One of the biggest holdbacks in to improving poverty and helping out the homeless is the biggest institution of them all, government. They are the ones who run the show and allow what they want for the businesses and non-profits to do. I was talking with one of the case-managers at the internship that I volunteer at. I found out some interesting information about how the city can really limit the helping that these people and volunteers can do for the non-profits and shelters that help the homeless. The way I found this out was because I was curious why the church had the men’s shelter open for only 3/4ths of the year. I was told that is was because of the city. They only allowed for a permit for that length. They are in the process of fighting it to make it a full year, because it is stupid to kick the people in need out for a few months. The city is also doing sweeps right now and is pushing the homeless on the street out to another neighboring city. It would be a lot more beneficial to put the recourses towards the shelters that house them and not have them be on the street. The shelters are beneficial in the sense that they help the homeless try to find a better place to live, or try to give them the job skills that would allow them to get back up on their feet.
All posts by Taylor K.
Teaching Presentation
For my teaching project, I decided to head down to Costa Mesa, California to do my presentation. This took place at my mom’s preschool, A Child’s Place, with the audience bang made up of the eight to ten teachers who work at the preschool. My presentation consisted a number of parts; one being made up of statistics that I have gathered and four others that talked about specific aspects of homelessness. After the presentation of information, I took a few questions from the audience that ranged from bringing up new information to clarifying and going deeper in other information that was said. Because I was presenting at a preschool to the teachers that work there, I decided to tailor parts of my presentation to the aspects of homelessness of children. This would be more relevant and beneficial to my audience.
I broke my presentation down into five different sections. The first section focused on the children aspect of homelessness and talked about the variety of statistics that I had found. In 2011, there were 1,168,354 homeless children that were enrolled in preschools and K-12 programs. This was a 10% jump over the previous year and a 72% increase since the recession in 2008. The percentages of where these children are living are 71% “doubled up” (they share housing situations with others), 15% in shelters, 6% hotels/motels, and 4% are unsheltered. There are one in 45 children that will experience homelessness in America each year. This means that there ill be over 1.6 million children affected. Some other statistics showed how these children have health issues more often than other children and are more exposed to violent situations.
Next I talked about the causes of homelessness and I broke it down into what I consider the five biggest parts. These were the economy, cost to own/rent a house, spousal abuse, drugs, and arrests.
Homeless counts was the next topic and I focused on how these counts are not always done the right way. There really is not an accurate number of how many homeless people there are in any given area. If a city puts enough resources into it they may be able to come up with a more accurate number, but if they do that they then have to spend more into helping the homeless. A lot of cities ignore this then so they do not have to provide services.
I brought up what I thought the best way was to combat homelessness, which was with affordable housing. There was a city back east that bought a building which they allowed homeless to live in if they put 30% of their “income” into (disability payment, social security, etc.) and the rest was paid by public and private grants. They then look at a variety of figures the next year and found surprising results. There was about 95% reduction in arrests throughout the people living there because they had a home to hang out in. Also there was about three million dollars saved by the city through the Emergency Room because the homeless living there were not getting as sick as often and were then not clogging up the ER with their illness problems.
Lastly I talked about my experience with the volunteer work that I have done this semester. I worked at the Central City Lutheran Mission and talked about my experience in working at the daily free meal, the after-school program, and in the men’s shelter.
I felt that I actually did a great job with my presentation to these teachers. It was really easy to speak to them and they responded with some though-provoking questions afterward. I learned a great amount more through researching the statistics about the homeless children and felt that I conveyed this and the other information well. Overall I felt like this presentation was a success.
Holding Back the Help
One of the biggest holdbacks in to improving poverty and helping out the homeless is the biggest institution of them all, government. They are the ones who run the show and allow what they want for the businesses and non-profits to do. I was talking with one of the case-managers at the internship that I volunteer at. I found out some interesting information about how the city can really limit the helping that these people and volunteers can do for the non-profits and shelters that help the homeless. The way I found this out was because I was curious why the church had the men’s shelter open for only 3/4ths of the year. I was told that is was because of the city. They only allowed for a permit for that length. They are in the process of fighting it to make it a full year, because it is stupid to kick the people in need out for a few months. The city is also doing sweeps right now and is pushing the homeless on the street out to another neighboring city. It would be a lot more beneficial to put the recourses towards the shelters that house them and not have them be on the street. The shelters are beneficial in the sense that they help the homeless try to find a better place to live, or try to give them the job skills that would allow them to get back up on their feet.
Drug Abuse and the Homeless
According to class discussions and a number of different readings we have done, substance abuse is not regarded as a high cause of homelessness. It is very prevalent in the homeless community though. I was always interested in how substance abuse effects the homeless community and decided for my blog post this week to do a bit of research into finding out some facts and information.
There are two different types of substance abuse: drugs and alcohol. 38% of homeless were dependent on alcohol with the abuse being more common in the older generation. 26% abused other drugs with it being more common for the younger generation. In addition, it is more common for substance abuse to be prevalent for the homeless population compared to the general population.
This bit of information was surprising to me because it contradicts, or at least says we should pay attention more to, how much of a factor substance abuse is becoming homeless. It sometimes may be a direct reason, or it may tag along other factors. Examples would be if someone was behind on bills, they may drink more, which cause them to fall so far behind they lose their house. There was a 2008 survey by the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for their top three causes of homelessness and Substance abuse was one of the three for single adults (reported by 68% of the cities). Another statistic is that substance abuse accounted for 12% of the cities for one of the top three reasons for homelessness for families. Lastly two-thirds of the homeless say that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for becoming homeless.
More times this abuse is a result of homelessness than a cause. Once becoming homeless, these people turn to alcohol and drugs to try and cope with their situation. In reality it makes it harder for them to function in society and to try to get a job to get back on their feet. If some of the homeless do become sober, there is little success remaining it while on the street. A lot of the treatment programs have an abstinence type programming which is not a very effective strategy and should focus on staying sober and the possibility of relapsing.
Saving Money with a Home
It actually saves the city money when they work together with the homeless to find a place to live. This is a really interesting fact that I learned while researching a variety of articles on homelessness. There have been a number of studies that have shown this fact, from ones in Florida, Colorado, and etc., but this one comes from Charlotte, North Carolina, where researchers at the University of North Carolina Charlotte studied a new apartment complex that was for homeless people.
This complex opened in 2012 starting with 85 units. The rules for the place are that each resident has to pay thirty percent of their income towards rent. The income ranges from any money from a job to benefits from the government. The rest of the costs are covered by a combination of local and federal government grants and private donors. In the first year, taxpayers save about $1.8 million because of two areas that had less a burden of homeless people which were health care and incarceration. With this housing complex being open, the residents visited the emergency room 447 fewer times than in past years. Also they were arrested 78 percent less during that first year as well. Because of the large amount of success that the housing complex was having, the Charlotte City Council approved about $1 million to have the Moore Place expand to 120 units.
For more information and links to the other city’s studies, click this link
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/03/24/3418140/charlotte-homeless-study/
Derelict Paradise
These last couple of weeks I read a book that had a very interesting view about how there is more to homelessness than just these people having a hard time living and surviving in absolute poverty. The book I read was Derelict Paradise and it explained how there are people in higher up positions in society who are benefitting off the people who are struggling. The author Daniel Kerr has conducted interviews with close to 200 homeless individuals and researched through the city’s local archives to find research on charities, politicians, newspapers, etc. to find out about how the city of Cleveland works and has changed. His informational study looks back from the last 130 years of the 1870s to present day.
Back in the day the city of Cleveland there was a “time [where] downtown Cleveland was a haven, almost a utopia, for lower income people” (Karr pg. 5). Back then housing was more affordable and available for the low-income population. But throughout the years the city was growing and wanting to look good to tourists and for its citizens, so this housing was destroyed and resulting in slums popping up. The slums were also eventually taken down and the homeless now were displaced.
There were a variety of people who benefited off the homeless with examples of the law enforcement, landlords, and the social shelters. They did not care for the homeless and were getting paid to “help” them live in these horrible conditions. When the migrant workers that came in to work for low labor threatened employer’s jobs, they banded together to remove the public services that helped out these workers.
There was a lot of work done to make sure that the homeless problem never improved so that profits were still able to be made off the homeless. There were a number of riots that occurred because of this, but nothing ever change. This seemed to occur every twenty to thirty years up until the present.
Internship Progress
For my internship I volenteered at a mission in San Bernardino. This mission is a community-based organization that was established in 1994 by five Lutheran churches. The original churches are still supporting the mission today alongside many more community partners. They have special assistance to those in special situations of youths at risk, HIV+ homeless, and homeless men.
The main method of helping the less fortunate is that there is a shelter that is open to homeless men. The shelter is open from the months of November to April. At one time there is the capacity of housing 70 men at a time. Through the six months of operation, there are 200 to 300 unduplicated men that come to the shelter for housing. There are also a variety of other classes that are offered to the public and to the people in need. The classes that they offer are aerobics, computer instruction, sewing and home arts class, English as a second language, and arts and crafts (with a $15 monthly fee).
The mission has an after school program that is provided daily from 3:30 to 6:00 pm. This is available to the neighborhood children and is free of charge. At the moment there are 32 children enrolled in the afterschool program. This program is offered in both Spanish and English. There are volunteers that help out with snacks that are offered at the beginning of the program. At 5:30 to 6:00 the neighborhood children eat a dinner provided by the mission. Through the time that the after school program is in session there are a variety of educational and recreational activities. Some of the special activities that the mission puts on for the kids are field trips, holiday parties, backpacks with school supplies, and gifts provided by donors.
Everyday volunteers prepare a free meal with food donated and grown in the community garden. This meal is distributed from the hours of 12 to 1. Students from the University of Redlands and other volunteers established the community garden. There are 19 boxes that grow a variety of plants. 10 of the boxes are for families in the neighborhood, 7 boxes are for the mission and the free meals that they provide, and 2 boxes are planted and maintained by the after school program. There is a food pantry that on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of every month, bags of groceries are given out free of charge to people who are in need of food. There are 96 bags that are assembled to be given out. At the back of the property there is a clinic that provides comprehensive primary care services to the community. It accepts a variety of health insurance, but to those that do not have insurances fees start as low as $20. Lastly there is a thrift store where people can purchase donated items. If there are people in need of clothing they can choose clothes for free by contacting the missions office.
Raising the Wage
One of the topics we were discussing about in class was the minimum wage, when our professor mentioned how there is a man who is going to put forth a vote on the ballot this November for the people to increase the minimum wage for California. This actually interested me quite a bit so I decided to do a bit of research to figure out more information on this subject. I found an article online that tells all about the man behind this measure and why he believes it will be a good idea for the wage to increase.
Behind the measure is a man named Ron Unz. His background is that he is a conservative man who was a software developer, a theoretical physicist from Harvard, and a publisher of the American Conservative magazine. What he wants to put into an effect is establishing the minimum wage at $12 dollars an hour, and to do this he wants to have the people vote on it issue on the ballot this November. He is also doing a great job at convincing both liberals and conservatives to back this issue. Its very interesting to be hearing a conservative talking about and having the position of wanting the wage increased, but his idea behind it has to do with logic.
He takes the standpoint of saying if businesses pay their low wage employees more, it will be taking away from what the taxpayers assist to the low-income people through food stamps, housing aid, Medicaid, etc. Our state has such a high cost of living and if we were to increase the minimum wage to $12 it would essentially be about $9.25 at the federal level if converted for living expense. This would pull a tremendous amount of people out of poverty and our working families would get about $15 billion per year. Also money would be saved for the taxpayers from not paying as much to the programs that assist the poor people. He also has an argument for the rich who might argue against his wanting to raise the wages. Unz says investing $2 million today would raise the annual incomes of low-wage workers by $15 billion. That is a tremendous increase.
I am really interested on how this will all play out and even just with the people involved in agreeing for this cause. I will definitely continue on watching what happens now and in November.
For more information check out this website
or just search around about this topic online
Money Issues
This past week we spent our time looking and researching statistics and percentages on the causes of homelessness. There are an incredible amount of things that can result in a person becoming homeless. But from looking at our graph we put up on the screen, it was clear that the number one cause of homelessness was from losing a job/financial struggles. I then decided to search a bit more research and see what I can find about this situation. One of the websites that I have found is a website that is dedicated to the homeless issue in Hillsborough County, Florida (found below). Here they talk about the variety of issues that cause homelessness, but focus mainly on the financial situation. They found from asking during their 2011 homeless count that nearly 50% of the homeless who answered were out there due to employment/financial reasons. This is huge because nearly a fourth to a half (ranging differently in other areas) are out on the street because they are not able to afford housing. On this website they put a chart up which displays the amount needed per hour to afford housing in their city. For a 0 bedroom apt it is $714 while for a 1 bedroom apt it is $793 respectively. To make enough to pay rent, the money earned an hour would have to be $13.73 for 0 bedroom apt. and $15.25 for 1 bedroom apt. Making minimum wage or even a little above, or not even having a job at all is a huge problem to trying to make enough to make rent. There needs to be a way where there can be more affordable housing available to all so people are not forced out to live on the streets.
http://www.homelessofhc.org/~homeless/index.php/get-educated-information-homelessness/causes-of-homelessness
Counting the Homeless
This week’s classes focused on how our society keeps track of the homeless population. It seems like it would be quite a hard task and it can be because they are not registered with the area they live in and take up residence in any place they feel safe enough to live it. On Tuesday we got to have a Skype session with two experts who are involved in finding and counting the homeless for their records. We got to hear the different ways this takes place. Then for Thursday we choice a city and researched on our own the statistics of homeless for that city. By analyzing the data I found, I got to understand better the variety of information that is found from the city.
The area I chose was Fresno Madera Point in Time count for 2013. There are a variety of ways that cities try to find our how many homeless individuals are living this their city, and Fresno used two of these methods. These were the survey and tally volunteers who participated. This Pit count took over four months to complete. The basic statistics are that there are 594 sheltered homeless and 2,537 unsheltered homeless.
Depending on the city there can be a wide range of how serious the count is taken. There needs to be one every two years, but if the city does not care as much they may do a count and estimate at the same time. If city really cares they will do there best to count how many homeless there are, and then from that data use resources to go towards shelters and programs to try to get people off the streets.
http://www.appliedsurveyresearch.org/projects_database/homelessness/
POINT IN TIME COUNT 2013 – Fresno Madera Continuum of Care