Category Archives: People

Teaching Project

Homelessness, People, Poverty

College is an experience where students are exposed to many different types of elements including getting out of one’s comfort zone, learning about an uncomfortable topic, or having to stand in class and present on something you never knew about before the assignment. I realized there was probably a pocket full of student who had never thought about the concept of hunger, homelessness, and poverty in the context and depth that this course has discussed the topic. On campus, I am involved in various organizations including a national business fraternity. This being said, the reason I minored in SOAN was to expose myself to another side of life than what business describes. Many of the people in my fraternity have never been exposed to the other side in a scholarly and academic setting. This has lead them to jump to conclusions about homelessness that may not necessarily be true but they just conform to what society states we should think and feel when it comes to the topic of homelessness.

I did my teaching project on was my last day volunteering at my internship and I came straight from doing my hours to complete the presentation. The reason I did this was because everything about my feelings of homelessness and how I felt about the internship would be prevalent in my mind. This would also lead me to be more passionate during my presentation as well. As I said, I invited the members of my business fraternity to come to my presentation. I did not tell them of anything that was going to happen so I made the dress casual to spark more attendance. I opened up the presentation describing the course and what we have learned over the semester. I then had them create a budget for a certain set of characteristics a homeless person might face. I gave them the prompt of being a part time cashier at Walmart making roughly $8.50 an hour for 20 hours a week that has two kids, one five-year old and one two-year old, no car, and no nearby family. Most of the reactions to this was amazement. They could not even understand how a person in this situation is supposed to attempt to get by. I gave them 5-10 minutes to try to create a budget for this person but they could not carry out that. At this point, I started my actual presentation in which I talked about the average perception of homelessness and what the reality of the situation is. I told the story of Shanesha Taylor (I wrote about her in one of my blog post assignments) and how even though she was trying to get a job, she still faced several burdens that would be difficult to overcome. I then gave the HUD definition of what homelessness is defined as. Additionally, I went on to describe what it would take to end homelessness and how everyone can do their part. I used this moment to talk about my internship, both the positive and negative aspects. The teaching project itself was more difficult than I had thought. This was because I had learned so much that it was difficult to convey even 5 percent of my knowledge.

Hauntingly Beautiful Portraits of the Homeless

About being poor, Books and Films, Homelessness, Portraits of Homeless, Uncategorized

This week, I decided to search for an article pertaining to homelessness that utilized visual elements that could bring awareness to this issue. While traditional style articles can be great ways to spread the word of societal problems, I think that photographs and art forms of expression can have just as significant of an impact. The article that I found incorporated both written and visual elements and focused on photographer Lee Jeffries and his finds during his most recent trip to Miami, Florida. Jeffries describes meeting a homeless woman there who had spent most of her life in the adult film industry and after she no longer was able to do that, she spiraled into homelessness, depression, and addiction. As he states in the article “She understands what she’s doing, she understands the choices she makes. She just doesn’t see a way out. But she’s still a human being who looks out for other people, and the younger girls she stays with, often to the detriment of herself.”

The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” really holds true to the photographs that Jeffries has posted of the homeless population, both in this article and his book ‘Lost Angels’. According to the article, it is his goal as an artist to give a face and a voice to overlooked populations. He has photographed poverty stricken individuals across Europe and the US on his personal mission to raise awareness to the oftentimes ignored homeless population.

These pictures say it all, it is almost as though you can see into the soul of the people in Jeffries pictures. Although the article itself was short and to the point, the inclusion of these photographs need no words, as they tell the stories and hardships of these people without needing much description. I think that this type of photography is a great way to raise awareness of homelessness, especially for those who are uncomfortable with it and choose to ignore it in their daily lives. I think it would be impossible to not feel affected by these striking visualizations of what it truly means to be without a home and to be treated without dignity.  As the article states “His style of commercial photography, he understands, “is a small ripple” in the scope of possibility for change, “but it’s significant in terms of what one person can do.”

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/07/margo-stevens_n_5079048.html

 

 

Crime of Homelessness

About being poor, Causes of Poverty, Government programs, Homelessness, Portraits of Homeless, Working poor

It has been interesting to see that most people think that homeless people are in the situation they are in because they are lazy and/or have no work ethic. This being said, for my teaching project, I have been trying to find real stories of people who are trying their hardest to get out of their situation as well as break the societal cycle.

Yesterday, a social reform type blog posted an article that did just that.  Shanesha Taylor is a homeless mother of 2 that was offered an interview. Because she had no one to watch or care for he children, she had me wait in the car. When she was done with the interview, her life became much more difficult. She was then arrested and her children we taken to child protective services. Since the story did not explain why she was homeless in the first place, it still shines a bright light on the issue of single mothers and their poverty level.  The article says that about 1.6 million kids in America are considered homeless and that sets them up for immediate failure as it makes it much more difficult to rise out of it. After hearing this story, many people reached out to Shanesha and donated money for her to help regain her children’s custody. As this situation was not her choice, it shows that society is constructed by giving the unfair advantage to those who need it the most. Now Shanesha and many women in similar situations have to deal with systems that will cost even more money and time. It is sad to think that people get in trouble for being in a situation they have no control over.

http://socialistworker.org/2014/04/02/the-real-crime-is-homelessness

Paying Alcoholics in Beer? Good or Bad Idea?

About being poor, Government programs, Homelessness, News link, Organizations, People, Poverty, Solutions to Homelessness, Solutions to Hunger

Tonight, I was talking to my dad about this class, and he told me about a program he’d heard of in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This article from BBC News does a very good job of explaining the program. Basically, a company (The Rainbow Group) partially funded by the Dutch government have started a program to help homeless alcoholics in Amsterdam. The article describes how the program works: “They arrive at 09:00 and work until 15:00. They take extended breaks for beer, cigarettes and a hot lunch, all provided free of charge.” The aim of the program is not to fix these people, but to give them a better quality of life, while bettering the neighborhoods at the same time. Though this is a very controversial program that I imagine most Americans would not take seriously, I think it’s a very intriguing idea. The program seems to be helping to keep violence to a minimum and has been fairly cost effective. The people involved in the program are given a sense of dignity because they can work for their beer instead of begging for money. One of the men stated that “‘They used to treat us like garbage – and now we are picking up their garbage, we are not the garbage anymore.'” Rather than trying to change the “unchangeable reality” of alcoholism, this project is aimed at creating a better environment for alcoholics to live in.

I’m not sure about this program and its effectiveness, but I think that the change of thinking about these types of things is a good start to changing society. As the article states, why not “abandon ‘old-fashioned political correctness'” and try something “crazy” like this?

What do you think about this type of program? Do you think it would work in America? Is it making a significant difference?

Problematic Discourse

About being poor, How we should treat each other, Local organizations, Organizations, People, Poverty, Reflections on our Reading

On Saturday I worked at my internship organization’s weekly food bank and observed discourse about poverty.

At my organization, there are “food box runners” who carry out the boxes to the clients’ cars or wherever they wish. These runners are usually male volunteers who can lift a decent amount. I recognized the some of the same people doing it as last week, but there were new volunteers doing this job. One of the senior volunteers (or one of the pastors, I’m not exactly sure) within the organization was explaining what these runners needed to do. I overheard parts of the explanation, and there were one huge red flag. The volunteer, Bob*, said what I expected him to say, smile and be respectful,  but then I heard him say “These people come here with low self-esteem and depression. They don’t want to be taking these boxes but they have to.” Bob already had preconceived notions about these people, and it made me think about the discourses of Lyon-Callo’s book Inequality, Poverty, and Neoliberal Governance and other discourses that we’ve been discussing in class. My organization proclaims to be giving people a sense of dignity, but this struck me as problematic because you don’t give dignity to people by assuming that they have low self-esteem and depression; it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I think it skews the way you view the clients. Those runners likely behaved differently toward the clients than if they hadn’t been told that. If I had been in Bob’s position, I would have just told the runners to be respectful and kind like I would tell any other person working at my organization. I wouldn’t add the problematic discourse additionally.

The Real Causes of Homelessness

About being poor, Causes of Homelessness, Government programs, Homelessness, People, Portraits of Homeless, Poverty, Solutions to Homelessness

I found this story written by Mollie Lowery that hit on many of the points we have been making in class about what truly causes homelessness. Lowery writes the story of a chronically homeless woman named Lourdes. This story is powerful in pointing out the many different flaws of our current system and the ways in which we treat the homeless. I see a lot of the arguments Vincent Lyon-Callo makes in his book  Inequality, Poverty, And Neoliberal Governance: Activist Ethnography in the Homeless Sheltering Industry (purchase on Amazon) within Lourdes’ story. One of these arguments is that our society medicalizes homelessness. The best way I can describe this is by pulling a quote from Lowery’s story of getting Lourdes back into housing: “I began each day with reassurances that if Lourdes got in the car with me, I wouldn’t take her to a mental hospital. Such fear and distrust do not emanate from some genetic pathology. It comes from years of being marginalized, excluded, exposed and traumatized.” Both Lyon-Callo and Lowery emphasize the very important fact that the systems that we have in place to “help” homeless people place the blame on personal attributes, rather than acknowledging that the problem comes from these systems that create inequalities.  Though we have many systems in place to try to help the ever-growing number of homeless, Lowery stresses that “a far more humane, effective — and cheaper — strategy would be to prevent people like Lourdes from winding up homeless in the first place.” Rather than putting a band-aid on the problem, we need to focus on preventing the problem from ever happening. And this involves seeing the true cause of homelessness instead of focusing on “individual pathologies and solutions.”

Homeless with a Home

Homelessness, People, Reflections on our Reading

After reading At Home on the Street, by Jason Wasserman and Jeffery Clair, I was shocked and impressed by the measures they took within their experience with the homeless.  In this book, authors tell the story of their journey and methodologies they used. They lived among the homeless on the streets and were able to form relationships with them. One leading question was why did they choose to live on the streets and not in a shelter. They chose the streets because they were able to choose where they slept and were able to get the full effect of what it truly is like to be homeless living on the streets.

I found this to be commendable of Wasserman and Clair and believe they took the right approach in their research. In addition, they were able to build relationships/friendships with fellow people on the streets and hear their stories. Also, they felt that living on the streets was safer than living in shelters which I thought was unexpected. May people think that sleeping in the shelter is the safer option but in reality there are a lot problems with crime and violence within shelters making it an unsafe environment.  In addition, you may not get to choose were you sleep in the shelter, unlike the streets. In the book, it was explained that people who were living on the streets did have a home, it just did not seem like a home to outsiders.  Many had a constant resting spot that they would go to every night and that was their home. I found his to be very powerful and eye-opening.

Here is a look to purchase the book:

http://www.amazon.com/At-Home-Street-Poverty-Homelessness/dp/1588267016/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395134115&sr=8-1&keywords=at+home+on+the+street

Panhandlers in Redlands

About being poor, Homelessness, How we should treat each other, Local organizations, News link, People, Poverty

I picked up a copy of the Redlands Daily Facts (our local newspaper) today and saw that the front page headline was “POPULAR WITH PANHANDLERS: Redlands’ reputation for giving lures locals, out-of-towners seeking handouts.” Of course, the “handout” stereotype caught my eye, and I proceeded to read the article (which can be found online, here.) Just the way the entire article is set up and written bothers me. It is full of negative stereotypes and stigmas against panhandlers and focuses completely on the police’s and the businesses’ side rather than taking a deeper look into the lives of the panhandlers. The article points out the way people spend the money they receive while panhandling, pulling quotes from interviews with the panhandlers such as, “You’ve got to survive out here. You’ve got to do it to make money to buy your food, beer and tobacco.” The article emphasizes the fact that many panhandlers have drug/alcohol addictions, posing addiction as a cause of the homeless problem rather than an outcome and stereotyping these people as lazy drug-addicts who spend the “handouts” they receive on booze and dope. The article lacks empathy for the people who apparently are “coming from outside city limits to come to Redlands to panhandle because it’s more profitable” due to Redlands citizens’ “big hearts.” The article emphasizes the fact that “one out of three panhandlers are not homeless,” as if to persuade people that the housed people are even more unworthy of donated money. It goes on to explain different tactics panhandlers use to get money, characterizing these people as liars. The police and the newspaper article encourage people to donate to organizations that help the homeless in the area instead of giving directly to homeless people. This is a recurring theme we have seen throughout history. The authorities encourage people to funnel their money through the institutions that help homeless, but there are not enough truly helpful organizations to solve the problem.  Overall, this article was frustrating, but not surprising. It lacked an understanding of the homeless problem and brushed over the backgrounds of panhandlers, stigmatizing them as lazy and evil.

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.

The Blessing Center

How we should treat each other, Local organizations, Organizations, People, Portraits of Homeless, Solutions to Hunger, Uncategorized

The Blessing Center has been a great place to volunteer.  I am seeing the hope and help that they bring to people who are struggling, but also the impact The Blessing Center has on volunteers.  The Blessing Center is a small community within a larger community of Redlands that helps people who are in need, in ways I did not think were possible.  Seeing how volunteers who were once helped by the Blessing Center are giving back, shows the impact that this small community has had.  People who volunteer at The Blessing Center are hopeful and dedicated to helping others in any way that they can.  It is an organization that has stood in Redlands for over 14 years and continues to follow its values every day of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and helping those who are hurt.

Within The Blessing Center there are food and clothing distribution centers and resource centers available for their clients.  Being able to volunteer at this site has shown me the value of volunteering.  While working in the food distribution center you are able to see the clients and sometimes interact with them.  I was fortunate enough to be able to see and interact with the clients while giving them food.  It was very eye opening to see how many people just in Redlands were in need of help.  They picked up their boxes of non-perishable food and then came to us so we could give them the fruit/vegetable bags.  Many of the people kept saying “God Bless You” as they walked by showing just how grateful they truly were.

The distribution centers of The Blessing Center are opened every Tuesday and Saturday for clients.  After getting their food, clients are able to come back in and take any clothing if needed.  I have only been able to volunteer on Saturdays so I am hoping I can go during the week to volunteer and observe some of the other resources and centers that the Blessing Center offers.  They have class to teach people how to operate computers, resource centers to help people find jobs, clinics for people in need of shots or other medical attention, dentistry,  H.O.P.E centers for people affected by HIV/aids, and various programs for children.

My favorite part about volunteering at the Blessing Center is the sense of community that surrounds you while you are there.  Every Saturday Pastor Craig starts off the day with a prayer circle.  He blesses the food and clothing that they have received throughout the week and blesses all the volunteers.  He thanks God for all the opportunities he has given The Blessing Center and how grateful he is for it being able to help so many people.  He then opens up the circle for anyone else who would like a say a few words.  This prayer circle always makes me feel like I chose the right place for my internship because of the sense of community and how grateful, passionate, and hopeful everyone is.