My internship for the past month has been with a small non-profit Christian organization that operates solely off of the generosity of donors. The mission of my agency is to fulfill the scripture, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was naked and you clothed me…” (Matthew 25). This non-profit offers anyone in need a weekly food box as well as a access to medical care and discounted/free clothing.

An observation that I have made about this organization is how diverse the people who volunteer there are. Everyone from homeless community members to college students is there donating their time and service to this facility. I believe that this is because unlike other charity organizations, this one does not require any prior training or a background check to volunteer. The agency is happy for any and all help, whether or not you are offering this just once or every Saturday for a year. This is particularly helpful for individuals in need of the organization’s services who who would rather work for what they receive instead of getting what they might consider to be a “hand-out.” This charity does not discriminate in any way, shape, or form and is willing to help every person who walks through the door regardless of their race, religious affiliation, age, gender, or lifestyle choices.

One of the major questions that I had after my first day of interning there was where was all of this food coming from? The amounts of bread, meat, sweets, and dairy products were so vast that I could not imagine that this was the result of families cleaning out their pantries. I was able to speak to one of the heads of the organization and he elucidated that the food available to fill the food boxes is donated by local grocery stores that instead of throwing out surplus items or products that aren’t profitable give the food to the agency to help the hungry. Without these businesses donating their unwanted food, the agency wouldn’t be able to distribute food boxes to local people in need every Saturday.
I did notice, however, that because all of the food is donated, the organization cannot always ensure that there will be enough of each different food group to put in the boxes. For example, near the end of one of the shifts, the only items I had left in abundance were bread and sweet products. There were still three families patiently awaiting a box and all I had left to give them were cupcakes, cookies, rolls, eggs, and several loaves of white bread. Tragically, while these food boxes offer people something to eat when they would otherwise have to go without, the boxes are not always healthy or nourishing. This is particularly concerning when the families have children whose diets are more demanding of proper nutrition in order to grow properly. While the agency tries its best to provide its clients with a well-balanced box, due to a lack of resources they can’t always do this. This is representative of one of the many challenges that non-profit organizations face.

After presenting to the class the ethnographic work of Kim Hooper, “Reckoning with Homelessness”, it gave me a broad understanding of the rise of homelessness in the United States and the historical context of the high rates of homeless men.  Hopper argues in his book that most written ethnographies lack the reliability of the problem-solving by providing a numerous of facts that has been embarked through history, yet the solutions are not being brought to the attention of the people to deter homelessness.  In his work, Hopper persuades us to understand his structural method with solutions advocated to solve the issue of homelessness and the need to develop organizations for the people to restore the country.

Hopper’s fieldwork define the frameworks of homelessness aggressively to present the failures and improvements the government has assisted in terms of relief.  In his efforts to focus and recognized this problem as a chronic issue grounded by the lack of public assistance and mental illness, Hopper help fund the National Coalition for the Homelessness.  Through his research he continues to distribute social policy and anthropology to help us understand that homelessness is a complex issue where the population varies, and the need to adopt new methods to resolve the issue can establish stability in our country gracefully.

I was reading the Huffington Post today and came across some interesting information that I thought pertained to this class. It was about the aftermath of a decisions made my conservative Texas legislators to cut the funding of family planning clinics by two-thirds. I was first off shocked by the decisions to cut that much funding. I truly blows my mind when government officials and political figures decide that family planning and assistance is something worth taking out of our budget. What didn’t surprise me however, was that the first demographic that was negatively effected by this was women. This particular budget cut wasn’t just taking away families’ abilities to get services and plan their futures in a constructive way, but it took away major health assistance for women (i.e. contraceptives, pap smears, cancer treatments, etc.) It then described in the article how Latina women living in the Rio Grande Valley were effected. What initially broke my heart for these women was that the original goal of this budget cut was to ensure that the efforts of Planned Parenthood were stifled. But, as this typically turns out, when you take away the access for women to properly understand and take care of their own bodies, then women’s bodies are the first ones to be negatively influenced. So much in this particular case, that it has been determined as an infringement on these women’s humans rights. They no longer have access to testing for sexually transmitted diseases, for basic checkups regarding their health, abortions etc. Without these forms of assistance these women are not only susceptible to becoming extremely ill, but are also now exposed to unexpected pregnancy and other issues relating to their sexual health that could deeply effect heir lives. This made me think about the homeless mothers in book that I read for our last assignment. Im sure those women could have had the information and assistance to make better choices regarding their sexual wellbeing and physical health had they had the information of how to be safe and how to advocate for themselves. It also connects to the book that I am reading now that deals specifically with policies. Without these resources that were taken away in the budget cuts, there has been a drastic reduction in condom use, women re having to chose between getting check ups and feeding there family, etc. These are choices that people shouldn’t have to make and are inevitably the ones that can send force a person into homelessness. What I mean by this is that if a mother falls sick because she couldn’t get a checkup on time, she cannot work and then her family can lose their income. If a mother has an unexpected pregnancy and she cannot afford to take care of another child, that could also lead to homelessness. There are plenty of ways in which taking the rights that women have to education, protection and care of their bodies can effect their overall quality of life. I was heartbroken by stories in the article and was exceedingly sad for these women. However, I was happy to see that there are still come women who are meeting up with one another to discuss their reproductive rights. I think that the empowerment that these women are still seeking to provide themselves and each other with is proof of how resilient women are, however I don’t think that they should be forced into providing it for themselves, or forced into thinking that they are the only ones that care about their reproductive rights. Women should be a priority of our society and yet we remain a particularly undervalued group in most of the world. In the same way that we have been discussing that to understand homelessness is to help end homelessness, to understand the reality of these women’s lives and what they need is to help end the oppression that they are facing on a day to day basis They do not deserve to have their rights taken away from them in regards to their knowledge of their bodies and the rights provided for their bodies. More or less what I meant to say through this post was that I am now starting to see that ways in which people need to start thinking more about one another. We need to think about the homeless, we need to think about impoverished and under supported women, etc. We just need to keep each other in mind when we make drastic policy and funding cuts and we need to think about who is truly going to be affected and to what degrees.

post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/26/nuestro-texas-rio-grande-valley-report_n_4849754.html

The book I received for my second group presentation was about the history of homelessness. There were a lot of connections in there that i’ve never made. I guess the most striking one to me is that I never considered vagabonds or hobos to be homeless in a sense, I almost always viewed them as a Gypsy type person who travels around and that is there thing, and not that they dont have a home so they have to wonder. There is also a really big distinction from how they were displayed as homeless to what we have now. Looking through the book, back in the times of vagabonds and hobos, the people were treated almost as subhuman. They were looked at incredibly cruelly, especially in the 1870s, with people wanting them beaten or killed because of what they did and how they were, and even before that they were looked at as incredibly immoral people. I’m glad most of shave empathy now towards them, you still hear some social Darwinist comments about homeless, but at least its not comments about flogging them or killing them.

While exploring Jenck’s theories regarding what the causes of homelessness are and discussing how relevant or accurate his claims are today, I came across several statistics relating to domestic violence.

A report from 2009 comprised by the National Coalition for the Homeless elucidates that one out every four women will experience domestic violence at some point in her life. This shocking statistic directly correlates with homelessness rates, because many women are forced to flee their homes to avoid further violence from partners. Often these women make the decision to be homeless in order to remove their children from the perilous and volatile home situations. In fact, in 2008, 28% of families reported that they were homeless as a result of domestic violence (U.S Conference of Mayors, 2008) and 39% of cities of cities cited domestic abuse as being the primary reason for homelessness in their area (U.S Conference of Mayors, 2007).

These numbers have only increased since the reports were made. Sadly, funds allotted to aid homelessness have not increased and so many women are faced with the horrible decision as to whether they are better off risking more violence by remaining at home with an abusive husband or boyfriend or relinquishing their homes and taking to the streets. The women who choose to leave their homes are often left with almost no resources and as a result are incapable of helping themselves out of their dire situations. This becomes even more difficult when children are present. As we have studied in class, attending school and being a successful student and learner is nearly impossible when your family and home life is unstable and inconsistent.

Despite all of this blatant evidence that homeless victims of domestic violence desperately need help, on any given day, approximately 1,800 people can not be provided with emergency shelter and 1,500 people could not be given any transitional shelter either (National Network to End Domestic Violence.) It is obvious that more needs to be done to offer relief to the courageous women who have left violent situations and need a hand getting back on their feet and rebuilding their lives.

Interview With a Homeless Woman and Victim of Domestic Violence

There are many causes of homelessness throughout the world. Some causes may have been sudden and other were a series of events that led to homelessness. Time after time we hear and are brain washed to believe that homeless people are homeless because they chose to mess up in life or simply are low-lifes that are lazy. All those nasty stereotypes are spread from generation to generation making homeless people have a bad representation to who they are and how they got to be on the streets. Homelessness is an issue that many choose to ignore and be ignorant about. After reading  Reeve Vanneman’sonline summary of Christopher Jencks’ “The Homeless,” i was able to understand some of the earliest causes of homelessness.

As time passes new causes have began to appear. Many of the causes mentioned by Christopher Jencks are still very common. The assignment given to us brought me to some really interesting findings. Some of my findings came to a surprise although many , after doing the assignment, were  obvious causes of homelessness. One of the most obvious ones was natural disasters, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and many others can cause many to become homeless. I think it is also important as mentioned in class, to understand that there are causes that make you become homeless instantly and then there are little factors that add up and can lead to one becoming homeless. One of the ones that is a minor cause/factor is roommates. I was initially taken back because i currently have roommates. It made sense after reading about roommates as a cause of homeless because at any point in time they can decide to move out and i am then left to try to gather the money for my apartment and try to find new roommates.
Every individual homeless has a story to how they became homeless. Although many individuals think homeless is or should be blamed on the individual themself who is currently on the street they need to research different causes. The best way to open up the eyes of society is by educating them about this.

Over the past week, our class explored many various statistics and information concerning homelessness. As those numbers put at our heart strings, they can only tell us so much. Personal accounts and stories are the only way that a message can truly be conveyed. Additionally, the statistics offer no solutions to the problems. After our class discussion, I realized there is no true way to end homelessness. Programs, initiatives, and support can only do so much; they cannot simply make the problem vanish into thin air. It is similar to giving food to a wandering cat and it develops the pattern of coming back for more and not learning from its experience.

This morning I was listening to 97.1 KGGI FM and they have a segment called “Random Acts of Kindness.” One listener called in and told the story of how he started donating to the homeless. He said he met a homeless person who had worn the same shirt for three months. One day when he came home, he used his own t-shirt to wipe the sweat off his brow and proceeded to throw his shirt away. At this moment, he realized how wasteful he has been and decided to change for the better. Pulling his friends in the cause, they were able to give shirts to everyone in need within their town.  It is nice stories like this that convey the passion necessary to start instilling this behavior in children from the start so giving to those in need is not abnormal or difficult to accomplish.

After realizing the intricate and interdependent nature of the causes of homelessness, we can start to see how the individual and structural causes start to reinforce each other.  With wages falling and the system failures of our time being exacerbated by an unequal system of disparity, what can be done?  I was looking at some different sites and read an article that posted a very similar story to one that Samantha had posted, but it was not in HP, it was in Nation of Change.  The article describes what we are actively becoming aware of and describes how Utah, a republican state, has reduced homelessness by 78% in the last eight years.   It is even proposed that homelessness is to be ended in Utah by 2015.  http://www.nationofchange.org/utah-ending-homelessness-giving-people-homes-1390056183

Another aspect of that article and of another video I saw recently is touching on this aspect of how to react, and it gives us a good test of how the public or figures are looking at and how they generally view homelessness and the stigmatic nature of this issue.  I’m talking about passing legislation such as what we saw in Santa Monica and many other cities that make homelessness either illegal, or the assisting of said homeless persons illegal.  This particular avenue of moving all homeless away and into camps is rather scary, and not something I am supportive of or would want to be part of as an American.  So with these two contrasting stories I hope to illustrate the various routes that can be taken, and the effectiveness of one over many others.

http://truthia.com/its-now-illegal-to-be-homeless/