Category Archives: Homelessness

Promoting Dignity

About being poor, How we should treat each other, Local organizations, Organizations, Solutions to Homelessness

            I have been interning a Family Services center, an agency dedicated to offering support to low-income and homeless families with the end goal of leading them towards self-sufficiency. Family services depends on the support of organizations and leaders to improve the lives of those at or below the poverty line, which in turn strengthens the community as a whole.

             I began my work in the distribution center. The labor of this work can be grueling at times but it made me appreciate the care that’s put into this process. Staff members believe in giving clients items that they would be proud to own. Items are cleaned, disinfected, and made presentable. Goods that don’t meet these expectations are put into bags and placed where individuals can grab them. Absolutely nothing donated is wasted.

            I’ve spent time in the clothing center. Clients come in to this room and are given fifteen minutes to browse clothing options. It’s an opportunity for them to receive any special needs items such as blankets, pillows, towels, or cooking utensils. Clothes are folded, counted, recorded, and bagged in regular shopping bags. Clients are able to come in, gain access to clean clothes and choose what fits their needs, including work appropriate attire that will enable them to search for employment.

            The food pantry is set up very similarly to a grocery store, with aisles of foods. Families are given access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and good sources of protein and vitamins. They fill grocery bags with food items to meet the family’s needs. When they leave, the items are in grocery bags so there would be no way to detect that they had gotten these food items from anywhere but the grocery store. This is another way that they are treated with dignity.

            I have been volunteering in the child care center which is a very important feature of Family Services. It allows parents the time to go to classes and counseling while knowing that their children are safely being cared for. On a usual day, children are dropped off and signed in by parents and they begin their school homework projects that they have. The volunteers in this area spend a lot of time and efforts helping the children understand and complete their homework and any special projects that they have to prevent them from falling behind in school.

            Going forward, I hope to gain much more insight into some of the services that I am less familiar with. I am aware that this organization offers a wide variety of services such as resume building, job assistance, and computer skills training, I’m not fully knowledgeable of the specifics of these services. I hope to gain insight in these classes and the feedback of the clients.

          The overall message of this organization is to promote the dignity of all people, a concept that we have identified in class as imperative. While it’s overwhelming to consider the status of homelessness, this experience has made me see the great impact that a single person can make. Family Services was established over one hundred years ago and was built on the importance of community members volunteering by donating time, money, and resources. Each and every individual who has volunteered here has played a role in ensuring that it is able to keep going.

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.

Taking Action

About being poor, Government programs, News link, Solutions to Homelessness

As we transition into the part of the semester in which the underlying theme is about what  the government is doing about the homeless population, I found an article which shows how taking one step can make a huge impact. On March 8th, The Los Angeles Times published an article about having a safe space for homeless people. In Sonoma County, supervisors lifted the ban of people sleeping in their cars. They realized that for some people, living in their cars is their only option. They made a Safe Parking Program that allowed homeless people the opportunity to park their car in a designated lot and could keep their cars there overnight.

This program provides a safe space for homeless people. One man described it as “heavenly” and was grateful for this safe space. While reading, I was asking myself why is this just happening now? This is a great program that should have been brought about sooner. One woman states “A man walked up to me and his entire face and beard was covered in frost”. This just shows how action needed to be taken. It is said that four men died from freezing to death, which is another situation that should not have happened. By lifting this ban and allowing this safe space program, homeless people not only feel safe, they also being taken out of bad weather conditions that they would have to face if they were sleeping outdoors.

After reading this article, I am confident in some of the steps our government is taking towards helping homeless people. If more ideas and solutions like this were put into action, homeless people would be given a better outcome.

Safe Space Program provided these people with a place to park their car and sleep overnight

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-santa-rosa-homeless-parking-20140309,0,3081428.story#ixzz2vbYjWG6y

 

Somewhere to Sleep

About being poor, Homelessness, News link

In recent news an online article was published by the local Los Angeles Times entitled “In Sonoma County, a heartwarming safe-parking program for the homeless” which described the unique response of this affluent county to both the freezing temperatures and the spike in homeless persons sleeping in their cars. This article was unique in the fact that it described all kinds of people who have found themselves needing to utilize these safe parking spaces at night for a place to sleep. With the waiting lists for shelters growing increasingly long and the temperatures continuing to drop, the homeless were out of options besides sleeping in their cars, which is against the law in Sonoma County as well as many other places. As Supervisor Shirlee Zane is quoted in this article, she states “It was just stupid to say it’s illegal to sleep in your car. For some people, all they own is their car.” This is why several other counties including nearby San Diego County, have began adopting this idea of safe parking spaces that allow people to sleep in their vehicles without being hassled by police.
As the article also stated “in Santa Clara County, four homeless men had frozen to death on the streets”. This was a huge catalyst for people like Shirlee Zane to get these safe parking spaces going. This quote was very powerful to me because despite this tragedy, there are still policymakers and community members who are advocating for anti-camping ordinances to ban homeless from sleeping in vehicles which could be their only way of survival. While this article was describing the recent situation in Sonoma County, it is obvious from our recent coursework in homeless counts around the nation that this is not an isolated occurrence and  that this is going to continue to happen in many areas. Because of this, anti-camping ordinances need to be reconsidered and altered as a temporary bandage to the problem while long-term solutions are formed.

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-santa-rosa-homeless-parking-20140309,0,3081428.story?page=1#axzz2vbNk21a0

 

Raising the Wage

Homelessness, Poverty, Solutions to Homelessness

One of the topics we were discussing about in class was the minimum wage, when our professor mentioned how there is a man who is going to put forth a vote on the ballot this November for the people to increase the minimum wage for California. This actually interested me quite a bit so I decided to do a bit of research to figure out more information on this subject. I found an article online that tells all about the man behind this measure and why he believes it will be a good idea for the wage to increase.

Behind the measure is a man named Ron Unz. His background is that he is a conservative man who was a software developer, a theoretical physicist from Harvard, and a publisher of the American Conservative magazine. What he wants to put into an effect is establishing the minimum wage at $12 dollars an hour, and to do this he wants to have the people vote on it issue on the ballot this November. He is also doing a great job at convincing both liberals and conservatives to back this issue. Its very interesting to be hearing a conservative talking about and having the position of wanting the wage increased, but his idea behind it has to do with logic.

He takes the standpoint of saying if businesses pay their low wage employees more, it will be taking away from what the taxpayers assist to the low-income people through food stamps, housing aid, Medicaid, etc. Our state has such a high cost of living and if we were to increase the minimum wage to $12 it would essentially be about $9.25 at the federal level if converted for living expense. This would pull a tremendous amount of people out of poverty and our working families would get about $15 billion per year. Also money would be saved for the taxpayers from not paying as much to the programs that assist the poor people. He also has an argument for the rich who might argue against his wanting to raise the wages. Unz says investing $2 million today would raise the annual incomes of low-wage workers by $15 billion. That is a tremendous increase.

I am really interested on how this will all play out and even just with the people involved in agreeing for this cause. I will definitely continue on watching what happens now and in November.

For more information check out this website

California’s Coming Minimum Wage Restoration


or just search around about this topic online

Homeless for a Night

Homelessness, News link

This past weekend, dozens of students in Birmingham, Alabama participated in a project called “Cardboard Connect” that provides students with an idea of what it feels like to be homeless. The students then spend the night without the comforts of home and then are given the opportunity to discuss issues of homelessness and how to take active leadership roles in trying to solve the issues. The students ended up giving back to the homeless community by collecting hygiene products.

After reading this short article posted on March 8th, there were three comments following it. Two of the three comments expressed negative feelings towards this project and how it doesn’t “truly” teach the students about homelessness. On even expressed that the students should have attended drug abuse counseling in order to learn about the addiction and the cost of taking drugs. However, like the students participating in the project, do these commenters have any idea about what it is like to be homeless? The one comment about drug abuse was only mentioned based off a possible statistic that homeless people are drug addicts or have mental issues, which are common stereotypes associated with homeless people. Yet with the other comment, there was a good point made that this project doesn’t show the reality that homeless people experience daily. Although this project allowed students to become more aware of what is taking place, do you think that this project is an effective exercise and learning experience on homelessness? Or do your thoughts linger towards agreement with the mentioned comments?

To read the article and comments visit:  http://www.abc3340.com/story/24923385/birmingham-teens-spend-the-night-out-to-learn-about-homelessness

“Reckoning with Homelessness”

Homelessness

Kim Hopper’s book, Reckoning with Homelessness, discusses his ethnographic fieldwork of homeless people from 1979-1982. During his fieldwork he did not tell the homeless people who he encountered that he was an ethnographer studying them. He felt that he received very real stories from the homeless men when he made it seem like he was one of them. Hopper focuses mainly on homeless men because historically they were the first to be seen homeless.

Hopper talks with men who are living in shelters, on the streets, in airports, and at train stations. Often there were shelters for these men to go to; however they would rather be on the streets than the shelters. One man explained life in the shelters, “The shelter and flophouses were lousy, unsafe, dirty places, where brutality was common. Your cloths were stolen and your life threatened. Maintaining your respectability or cleanliness was impossible in such a setting” (Monroe 93).  Although living on the streets is not an easy way of living, especially when you are constantly being told that you can’t stay where you are and you have to move, the shelters were believed to be even worse than the streets. Airports seemed to be a common place of shelter for homeless. Homeless were attracted to airports because they have clean restrooms and drinking fountains for free water. Homeless would occupy the airports anywhere from three days to three years.

I find it interesting that Hopper focuses on men because we seem to mainly focus on women and families. What about the men who do not have any family or any ties? Men are a large percentage of the homeless population and they are just as important as the homeless women and children.

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.

Homeless College Students

About being poor, Homelessness, News link, People, Poverty

This article by Blake Ellis from CNN Money describes the issue of being homeless in college. I had never really given thought to homeless college students before reading this article. I suppose I had the assumption that if you could afford to go to college, you couldn’t be homeless. But after reading this article, I realize that this is assumption is just as flawed as the rest. I was shocked that there were 58,158 (reported) homeless college applicants in the 2012-2013 school year. The true number is probably even higher than this, since people often don’t consider themselves homeless if they are living in a car or in on friends’ couches. As Duffield says, “‘There’s an assumption that if you’re homeless, you’re so focused on basic needs like food and shelter that school isn’t a concern,’ said Duffield. ‘But for these youth, education is the answer — the jobs that are available don’t pay good wages if you don’t have a degree, so [education] is the only way out of their situation.'”

These students work harder than most others to get through school because they can barely even afford to pay the 15% (or more) of their tuition that financial aid doesn’t cover.
Yet, they can’t afford to stay on campus over breaks. I know that the University of Redlands charges students to stay on campus over winter break. This makes me wonder how many students can’t afford to stay here during the month long break and if any are technically homeless during that time. Though this is a fairly affluent university, there may be some students who have no home to return to during the breaks.

Causes of Homelessness

Causes of Homelessness, Uncategorized,

In the 1960’s Christopher Jencks presented his causes of homelessness in The Homeless. The causes discussed in his book included the closing of mental wards, the crack epidemic, marriage and jobs, as well as the decline in a variety of safety nets. Some new things to consider for today’s populations are the economic crash, the decline of the middle class, and the foreclosure crisis.  If surveyed, the majority of society may not include such causes. Many people tend to think homelessness is an individual circumstance. Through readings and class discussions, we are learning this is not the case. Each of these possible causes are all structural based sources.

Understanding the causes of homelessness if an important step to realizing the proper solutions to the issue. Many of these causes are structural and most of the solutions to these problems don’t take that into consideration. There are  many ‘band aid’ solutions, meaning that they will help the problem but they are not permanent solutions. Examples of this can include public aid/services. These band aids are important but they also allow for homelessness to continue as it is currently. There is little to no affordable housing or other more permanent solutions to the issue and the funding for ‘band aid’ programs continues to be cut year after year. What will happen to the homeless populations as funding continues to be cut and as more laws pass criminalizing the homeless? The current options for solutions are limited and do not seem to attack the structural part of the issue.

I think it’s important that when a community discusses homelessness they consider the structural causes rather than the individual causes. Such a gap in recognizing the true causes of homelessness can often result in more band aid type solutions. The permanent solutions won’t even be considered because many times the community fails to recognize the true issues.

To read a summary of Jenck’s The Homeless click here: http://www.vanneman.umd.edu/socy498/jencks.html