We watched a very interesting video on children in homelessness near Disneyland. Hearing them speak about their situations was interesting, I didn’t think they would completely comprehend what was happening to them. I wasn’t thinking about them in the same situation, only thinking it affected the parents. I remember one of the younger girls speaking on her paranoia and she was scared that she would picked up by someone but she had never been taken. That made me realize and think more about psychological problems faced I am in a child psychology class and my professor was telling the class that when children are diagnosed younger, it tends to be more serve and reoccur at some point in their life. The likelihood is higher for these children because of the environment they are in and if their parents are dealing with mental illness as well. I was inspired by the people who created and working at the school for these children.

The idea of camps is very interesting and quite helpful giving them a community, but a few concerns came about. Even though this idea is great and has so much potential, its disconnecting them from the rest of community but also giving them a space they feel comfortable in. I think idea of the camps is low cost and more eco friendly. I am surprised there isn’t more of these and promoted more. I feel like it should be one of the ideas for Redlands since cost is a problem to the counsel here.

This week, we watched a documentary focusing on homeless, and nearly homeless, children in Orange County. The common factor for many of these children was that they attended a school whose mission was specifically to serve their particular demographic. The school offers many valuable services to the children who attend it, beyond its baseic function as a institution of learning. It provides meals to the children, both during the day, and groceries for the family. It also provides a bus service which goes anywhere necessary to pick them up, even if they are currently living in the park. And it provides a measure of stability to lives which are often anything but.

At the same time, what the school offers isn’t nearly enough.  One classroom often hosts several grades, which is not conductive to learning. The food is not exactly of the highest quality,  as one teacher says, “I wouldn’t eat it”. And the efforts the staff makes cannot possibly alleviate all of the problems the children face.

For me, the film raised an important question. What do we do when the services provided by organizations meant to serve the homeless are inadequate? To ignore or condemn organizations which do good work simply because they do not do enough seems unfair, yet at the same time it cannot be ignored that the work they do is often not up to par with the problems they face.

This week was very interesting because we not only looked at the issues of homelessness, but also potential solutions. On Thursday, we watched a film on the Motel Kids of Orange County and it helped shed light on how big of an issue homelessness is in more affluent areas. When a certain area (such as Orange County) grows larger and the cost of living goes up, what happens to the people who “fall through the cracks”? The people who have always been in that area, but recently couldn’t afford it anymore. Working a job at minimum wage no longer provides an individual with enough money to live, especially in areas with higher costs of living. Even in Redlands, the cost of living has continued to increase, making market rent prices comparable to cities in Orange County. The video made me really sad, not only because it helps illustrate the struggles these children and families have to go through, but also how quickly these children are forced to grow up. The language the young children used in the film really struck me because they spoke about things that I never even had to think about when I was their age. Also, the film helped show how children who grow up in low income areas and are surrounded by gangs, violence and crime often “adopt” these habits or get involved. It helps illustrate how many social issues are products of other social issues and how it is an endless cycle that is difficult to escape.

Tuesday’s class was a little less depressing because we spoke about “solutions” to homelessness such as tent cities. My group presented about how tent cities often provide homeless individuals with more of a close-knit family than living on the street or in a shelter. In many ways, tent cities help homeless individuals reestablish social ties, accountability, and autonomy. I hope that in the next few weeks of class, we continue to talk about potential solutions to homelessness.

Watching the movie about the homeless kids in Orange County really reinforced two main ideas that I have noticed in my experiences with homeless children: They grow up fast, and overall, they seem more happy and appreciative then you would think. For the first instance, the movie showed this well, when the kids were learning about their rights as well as drugs in a grade in which that would usually not happen. When talking about drugs, the teacher said, some of you have probably been offered one of these things before. To me this was different because although maybe I had seen drugs referenced on TV when I was young, I most certainly was not talking about it in school. To the second point, about their attitudes, it really struck me when the family was going through the trash to look for things they wanted. On first site, that is something that may elicit sadness, but these kids were rummaging through with joy, excited for what they may find. Also, throughout the movie, the kids were playing around with each other a lot, and one may think that their status would debilitate them from having that kind of joy. In reality, playing around is probably the only escape they can get, besides school. I was talking to my friend after class about the film, and talking about humans truly can adapt to a lot. She said, these kids grew up not knowing any different, and so that probably helps, which I thought was a good point.

This week presenting my book presentation and hearing my classmates presentation gave a lot of light into our homeless situation.  One which has been greatly overlooked by the people and our government.  We have let homelessness drag on now for years and years, never understanding the severity of homelessness.  Even when the homeless are human beings, like me and you that didn’t make the quota.  Doesn’t mean they’re any less important, just means that they need help, and we need to help them.  There would be so many more homeless on the streets if there weren’t people helping out one another.  Many would-be-homeless are lucky to have a friend or family member that can help them figure out their situation.  It is those that don’t have that person to lean on that become homeless and when talking to the homeless at RFS, it is clear that programs and organizations aren’t doing enough.  Or make it to hard/complicating for the homeless or would be homeless to put the pieces of their life together.  There are so many qualifications needed to get assistance at RFS alone and I know other places aren’t much better.  Yet it’s not all their fault, city councils don’t do much to assist them in their efforts.  With officers picking up homeless and taking them to different districts so that it’s no longer their problem or the cities.  Turning down programs that would provide affordable housing, and get many people off the street.  Just to please a few heavy hearted people that don’t want to have the less wealthy in their area, saying things like “their site is unpleasing”, but if city councils allowed for the development of affordable housing- there wouldn’t be those “unpleasant sites” on the street.  So talk to your city councils and get them to start approving building affordable housing, so we can get these human beings in homes!!!

This week I heard a presentation on the history of the homeless by individuals in the class and Jim. The most shocking thing I heard was how many times the economy clasped I’ve the past 50 years, being over 3 times. Our economy is meant to not function, and eventually crash. I just don’t understand why the government keeps trying to use this method knowing the consequences.

Social protest became huge in the trying to get policies for the homeless. It was as if these people were stripped of rights. Having more than people on their side showed how important this issues was to the broader community. Having people of all economic backgrounds involved.  But because of these people much change was brought about, allowing more money to be spent on a wider variety of things.  Also opening up the help of more government assistance in general. Money was spent on more emergency shelters, drop in centers, long term housing, and medical care.

Many shelters had and still have very strict rules and regulations for people who need it. I’ve been wondering if giving them more freedom would help them grow and change? Many say giving them too much freedom would cause them to become heavily dependent on outside resources instead of creating their own. Others say strict rules may keep them away from the help, and if we want people off the street they need to receive some type of help.  I understand some of the rules like no hard drugs, but others like be at the location at 6 is too much. We forget these people are grown and can move about how they want, but in order to get help you must obey. It is like they are treated like children.

This week’s discussions focused on various histories of American homelessness. This historical lens can be rather disheartening. Despite there being notable periods in American homelessness, our overarching approach has been cruel and consistently failed to fix homelessness since before our nation was formed. This begs the question: what does it take to make effective change of attitudes and policies? In thinking about this question, I start to think about my own community.

I live in the Johnston Community. A group of students at the University who design their own majors and choose to live in an intentional, learning community. Many of our conversations center around social justice and its place in our community. The topics lately have included transgender persons and racism. So many times, students have identified these problems (and problems of the garden-variety) in our community and worked passionately to solve them. Yet, time after time, their efforts fail.

Some fail because the student burns out, some because there wasn’t enough support, and some because they weren’t well planned. Though, the ones that survive these deaths, rarely survive our short institutional memory. The leaders of change leave, and often, the change leaves with them. Is this hurdle of short institutional memory applicable to societal change? What role does generational memory play in the success or failure of civil rights movements. Subsequently, what does it take for a movement to be remembered to and outlive its leaders?

I hope as we continue to explore the realities of hunger and homelessness in America, that we find approaches that have been effective. Nearly as important, I hope that we learn how to create change that persists.

After having spent so much time this semester discussing homelesness as a general issue or examining its presence in Redlands, particularly at the policy level, I became curious to see how the issue plays out in my hometown, Sacramento. I have notices the increasing number of homeless in Sacramento the past few years, particularly those camped along the river, but knew little else about how the city approaches the issue.

During my research, I found that the mayor, Steinberg, has proposed to increase the amount of funding directed towards the issue. Others, however, oppose this plan, either because they feel the funding should be directed elsewhere, they believe the measures proposed will be too expensive, or because they feel that Steinberg’s plans will be ineffective. For example, some, like  “Councilman Larry Carr, think that Sacramento’s homeless effort needs to be smaller in scale because of Sacramento’s lack of permanent housing where homeless people can be moved… also believes that Steinberg’s plan to erect homeless shelters in every council district in town will invariably place homeless shelters in poor neighborhoods while affluent neighborhoods are spared.”

I understand the reluctance that some feel, and the criticisms they profess. At the same time, these critics don’t seem to have an answer of how they thing the homelessness crisis should be addressed.  Even if a perfect plan cannot be presented, simply ignoring the problem will not help. As one article put it: “The cost of doing something about homelessness is insane. The cost of doing nothing about homelessness is even more insane. Because doing nothing means spending millions just to clean up the mess, move people along, move them in and out of jail, emergency rooms, river beds, doorways, alleys.”

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article228320264.html

This past week, we focused a lot on the history and root causes of homelessness. Tuesday, we did “jigsaw” reading where we each read and reported a specific chapter. My chapter talked about a specific shelter that used to be able to house everyone, but the waitlist continued to grow larger and larger. Because of the growing waitlist, they had to put policies in place that specified how staff members chose/admitted individuals to be housed in the shelter. Should it be needs based or based on chronological order (who called first gets housed first)? I think this is a very important question because nearly every shelter struggles in deciding who gets housed. I know that at the organization I’m interning with this semester struggles with this. What they end up doing, is a little bit of both. When a bed becomes available, they start calling individuals on the waitlist, unless there is someone who called that day who is in dire need for housing. The book talked a lot about fairness and how shelter staff members are forced to “play god” in determining who gets housed or not. I think it would interesting to research different shelter organizations and surveying what method they use for admitting individuals into their shelter.

Recently I was on Twitter, and I saw a post about the homeless in San Francisco. It was a post talking about how badly of an “epidemic” homelessness is in the area. I would have thought nothing on it, it was a post on someone explaining how San Francisco has a housing crisis. However, it was killing me seeing that this person created a thread of videos attached to his post, of homeless people on drugs, using drugs, excreting, and sleeping in the streets. He had videos upon videos, calling the acts disgusting, and harmful for the surrounding environment. While this is an issue that does need to be addressed on how to help with these issues, we need to realize that it isn’t something that these people choose to do. They were put into this situation because of a system which is broken, and needs fixing. It helped me feel better seeing people comment in the chat underneath, saying they were feeling discomfort about the videos being put up. They also were creating conversation about how this is a problem of a broken system, and not the people’s fault. It made me concerned about how we as a people view poverty in America, but seeing others rise to the challenge of having these difficult talks and educating each other helped remind me that we can change this issue.