Once again in class Vincent Lyon-Callos book:” Inequality,
Poverty, And Neoliberal Governance: Activist Ethnography in the Homeless
Sheltering Industry” has struck me. Like most of the books read in
this course I have encountered different perspectives, ideas, and beliefs of
those that have become homeless.  Some of the main topics Lyon-Callo mentions is the separation of those deserving and undeserving homeless. In most cases and seen in my participation in shelters, undeserving and deserving homeless are truly recognizable. The difference in recognizable in the sense that they have already been placed into this groups and get treated in different ways from both the staff and volunteers.  There are so many structural problems but as mentioned in class how do we tackle these reoccurring problems? Up to bottom or from bottom up? There were also things such as abuse and use. Where is it that we draw the line? Something that was brought up in our class discussion was, what if we were the staff? What would we do to change the system? It is a very difficult question because as much as we want to change there are things such
as findings that will be affected if there is a change in the way this
shelters/programs run. Lyon-Callo talks about that on page 166, the way in
which these volunteers and staffs are afraid of the change. As well as in page
115 where he mentions how volunteer feel worthless. It’s the concept that you
are there ‘helping’ the homeless by putting food in boxes, separating clothes,
talking to them and yet you cannot provide a home or a stable life for them.
How do we as a society tackle the structural issues?