While passing by College Avenue Friday, one may have noticed a group of people living in cardboard boxes.

This "Shanty Town" was set up by the members of Habitat for Humanity, in hopes of spreading awareness about poverty housing.

The students involved camped in boxes for 24 hours to demonstrate how people live when they cannot afford homes.

Since 1989, Virginia Tech's chapter of Habitat for Human has helped build more than 20 homes in neighboring counties.

Shanty Town was another effort to promote awareness and make people understand housing issues, ("Habitat members to go homeless," CT, April 16).

Unlike larger cities and urban areas, it is not common to see homeless people living on the streets of Blacksburg.

After living in a nice area like Blacksburg, one might forget the streets of larger cities are flooded with people who can't afford housing and are forced to live in shelters or in cardboard boxes.

Shanty Town stood as a reminder that this problem does exist and that students should be willing to help solve the problem by donating money or man-hours to organizations like Habitat for Humanity.

One might think areas like Blacksburg have no problems with poverty and homelessness.

However, in October the Town of Blacksburg passed a resolution to create a two-family homeless shelter. A homeless problem exists in Blacksburg even if we don't see it.

We never know when the economy could decline, and we could lose our jobs and find ourselves in similar positions. Not all homeless people are the type stereotyped in movies, only seeking spare change to buy some liquor.

"Over the last five years, 5.7 million different people in the United States have been homeless for some length of time. Approximately 1.2 million American families on waiting lists for subsidized housing are at particular risk of homelessness today," (National Health Care for the Homeless Council).

Most are average Americans who lose their financial stability due to low wages, expensive housing, lack of insurance or discrimination.

Some are families who couldn't make ends meet and ended up on the street, while others are individuals suffering from mental and physical disabilities.