This week was an interesting week. I feel like teaching another person is very hard but amazing at the same time because you are projecting your knowledge onto another person. To start me and Raechel decided to work together since we are in the same sorority. We came together and decided that our audience was going to be all of our sisters at one of our Sunday meetings. Our procedure we decided was going to be asking them their views on homelessness, what resources they think are available, and the language used surrounding the Homelss community. As we started to plan we noticed that most of our friends were in the library and we decided to change who we were tailoring our teaching project to. We decided to teach our friends and sisters as they passed by in the library. We wanted to focus on these topics because they are very important in understanding homelessness. If we want to teach others we have to start with the basics and work our way up. When we talked to our friends we noticed them all using similar words. tThey would use words like they are dirty, poor, crazy, drunk, and sad, This is not all of the Homelss population. we went on to explain that some do go through different mood swings due to not talking to anyone and being lonely, mental health issues, and some are on drugs and that does alter their personalities. We also went on to explain that there are three different types of homelessness. We started with chronic which is the least common type. This is when they are homeless for a longer amount of time due to a specific situation. Next is transitional homeless. This means that they stay at a shelter for a set time due to a catastrophic event int heir life. This is the most common type of homelessness. The last is episodic which means they frequently go in and out of homelessness. When we taught about this we also taught about different resources available. Together we talked about 211 which is a hotline to give available resources. Another resource is the HOPE officers. This gave them a new look to officers. They started to have a a open mind towards some officers because some do end u0 helping the Homelss protecting them and providing them resources. When we mentioned this they told us they thought that churches always had open doors and available resources to keep taking people in. They also thought that food is always being donated and used. Some places use the food and are always needing more but some places do not use the canned food that they have in their pantry which is terrible. We also had to explain that the government does not do to much ti help the cities decrease homelessness. Overall our students learned that homelessness is very diverse. People range in race and age. They also learned about all the different resources and that their are Homelss counts done.

This week has been very interesting. I loved hearing all the oral reports on the different organizations the class was interning at. It was very  rewarding as a whole to hear what the class thought was effective and what wasn’t. Hearing all the different positives and negatives makes me want to try to come together and find some solutions to these issues. One that really made me uneasy was one of the Youth shelters get tons of can donations yet they still go out and buy groceries to make meals when they could be planning meals based off what they have in their pantry. The organization is wasting money that could be used elsewhere. If they are not going to use the food they are donated they should donate it to a organization that will before the food expires. I know for a fact if they donated it to Youth Hope it would be gone so fast. Food never stays on those shelves. The youth are so grateful when they get any food canned or not. It is a matter if you make meals according to what you have using available resources.

This week was very interesting. I enjoyed going over the data exercise  4 on the different organizations and their effectiveness. I chose a organization based out of New York. They try to feed around a thousand meals in the city on a given night. The organization also had many different housing options. They offer housing for single mothers and their children, a place for people that just got out of jail, a place for men, and apartments for families. The apartments they ask you to pay a small fee and go to some classes. I think the class is a great idea because they are about saving and investments. They also are about staying clean and out of trouble. Overall this program does great things and continues to help others find housing, shelter, and food. I found that hearing all of these different organizations working together really made me appreciate what the world is doing to try to help homeless or near homeless. It was amazing to hear that other countries are doing outreach. In Austria they are doing outreach through food. They help by serving food on any given day and the locals who really wanted It were extremely appreciative while the nonlocal were very greedy and only wanted what they wanted.

This weeks speaker  was from Homelss Solutions Inc which is a nonprofit that focuses on housing and shelter in New Jersey. They are around 35 years old and help hundreds yearly in Morris county. They have a few programs which are very helpful to everybody needing assistance. They offer shelter to men and women who are single, families, and people who have a mental health diagnosis. Homelss Solutions also offers a transitional housing program and full apartments. With some of the housing options you are allowed to stay up to 18 months. In addition you have to pay for part of you stay, go to budget training, learn about credit and nutrition, and they are a curfew. I found it so interesting when they said that about 75% of the people in the transitional housing have a dual drug and alcohol problem.  Homeless Solutions also offers a home called Mt. Kembel. This is a home for senior women with low income. It amazes me that the took the older generation into consideration because most organizations only focus on the younger youth up to around age 50. But the older generation is very important for our society because they made our cities what they are now. The speaker mentioned that everyday 8 households get evicted. I was shocked to hear that and it made me so sad. I know this number is continuously growing but that means the number of people on the streets will continue to rise. The government needs to step in and start helping more.

This weeks class was very interesting. I feel that having everybody read certain chapters, and as a class  go over each one so we didn’t have to read the full book was very helpful. Having to group together with the people that read your chapters and draw a picture that represents what you read about was a great visual learning activity. This book I feel like is the same as the others using the river analogy but went into greater depth explaining it. It also explained what the workers were doing to help the youth get back on their feet. The workers stated that they start with a large sum of youth and then once they start to integrate programs such as health programs, and jobs the youth start to filter out. In the end they have a small amount still left in the programs. This made me sad because all the resources are readily available but the youth just weren’t taking advantage of them.

This week we presented our internships oral report. I really enjoyed doing this for a few reasons. I got to hear what the other people interning for my internship were experiencing that was different from what I was. I also liked presenting in front of the class because it brought me out of my comfort zone. Public speaking is one of my many fears but the format we did made the process go so smoothly.

It was amazing to hear the language used at every agency. None of them leaned towards the word homeless. The most common words used were youth and clients. This made the people being served feel equal which is extremely important when trying to collect yourself. Hearing what every agency does outreach the people who are going through a rough time was spectacular. The agencies put on different programs such as addiction help, counseling, and provide medical help. Some agencies also hand out food and have soup kitchens to help in any way they can. There are also racks of clothing to help them have new proper fitting clothes for themselves or for interviews. All these programs together really make an impact in the communities they serve because they are striving to help the Homelss get back on their feet and find housing, or just work on what they want to work on. Overall this week was by far my favorite week and I can’t wait to hear how everyone enjoyed their internships and what they did and did not like.

The book The Value of Homelessness Managing Surplus Life in the United States was a very interesting book to read. My favorite part of the book was the understanding of the river analogy. Are people creating the issue or only helping the problem. You have to ask yourself that question. I also liked in the book when they talked about mental health and chronic homelessness. Creg in the book stated that the homeless mental health just becomes another body in the government system. That made me sad because everyone’s  mental health is very important. When the media shows the homeless they show them as crazy and that is some but not all. Showing this side to it only makes the issue grow instead they should be trying to fix the issue.  Chronic homelessness is when an individual with a disabling condition who has either been continuously homeless for a year or more, or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.  I was very happy to see that these numbers are decreasing at a slow but steady rate. The stats that I found were on any given night around 123,790 people are chronically homeless and about 70% of them were living in unfit areas. When the unfit part was added it means that they could not receive help If they needed it or were living next to hazardous areas. Overall the underlining issue to homelessness and how to move forward with it is to build more affordable low income housing. This is a housing issue and could be moving in a positive direction but steps have to be made first. 

This week I really enjoyed our second presentation/conference. It was amazing to hear how they analyze the homeless. To do that they said that you need to know the definition of homeless. In order to do the counts you have to not only check the streets because not everybody gets the opportunity to stay in a shelter for the night but you also check the different care systems and organizational funded shelters. The key components to the counts are timing and well trained volunteers with a guide team. The problem that was being faced with the homeless counts was the volunteers were not meeting expectations. This means that they did not know the area as well as they said they did, they were slaking off, or simply did not show up. The volunteers need to know the area being counted extremely well because they have to check areas that most do not go to. This could be different fields, vacant lots, and parking lots.

I also was very surprised about the counts in Seattle. It it now considered to have the 3rd highest homeless population. they have 11 thousand homeless and about 6 thousand of them are unsheltered. This is a huge amount that the city needs to work on.

This weeks class was slightly challenging since the schedule got moved around. I really enjoyed the LA Times article. It was interesting to read that a group of people relax on the cities lawn to get away from the madness. They are perfectly fine being right next to the police station as long as they can have some peace. I got really sad reading about how La has a housing crisis. I grew up going to La on the weekends and I saw some of the Homeless but never to the extent as it is now. It must be extremely difficult for the people living in Korea town. I would hate to walk outside my house and have feces and rotting food right at my feet. The homeless have nowhere else to go because there is just not enough room in the shelters which is extremely sad. I found it amazing that voters passed to tax themselves 4.6 billion dollars. All that money will go to building 10,000 houses. This will be over a 10 year span. With all the money coming in to help homeless the outreach teams have been quadrupling  which is amazing because change is happening. With more outreach means that groups are coming together to help so with that said they have expanded the hours for shelters in the winter, added 600 new beds to the shelters, and have been giving out more vouchers for hotels. All this is allowing homeless to at least have somewhere warm they can rest at on a cold winter night.

This week I really enjoyed learning about all the different books that each group read. It was amazing to see how every group came together to present in various ways to keep the class engaged. I really loved reading Mothers because it showed the everyday struggle mothers go through to provide for their families. It also showed that they go through abuse  sometimes from early childhood and they have it in their systems so they just assume that it is “normal”. The story about the mother who attacked her husband because he was abusing their son really made me emotional because she had the mother bear instinct but couldn’t get out of the awful situation she was in. The only thing that stooped her from killing her husband was her son yelling at her to stop. Another story that got to me was the mother who married her husband while he was in jail. He would put her in harmful situations and she just kept going back to him. The mother picked up her life and moved near the jail to be near him. She eventually got her life together and went to a safe haven house which was an amazing outcome. She later got remarried but her new husband was abusive also and she realized that way sooner then she did her last husband.