Category Archives: Homelessness

Does a Home Make You Trustworthy?

Homelessness, People

Rewind three days to last Saturday in Redlands, CA. It’s a sunny afternoon, a far contrast from the weather on a January day elsewhere in the country, as I pull up to the Chevron station on the edge of the downtown section of Redlands. I’m driving my hand-me-down Lincoln Town Car from my grandmother, which has been running on “low” gas for about a week now. One of my roommates, who had owed me over a hundred dollars towards the water bill, has just paid me back and I’m excited to be able to finally fill my tank; a task that will consume fifty of the sixty dollars that I am gleaming to have received.

I enter the station and joke with the nice woman behind the counter about how the high gas prices for the Town Car’s V8 engine cause me to “walk and save money on a gym membership”. As I walk back towards my shining, freshly washed car, a young woman of about 25 years of age approaches me to ask if I can spare a dollar fifty to help her buy a one-day bus pass to get her home to Yucaipa (the neighboring town). Immediately my mind flashes to the discussions we had just a few days prior in my “Hunger and Homelessness” class at the University of Redlands. We had discovered how the expense of a bus pass, which I used to reference as “just a dollar-fifty”, was an extreme financial burden on those whom were forced to take the bus due to poverty. I then asked the woman if she took the bus often in order to get to work and back home. She answered that she rode the bus everyday. Immediately, without a single hesitation, I handed her the $10 that I had left over from paying the attendant to fill my tank.

While I am embarrassed to admit it, I would not have made this same decision a few weeks ago. Yes, I would’ve have given the woman some money, but I most likely would have followed her or accompanied her in order to make sure that the money was going where she claimed it was meant to go. In fact, I had that very experience about two months ago at Union Station in downtown LA. Following this interaction with the woman at that gas station and noticing my change of reaction, I’ve come to reflect heavily on a question of ethics and trust: “Do we trust homeless/impoverished people less strictly because they don’t have a home/look poor?” When you donate money to the Girl Scouts selling you cookies outside Vons or let a friend borrow $10 for dinner, do you question if they will actually spend the money you give them wisely? How about with the homeless man asking for a dollar on the corner just to feed his family? How quickly does your mind jump to assuming that he will just go buy booze and drink the night away until he asks you for that same dollar tomorrow? I don’t know the answer, just food for thought, but I would love to hear your responses, as I wrestle with my own in my head.

 

 

No hope, no way out

About being poor, Homelessness, Portraits of Homeless, Reflections on our Reading

“It’s best not to hope. You take what you can get as you spot it.” Linda Tirado’s essay “This is Why Poor People’s Bad Decisions Make Sense”  was captivating and awe-inspiring. Out of all the reading and topics in class, her life account and struggle pushed beyond the normal boundaries of writing due to her bluntness and lack of compassion toward herself and others in similar situations. For example, when she speaks about her knowledge of knowing how to cook and prepare a meal, it is not because she is not capable of putting something together, it is because she does not have the means to do so.  In addition, when she pushes away the fact that she makes terrible financial decisions, she states, “I will never be not poor, so what does it matter.”

It is hard for me to believe that some people’s lives get to a point where they lose motivation, lose hope, and feel like there is no way out. After listening to those personal accounts from Invisible People, my view of homelessness turned completely around. As I have had both negative and positive experiences with homeless people, nothing matters when it comes to viewing each person as an individual.

Yet, the answer to all these problems cannot be solved by a quick fix. However, it can be solved by the reshaping of our roots and foundations. Education and society’s investment in children can cause a positive change when instilling proper attention and focus on social practices that aid the development of children on all levels. If children have roots that teach values and goal oriented thought process, homelessness would not occur. As this would be a daunting task, just as each homeless person should be judged individually, all children can create an impact by understanding and sharing their understanding of the world around them.

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.