Category Archives: Solutions to Poverty

Keeping Our Cities Clean and Making Money

Homelessness, News link, Related topics, Solutions to Poverty

A complaint I hear a lot when people talk about homelessness is how dirty the streets are due to homeless people throwing their waste everywhere. With no personal garbage and recycling bins, people who are homeless have to rely on city garbage cans which can be few and far between. The city of Fort Worth in Texas is trying to combat this problem. Their program called Clean Slate offers paying jobs to homeless people staying at one of their local shelters. The workers earn $10 an hour and receive benefits and vacation time, all while collecting trash around homeless encampments. City-funded, the goal of this program is to employ homeless people and eventually get them employed in stable, long-term positions, even though they are allowed to work for the program as long as they like.

Other cities have decided to replicate this program and I think there’s a large benefit to it. While it is subjecting homeless people to “do the dirty work” and city funding could be going to improve sanitation services, I think that it’s a step in the right direction. Helping these people who are down on their luck by offering a low-wage job adds to a resume and gives work experience and a reference for when they are ready to move on to other work.

The article says that L.A.’s city council signed off to replicate this program in November though I couldn’t find any follow up information on if the city is moving to actually create this program.

Ballor, C. (2018, January 27). Fort Worth pays homeless to help clean up city’s streets. Dallas News. Retrieved January 28, 2018, from https://www.dallasnews.com/news/fort-worth/2018/01/27/fort-worth-pays-homeless-help-clean-citys-streets

L.A. considers hiring homeless people to clean up litter on the streets. (2017, November 1). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 28, 2018, from http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-trash-20171101-story.html

On the Streets – Conclusion of a hopeful video series

About being poor, Homelessness, Solutions to Poverty

I have been following the web series “On the Streets” hosted by LA Times contact reporter Lisa Biagiotti as they finish up there twelfth video session to close up the series. Biagiotti seeks out her neighbors Wanda, and more recently, Pepper who have been on the streets for years. Wanda and Biagiotti are close acquaintances ever since Biagiotti struck a conversation with her as Wanda was digging through her recycle bin. Since then, Wanda gives Biagiotti information on her life, and the reality of living on the streets. It was so interesting to see a reporter genuinely interested in the lives of those not spoken for generally in the news.

Wanda in this video introduced Biagiotti to her friend Pepper who had spent years in jail, and on the streets but now is a self-employed truck driver doing well for himself. He was very proud and referred to himself as the “mayor of Skid Row” at one point. He is the only one I believe in the “On the Streets” web series episodes that I have seen that has been self-employed and got himself off the streets.

What I love about these web series episodes is that while Biagiotti is learning aspects of homelessness from her friends and neighbors, she uses this to portray the reality of homelessness to the audience.

She also exposes the situation of her friend Wanda who walks around all day recycling and collecting bottles so she can collect her average of $22.00 a day from the recycling company. Wanda has arthritis in her legs and as Biagiotti notes she has a “swagger” about her because of this. She has no SSI although she has been waiting for the request to be approved. Once she gets the SSI Wanda should be able to at least provide enough support for herself so that she doesn’t have to walk all day long in pain. Situations like this make me confused about why there aren’t programs out there that do more community outreach to find people who need the necessary resources.

Internship Report #2

Homelessness, Hunger, Local organizations, Organizations, Poverty, Solutions to Homelessness, Solutions to Hunger, Solutions to Poverty

I have been volunteering at a local organization which provides services to low income and homeless families across the valley. Throughout the past couple months, I have worked in several different areas of service and have observed both positive and negative aspects of the organization. The organization runs on minimal and ever-shrinking government funding, donations from the community, a small staff, and volunteer work. Because the organization gets most of its funds from the contributions of community members, the amount of money it has to work with is inconsistent from year to year.

The staff and volunteers must deal with the unpredictability of low funds and whatever donations happen come their way each day. This uncertainty and instability creates a chaotic environment at times. If one of the fourteen permanent staff members is gone, another staff member may have to juggle two different jobs that day. The association does a relatively good job at maintaining order and organization despite these complications. The staff is flexible and is able to work in any section of the facility. Almost every person involved works hard to help each individual who seeks services. The organization’s infrastructure allows for the staff to bend the rules at times in order to provide the best service possible for each client. If the organization is not able to provide services to a person who is seeking its help, the staff members make sure to refer the person to another place that may be able to help. They do the best they can with what they have.

The organization was founded (over a hundred years ago) with the concept of helping the “worthy poor” and some traces of this idea can still be observed in the intentions of the association today. The association provides free educational programs for individuals including basic life skills, parenting classes, money management, employment readiness, computer classes, counseling, and anger management. Providing these types of classes indicates that the clients need to be “fixed” in a sense. Though it does focus somewhat on fixing the problems of the individual, this organization clearly recognizes that homelessness is structural problem. In fact, one of the brochures about the organization describes the causes of family homelessness as “the combined effects of lack of affordable housing, extreme poverty, decreasing government supports, changing demographics of the family, the challenges of raising children alone, domestic violence, and fractured social supports.” The fact that the organization even acknowledges that homelessness is a structural problem sets it apart from other agencies of its kind.

In my time at this agency, I feel that I have not been as helpful as I have the potential to be. I believe this is because, when a volunteer becomes involved in the organization, they are asked which area(s) they would most prefer to work in but are not asked specifically what skills they can contribute to the organization. I am sure that many of the regular volunteers who have worked at the agency for an extended period of time have found their niche in the organization, but the temporary volunteers, who only work for a few months and then leave, do not make as much of an impact as they have the potential to make. I talked to one of the staff members and he said that one of the hardest issues that the organization faces is the fact that many of the volunteers it receives only work during the school year (September through May) because of affiliations with high schools and the university. This leads to very sparse pools of volunteers during the summer months, which is problematic for the organization. It makes do with what it receives, but it cannot help clients as thoroughly as it would like when there is not an adequate supply of volunteers.

Internship Progress Report

Anti-Poverty Programs, Homelessness, Hunger, Local organizations, Organizations, Poverty, Solutions to Hunger, Solutions to Poverty

Since 1898, the service association I have been interning at has relied on donations and a system of volunteers to provide services to low income and homeless families, disabled adults, and impoverished seniors of the East Valley. Today, there are 14 paid staff members and several volunteers.

Families that receive support from this location are either homeless or on the brink of homelessness. The many services provided by the organization are aimed at helping families in danger of becoming homeless pull themselves out of the rut that many get stuck in. The organization uses a case management-based approach that makes their care more compassionate and personal. Parents can take free classes on budgeting, parenting, anger management, computer skills, etc. and get job training or help with job searching. Housing assistance is provided through the Home Again program, which helps families move from homelessness to permanent housing through several different programs.

Food, clothing, furniture, and many other supplies needed for living are provided to clients through the distribution center. The distribution center contains the food pantry and the clothing room, where volunteers work daily to sort and organize donations. Families can “shop” for clothes and bedding in the clothing room each month. Volunteers in the food pantry put bags of food together for families of different sizes. Giving families the food in grocery bags makes it look as though they are just taking food home from the store like any other person, saving them from judgment.

The childcare center provides a place for children to go while their parents are in class or counseling or any other service they receive. There are plenty of board games, toys, puzzles, books, and crafts available to keep the children busy while they wait for their parents. On certain days, tutoring and homework help is available to the children as needed, to help them keep up with school. This is a very important aspect of the childcare center, as many of the families have a hard time keeping up with school with so many other things to deal with.

Meals are provided to families every night at 5:30 p.m. The dining room is set up with each family at their own table. Parents go to the kitchen to get the food and bring it back to the rest of the family, rather than every person waiting in line, as is done at many charity services. This makes the dining experience more relaxed, dignified, and comfortable for the entire family.

This service organization also puts on holiday programs including Christmas gift giving, in which the parents can pick out and wrap presents for their children, Thanksgiving and Easter meals, Easter baskets, and Easter egg hunts. These are fun experiences that every child deserves to have, and which could not be possible without the volunteer help and donations from the community.

All of these services have helped families in need immensely over the 100+ years that the volunteer-based organization has been around. It is clear that this association understands that everyone deserves respect and dignity and treats its clients with compassion and care.

What Not To Buy: Dictating the Choices of Low Income Families

About being poor, Food stamps (SNAP), Government programs, Harrassment, Hunger, People, Poverty, Solutions to Hunger, Solutions to Poverty, Working poor

As the debate over Food Stamps receives media attention, once again conservatives, the gullible, and the ignorant do not understand what Food Stamps themselves provide. Whenever this government program is brought up, like welfare, conservative media enjoys reporting on instances of misuse and abuse of the system–except unlike welfare, people cannot purchase anything but FOOD with Food Stamps. Fox News analysts in particular report on instances of people using Food Stamps to buy movie tickets, toys, electronics, cigarettes, even tickets to Disneyland, and the simple truth is that none of these statements are true. Jon Stewart essentially equates this kind of “rumor reporting” to be no better than believing chain emails threatening bad luck if one doesn’t  continue the chain.Food Stamps can only provide those who receive them with food. However, as everyone knows, people need more than food to survive day to day, and from many comments I’ve read on tumblr regarding this debate, it often takes scrambling in order to make up money to pay for the inedible necessities. Thus, the prospect of cutting Food Stamps even further only hurts those who need this program in order to survive because it ruins an already strict budget.

The controversy about Food Stamps continues because some conservatives believe that the government should regulate what people should be purchasing. As Jon Stewart jokes, in his segment What Not To Buy: What Would Jesus Soil, poor people shouldn’t purchase junk food because that’s bad for their health, but they’re also looked down upon if they purchase higher quality luxury foods (they’re abusing the system, they don’t really aren’t poor if they can afford those foods). Thus, low income families are being ripped apart by the media with classism, thus perpetuating stereotypes and classist discourse about poverty.

Raising the Minimum Wage

About being poor, Causes of Homelessness, Causes of Hunger, Causes of Poverty, Government programs, News link, Poverty, Solutions to Poverty

Image Detail

I saw this image on an Upworthy article, which can be found here. This map shows how many hours a minimum wage worker in each state would have to work per week simply to afford a 2 bedroom apartment, without paying more than 30% of their income. Not a single state’s minimum wage is high enough to adequately cover the costs of housing without working at least 65 hours a week. This means that housed minimum wage workers are either having to sacrifice other necessities for life such as food, child care, transportation, etc., or they are having to work two or more low wage jobs. Most likely, many low wage workers are doing both of these things just to survive.

We have seen several examples throughout this course (and on this blog) that show that a huge cause of homelessness is the imbalance of housing costs and wages in America. It seems so obvious that the current state this nation is in is not sustaining so many of its members. Raising the minimum wage is one way we can start addressing this issue. Gov. Peter Shumlin (Vermont) and Gov. Dan Malloy (Connecticut) wrote a piece on CNN’s Opinion section called “No brainer: Three reasons why a $10.10 minimum wage is good for America.” Their third reason was that “it’s the right thing to do. No American working 40 hours or more a week deserves to live in poverty.” The governors go on to debunk the bogus arguments many make against raising the national minimum wage: “Republican governors across the country have also stood in the way of progress. Some have pandered to stereotype, suggesting that a raise in the minimum wage should be rejected because it would only help young workers rather than acknowledging that 88% of workers who would be affected by moving the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour are over the age of 20, and more are over the age of 55 than are teenagers.”

There is no logical reason that the minimum wage shouldn’t be raised. It is clear that this would be a good start to counteracting the cost of housing and to abolishing homelessness.

Tiny Houses for the Homeless

Causes of Homelessness, Homelessness, Organizations, Related topics, Solutions to Homelessness, Solutions to Poverty

In class during the past week, we began looking at the major and minor causes of homelessness today in comparison to what they have previously been. We found that decline in public assistance, mental illness, domestic violence, and lack of affordable housing were just a few of the main causes of homelessness today. While it was easy to find the top causes of homelessness and poverty, it was quite problematic to try to brainstorm strategies and solutions to alleviate these problems. It can become overwhelming because there are so many of these issues that choosing which to tackle first can be difficult.

While continuing my research on the different ways that non-profit organizations and individuals are working towards solving these wide array of problems, I came across a recent article titled Tiny Houses for the Homeless: An Affordable Solution Catches On, the content of which is exactly what it sounds like. In several cities around the country, these villages of tiny, low-budget houses are being built to offer support to the homeless. These small communities offer safe places for the homeless to sleep, maintain hygiene, and form bonds with one another.

As for the costs of this effort, the article states that  “many of the building materials were donated, and all of the labor was done in a massive volunteer effort” (Lundahl 2014). In the article, the author discusses how even though the cost of each of these tiny houses can be around $10,000, the overall costs of these buildings is much lower than the alternative route of building apartment housing for these individuals. The cost-effectiveness of this plan is what is catching the eye of other city officials who are seeing the affordability and advantages to investing in these communities, which in the end will save them money.

After reading this article, I feel that this would be a good way to house the homeless and offer up a solution to the problem of the lack of affordable housing. Learning in our class that while the homeless population increases, the amount of low-income housing has actually decreased is very shocking and confusing. If there were more of these small communities of low-budget housing available in more cities, the effect would be dramatic. Clearly this is just one solution to one problem that the homeless are facing, but any efforts to push for these tiny houses would make an enormous impact of the lives of these homeless.

 

* http://truth-out.org/news/item/22050-tiny-houses-for-the-homeless-an-affordable-solution-catches-on

How Utah Will Soon End Chronic Homelessness: A First Step?

Causes of Homelessness, Causes of Poverty, Homelessness, Solutions to Homelessness, Solutions to Poverty, Uncategorized

Our Data Exercise #3 assignment pushed my level of being overwhelmed to a new height. When we ended class on Thursday with thinking about ways to possibly end these causes, I had no idea where to start or even which one to choose. Therefore, I decided to focus this week’s blog on what others are doing to end these causes. Affordable housing was one of the most common causes that were seen from Jenck’s 1980s research and the class’ updated research.
In focusing on affordable housing, a 2011 article on The Huffington Post surfaced and discussed How Utah Will Soon End Chronic Homelessness. The state of Utah has had a 26 percent drop in homelessness since 2010 and credited it to its “Ten-Year Strategic Action Plan to End Chronic Homelessness”. According to this plan, Utah will reach its goal of eliminating chronic poverty by 2014 by implementing Housingworks programs. With the Housingworks programs, the state is giving the homeless access to their own apartments that tenants will pay 30 percent of their state-facilitated income for rent, so the housing isn’t freely given. The state will also provide job training and social services to assist in keeping a job and social life. Huffington Post Blogger Anna Bahr also reports that Utah’s homelessness is at a four year low, as of 2011.
It seems that this plan had been showing progress and would help with other causes of homelessness besides just affordable housing. Does this mean we cannot just focus on eliminating one cause at a time? That these causes of homelessness are too related? In further research to see how Utah’s plan has either been successful or unsuccessful, my research fell flat. But is Utah’s plan the first step to ending these causes?

Smart Solutions from the Homeless

Solutions to Homelessness, Solutions to Poverty

Jessica P. Morrell’s Voices from the Street (2007) is a collection of over five hundred interviews with actual homeless people who were willing and eager to share their stories. All of the interviews provide insight into how life really is for the homeless and several of the folks shared their ideas of improvements to be made to the very broken system that is available for people living on the streets. There are many stereotypes against homeless people – that they are uneducated and therefore not smart, but many of the ideas brought forward by the “narrators” of this book were very simple and plausible. For example, in the chapter entitled “Barriers to finding work,” one man expressed the need for a sort of day center where homeless could have access to “More phone usage, more laundry services, more clothing – appropriate clothing – more showers perhaps” (p. 108). Though several of the people interviewed acknowledge that there are places that offer these types of services, many of these places are not open at convenient times for the job hunting process. Another man, in the same chapter, assesses the problem of not having anywhere safe to place one’s belongings while applying to jobs. He mentions that there is a place where people can store their belongings temporarily in exchange for volunteer hours, “but those hours you got to volunteer over there are the hours you want to go somewhere else” (p. 107). So although there are many existing services that provide solutions for the homeless, there needs to be an improvement of operations for the convenience of the people for which these services are providing for. The most important and helpful way to find these improvements would be to go directly to the homeless to observe their needs.

Rehab, Housing, Prison, and Dignity

Reflections on our Reading, Solutions to Homelessness, Solutions to Poverty

Stability derives primarily from having one’s basic needs being met: food, water, safety, and shelter. The most problematic and costly of these four is shelter.

The New York Times article “Program to End Homelessness Among Veterans Reaches a Milestone in Arizona” by Fernanda Santos deals with the question of whether drug or alcohol rehabilitation should come first, or if housing should come first in the path of creating “stability” for a person who was recently homeless or in poverty. Veterans, who served in the military whether as draftees or in more recent years as soldiers who volunteered, often have a difficult time finding work and a place to live. Many are disabled, whether physically or mentally, and as the Santos’ article argues, deserve better treatment than a life of instability from a lack of housing. This article also deals with the broader question: should there be a set of criteria for homeless and impoverished individuals that they must fulfill before receiving aid?

Some organizations, particularly religious ones, prefer offering rehab but fail to provide a sense of long term stability, as Kenan Heise argues in the chapter entitled “Drugs, Alcohol, and the Homeless” in his book The Book of the Poor. Religious organizations in particular place a moral obstacle in the path of the homeless, and most often, the idea that rehab to stability crumbles upon itself as organizations only provide rehab but fail at providing housing. As David Kemp states in this chapter during an interview with T.M., “…people will open up a lot better if you are not there directly trying to get them to stop using and that it is not a factor in what you are trying to do” (Heise, 37). Rather than behaving as a probational officer, organizations should focus on finding and/or creating affordable housing. Otherwise, rehab fails and/or individuals will turn to prison as a temporary shelter or place of stability.

In addition, the old path of rehab to stability is also the mindset of penal institutions, which house a large quantity of homeless individuals charged with the possession of drugs, not violent criminal behavior. Most  homeless individuals purposefully  land themselves into prison. Santos writes, “A 2009 analysis commissioned by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which handles the largest population of homeless veterans in the country, found that the monthly cost of housing and supportive services for one person was $605, while the public costs of a person living on the streets were roughly $2,900 a month.” The cost of housing a prisoner is significantly more than providing civilian housing in most states, tax dollars that could provide housing and improvement for communities.

Yet individuals land themselves in prison for shelter, regular meals, and will follow through the motions of rehab with the likelihood of falling back into old habits when out on the streets again. Both Heise and Santos argue that individuals, if separated from the source of their stress and other pressures, such as living on the streets, uncertainty about where one will sleep at night or find another meal, and the accessibility of drugs and alcohol, would thus be less likely to do drugs or drink alcohol or associate with those who do. By distancing themselves through having a place to live, studies show the use of drugs and alcohol decreases, thus decreasing likelihood of imprisonment.

This is further exemplified expertly through the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black in which Taystee, a black prisoner housed at a New York federal penitentiary where the show takes place, prefers living in the prison and is willing to forfeit her “freedoms” in order to return to prison because the outside world is too unstable. Inside the prison Taystee has a job at the prison’s library, regular meals, a bed, and friends. In the outside world she has no family, no friends, a probation officer that did not provide housing and a sense of compassion, and the real possibility of falling into poverty.

Rather than a confrontational approach, organizations should work toward providing the one thing homeless and impoverished individuals need and want: a home, security, and their own personal dignity in the process.