National Roof Over Your Head Day

Love is not all you need – you will also need food, clothes and a roof over your heads. Silly, but so true.

Moffat Machingura

At the end of a long day, there’s nothing quite like coming back to a warm house, with family and friends. When you’ve been working, or its cold outside, or even when you’ve just gone out for a walk, home is the place you dream of coming back to.

But for some people that’s not an option that exists, there is no roof over their head to come home to. National Roof Over Your Head Day reminds you to take a moment to appreciate the fact that you have a place to hang your hat, or if you don’t, to keep working for that most important of dreams.

History of National Roof Over Your Head Day

Born out of a response to the number of homeless people that are out there, even in highly developed first world countries, National Roof Over Your Head Day serves to bring awareness to the fact that there are so many people out there who don’t have this basic need.

100 million people are estimated to not have a roof over their head, and of those that do, 1.6 billion are seen as having inadequate housing for themselves and their family.

What National Roof Over Your Head Day really is, is a call to charity and social awareness. Homelessness is a real problem, but it can be overcome. There have been a lot of creative moves made to help alleviate this problem, with one notable method being rolled out in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The city discovered it was paying $20,000 a year to handle their homeless issue, including policing, arrests, healthcare, jail time, just to name a few. So instead they built homes they could put their homeless into for just $7,800 a year. Since then, homeless in the city has dropped by 72%, all while saving the town money.

How to Celebrate National Roof Over Your Head Day

The best way to celebrate National Roof Over Your Head Day is to get out there and start being a solution to the homeless problem. Sure, there aren’t many of us who could actually afford to house the homeless on our own, but there are steps we could take to help motivate our leaders to do it. After all, look at the numbers above in Utah, those numbers ring true across the United States, and in fact across the world.

You can also take presents off the giving trees that are often put up at Christmas, or just drop a few dollars in the cup of the next homeless person you pass. National Roof Over Your Head Day is about giving others opportunity, and being thankful for what we have.