The most surprising thing to me this week was that there is so much debate around how many homeless there are. It seems like a really simple thing to calculate but it’s not. The definitions of homelessness impacts it a lot because this can include things like: people living in cars or RVs, “welfare” hotels, people in jail who would be homeless, detox centers, and runaways in foster care. These are people that should be considered and included when thinking of policy changes, but are often left out. It so vastly changes the conversation around homelessness because that number is a quick statistic that stands for how pervasive this problem is.

The second thing that stood out to me in class this week was when we talked about personal susceptibility and how it relates to homelessness. Things like addiction, mental illness, disabilities, injuries, and family tragedies are each buffers that if removed puts you at a much higher risk for being on the street. This poses some interesting political questions like if we were to prioritize mental health care what kind of impact would this have on our homeless population? (Christopher Jencks cited this as one of the main reasons homelessness has been on the rise) We could also spend money on things like working to prevent and treat addiction, disability and injury services, and providing family services with the money and resources currently going into putting people in jail overnight for sitting on the sidewalk.