Category Archives: Related topics

Keeping Our Cities Clean and Making Money

January 28, 2018Homelessness, News link, Related topics, Solutions to PovertyEmma

A complaint I hear a lot when people talk about homelessness is how dirty the streets are due to homeless people throwing their waste everywhere. With no personal garbage and recycling bins, people who are homeless have to rely on city garbage cans which can be few and far between. The city of Fort Worth in Texas is trying to combat this problem. Their program called Clean Slate offers paying jobs to homeless people staying at one of their local shelters. The workers earn $10 an hour and receive benefits and vacation time, all while collecting trash around homeless encampments. City-funded, the goal of this program is to employ homeless people and eventually get them employed in stable, long-term positions, even though they are allowed to work for the program as long as they like.

Other cities have decided to replicate this program and I think there’s a large benefit to it. While it is subjecting homeless people to “do the dirty work” and city funding could be going to improve sanitation services, I think that it’s a step in the right direction. Helping these people who are down on their luck by offering a low-wage job adds to a resume and gives work experience and a reference for when they are ready to move on to other work.

The article says that L.A.’s city council signed off to replicate this program in November though I couldn’t find any follow up information on if the city is moving to actually create this program.

Ballor, C. (2018, January 27). Fort Worth pays homeless to help clean up city’s streets. Dallas News. Retrieved January 28, 2018, from https://www.dallasnews.com/news/fort-worth/2018/01/27/fort-worth-pays-homeless-help-clean-citys-streets

L.A. considers hiring homeless people to clean up litter on the streets. (2017, November 1). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 28, 2018, from http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-trash-20171101-story.html

Teaching Event Reflection

April 17, 2014Related topicsKate

I posted 100 flyers throughout the campus about my teaching event in various academic buildings, residence halls, and bathrooms to capture people’s attention. At the bottom of each flyer was information about a teaching event to learn about homelessness.

My teaching event was a success. We met in the Women’s Center . A total of twelve people who attended. Ten of the twelve people who came were my friends. Two of the twelve people were students who I had never met before. I felt happy, excited, and to some degree surprised that two girls who I did not know came. I met my goal of having 10-20 people attend.

The event lasted a little over an hour, which was my goal. I began the event as planned, sharing a little about myself and the course. I then went around the room and asked people what they hoped to learn from the event. I took notes to ensure that I would address their questions. Some questions by students included the homeless population demographics, causes, what groups have more help, information about homeless veterans, homeless youth, and solutions.

I then started to address their questions with using both experience from my internships and information from the Hunger and Homelessness course. I would also check back in with my audience periodically asking them if they had more questions or needed clarification.

I also left sometime at the end for students to come up and ask more questions one-on-one. I had some students ask about volunteering and I handed them a handout of the local agencies provided by the class website.

I chose to teach topics that students were interested in. I wanted the student audience to take initiative for their learning. I wanted them to be interested in the event and I wanted it to be as informative as possible that is why I based my event off of the student generated questions.

Sometimes you do not know who will be affected by what you do. I had one person approach me for assistance because her friend is going through domestic violence. In that moment I felt that my teaching project had been a success in a way that I had not imagined. I felt to some degree honored that she felt like she could talk to me. I shared my knowledge from the experiences that I had when I worked at the domestic violence shelter. I also gave her a brochure about resources for domestic violence victims in Redlands.

I suppose this is a lesson in teaching because you might think that you are going in one direction; yet you might have a more meaningful experience than expected. When you offer something by teaching it can go in an unexpected direction; in a way that was better than imagined.

Final Internship Report: A for Advantageous

April 10, 2014Local organizations, Organizations, Related topicsSamantha

In the last 7 weeks, I have spent 35.5 hours interning at local youth shelter in order to gain both a deeper understanding of how they operate and some experiences to take back and share with my class. It is a small run agency that functions solely for the clients and to reach their ultimate goal of family reunification. Now, how is it that the shelter is able to accomplish such a goal? Like all other processes, there are steps that are taken, however, it isn’t refined enough to be called a smooth operation.

The shelter provides the clients with a shelter manager, a youth advocate, and eleven staff members to assist them during their stay within the program. The shelter manager and youth advocate are key factors in determining how the shelter is run and how the daily schedules are planned. The daily schedule is what keeps both the clients and staff on track for the day, making sure that they have regular meals, chores are getting done, and productive activities are taking place.

With the intern and volunteer program being relatively new, the shelter staff tends to under utilize what the volunteers are capable of doing, leaving them to either hover over the clients or complete the little tasks that have been left untouched by the staff. I have spent the majority of my time at the shelter supervising and participating with the clients in their positive reinforcing activities.

These positive reinforcing activities, such as morning check in, life skills, and group circle, allow the clients to learn healthier ways for dealing with their situations and in becoming the best possible version of their selves. However, these activities also promote a self-blaming quality in the clients that is an apparent theme throughout the individuals and in the activities. It also doesn’t help that some of the staff promote the societal expectations that they have so far have yet to understand. This program may have good intentions, but it is still focusing on the individual rather than the over arching structural problems that they are definitely aware of.

Although the shelter is very successful in returning majority of clients to their families, rather than another safe environment, there needs to be a deeper understanding of the structural problems that lead to the issues clients face for the staff. The shelter manager and youth advocate are more than capable of providing the insight into this if they were only aware of that this knowledge needed to be shared. This is one area where I had tried to step up and force them to utilize me because taking this class also has provided me with the awareness of structural problems that they do not posses.

Overall, the shelter has a good track record for completing their mission time and time again for an agency that has only been around for three years. I would give the shelter an A for advantageous because that is what they give their clients; the advantage to take the cruel world head on and be successful.

Finding Hope

April 4, 2014Related topicsKate

During the Hunger and Homelessness course I have had many moments were I have felt emotionally struck and stuck by the content. I have felt trapped by structural constraints. I have felt overwhelmed of where to start. At times I have experienced deep sadness and a loss of hope. Tuesdays and Thursdays class offered much needed hope.

The organizations discussed on Tuesday from Heise’s book The Book of the Poor offered ways of dealing with the problems of hunger and homelessness. The fact that many of the organizations are still running and making a difference is reassuring. Despite the small staff size the organizations are able to offer assistance to many.

I am grateful that Nickeled and Dimed will be brought to University of Redlands by the theater department. The production will provide a way to educate students, faculty, and community members about the impossible nature of living off of a minimum wage job. The production provides an opportunity to reach out to others who would not otherwise learn about the real life struggles of having a minimum wage.

ABCs and Rice is an example of a nonprofit organization that saw a problem and a way to help. ABCs and Rice picked a target group- impoverished children living in Siem Reap, Cambodia. They then developed a mission of breaking the cycle of poverty through education. They recognize barriers that prevent children from going to school and seek to find solutions to break barriers.

A lesson I have taken away after Tuesday and Thursday’s class is find a cause that you are passionate about. This might mean joining a nongovernmental organization or creating your own. This requires recognizing your skills and limitations. Develop a vision and mission of what you hope to accomplish. Hard work is an ingredient in this process. Yet, one must find a healthy balance between working and taking care of you yourself so that burnout is avoided.

Tiny Houses for the Homeless

February 25, 2014Causes of Homelessness, Homelessness, Organizations, Related topics, Solutions to Homelessness, Solutions to PovertySara

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

Two Social Injustices

February 23, 2014Books and Films, Related topicsKate

In my course Inequality in Education we are reading Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. I have connected multiple findings that relate to our discussions, readings, and exercises in Hunger and Homelessness. Kozol’s strategy for obtaining his research was to listen to the children’s voices. He noted that the children’s voices were largely absent from the discussion. In Voices from the Street, Jessica Morrell takes the same approach when investigating homelessness. Morrell gathered her research through interviews with homeless people in Portland, Oregon. The perspective of listening to the people who experience these circumstances is necessary because an outsider can never truly understand the lived realities. Kozol captures the voices of many children by visiting thirty neighborhoods in Washington D.C., New York, and San Antonio.

Kozol starts by describing a school in East St. Louis, Illinois. The city is ninety-eight percent black, seventy-five percent of the population collects welfare, and there is exposure to raw sewage and lead poisoning. There is a defined difference because the two nicest buildings in the city are the Federal Court House and City Hall. I observed a similar situation in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, where many homeless reside. I found it ironic that City Hall was in the middle of the Tenderloin. On the lawn of City Hall homeless people would rest, talk, sleep, and sell drugs. The homeless people were prohibited from using the bathrooms in City Hall. Kozol questions, “Why Americans permit this is so hard for somebody like me, who grew up in the real Third World, to understand…” (17). The heightened separation draws attention to these injustices.

Negative stigmas exist about marginalized people that are often untested and untrue. Kozol spoke with the superintendent who shared, “gifted children are everywhere in East St. Louis, but their gifts are lost to poverty and turmoil and the damage done by knowing they are written off by their society” (34). This theme of being “written off” is persistent to the way that homeless people are treated. Often, judgments can be made about their current state that is untrue. Like the gifted children in St. Louis, homeless people may have the ability but lack resources and opportunities to succeed.

Kozol also notes the multiple obstacles that the children and their parents face. Many of these obstacles are shared by the homeless community. These obstacles include: crime, poverty, lack of education, insufficient health care, and unemployment. The family can significantly influence your type of life; one might be born into a family who lives in poverty which impacts every aspect of one’s life.

Yet, despite these obstacles, in a conversation Kozol had with a reverend in North Lawndale, Chicago the reverend shared, “there’s something here being purified by the pain. All the veneers, all the facades, are burnt away and you see something genuine and beautiful that isn’t often found among the affluent” (43). When people lack resources perhaps they have something that people with resources, like me, do not. Maybe they have a heightened awareness for what they do have. Maybe they treasure their relationships more.

In reading Kozol’s book I was able to link two social injustices together, homelessness and inequality in education. I found common obstacles and themes due to structural inequalities.

*Both books Voices from the Street and Savage Inequalities can be purchased on Amazon.