This week we viewed a film on homeless life in Santa Monica. I have been to Santa Monica before and know it as one of the most expensive places to live. I did see several homeless people there during my visits, but did not understand how big of an issue it is in this city. In the film, one of the members of the homeless community tried running for city council. The city board had been making little to no efforts to help the homeless, including promising shelter but not being able to provide it and attempting to stop civilians from giving out free meals by the beach. When a group had settled down in a park or outside of a building, the police would come through and tell them to move somewhere else. These people were not given information on where they could stay or alternative solutions, so it was one big game of move-around that the police were playing with the homeless. The police would also cite someone they saw using a shopping cart to push around their things, or if they removed objects from a dumpster (which I do not understand since I thought trash was public domain). Receivers of a citation opted to wait until a warrant was put on them, since that would only mean one night in jail. It is sad to see these people getting in trouble with the law for things that are not a huge deal, such as taking things out of a trash can, when there are much bigger issues the police could be spending their time on. Lastly, a comment that bothered me came from a tourist riding her bicycle, talking about how she was staying at a 5 star hotel down the street, and close by were all these homeless people. She said she wished there was a better sight for tourists to see. 2 young males also mentioned how they did not want to “see” the homeless, as if it’s ok for it to exist, so long as it’s not in front of them. I believe this mindset is the roadblock to solutions.

Being homeless is a much more difficult situation to get out of than I previously thought. Often times, you hear someone dismiss a homeless person’s possible causes for their situation, and they proclaim it could be solved by “going out and getting a job”. What I have not heard discussed often is how many of these people actually do have jobs and how those jobs barely keep them off the streets or from going hungry. Society turns to the easy route of blaming others for their misfortunes before trying to fully understand the circumstances. Minimum wage is in fact impossible to live off of, and was proved through Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed, where she tested out a life of poverty. In this book, what I noticed most is that one minimum wage job is not enough to live, but sometimes getting two (or even three) jobs is impossible. When working at Wal-Mart, she had no control over her hours, and that lack of continuity in a schedule makes it next to impossible to hold a job elsewhere. Rent cannot be made on checks like that, and cohabitation was a main point in her article Too Poor to Make the News. Overcrowding was discussed, and how we do not have firm numbers regarding this issue because “no one likes to acknowledge it to census-takers, journalists, or anyone else who might be remotely connected to the authorities” (1). It does not get accurately reported because people do not want to risk getting evicted, being left with nowhere to go. What I realized this week is the less fortunate do not get the credit or reputation they deserve, since many of them are hard workers who give their all to try and make ends meet. The economy makes it so hard for low-wage workers to secure housing.

1.         Ehrenreich, Barbara. “Too Poor to Make the News.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 June 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14ehrenreich.html?_r=0.

2.         Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed. Metropolitan, 2001.