Category Archives: Poverty

Internship Progress

Local organizations, Portraits of Homeless, Uncategorized, Working poor

Through my internship, I am volunteering at a religious organization that provides food boxes, emergency food boxes, nightly dinners, and chapel services. I was determined to figure out what the organization had to offer as I wanted to be as unbiased as possible for the entirety of the internship. Upon first going there, I was aware that I was going to be package food and distributing it to those in need. However, I was unaware that it was going to be so much more complicated than that.

The hostility of the current volunteers was somewhat off-putting, yet this was a concept I would come to understand later on. I met a man named Bob who was the only one who greeted me kindly. We put together food boxes and he asked me several questions about my purpose and what I hope to gain out of the internship. The next time I came, mostly everyone greeted me kindly as I had gained the trust of Bob. The dynamic between the volunteers seemed unbalanced. This lead me to ask Bob why he started volunteering at my internship site.

Bob went on and explained his troubled youth in Chicago, to his move out west to work for a bank. Bob had a tiff with drugs and drug usage which landed him in his current unemployed state. He is on welfare and due to the fact he is unemployed, he has to volunteer 150 hours a month to receive his aid. Because he spends so much time volunteering, he is unable to apply for jobs due to irregular “free time” and a lack of internet service. Bob has a nine year old daughter and a wife, who is also unemployed. This lead me to investigate what motivated other to volunteer at the site. The answer was that they were all on parole, probation, or actively going to drug court for their own separate reasons. More than half of the volunteers were using the services of the site itself, depending on their own weekly food box.

There are a few key takeaways I have had thus far. First, all homeless people are not the same. Some people come to pick up their food boxes in work uniforms and some arrive in tattered clothes, but have the same needs. Second, not all people who need help can receive it. There is a rigorous process with my internship site that makes it competitive to receive aid with the limited number of spots. Those who are able to consistently receive aid are viewed as “the lucky ones.”  Lastly, society perceives help and aid in interesting ways as our culture feels like a simple “handout” can lead someone to success. While having a meal would make someone more likely to complete activities since they have calories to get them moving, it actually accomplishes nothing. The construction of our societal model of help blurred by certain help being perceived as good when the reality of intentions does not match the desired result.

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 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

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.

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?

Problems with P.I.T.

Homelessness, News link, People, Poverty

I found a news article on CNN today that relates perfectly to what we have been discussing in class for the past week. This article discusses some of the problems encountered during the P.I.T. (Point-in-Time) count of Camden County, New Jersey. Camden is the poorest city in the U.S. and has an unemployment rate of 13%. Yet last year’s P.I.T. count found only “589 homeless people in the 513,000-person county.” This makes it the perfect example of an area with a very understated homeless count.

As we’ve seen throughout this past week, there are many problems with the current system of P.I.T. counting. P.I.T. counts takes place within a 24-hour period in the last week of January at least every other year. These counts are required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for each county, but they are not funded by the government. There’s the first problem –  without proper funding, of course we are not going to get an accurate count. Furthermore, as the homeless in the CNN video repeated many times, homeless people often don’t want to be seen. There are many places that probably go unchecked by counters simply because they can’t see them. There are plenty of homeless sleeping in cars, couchsurfing, living in abandoned buildings or “tent cities,”and hopping back and forth from the street to various family members’ homes. All of these people fit HUD’s description of homeless. Yet they most often are not being counted in the “homeless census.”

Obviously, it is close to impossible to get a completely accurate count of homeless, since the numbers change from day to day as it is. But as shown by this article and the other data we have seen this week, there is a great importance in improving the P.I.T. count. The homeless are being under-counted and therefore misrepresented. These counts determine how much federal aid is given to the shelter systems, so they directly affect the people being misrepresented.

Internship at a church

About being poor, Causes of Poverty, Homelessness, Hunger

One of the best ways for a student to learn is to experience the subject they are focusing on in person. But it is even more rewarding to, in addition, have individuals highly experienced in the situation to pass on information about what one has just seen.

Today was the first day that I got to start my internship and help at one of the churches located in San Bernardino. My task today was to work in the soup kitchen and help provide a free lunch for the individuals that should up between the hours of twelve to one. It was a good day to show up, because one of the regulars that usually is there was out because of an emergency, so I took her place and worked side by side with a really nice, older, Spanish-speaking lady in the kitchen. We had a number of tasks to complete and I was actually surprised and the amount of food that was donated and those we worked with. A salad, pasta, and chicken with a nice spice on it was served along side some doughnuts and lemonade. It felt quite nice to accomplish all that in a short amount of time and to have most of it gone in that hour. I ask about how many people are served during a normal lunch, which happens five days a week, and at the beginning of the month there is usually 60-70 people, but at the end of the month it shoots up to 110-120. I thought it might be due to money running out at the end of the month, and I was partly correct, but found out the real reason later on. There were a number of really nice people that I met at this time, some being the workers and some being there for the food. But as I was getting close to being done with finishing up, I met this man who talked with me for a good forty-five minutes about the shelter, the surrounding area, and a few other things. He was the IT for the church, and filled me in on the hunger and homeless in the area.

First of all he told me that none of the people in the area are ever too hungry. There is an abundance of food in the area. With about six other churches on the same street that also have free lunches, people are never in any real danger of going hungry. He said there was so much food, that some of it even goes bad. There is always some bread that is molding and the other week there was a shipment of bananas donated that were not used.

Second, he told me that the main reason that there are so many homeless people is not because of financial situations, but because of drug use. A large portion of the people coming use drugs such as crack or meth and that is the reason that there are more people later in the month. This is because money is immediately spent on drugs and as soon as their cash runs out, they come back to the church. The reason they cannot get a consistent job is because of criminal records. He made a good point, that someone may get arrested for drug use, go to jail, and then have a record for seven years, not allowing that person to get a job and get back on their feet.

The whole system needs to be looked at, because it seems to be a giant cycle keeping these people from moving on from their past, and getting stuck without anywhere to go. I plan on researching this topic further, because what he said really did change my perspective on a lot of things dealing with this topic.