All posts by Sally

126,000 Millionaires & 58,000 Homeless

About being poor, Anti-Poverty Programs, Solutions to Homelessness

In this Huffington Post blog post by Joel John Roberts, an interesting solution to homelessness in L.A. is presented. Roberts reports that there are 126,000 millionaires in the Los Angeles area, living it up in their mansions and driving their Lamborghinis past the 58,000 people living on the street. What if the millionaires of L.A. took care of the homeless? Roberts suggests a “Two-for-One” program, where two millionaires can “pay for a person’s mental health care. Pay for the cost of rehab. Provide the means to get a job. Cover the tab of an apartment security deposit. And pay $1,000 per month for a tiny apartment.” Though this suggestion is not a completely serious one, it proves a point. It shows how ridiculously huge the gap is between the rich and the poor and it shows how easy it could be to solve the issue of homelessness in L.A. and other stratified cities in the U.S., if the people at the top only cared enough to do so. As Roberts states, “We [Los Angeles] are the epitome of the first world clashing with the third.” I believe that this solution could work, if only there weren’t so many stigmas against the homeless. If we could open people’s eyes and show them the reality of the homeless issue, they would understand that it can happen to anyone and that the people who live on the streets are not “lazy” or “just looking for a handout,” and they would be eager to help.

What do you think about this solution to homelessness? Would it ever happen? If it did happen, would it really work?

What are some other creative solutions to homelessness that you think would solve the problem?

“Housing first. Community next.”

Anti-Poverty Programs, Government programs, Homelessness, News link, Organizations, Solutions to Homelessness

This blog post from the Huffington Post provides an interesting insight on a possible solution to homelessness. What Joel John Roberts argues is that the key aspect of solving homelessness is a sense of community. Only three weeks into this course, we have already seen several examples of the importance of a simple human connection. A perfect quote regarding this comes from the film “Taylor’s Campaign” (1997): “we are not just looking for a handout, but are looking for just a hand.”  Though charity and “handouts” help, people do not want to be seen as a project; something to be fixed and then forgotten about. The homeless want to be a part of the community, just like everyone else. The only way to really help these people is to extend our kindness and humanness to them. The program described in the article has made a lot of progress in housing homeless people, yet the author/agency director even acknowledges that it needs to be taken a step further in order to maintain this progress. As Roberts states, “A weekly visit from a case worker, or an open case management office in the building, does not create an intimate, supportive community for a person who has been isolated on the streets for years.” He stresses the importance of a supportive and warm community that can ease homeless back into housed living. People too often forget how easy it is to make a person feel like a human being. Solutions to homelessness need to take a step further and include humanity and caring.

Smart Solutions from the Homeless

Solutions to Homelessness, Solutions to Poverty

Jessica P. Morrell’s Voices from the Street (2007) is a collection of over five hundred interviews with actual homeless people who were willing and eager to share their stories. All of the interviews provide insight into how life really is for the homeless and several of the folks shared their ideas of improvements to be made to the very broken system that is available for people living on the streets. There are many stereotypes against homeless people – that they are uneducated and therefore not smart, but many of the ideas brought forward by the “narrators” of this book were very simple and plausible. For example, in the chapter entitled “Barriers to finding work,” one man expressed the need for a sort of day center where homeless could have access to “More phone usage, more laundry services, more clothing – appropriate clothing – more showers perhaps” (p. 108). Though several of the people interviewed acknowledge that there are places that offer these types of services, many of these places are not open at convenient times for the job hunting process. Another man, in the same chapter, assesses the problem of not having anywhere safe to place one’s belongings while applying to jobs. He mentions that there is a place where people can store their belongings temporarily in exchange for volunteer hours, “but those hours you got to volunteer over there are the hours you want to go somewhere else” (p. 107). So although there are many existing services that provide solutions for the homeless, there needs to be an improvement of operations for the convenience of the people for which these services are providing for. The most important and helpful way to find these improvements would be to go directly to the homeless to observe their needs.