirit's mother entered the early stages of dementia and Alzheimer's, she quickly returned to South Carolina to care for her.

Around the same time, Spirit's daughters asked her to move in so she could help pay the bills and take care of their children. Spirit soon felt the living arrangements getting out of hand when her daughters began stealing from her mother and pushing to get power of attorney over her. Things continued to get worse as friends and boyfriends began coming in and out of the home constantly, disregarding Spirit's mother and her health.

The face of the strong, unbothered Spirit I had been interviewing now looked hopeless as she said, "she had."

She was referring to the fact that her mother was a have and her daughters were have-nots. Her mother had a retirement plan to sustain her and Spirit's daughters wanted in on the money. After pleading with her daughters to stop stealing from her mother, Spirit did what she said was the worst decision she could have made. She tried getting the police involved, only for them to tell her it was a family matter.

Tensions rose between Spirit and her daughters. She finally decided she was going to get all of her mother's things and move out as soon as she could. That's when Spirit lost more than she thought her daughters would take from her. Spirit looked past me, nodded, and quietly said, "her boyfriend came into the home and shot my mother. He took my mother's life because she had." Four years later and Spirit still lives on the streets away from her family.

What set Spirit's journey apart from those who do not face homelessness, is that she came from a low-income family and was systematically forced to stay within that sector of the population.

To be very clear, she did not make a single excuse for ending up in Finlay Park sitting on a cardboard box. The system has been failing Spirit and others from the moment they were born. You don't choose your family's financial situation, you don't choose to become addicted to a substance and you don't choose to have a mental illness. The vast majority of homeless people come from situations such as these and America is doing nothing to help them.

What would Spirit call these people? The have-nots.

Many times, they aren't to blame and if they are anything like Spirit, they make no excuses to explain why they live on the streets. They come into the world below the poverty line and, unfortunately, many times they leave this world the same way. Spirit and other homeless citizens are activists for the have-nots. An activist is a person who campaigns to bring about political or social change. The social change they are calling upon is how we handle the homeless population.

While giving out food and clothes and offering shelters can benefit homeless people, it is never going to fully end homelessness.

The government needs to stop it at the root cause: the low-income areas.

Beautiful parks and schools with excellent teachers need to be built near the projects. The amount of affordable housing needs to increase. The government and all of us that have need to give these opportunities to the have-nots so that the cycle can stop. An outstanding amount of research shows that rather than jailing the homeless, we should offer permanent housing and treatments for mental health and addiction. Not only do these alternatives work better, but they also are less costly for our government.

"I ask myself, 'where do I go from here?' I don't want to live here for the rest of my life and I don't want to end up in prison either," Spirit said. We have a broken system when it comes to the homeless that needs to be addressed. I think we can all agree that all citizens deserve a roof over their head and a place to call home. Every time you see a homeless person, you see an activist begging for something to be done about the way our government deals with homelessness.

So, where do we go from here?