For my teaching project I decided to skype my family and talk to them about some of the root causes of homelessness. I was originally going to a report on Redlands/ San Bernardino area. I was going to talk about the area specific problems and policy. Then I changed my mind because I thought about my audience better. My dad is a politically engaged person and I thought it would be more likely to be a meaningful discussion with him if we talked about government root causes of homelessness. So I took information we got in our readings, discussions, and during class and made a verbal presentation ment to get him engaged. My mom is an occupational therapist and has worked with a variety of jobs, the majority having clients with different mental and physical disabilities. Many of her jobs have been at schools with kids who come from low-income families. I also made sure to talk about mental illness and addiction as susceptibility factors in homelessness because I knew that would catch her attention and she would have more things to say. As I suspected my dad would always flip the argument on me- for example when I was talking about Clinton’s Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 and how it reached less people, he talked about how that was intentional, the program existed to motivate people to get back into jobs because you were only able to get assistance if you were employed or taking steps in your education to reach that.He talked about how if you were not able to find a job the government would give you one. I thought there was definitely some merit to his point. But I responded by explaining that homelessness need more help than that to actually fix the problem. There are other factors that could prevent someone from participating in this program like mental illness, transportation, family circumstances, location, and following a bunch of rules and regulations is not always the best route to go.

If I could do this project again I would change some of the details in the way that I presented my information. I think that I was very used to our classroom setting where we have the background knowledge to automatically be sympathetic to situations. I think that I started the discussion with some very strong opinions and it was contant heavy. If I started with some background knowledge first I think it may have gone slightly smoother. Overall I enjoyed our conversation. I think it’s important to have these discussions with family even when it gets difficult. The disagreements are valuable because we will never make progress just preaching to the choir. I learned that I need to look at my arguments closer and take my opinions out a little and incorporate a more whole explanation of what I’m trying to say. My dad had many points that he was able to counter mine with because I failed to look at the whole picture. For example, Clinton’s plan, how globalization in many ways is a good thing, and the flaws of unions. While simple, I believe the discussion was successful in making people who don’t normally have to think about homelessness pause and get a new perspective, which was my goal.

My personal favorite part of last week was when we got to have a discussion on how we can best help others while protecting ourselves. As I talked about in our discussion, when I was volunteering in Juvenile Hall I was really struggling in the beginning to connect with my first class. I took this as a sign that it was a personal flaw of mine. I thought that maybe I wasn’t listening to them, or doing a good job presenting myself as someone they could talk too, or that the worlds we came from were so different that I wouldn’t be able to make a difference. But, when they filled out their evaluations of us there were tons of comments on how they appreciated us coming in and liked talking to us. It made me realize that not all progress can be seen, and just because it isn’t tangible to you doesn’t mean you aren’t making progress. I’m not positive what direction my career will take me, and I will probably end up doing multiple things, but one of this things I want to do is directly help and interact with people who are struggling. It was a really helpful food for thought about my own abilities to manage my own emotions working in the social work (or similar) fields.

I really enjoyed this week of talking about different cities, and learning of a couple theories out there of what actual steps to take to solve the homelessness issue. It was no surprise to me that Los Angeles was making more progress than San Antonio because of certain ideological issues that are affecting policy. San Antonio’s choice to isolate the homeless, blame their situation on personal failings, and rely on private action showed in their results as Los Angeles is experiencing more success in long-term solutions.

Dan McGuire’s skype call was also really informative. Homeless Solutions in New Jersey is privately owned, and I think that it was good for me to hear about a private organization making real sustainable differences, because based on the reading and discussing we have been doing in class I have found myself leaning in favor of government providing these services. Privatizing this issue seems to go hand-in-hand with doing things like blaming peoples situation on personal flaws and damaging stigmas. It seems like that would be a good idea because of the way it would impact national narrative, but it’s always a good reminder that private institutions can do plenty good.

Hearing about how state funds have shrunk dramatically was definitely disheartening. I believe that across the board there was a 75% drop. Fixing this problem will obviously take a lot of resources and it seems like we are moving in the wrong direction.

Listening to everybody’s reports on their internship sites was definitely eye-opening for me. There were a couple things that stood out to me. First, many of the organizations were started by people who have been affected by hunger and homelessness themselves. Second, most of them said something along the lines of “A hand out, not a hand up”, meaning they were there for resources but it is up to people to use them. I found both of these things to be hopeful, because it means that people in charge of running organizations have first hand experience and a more accurate understanding of people’s needs. Another interesting commonality is the use of language. Most organizations refer to people as clients or youth to avoid labeling people immediately as something negative. This seems like a very humanizing practice, and it makes sense that people who have been in the same situation would know how important labels and language around this kind of thing is.

In my internship at Family Services I am going to request to move to a different area so I can have a little more exposure to people. I am able to talk to people where I am in the donation center but it’s less frequent. And talking to people is definitely the most enriching part of everyone’s experience.

Both of the presentations we listened to this week gave me a greater appreciation for the difficulties of practically correcting this housing problem. The thing that stuck with me with the first presentation on Monday was when the speakers from San Bernardino Homeless Outreach explained how there is an extent to what they can do, based on where the person in need of assistance is psychologically that day. If someone isn’t wanting help it isn’t within their rights to put them in some kind of program, even if it would help. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing because people have the right to make their own decisions; and it isn’t right to assume that people not struggling with poverty automatically know what is best for people in those situations.

On a more positive note, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there is a 211 number you can call for homeless issues. This is both less expensive for the taxpayer and the people who show up to the issue are specifically trained for it. I wish this was a more well-known fact because more people would probably use that number and then we wouldn’t be waiting until someone is a potential danger before alerting authorities. The people talking to us were pretty clearly more conscious about homeless issues than many of the police we have read about. They talking about how charging someone with a misdemeanor is about $1000 and doesn’t fix anything and how there is a current trend of criminalization instead of reintegrating back into society.

The most surprising thing to me this week was that there is so much debate around how many homeless there are. It seems like a really simple thing to calculate but it’s not. The definitions of homelessness impacts it a lot because this can include things like: people living in cars or RVs, “welfare” hotels, people in jail who would be homeless, detox centers, and runaways in foster care. These are people that should be considered and included when thinking of policy changes, but are often left out. It so vastly changes the conversation around homelessness because that number is a quick statistic that stands for how pervasive this problem is.

The second thing that stood out to me in class this week was when we talked about personal susceptibility and how it relates to homelessness. Things like addiction, mental illness, disabilities, injuries, and family tragedies are each buffers that if removed puts you at a much higher risk for being on the street. This poses some interesting political questions like if we were to prioritize mental health care what kind of impact would this have on our homeless population? (Christopher Jencks cited this as one of the main reasons homelessness has been on the rise) We could also spend money on things like working to prevent and treat addiction, disability and injury services, and providing family services with the money and resources currently going into putting people in jail overnight for sitting on the sidewalk.

Listening to everyones group present was both interesting and informative. The thing that stood out to me the most was the overlap between all of our material, specifically the recurring theme of societies misguided idea of how people become homeless. People on the street may pass by and ignore people or be unkind because they believe that people in these situations got there through their own doing. It was present in the book I read Down, Out, and Under Arrest with police brutality behaving as if people in this situation are sub-human or deserving of the bad things that come their way when there is a huge range of reasons why people end up in these situations.

Everyday people’s inaccurate perception of people in poverty snowballs the problem; if you don’t look business presentable you will have trouble getting and holding down a job. Doctors and people in stores won’t take you seriously, and police will automatically assume the worst. It deepens the cycle of not being accepted by society, and further dividing the line and understanding between the classes. It makes me wonder what we can do to fix this problem. A clear solution is education, but I think that there are a lot of organizations and groups that speak to this issue and it is not being heard so there may be a different way to effect change. I look forward to doing more readings that focus on policy because it seems likely to me that this is an area that hold a lot of potential progress.