This week we focused on homeless counts. On Wednesday, we got to listen to two guest speakers discuss Point-In-Time Counts, including the issues with these counts. Misrepresentation is common with counts, because if not properly administered (or cared for enough), the numbers representing people without homes could be much smaller than reality, which then make the issue look like less of a problem. Counts also cost an insane amount of money, and the cost varies greatly. Point-In-Time counts are not funded and depend on private funding or sponsors. These counts were described as “inherently political”, which makes sense, because based on the political atmosphere of a community, certain information can be shared or withheld to fit a certain agenda.

For our second data exercise, I looked at the homeless counts from 2 SoCal cities that I am very familiar with. I live in Highland (a neighboring city to Redlands), and out of the 1,866 homeless people accounted for in 2017 in all of San Bernardino County, only 35 of these people were in Highland. I find this number low, and I think it’s due to Highland and San Bernardino’s border and homeless people crossing it so often. It would be hard to determine which city these people belong to. If you visited West Highland, you would see why 35 is a low number. San Bernardino is literally right next door, and had 491 reported homeless. The other city I picked was Anaheim, where most of the homeless were found near the Anaheim/Fullerton border. This is generally a poorer part of town. 80% of sheltered homeless in Anaheim are women, and 71% of unsheltered are men. 906 people were accounted for in total, and I mainly focused on the Disneyland area since that’s what I know best. There are actually many homeless people living right around Disneyland, but people certainly do not think about that. Disneyland is associated with happiness and wealth (I mean, have you seen those ticket prices?) but this just further proves that homelessness is all around, in rich areas and not. We just let it go unnoticed, and inaccurate homeless counts do not help us see the real issue.

CITATIONS: Highland Homeless Count Info– http://wp.sbcounty.gov/dbh/sbchp/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/08/2017-SBC-Prelimi nary-Point-In-Time-Count-Report.pdf

Anaheim Homeless Count Info– https://www.anaheim.net/DocumentCenter/View/14920

This past week in class was unique in the sense that we were able to listen to different speakers. On Monday, we had the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department come in who are a part of the Homeless Outreach Program in San Bernardino. We also had a Skype conference with call with two experts who specialize in homeless counts. Both sets of speakers were incredibly interesting and I was able to learn a lot more information from them. From the San Bernardino Sheriffs’ I learned a lot about different costs. I did not realize that instead of dialing “911” when you encounter a homeless person and think something may be wrong, you should dial “211,” which is a homeless outreach program who will send someone to help. The reason to call the “211” number is because it cost tax payers less money. I know I was completely unaware, as I am sure many other people are, the cost for emergency vehicles just to respond to a call and not utilize anything but their vehicles. If you call “911” about a homeless person, they more than likely will dispatch an ambulance, fire truck, and police officer. I learned that just to run a fire truck it cost $300 each time they turn it one. That is a lot of money and more often then not the homeless person is just sleeping because they do not want sleep at night because it can be dangerous. Also, according to the San Bernardino fire station they receive on average 15 calls a day and half of them are for homeless. That is over $2,000 that is being used just on a fire truck alone to respond to a call they probably are not needed for. While talking to the homeless count experts, I learned how much money went into homeless counts. It can be anywhere from $1,000 to nearly a million dollars. I was surprised by this because I do not understand why it cost this much. I personally do not understand why the money they are using towards homeless counts, if it truly is that expensive, why they cannot use that money to build more shelters or even just provide a meal to the homeless instead. If I was homeless I personally would rather have money used to buy me a meal rather then it being to train someone to put down a tally mark when they walk past me once a year.

This past week we discussed the many causes of homelessness and divided these influences into two categories: personal and structural. Personal being alcohol/drug abuse, mental illnesses, disabilities, and family tragedies. Structural including housing losses, hospital closures, changes within the job market, and lowered social support. This helped me open my eyes to the realities of homelessness: not every person whom “resides” on the streets was driven there by their personal choices to engage in illegal actives (drug/alcohol abuse, etc). Today many individuals admit there are issues dramatically arising with the quantity of homeless individuals, yet these people prefer to believe the government systems are indeed benefiting these individuals at every cost. Is that always the case?

It seems that policies tend to “help” the homeless community by forcing them out in order to “better” the existing city. Not every homeless individual was driven by alcohol, drugs, or mental incapabilities. Policies, unequal wages, de-institutionalization, divorce, unemployment, etc. are all impacting the rates of poverty, just as addictions.

This horrifying realization brings me to promote an opportunity to help the homeless community (Community being these homeless individuals who, in fact, do share the same place to call “home” and personal characteristics. Home is the streets to most of these people). This week students will be tabling outside of the commons during breakfast and lunch hours in hopes of receiving donations. Donations include clothes, non-perishable food, and unopened toiletries. These items will be provided to an agency, who shall not be named, that strives to help homeless individuals. After donations, this group will deliver the items on Friday February 16th and help cook/serve meals for anyone who turns to this camp/agency for guidance. Students are more than welcomed to donate items AND volunteer for meal prep. This seems like a great opportunity for students to get involved with the homeless community in order to realize the strong influence that take over each life. If you want more information on this opportunity please reach out to me! jordin_lowes@redlands.edu

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.

I found interest in the article “Who’s Able-Bodied Anyway”  by Emily Badger. In the article Badger brings up the term “able-bodied” and the existing controversy over what the word means and who it entails to. In this discussion, Badger mentions the Trump administration by saying, “they are effectively everyone left, and they have become the focus of resurgent conservative proposals to overhaul government aid, such as one announced last month by the Trump administration that would allow states to test work requirements for medicaid.” In addition to this, Badger makes the point that “there is no standard for physical or mental ability that makes a person able”.  Towards the end of the article, Badger makes one more statement being “the food stamp program does identify a group called able-bodied adults without dependents. But Medicaid makes no mention of them.”

With everything stated above, I have concluded that people in the government and positions of power have used the term “able-bodied” to target a certain group of people who society deems as too lazy or just unwilling to work. These people, near homeless/homeless, who are labelled by the circumstance they do not inhabit, are put in a specific category just because of it. Things like this include “not disabled, not elderly, not children, not pregnant, not blind.” These people, the able-bodied, are judged and mistreated by people who may or may not acknowledge their position is the result of inequality in systems and institutions. Other factors can be conditions not recognized important by society, such as depression, anxiety, etc.

Even though Governor David Ige declared a state of emergency in Hawaii to deal with homelessness in 2015, 51 out of every 10,000 Hawaiians are still homeless today. On an island chain that thrives off tourists, it is understandable to know that state funding is going toward the tourism industry and not low-income housing projects. The matter is, however, that “Hawaii is the worst state for per capita homelessness in the country, and ties with California for the second-highest percentage of unsheltered homeless youths”. A study done on the island of Oahu showed that youth homelessness starts as early as the age of 14 with more than half the interviewees having parents with substance abuse problems or parents who are incarcerated.

The article I was reading about Hawaii reminded me of a privilege that many of us have in the continental U.S. If we aren’t happy where we are located, most of us can easily get up and move to a new location by car, plane, or train. Traveling expenses through the United States do not amount to too much. Hawaii has a different story, however. The youth that find themselves homeless may have family members on the mainland but no means to pay the $500 plane ticket to resituate themselves. Instead, they are left to make ends meet on an island with an incredible cost of living. This leads to these homeless youth to engage in “survival sex” and carrying out other acts in exchange for food, shelter, or money.

While Hawaii’s government has announced plans to make homelessness a priority in 2018, I’m left wondering how anyone is supposed to survive in Hawaii when the cost of living is so high and most of the focus is on the tourism industry. I often vacation in Hawaii and will be viewing their situation a little differently the next time I go.

http://www.newsweek.com/youth-homelessness-age-hawaii-802825

Our next course topic discusses homeless counts. During research on this topic, I came across an article titled “SF homeless count: What it’s like, and why it’s flawed” by Caille Millner. The author discusses her debates with others about if a man was indeed homeless or not during the SF homeless count. They argued that his jacket was too nice to belong to a homeless man, but the author argued that he looked like a drug addict and was obviously homeless. They debated over every person they came across. Who is to know if they are actually homeless? And how did they come to an agreement? I was curious why the coordinators told them to not ask if they were homeless.

Millner stated that the volunteers, including herself, “are forced to make judgments about other people’s poverty” (Millner, 2017). This was difficult for me to accept because I feel that these are the people who are trying to help the homeless, yet they stereotype them as well. Is there a way to count the homeless without stereotyping and judging these human beings?

Many of the books we have read in this course, tell us to stray away from this stereotype, yet these homeless counts do the opposite. I feel that volunteers participating in homeless counts need to be better educated about the homeless. I am curious if there are certain standards that a homeless person has to have to be counted. If I ever participated in a homeless count, I would wonder if I was right or wrong in my count.

One of the more shocking articles I read this week was a recent one from the LA Times posted on Feb 01,2018. The article’s main focus, the 75% surge of the last six years, on the homeless crisis baffled me because it showed the major increase in unsheltered homeless and the decrease in sheltered. Talking about the causes  of homelessness feels different discussing it in class than it is seeing it through experience. But this article was shocking because initially all the numbers popped out at me, 33,243 to 55,188.

The article then goes on to talk about the housing renovations and the policies and governments that worked and then failed to get the homeless back into the houses of LA.  The fact that LA renovated the city to make it “look better” caused the higher rent and the increase of encampments around the city, making the hygiene of the city becoming less and less suitable to live in. The graph that showed how LA was near the bottom of cities who sheltered their homeless, was also upsetting, near only 25% were sheltered, compared to New York City or Salt Lake City.

The different ways that government has tried to set up or have better opportunities were interesting to read about. I believe in the added shelter beds, the expanded winter shelter hours, and the employment opportunities. However the upkeep of the portable toilets and there being a “dumping ground for hospitals and prisons” and the “guarantee a right to sidewalks instead of a right to shelter” were not the best decisions of government just temporary solutions not long-lasting solutions to allow the homeless to move out of their positions. “L.A.’s homelessness policy had come full circle.”

Have you ever wondered where the homeless go when it gets too cold outside? In Atlanta, they have started to find refuge in the airport. The Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has a public terminal that is open for 24 hours a day. Over the years some homeless people have found shelter within this terminal. However, after a closure of a large shelter downtown and the increase of colder weather the airport has been used more as an escape from the cold. A number of newspapers have reported on how the homeless have been using public transportation to take them to the airport so they can find spots within the terminal. Frequent flyers have even begun to notice the increase of the homeless within the terminal. This has caused some to realize the amount of homeless that reside in the nearby areas. This increase of homeless has caused officials to take action. They have started to ask people to show boarding passes and if they do not have one then they are told that they are trespassing. A person interviewed about the increase of homeless at the airport shared her thoughts on the homeless who seek shelter in the terminal. She found it heartbreaking with the lows in the night being into the 30s that the homeless were inadequately dressed. She also found it as a negative reflection of the country. With so many people traveling into the country, one of the first things that they see is the influx of homeless seeking shelter is not something to be proud of. A spokesman for the airport commented on the fact that they are trying their best to find a long-term solution for those experiencing homelessness. They are promising to treat those who come in with humanity especially during these colder months. Others have found the fact that homeless have found shelter within the airport is a true reflection of what the state is facing with homelessness. It is important to remember that as states face these colder months a number of places have opened up to help those in need.

Citation:

“Atlanta’s Homeless Are Flocking to Airport Atrium Overnight .” U.S. News & World Report , 11 Feb. 2018, www.usnews.com/news/best-states/georgia/articles/2018-02-11/atlantas-homeless-are-flocking-to-airport-atrium-overnight.

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.