Working at a restaurant, you see many different types of people, regulars, travelers, couples, foreigners, and just about everyone. We all need to eat. But what about the homeless? What happens when they walk into a restaurant?

I walked into my restaurant the other day, for another day at the daily grind, to find a lady by herself in my section. The other waitresses told me that she had been sitting there for many hours. Come to find she had been there since about 11 in the morning and it was already reaching 4 in the afternoon when I got into work. I stopped to check in on her where she asked for a slice of pie; my manager had just gone over to talk to her, so I assumed she decided to order something in order to stay longer. After about another hour, she asked for a refill of her coffee to-go. It was then that I realized that it was the coldest it had been all week and she might want a hot drink to warm her up.

When another server came on and started to take over my section, he began talking about her loud enough for her to hear of course. He would say things such as, “shes been here since 10,  she shouldn’t still be here” or “she smells and is grossing the customers out”. And shortly after that is when she decided to leave, most likely due to his comments.

Many of us wanted to help, but we were unsure of how; from the class I am currently taking, I know that there are some shelters in San Bernardino, but we were in Redlands. My manager called the police to see if there was anything we could do, there apparently is a Goodwill just down the street, but the only problem is they don’t accept people until after 8 pm, and that was about four hours away. Before she left, my manager was able to tell her this information for which she only nodded.

But how is it that we don’t know what to do in these situations, where we want to help someone, but don’t know if they want it or even how to give it. There wasn’t much any of us could do, since we were at work, but even if we could, we didn’t know what to do. None of us wanted to send her on her way since it was really cold out, but there wasn’t much we could do in the first place. And what if we were in her shoes, someone just trying to stay out of the cold, but being commented on by other people. Would the other server treated her differently, if he only imagined he was in her shoes, wouldn’t he hope for some compassion?

So, what can we do in our town to help the homeless?

Twice a week, I’m a coward. As I sit in class for an hour and twenty minutes, I am humbled by the independent stories of homeless mothers and their children. While many of theses individuals have been inserted into an inevitable trap of poverty, struggling to make it day-to-day with only two dollars in their pockets, others have been blessed with material items.

As soon as that hour and twenty is over, it’s no longer a matter of “Hunger and Homelessness.” At 2:30PM, the setting transitions to “Consumers and Consumption” where I am faced with the overwhelming reality of overconsumption in American culture. The privilege many millennials have come to identify with is borderline disgusting. While cellphones in kindergarten are what is expected by many children of affluent backgrounds, for children born into the cycle of poverty, food is never guaranteed. It’s fascinating seeing the divide between those who buy shoes for the brand name, those whom shoe’s aren’t even an option for. As situations become more emotionally, physically, and financially draining, the expected standard of living consequently decreases.

As sociology major, I have come to understand that this educational route means despising almost anything that I encounter that faintly smells of inequality. Seeing beyond societal, economic, and political issues in hopes of finding a solution requires energy that individuals in society fail to search for.

So I was doing some digging to follow up on my last post since it seemed New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans for dealing with homelessness were pretty vague. What I found is a 13 page document that’s dated eight months before the article I used in my last post that outlines everything de Blasio and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are planning to do. I’ll post the link at the bottom, and I highly encourage you guys to check it out; these guys are trying to end – yes, END – homelessness in New York City by 2020. Of the nine main concepts outlined in the document, at least five focus on housing and rental assistance to prevent homelessness.

A couple comments I have about the document: I’m really interested to see how raising the minimum wage in N.Y.C. to $15/hour would affect the economy. It sounds great, but I know there is an argument to be made against it from a business standpoint; since economics isn’t my strongest subject I don’t know what kinds of effects this would have on both small and large businesses, and overall I think this will be one of the more controversial parts of de Blasio and Cuomo’s plan. Another thing I wanted to touch on is under section 3 of the document it states that de Blasio and Cuomo will renew a City-State agreement to create and fully fund 30,000 units of supportive housing over the next ten years. First off, the beginning of the document says they’re trying to end homelessness in five years, but that’s not the point. What stood out to me was that one of the bullet-points under this agreement states 20,000 of those units will go towards individuals, while 8,700 go to families, and 1,300 to youths. I’m a little confused as to why families aren’t getting the majority of these housing units, I feel families should be more of a primary target in terms of getting people off the streets. I’m not trying to say families are more or less worthy of housing than individuals by any means, I was just a little thrown off by the figures because allocating 20,000 of the units towards families would get more than double the people off the streets.

I think this document is great way for us to get an idea of what it’s like trying to create public policies to counteract homelessness, and it’s definitely something I’d like to go over as a class one day if at all possible.

Click to access HomesForEveryNYerReport04072015.pdf

When watching the documentary that showcased the lives of a community (family) compiled of homeless people in Santa Monica during 1994 it was hard to not be emotionally effected. The effort that this community put into the upkeep of their living space (such as sweeping rugs, making beds, and maintaining cooking supplies), newly formed familial bonds, and livelihood (can collecting and dumpster diving) was impressive. I would never have the resilience to be hassled by my inner demons as well as outer entities such as police and the societal structure that enabled me to live a suppressed life.

One example of impressive resilience and strength that stands out is, the army veteran who collected cans for 15-18 hours daily in order to make less than $40 change. He had all sorts of problems with his feet including, but not limited to, ingrown toenails and terribly painful callus. These problems should and could have left him incapable of maintaining his daily chores in order to survive. But when push comes to shove and you are faced with a choice of life or death- those who want to survive will aim to thrive in whatever ways they can.

How do these people maintain the courage to handle or bare the multiple struggles that present them daily? Where do they gather their strength, motivation and faith to keep going in a world where they do not belong? The most unsettling portions of the documentary were statements taken from (non-homeless) Santa Monica residents and tourist about homeless people. Statements about the process of evolution, and how the homeless were stunted in this process therefore should not be allowed to live their gift of life, was astonishing. The general air of the civilians towards the homeless was unfortunate. There was a lot of degradation of the human spirit and mind, calling homeless “unsightly burdens”.

The moment when the “family head” started breaking down in tears was a huge moment to understand and empathize through. Imagine; everything you have built and tried so hard to protect and maintain being stripped from you because in the eyes of society you have no right to anything you lay claim to. Not your belongs, your family, or yourself.

You just have tears worth noting.

What is money? What does it get you? If you only had $2 a day to live off of how would you survive? These are questions many of us do not know the answer to because our lives are privileged and we do not have to face the problem of not having enough. The book $2 A Day by Katherine Edin and Luke Shaefer shows the struggles of how to survive off of $2 a day.

In short the struggles the people in the stories go through are how to apply for welfare and also qualify to get welfare/food stamps, because if you did not know welfare is pretty much extinct. Other struggles these people face are finding a safe place for them and their family to live. Specifically in one story a mother and her two children were living with her uncle and she came home to her uncle raping her daughter so they went from having a home (even though it was unsafe) to being back on the streets.

In addition imagine you are ten years old again…what would be your biggest concern at that time in your life? For one of the people in this book her parents had left her alone on the streets at the age of ten and she had to figure out how to live and grow up. This to me was a reality check that nothing in my life is that bad and horrible and that when I have a bad day I need to take a step back and realize my problems are very miniscule compared to most peoples.

How far would you go to survive if you had $2 a day? The conclusions these people come up with are extreme. So…what would you do?

I saw this poster when I was going out to dinner with some friends at a pizza parlor.  Surprisingly, this was the first anti-panhandling poster I have ever seen, or at least can remember seeing.  I found this poster to be very abrasive and very political.  The bold title of the poster really conveys the message that panhandling will only lead to more problems and increase the number of homeless, or so one would think.

At the bottom of the poster, it tells the viewer to instead make a donation to a charitable organization, not necessarily hinting at a particular one.  It instead directs the viewer to a website.  What is disturbing to me is that the words telling the viewer to not promote panhandling are surprisingly larger and more “in your face”  than the small text saying to give to a charitable organization.  To me, this poster was made only fore the pizza business, and did not have the intention o having people donate to charitable organizations.  The business likely had panhandlers outside of the store, perhaps deterring business.

Another thing that bothered me is that this poster compares donating to a charitable organization to giving spare change to a panhandler.   Giving spare change to a panhandler is almost always a much smaller amount than in a donation to an organization.

What do you think the main intention of this poster is?  Have you all seen any posters similar to this around Redlands?

I traveled to Washington last week to assist in my aunt’s post-surgery recovery. The night after her surgery the T.V. was on in her room showing “BREAKING NEWS: Two Dead in Shooting at Seattle Homeless Encampment”. I listened closely as the investigators were looking into the meaning behind the shooting. Amongst the broadcasters, another conversation emerged. They provided statistics that homelessness has become more of a problem in the City of Seattle in recent years. In response to the shooting, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, presented some solutions to the problem.

In a local NPR segment, the reporter highlights this information about homeless cleanups, “Last year, Seattle performed more than 500 of these cleanups, up from 350 the year before. It’s all adding to the sense of the crisis around homelessness and one reason Seattle’s mayor declared a state of emergency.” Ed Murray has “allocated an additional $5 million for shelters, and he’s about to announce a one-stop walk-in center where homeless people can find services.”

Similar to other efforts around the country to find solutions to homelessness, Seattle was on track to have a plan to end homelessness by this time. Statistics show that homelessness has increased by 19% over a year ago in Seattle.

I find it interesting that legislative action is being taken only after the problem is revealed through breaking news. I would be interested to see the trend in aid to the homeless in Seattle and if the heat around the topic will continue to inspire action. What do you think about Ed Murray’s response to the shooting?

Check out the NPR conversation here:

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/30/464961021/seattle-mayor-confronts-homelessness-crisis-with-services-shelter

This week we had the opportunity to watch the film “Taylor’s Campaign”. The film made me realize that it is one thing to see and analyze statistics about homeless people and an entirely different thing to watch how their civil rights and dignity are slowly stripped away from them by the people in society. This documentary not only tells the story of homeless people in Santa Monica but a story shared by many all over the world.
It was very interesting to see the way in which people from different social classes treated the homeless. Officers in law enforcement found power behind their title and used it to their advantage in order to become more intimidating. Council members of city hall who had the potential to change the lives of homeless people made it clear that they were none of their concern. I was especially shocked of the way in which the residents of the city of Santa Monica perceived homeless people. A young man in the film used language that is used in cases of genocide, words that should not be used to refer to homeless people. The young man in the film stated, “They’re a waste… Simply taking up space. Homeless people should be put to sleep”. I was absolutely astonished by this statement. The fact that some people can be so ignorant to the hardships of others. The film definitely educated me and helped me be more understanding of homeless people because homelessness does not just happen from one day to another, there is a series of events that lead up to homelessness.

What does it mean to be in a position of power? After watching the documentary in class regarding the homeless population in Santa Monica, I began to change my views on what the word power means. Power was used left and right in this documentary, and used in ways that through my eyes appeared to be abusing it. Something that really struck me in this video was how the police officers used their power over these homeless people, who were causing no harm to others, just because they could. The civilians did the same thing, exerting their power of money and status over the homeless people by reporting them, and saying that they were disturbed by their presence. But these homeless people are essentially just like us. They have citizenship, they have the right to vote and they have the right to exist. The only thing that separates them is money. And because America is a place where money and power go hand and hand, these homeless people, and people living in extreme poverty, are in America essentially powerless.

But these “powerless” people are causing us no harm; so why do citizens feel the need to displace them, ticket them for pointless offenses, and publically embarrass them? I believe that it is a social stigma that is put in place by the “higher” class of people. They seem to believe that poverty is a self-fixing problem, and that it is their problem that they are living on the streets. They believe that it is the fault of the homeless people that they are sleeping on cardboard at night and pushing around shopping carts full of their belongings during the day. This “higher” class believes this because they have never taken the time to understand them, to talk to them. But instead they want to make them disappear, to remove them from the streets, because they are making the streets “dirty.” Throughout that documentary I discovered that the power dynamic has become so strong in our country that it has become a form of discrimination. People treat the poor as though they are the embarrassment in our country, and try to deny them basic human rights.

But say a person of “power” took a minute to talk to the homeless, or even just decided to leave them in peace and stopped exerting their power over those who cannot defend themselves. Could a simple action such as that change the power dynamic? Possibly, but an idea like that is much easier said than done, and change, my friends, is never easy.

This week in class we watched the documentary, Taylor’s Campaign. By far it was one of the best documentaries about homelessness that I’ve seen.

It showed real issues that homeless people in Santa Monica, and I’m sure in other places, face everyday. It showed homelessness from the perspective of homeless people. The homeless people that we meet in the film have personalities that are likable and make you question how someone like this can be homeless. The documentary truly shows the unjust side of dealing with homelessness. It enlightens the way police treat homeless people, and how people in City Hall treat them. To me, it looked like they had forgotten about these people’s humanity. One homeless man stated, “We got nothing to stand on…we can’t turn to nobody.” The same people who are supposed to fix these issues of poverty seem to have turned their back’s on a large population of people living in their city.

I felt angry about some people’s comment towards homeless people. Many people saw them as a burden to the city. It also upset me that Santa Monica wanted to pass policy that meant a person could not give food or money to a homeless person. I felt like they had no right to stop a person from helping another person on the street. I was a big fan of Ron Taylor because he really cared about these people, and like one of the men said in the film, “It’s hard to find a person that really cares.” He really wanted to make a difference in the city, which I found inspiring and motivating. His beliefs and actions allowed me to think of ways in which I can help the homeless community now and in the future.