Growing up in the Bay I’ve seen my fair share of all kinds of homeless people, including homeless people with pets. I always wondered why they decide to keep their pets in the state their in or give them away instead? Pets can make it hard to find shelter and food to feed two mouths. This article explains why pets help homeless, specifically homeless youth.

A study was conducted by the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph to see the effects of having pets as a homeless youth. They had some interesting results. They found that, “homeless youth who have pets are less likely to abuse drugs or engage in risky behavior.” Another study found that pets help ease depression among those living on the street. Michelle Lem, who is a graduate of veterinary college, explained why the bong between a pet and homeless youth is so strong. She says that because the youth have lost a lot of their trust in people, they find unconditional love from their pets who stay loyal to them. They will do anything for their pets, so they are less likely to commit harmful acts.

Unfortunately, there is also a downside to having pets as a homeless youth. It is much harder to receive social services because most places do not allow pets or accept them. This includes shelters as well. On the bright side Bill O’Grady, a sociology and anthropology professor at Guelph is that, “There is an opportunity here here to use this information when we’re developing services and plans for young people.” If pets can help homeless youth stay out of harm’s way and feel less depressed than perhaps they can help their transition their lives into something better.

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2016/03/27/Pets-help-homeless-youth-study-finds/3051459096337/

I recently came across a film as I was browsing Netflix. The title sounded interesting and it was rated high on the list of movies that I, as a consumer, might like. Shelter is a film centered around two characters, Hannah and Tahir (Jennifer Connelly and Anthony Mackie), two homeless individuals struggling to survive in New York. Tahir is a Nigerian immigrant, left with no choice but to wander the streets when his Visa expires. Hannah is a middle-aged, white woman fighting a heroine addiction. The two quickly become joint, and find they need each other to survive.

As the movie progresses and we learn more about the characters, their hidden pasts. One day, as  Tahir is making music with plastic buckets and drumsticks, are Hannah’s father comes searching for his daughter and asks Tahir if he has ever seen her. Tahir denies. Hannah’s father shows Tahir a photograph of Hannah’s son and confronts her that evening. We learn that Hannah is a widow and left her son motherless because of her addiction. Tahir is enraged because his wife was raped and killed as he and his son watched. Tahir’s son was also killed and claims he would do anything to be able to see him again and shames Hannah for choosing her addiction over her son.

This film gives us a closer look at the daily obstacles homeless people encounter. Throughout the film, Hannah repeatedly relapses until she starts attending AA meetings and is able to get Tahir and herself in a hotel. When Hannah and Tahir can no longer afford the room, they are forced return to the streets in the Winter.

There is a flaw in the system. Despite Hannah sobering up, finding housing, she and Tahir have too many odds against the.When Tahir becomes extremely ill, Hannah desperately sells her body for a place to stay and to purchase the prescribed medication for Tahir. In the case of Hannah and Tahir, there is no happy ending. This is often the case with the majority of those who are underprivileged in society.

This week I came across an article where there was a fight between a homeless man and a city worker in Salinas. It is mentioned that a city crew was attempting to clear homeless tents away from a public sidewalk after their 15 day notice had expired. The chaos happened after a city official told a homeless man “to put his possessions in a large dumpster like container”. The amount of disrespect that this homeless man received was enough to infuriate him and he sprinted toward the city worker’s truck in an attempt to kick it. This situation only brings up one of the most recent point that was brought up in our class discussions which is stripping away people’s humanity.
The way in which society goes about resolving the issue of homelessness in certain places around the world is very disturbing. Salinas city workers instead of helping these people find a better place to stay, suggest that they might as well throw all of their belongings in a dumpster. The state of Florida banns homeless people from sleeping in sidewalks having places. Throughout the last decade, society has made sure that homelessness people are looked at in any way except human. In this case, the city argues that because the homeless population has greatly increased, the encampments have become a public hazard. So many negative things are said about people in the streets that we often forget that even they still have rights, yet no one seems to advocate for them.

As I am sure many of you have facebooks. Recently trend at least on my facebook is a short one to two-minute video about a Canadian city that beat homelessness. They follow the housing first idea, which one man in the video talks about. They discuss and show in this video that in the long run it is more beneficial in many ways to get these homeless people off the streets. Continual spending will be happening if people are living on the streets where it can take only about $20,000 a person to build them somewhere to live.

In terms of housing first getting these homeless people off the streets and then working with them to become sober and working people of society is the best way. It is hard to motivate someone to want to stop doing drugs while they reside under a park bench, where if they are given a taste of a better life they may want to get better and work towards that from the safety of their own home and space.

Many people knowledgeable about homelessness would agree with this housing first idea, where those who do not know much about this group of people think it would be too expensive and it is not their problem. We are knowledgeable and it is our duty to help other people become knowledgeable so we can help and solve homelessness one city or town at a time.

I came across an article where a senior high school student attempt to address the issue of homelessness in her home town by providing a simple solution. Her solution includes renovating abandoned houses in order to provide homes for the homeless. Although it seems like a great idea, it is anything but easy to do this all over the country. Unlike politicians who have the power to make changes in our society, this young teenager strongly believes that homelessness is an issue that needs to be addressed. The young girl also understands that not only do people that are homeless need to be sheltered, but they also need to be provided with services to help them get back on their feet. As Isabel says, “If you don’t have stable housing, you can’t really go to a job interview. You have no way of ensuring you can be there everyday”. This idea of housing first has come up several times on our class discussions. Not only does it make sense but it has provided results because it prioritizes providing homeless people with a place to live before addressing any other issues that they might have.
Solving this issue of homelessness does not only require money but it also greatly needs people to simply change their mentality of how they view homeless people. In order for it to be addressed, people need to start caring about the topic and view the people in the streets as humans that can be given a second chance. If people understood this, we would not be in the same place we were 10 years ago when it comes to providing a solution for this issue that only seems to grow.

NBC News does a story on homelessness through the story of Marvin Bolton, a 61-year-old homeless man in New York. In the article, “Marvin’s World: Nine Lessons From Homeless Man’s Winter in NYC” Marvin gives us his own survival guide.

1. There is a day things finally catch up with you

2. You never sleep soundly

3. People will feed and clothe you

4. Still, you need to be charming

5. You can make money from other people’s garbage

6. You can get stuck in one place, even when you don’t have one

7. You can be locked up without walls

8. There is only so much your family can do

9. Here’s what you hold on to, even without a bedroom:

-Pride, a sense of Propriety & Hope

For Marvin, homelessness is a result of a character flaw. Marvin believes that it all it all began with drugs. He believes that his continued addiction has made it more difficult for him to be relieved of his homelessness. Marvin blames himself, rather than the societal obstacles that have made homeless to many, inevitable. While Marvin’s personal blame can be perceived as somewhat respectable to many, it is also not completely accurate. Other factors such as being born into poverty, being abandoned by his father, and unaffordable housing amongst other things are also responsible for Marvin’s homelessness. Homelessness is not a personal issue, but a societal, economic, and political problem.

Jarrett, Tracy. “Marvin’s World: Nine Lessons From Homeless Man’s Winter in NYC.” NBC News. N.p., 20 Mar. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. <http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/marvin-s-world-nine-lessons-homeless-man-s-winter-nyc-n537901>.

In connection with my book presentation last week that talked about the “new homeless” being  more youthful and this weekend’s reading where it talked about how homeless youth work with shelters, I decided to dive more into the topic of homeless youth in the U.S..

This article goes over some topics that we have already discussed in class. For example, how the homeless population is starting to have a makeup of more younger people in their 20s rather than the “old homeless” who have usually been in their mid 50s. It also talks about how homeless youth usually crash on their friends’ couches or hang out on the streets. The article empathized that, “mostly, they just blend in.”

New York is holding their annual homeless count and following along the same criteria that we learned about in class when doing their count. However, many homeless people are “overlooked.” The article also talks about how failure to make an accurate homeless count results in, “fewer social services for people at particular risk of being drawn into prostitution and cycling into long-term homelessness, according to organizations that specialize in helping young homeless people.”

The city has made efforts to add more beds to shelters, yet youth shelters find themselves not having enough resources for homeless youth. The problem is how “homeless” is defined. We’ve learned in class the definition that counters use to count how many homeless people there are and it’s very specific. Because homeless youth often sleep at their friend’s place or extended family, they are “technically homeless” but can not be counted if they are not sleeping on the streets.

Like the article said it’s important to count homeless youth in order to get more help for them and get more services and resources to help them. Failure to count homeless youth leaves them in the shadows and allows society to turn a blind eye to them. We fail as a society if we don’t acknowledge their struggles as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/nyregion/young-and-homeless-in-new-york-overlooked-and-underserved.html?_r=0

The author of How to Increase Homelessness and CEO of PATH Partners, Joel John Roberts, describes the changing direction that Los Angeles is taking in hopes of finally achieving a long term plan that will truly help the poor stay off the streets for good. Homelessness has increased by 12% in the past two years! The discussion on homelessness needs to remain the focus, Los Angeles’ new proposal on homelessness can become a model for other cities facing the same issues. They have learned from past failures, such as “Bring LA home” in 2003 because they did not have the resources to back up their proposed solutions. What’s different this time is that significant financial commitments are being put on the table. The State Senate is proposing $2 billion for those that are homeless battling their mental illness. The County of Los Angeles will contribute $149 million in order to put into effect the new homeless plan on top off the $300 million they committed last year to Housing for Health and the Mental Health Services Act Housing programs. As Robert argues, money alone cannot solve homelessness, what is more thrilling is that there has been a collective effort and shift by the County and City of Los Angeles to help the most vulnerable people off the street. If every Public Housing Authority agency in the county makes it a point to prioritize 50% of their turnover units to those that are vulnerable, 10,000 people within five years can be sleeping in their own bed. It’s time we change how we approach homelessness, let’s prioritize those that are the most vulnerable and are prone to stay on the streets vs those who can maneuver the system on their own.

http://www.povertyinsights.org/2016/03/15/la-homeless-plan-find-change-here/

Democratic Mayor Bill DeBlasio has just made an initiative to retrain 600 peace officers who work in the shelters of New York.  This is in an effort to address the notorious violence that occurs in shelters throughout New York.  There is no doubt that the hostility and danger inside shelters is an issue, and is often a reason for homeless to choose to stay in the streets rather than go to a shelter.

Critics of this initiative claim that stricter, more highly trained peace officers (in controlling “escalation,” whatever that may mean) will only deter people from going into these shelters.  Personally, I would critique this initiative in a similar way.  Being from a city with a very poor public school system, I was thinking of an issue similar to the one presented in the article.  Oakland public schools have always addressed issues of violence and deviance by putting in more security.  Does this solve the issue inside the schools? Perhaps by a little bit at first, but in the long run, but it has an effect on the students that is quite severe.  Seeing all kinds of security and policing around and inside their schools conditions the students to naturally see themselves as deviant criminals.  This does terrible things for students confidence and sense of self-worth.  In turn, treating them as criminals will make them more likely to conform to the stereotype.

So, I would bet that increasing security in homeless shelters would have a similar effect.  This proposed initiative doesn’t even add that much more advanced security.  It is merely a three day retraining process.  To me, this seems like an attempt from the mayor to make it seem like he is at least doing something.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/nyregion/new-york-police-will-retrain-security-staff-at-homeless-shelters.html?_r=0

I was very excited after reading the post about the encampment in Portland and how successful it was, so I wanted to find out if there were any other places around the country with anything similar. What I found is a “guide to homeless encampments” created by the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing; at first I was very worried about what I would find in this guide given the skewed public view on homeless people. I was surprised to find an outline of the two sides of the homelessness debate, one saying homeless people need society’s help to recover from their situation, and the other saying they simply drain resources and harm their communities.

In the section title Harms Caused by Homeless Encampments the guide outlines a variety of issues brought on by encampments. These included spreading disease due to garbage attracting rodents coupled with an inability to properly wash utensils. Poor hygiene and lack of health insurance also lead to the spreading of sickness. The next section of problems caused by encampments is in regards to the environment, but doesn’t have any quantitative data to support the claims. The guide states inadequate disposal of human waste can be hazardous to water supplies, and the use of wood stoves and camp fires can cause wildfires that destroy infrastructure as well as natural habitats. Finally the last problem discussed was the homeless and their impact on the larger community. The guide talks about a strong relationship between homelessness and criminality, threats to business viability, illegal use of public space, and costs to society. After reading through all the categories it was clear to me that the sole factor behind all these problems was public unwillingness to interact with or even be in proximity of homeless people, and that the public does not want to pay taxes towards having them around.

What the guide fails to mention is lack of money going towards social services and aid programs is a primary reason for homelessness, developing sickness, and living in public spaces and in addition does not address the side of the argument that homeless people need society’s help. All the problem categories outlined in the guide could be addressed quite easily if more of the public was informed about the real causes of homelessness and the ways to deal with it.