Category Archives: 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

Money Issues

About being poor, Homelessness, Poverty

This past week we spent our time looking and researching statistics and percentages on the causes of homelessness. There are an incredible amount of things that can result in a person becoming homeless. But from looking at our graph we put up on the screen, it was clear that the number one cause of homelessness was from losing a job/financial struggles. I then decided to search a bit more research and see what I can find about this situation. One of the websites that I have found is a website that is dedicated to the homeless issue in Hillsborough County, Florida (found below). Here they talk about the variety of issues that cause homelessness, but focus mainly on the financial situation. They found from asking during their 2011 homeless count that nearly 50% of the homeless who answered were out there due to employment/financial reasons. This is huge because nearly a fourth to a half (ranging differently in other areas) are out on the street because they are not able to afford housing. On this website they put a chart up which displays the amount needed per hour to afford housing in their city. For a 0 bedroom apt it is $714 while for a 1 bedroom apt it is $793 respectively. To make enough to pay rent, the money earned an hour would have to be $13.73 for 0 bedroom apt. and $15.25 for 1 bedroom apt. Making minimum wage or even a little above, or not even having a job at all is a huge problem to trying to make enough to make rent. There needs to be a way where there can be more affordable housing available to all so people are not forced out to live on the streets.

http://www.homelessofhc.org/~homeless/index.php/get-educated-information-homelessness/causes-of-homelessness

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?

Antelope Valley homeless population takes unexplained jump

Dumping, Homelessness, News link

An article in this morning’s Los Angeles Times reports a large jump in Lancaster, California’s homeless population.  Reporter Gale Holland points out that Lancaster is the last stop on L.A.’s Metro Line, so it’s possible that L.A. authorities are giving the homeless a one-way ticket out of town.  On the other hand, the jump from 1,412 Lancaster homeless in 2011 to 6,957 in 2013 may be just a more thorough biennial count.  (Some counts don’t bother to look for people in cars, miss the ‘hidden homeless’, etc.)

Holland writes that local shelter operators see little evidence of dumping, and that most of Lancaster’s homeless population has local ties.  That’s the pattern our University of Redlands team found a few years ago, when we conducted a homeless survey: most local homeless were either long-term residents or had relatives in the area.

Read Holland’s article HERE.

What do you think the major cause of homeless is?

Homelessness, People

After doing the Data Exercise this week, I was curious to see what other people thought the major cause of homeless was. After researching last week and reading various articles and studies I found many different causes of homelessness, but the major cause was job loss and the lack of income. Taking this into consideration I decided to ask various people what they thought was the major cause.

In response to this question I got various answers:

Drugs/Addiction

Financial Issues

Economic Region

Inability to Change

Criminal Record

Based on these answers I saw that many believed that homelessness is caused by something that the homeless individuals did wrong. In our world, homeless people are constantly stereotyped as people who did something wrong which brought them to the place they are today. One theory I thought was interesting was “economic region”. This is something that is very important because in some cities there are less job opportunities available for people, which makes it hard for people to earn a living.

After asking everyone, one person said that they thought the leading cause was drugs and addiction and that everything always comes back to addiction. This was upsetting to me because after seeing countless videos and reading various stories of homeless people, I know that not all homeless people are affected by drugs. Yes, some do turn to drugs because they feel like they have no where else to turn, but this is not something that should be a stereotype of homeless individuals.

 

 

 

Reasons for Homelessness

Causes of Homelessness

I have known there were multiple causes of homelessness, but I didn’t know how much of homelessness was caused by problems completely unrelated to the homeless person him or herself.  When reading about the different causes of homelessness 20 years ago I felt as though a lot of them still related today, but there are so many new issues today.  With some of the main populations of homeless people having either disabilities, chronic health problems, or fleeing domestic violence situations is alarming.  These people aren’t drug addicts or lazy.  These are people who are sick or unable to work, and people who are being forced to either stay in a home where they are abused or become homeless.  I think society forgets about these people.  They get overlooked, because it is easier to think they are all doing this to themselves than thinking about the fact that they just need help.  If everyone knew just how many people are actually homeless because of drug addictions or alcohol addictions, they would be surprised to see how low the number actually is.  In San Bernardino County, according to the point in time count of 2013, on 24% of the homeless people surveyed had substance abuse problems.  This leaves another 76% of people who are homeless for other reasons.  Education to people about this problem has to be the first step.  People have to be aware of how many people are on the streets for reasons they cannot change.

Florida Town That Banned Blankets For The Homeless Reverses Course

Government programs, Homelessness, Uncategorized

The ThinkProgress article can be found here. In 2013, Pensacola, Florida issued a law that “made it illegal to sleep ‘out-of-doors…adjacent to or inside a tent or sleeping bag, or atop and/or covered by materials such as a bedroll, cardboard, newspapers, or inside some form of temporary shelter.'” The city council pushed for this law in order to boost the aesthetic quality of the city–a.k.a, Pensacola was experiencing the same discomforting feeling that Santa Monica is recently experiencing. Essentially, the city council, through this law essentially wanted to force homeless individuals to leave their town given the harsh stereotype that homeless people are “an eyesore” upon a city.  The city’s mayor defined homelessness insensitively “as ‘camping,’ a benign term that minimizes the plight of people lacking reliable access to food and shelter”–because camping, connotatively can be at least described as one’s personal choice (rather than a societal issue). As the article describes, after intense backlash recently, given the coldness of this winter in even Florida this time of year, the mayor and the city council are working to repeal this law and are taking steps toward looking at the homelessness problem in their city. Sadly, it took a backlash of public outrage in order to instigate a degree of human decency, and given that the mayor needed to “reflect and pray” on the proposal to change the law in order to cease “banning blankets.”

Pensacola, Florida and Santa Monica, California, however, are only two of several cities and their councils that are looking to criminalize homelessness and looking desperately to find ways to ignore the societal problem and instead push it elsewhere to another city or back onto the shoulders of charity organizations. What disturbs me about this article is these people were elected to serve the people, which includes the homeless. These individuals have the power to actually induce effective change in their cities and yet they choose to be selfish.

 

Causes and Luck

Causes of Homelessness, Homelessness, Reflections on our Reading

After reading the overview of Jencks: The Homeless, I was reminded of the some of the causes that lead to the numerous homeless people who were discussed in the book group presentations in class. The most interesting for me was concerning marriages, the crack epidemic, social skills and family ties. I never would have thought of marriage as a cause for homelessness and how that affects women more than men. Jencks thoughtfully groups marriage and joblessness together, which makes perfect sense. If the working partner loses their job, in Jencks’s case the husband, that could cause strife in the relationship and leave the couple homeless, especially in this case, the woman who has a smaller probability of getting a job. With social skills and family ties, those are huge factors that would have also never occurred to me. One would think that living alone would be cheaper, yet it is not. And when there are no family ties to keep homeless people from living alone then the end result may be the streets.

However, the most well-known cause out of the ones I mentioned is the one that ends up being centered on the idea of luck. The chapter summary on The Crack Epidemic poses some important questions surrounding what most homeless people are stereotyped with as the cause of their current situation. It is asked “how does luck – bad luck for the homeless, good luck for the affluent – play a role in explaining individual outcomes?” That question right there is exactly what the problem tends to be – luck, or circumstance, not drugs and alcohol. If I have learned one thing from combining all of the book presentations, is that not one thing, especially stereotypic, is the cause of one’s homelessness. For those who believe that our lives are run by luck, then any number of us can end up on the street in a single moment. Some of us are just not as lucky as others. Should a concept as fickle as luck create a barrier between human beings?

Here’s the course site link to the University of Maryland’s Reeve Vanneman’s online summary of Christopher Jencks’ The Homeless.

One man’s leftovers is another man’s feast

Solutions to Homelessness

After volunteering so far this semester, I have grown curious about food. At the Salvation Army, they receive food from Target, Albertsons, Panera, and other partnerships with Inland Harvest. However, establishments like Stater Brothers and Vons that are within a half of a mile do not contribute to these causes. With the amount of light research I did, there were no articles or prevalent research done on this topic. Where does all the waste go? Obviously not to the people who need but do they just simply throw it in the trash? Or maybe they compost the left overs? Or maybe they do donate it but to another organization?

My question is this: why are companies not transparent about this? This would only give them great press coverage and a good name. Are they trying to hide how much they actually waste, or do they not waste enough food to donate? The more and more I started to think about this, it made me angry. For instance, I wonder what schools do with their left over meals. I understand that some products can be packaged and reused, but they have to be taken care of eventually.

All I know is the amount of food they can use at shelters is amazing. The staff at the Salvation Army get creative and make meals based off of what was dropped off to them the day before. In addition, they pack their food boxes trying to meet the needs of all the food groups and to be able to stretch for a week.  They make it work with what they have and help as many people as they can. One can only wonder what the possibilities could be if every company donated what they had as left overs.

Counting the Homeless

Homelessness

This week’s classes focused on how our society keeps track of the homeless population. It seems like it would be quite a hard task and it can be because they are not registered with the area they live in and take up residence in any place they feel safe enough to live it. On Tuesday we got to have a Skype session with two experts who are involved in finding and counting the homeless for their records. We got to hear the different ways this takes place. Then for Thursday we choice a city and researched on our own the statistics of homeless for that city. By analyzing the data I found, I got to understand better the variety of information that is found from the city.

The area I chose was Fresno Madera Point in Time count for 2013. There are a variety of ways that cities try to find our how many homeless individuals are living this their city, and Fresno used two of these methods. These were the survey and tally volunteers who participated. This Pit count took over four months to complete. The basic statistics are that there are 594 sheltered homeless and 2,537 unsheltered homeless.

Depending on the city there can be a wide range of how serious the count is taken. There needs to be one every two years, but if the city does not care as much they may do a count and estimate at the same time. If city really cares they will do there best to count how many homeless there are, and then from that data use resources to go towards shelters and programs to try to get people off the streets.

http://www.appliedsurveyresearch.org/projects_database/homelessness/

POINT IN TIME COUNT 2013 – Fresno Madera Continuum of Care