All posts by Taylor K.

Internship at a church

About being poor, Causes of Poverty, Homelessness, Hunger

One of the best ways for a student to learn is to experience the subject they are focusing on in person. But it is even more rewarding to, in addition, have individuals highly experienced in the situation to pass on information about what one has just seen.

Today was the first day that I got to start my internship and help at one of the churches located in San Bernardino. My task today was to work in the soup kitchen and help provide a free lunch for the individuals that should up between the hours of twelve to one. It was a good day to show up, because one of the regulars that usually is there was out because of an emergency, so I took her place and worked side by side with a really nice, older, Spanish-speaking lady in the kitchen. We had a number of tasks to complete and I was actually surprised and the amount of food that was donated and those we worked with. A salad, pasta, and chicken with a nice spice on it was served along side some doughnuts and lemonade. It felt quite nice to accomplish all that in a short amount of time and to have most of it gone in that hour. I ask about how many people are served during a normal lunch, which happens five days a week, and at the beginning of the month there is usually 60-70 people, but at the end of the month it shoots up to 110-120. I thought it might be due to money running out at the end of the month, and I was partly correct, but found out the real reason later on. There were a number of really nice people that I met at this time, some being the workers and some being there for the food. But as I was getting close to being done with finishing up, I met this man who talked with me for a good forty-five minutes about the shelter, the surrounding area, and a few other things. He was the IT for the church, and filled me in on the hunger and homeless in the area.

First of all he told me that none of the people in the area are ever too hungry. There is an abundance of food in the area. With about six other churches on the same street that also have free lunches, people are never in any real danger of going hungry. He said there was so much food, that some of it even goes bad. There is always some bread that is molding and the other week there was a shipment of bananas donated that were not used.

Second, he told me that the main reason that there are so many homeless people is not because of financial situations, but because of drug use. A large portion of the people coming use drugs such as crack or meth and that is the reason that there are more people later in the month. This is because money is immediately spent on drugs and as soon as their cash runs out, they come back to the church. The reason they cannot get a consistent job is because of criminal records. He made a good point, that someone may get arrested for drug use, go to jail, and then have a record for seven years, not allowing that person to get a job and get back on their feet.

The whole system needs to be looked at, because it seems to be a giant cycle keeping these people from moving on from their past, and getting stuck without anywhere to go. I plan on researching this topic further, because what he said really did change my perspective on a lot of things dealing with this topic.

Priorities in the Wrong Places

Books and Films, Government programs, Homelessness

This week in class, we got the opportunity to see a very informative documentary called “Taylor’s Campaign”. This followed around a man by the name of Ron Taylor while he was in the process of running for council on a platform of improving the lives of homelessness. He himself was once homeless for a period a little longer than ten months and decided to take a stand and make an effort to help improve the lives of the other homeless in the city of Santa Monica, California.
Not only does this movie just follow Taylor around while he campaigns, but gives an inside story of the struggles of homelessness in the city of Santa Monica with. The city has more than enough power to improve the lives of the homeless, but they choose to focus their time on trying to cut services for them while trying to hide them away from tourists, to not scare them away and ultimately increase revenue. There are many instances that the movie shows that the city could be doing more. A housing structure had to be built, but the problem was that there were only three-to-five beds for women while there were at least forty-to-fifty for the men. The services put in place to serve and protect the people are putting unnecessary time into harassing the homeless around the city. The police cite misdemeanors for shopping carts and kick others out of spots they found for the night to sleep in. It was also interesting to see how much time the police use to pointlessly hassle the homeless. In Lee Stringer’s book, Grand Central Winter, the cops use arresting the homeless for their own personal gain. One example of this is when the main character and his friend are woke up to an officer who was “calculating the overtime it will be worth to arrest the two of [them].” (44 Stringer) And these are people who are not trying to cause trouble to begin with. They are down on their luck and are doing anything they can to survive. A few of the homeless have a system to collect cans and bottles for money, and at the same time they are “doing a service for the city” by recycling, but the city would just rather bother and hassle them in hopes that they leave and go back to the shadows away from the residents and the tourists.