As my entire college career is winding down this week, I cannot help but reflect on this semester and acknowledge the moments in class that were most outstanding. Going into this class, I felt anxious to learn about homelessness. I knew that the conversations I was overhearing from family members about homeless people were wrong, but I didn’t know how to properly connect them. I mean, what do you really say when your outspoken uncle refers to all homeless people in Seattle as lazy, ungrateful people? Now I know that I have a multitude of responses lined up for the next time this conversation unfolds. Some of our most powerful moments in the class were when we all acknowledged that we need to humanize homelessness, but that doing just that won’t solve anything. Using our conversation from last class and reflecting on it, I think it’s important to keep in our minds that you can help people who are struggling and also fight against the structures that are making them struggle, all at the same time. Just because I want to “put band-aids on people” doesn’t mean I’m contributing to the same issue. I’m all about empathy and understanding and I think I will use those two traits moving forward when I continue to learn about homelessness and speak about homelessness with others. Breaking stereotypes and stigmas is one way that we can all start to change the conversation. While it’s not us fighting to change policy, it is a step in the right direction. I’m really grateful to have taken this class and to have learned so much in just a few short weeks!

Orange County’s plan to house the homeless is collapsing left and right. One plan to house the homeless in a central park in Huntington Beach was roundly rejected merely two days after it was proposed. Citizens cited fears of crime and of economic repercussions and homeless proliferation lowered market values for properties. All this despite the fact that a homeless youth shelter has operated in the park for over a decade with no problem. Now Irvine and Laguna Beach have reacted similarly and backed out of their own shelter plans. As the county flounders interesting developments will come from the US District Court Judge who ruled that Orange County must find housing for these people.
Municipal and local reaction is typical I think and has to be expected. I just don’t understand what the county thought it was getting out of displacing hundreds of homeless folk. Maybe they thought no one would notice as those without homes were forced to leave and relocate elsewhere. if so, then they definitely were not expecting a judicial injunction on the issue. Perhaps the county thought that local governments and residence would acquiesce to new homeless shelters in their home towns. Regardless, this is really an issue that the county brought upon themselves. To this day I am unsure just why the county of Orange felt the need to forcibly displace them in the first place. Additionally, I wonder what people in Orange County will say as the tax payers are expected to foot what is no doubt an expensive bill to house hundreds of homeless folk in motels. Overall, the issue might seem comical, if not entirely frustrating.

My personal favorite part of last week was when we got to have a discussion on how we can best help others while protecting ourselves. As I talked about in our discussion, when I was volunteering in Juvenile Hall I was really struggling in the beginning to connect with my first class. I took this as a sign that it was a personal flaw of mine. I thought that maybe I wasn’t listening to them, or doing a good job presenting myself as someone they could talk too, or that the worlds we came from were so different that I wouldn’t be able to make a difference. But, when they filled out their evaluations of us there were tons of comments on how they appreciated us coming in and liked talking to us. It made me realize that not all progress can be seen, and just because it isn’t tangible to you doesn’t mean you aren’t making progress. I’m not positive what direction my career will take me, and I will probably end up doing multiple things, but one of this things I want to do is directly help and interact with people who are struggling. It was a really helpful food for thought about my own abilities to manage my own emotions working in the social work (or similar) fields.

As I am reflecting on the semester, I cannot help but realize what this class has forced me to do. Not only has this course pushed me to desire volunteering and learning more about the homelessness issue at hand, the course positively challenged me to face my inner struggles with public speaking. Throughout this course, I have become more aware of the homeless population. Homelessness has not dramatically increased within the past four months, the course realistically made me more aware of the issue and therefore my eyes were more vulnerable to visualizing the homeless population.

One key topic from this course was the idea of a solution to homelessness. I have realized there is no one solution that will stop and ultimately help society by obtaining equality, affordable housing, and equal wage opportunities. Every individual had there own personal opinion regarding the homeless population, thus proving one solution is not possible to helping the issue. Multiple things must be done in order for  society to change their aspects, opinions, and attitudes towards the homeless community. For example, I have been telling people about my volunteer opportunities at a shelter that remains unknown. The majority of the people whom I inform about my volunteer experiences, reply with some type of amusement and thankful of my “great duties”, but in reality, what makes me giving back to my community such an amazing thing? Should helping other individuals and your community be so rare and unexpected of all living citizens?  This concept truly set in when I was realizing how individual people do not have to crucify people of the homeless community in order to be clueless as to why/how we can help. There are citizens who see the homelessness issue and desire to make an actual change, people who see the issue but think they are not “big” enough to make actual changes, and those whom choose to be clueless about the issue. I plan to explore furthermore into the logistics of homeless shelter agencies and policies for the homeless community.

While working on my teaching project in preparation for presenting it to my Rethinking Politics class this week, I realized how much I really have learned about homelessness in America this semester. My presentation is about undercounting homeless populations, which is certainly an area we have covered a lot in class, but I have been able to find new and interesting information as well. After putting more work into this topic, I really do think its one of the largest problems facing the homeless population. If they are being undercounted, then they are more likely to have fewer services provided to them. And if cities are being given smaller pools of funds from HUD because of their slim counts, then they are not able to make as many city or county wide changes to work towards eliminating homelessness. From my research for the project, more than anything I have found that the history of homeless counts have been inconsistent and tumultuous, and that no matter how successful a count may seem, there are still negative social and political implications.  This was especially apparent when we Skyped with Point-in-Time experts, who were able to identify that despite the best of intentions, there are still modes of manipulation that find their way into the mix. I’m hoping this is a political and social issue many of my classmates in the other class are not aware of, so that they will have a lot to learn!

Genocide: the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
Given the definition above, do you all think it is safe to say that the current phenomenon of homelessness in America is more or less an example of genocide? I discussed this notion with my friend yesterday and am unsure about my opinion of it. According to the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, homeless people are three times more likely than their non-homeless counterparts to die at any moment, and typically have life spans that are 30 years shorter than “average.” 831 Los Angeles County homeless people died during 2017, an 81.5% increase since 2013. There is obviously a strong correlation between homelessness and death, but I will provide a caveat: debilitating mental illness among homeless people may be a confounding variable in this correlative relationship. “…Individuals with co-occurring mental illness and homelessness, arguably the County’s most vulnerable populations, may account disportionately for the increased death rates,” said Dr. Jonathan Sherin of the LA County Department of Mental Health, quoted from the Los Angeles Daily News (Abram).
Now, are the deaths of homeless people due to deliberate action? From what we’ve learned in class, homeless people and people living in poverty experience very slow, extended deaths, largely caused by difficult labor and long work hours, malnutrition, stress, etc. These problems are arguably byproducts of capitalism and inequality. One could say that everyone is dying a very slow, extended death, but I think we could make the case that homeless people’s’ life spans are directly affected by such problems. (That is in contrast to most of us in this class, who are dying slow, long deaths simply because we are mortal.)
Even if it is not technically an example of a genocide, using the word “genocide” to describe homelessness as a national issue is justified if doing so expresses the severity of homelessness and its widespread harm, in my opinion. What do you all think? Do you agree? Disagree?

                                                                              Sources
Abram, Susan. “More of LA County’s Homeless Are Dying. Here’s Why.” Los Angeles Daily
News, 17 Jan. 2018,
www.dailynews.com/2018/01/17/more-of-la-countys-homeless-are-dying-heres-why/
“The Hard, Cold Facts About the Deaths of Homeless People.” Nhchc.org, www.nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/HardColdFacts.pdf.

This past week I had the opportunity to eat dinner with Rev. Dr. Miguel De La Torre who was on campus speaking for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s 50th anniversary of his assassination. During dinner he had some words regarding injustices and issues in the world such as immigration and religion. He described a hopelessness that I translated as a kind of hopelessness due to structures set in place that produce conditions that are only getting worse and worse as the years go by. Issues like housing are in the conversation and it made me reflect on points made in class regarding hunger and homelessness in America.

What I began to think about were constraints put on organizations who are constantly trying to fight and end hunger, poverty, homelessness, etc in their own communities. Constraints can include things like laws enforcing fines to organizations that have a history of giving meals to the community or have done the service before. Other constraints include rules and regulations, limited funding, and interference from state or federal governments while attempting to provide a service. In addition to this I started to think about organizations on a local level and how there are multiple organizations providing a variety of services in one place. Yes, this makes sense as it is difficult for one organization to provide a broad area of expertise in every place that displays a need, but organizations most times can be individual in the sense of lack of communication to other organizations. Referral and follow up programs are implemented into some organizations., but I think it may work in favor of every service if they communicate and work together against these larger constraints.

This week has been very interesting. I loved hearing all the oral reports on the different organizations the class was interning at. It was very  rewarding as a whole to hear what the class thought was effective and what wasn’t. Hearing all the different positives and negatives makes me want to try to come together and find some solutions to these issues. One that really made me uneasy was one of the Youth shelters get tons of can donations yet they still go out and buy groceries to make meals when they could be planning meals based off what they have in their pantry. The organization is wasting money that could be used elsewhere. If they are not going to use the food they are donated they should donate it to a organization that will before the food expires. I know for a fact if they donated it to Youth Hope it would be gone so fast. Food never stays on those shelves. The youth are so grateful when they get any food canned or not. It is a matter if you make meals according to what you have using available resources.

At first, I had no idea what to do for my Teaching Project. I enjoy doing presentations, but did not know who to present to. Finally, I decided to do a PowerPoint presentation to my EDUG 331 Child Development class last Wednesday. My topic was “Homeless Children and Youth in America.” My audience was my Child Development class and my professor. My purpose was to find a younger audience to inform them of issues among the homeless youth and share resources within this area. Most of the students in my class are interested in becoming educators and should be aware of this issue. I used information from the book “Braving the Streets,” the book “Homeless Mothers,” my Data Exercise 2 of Homeless Counts, and a number of other resources. In the beginning, my presentation included: who are the homeless, statistics, causes, how it affects their development, and a short video. These young people are sometimes referred to as “unaccompanied” youth. One difficulty was that the video took a long time to load. The short video discussed the homeless youth living in L.A. Most of them stated how they ended up there and what they feared the most about being homeless. I believe it is important to recognize that not all stories and situations are the same. It is different for every family or child. Youth homelessness is on the rise in the United States. According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, it is almost 2 million. I also touched on homeless counts and how the problem with youth is that they are most often undercounted. Next, I included some agencies and resources in the Redlands area. These were the Youth Hope Foundation, Our House, and the Redlands Family Service Association, which I learned about from our internship presentations. I added in a section about the Homeless Outreach team of the San Bernardino County Sheriffs (HOPE) who say to call 211 if a homeless related issue. At the end, I added in a section for questions, comments, and concerns.

Thankfully, the class was very engaged and I felt like they were actually paying attention.  I believe this was a good audience to share this issue with. My professor commented and said that she enjoyed that I shared agencies and resources in the Redlands area. She also encouraged all of us to get involved in these youth agencies, especially because she believes that the youth may feel more comfortable opening up with younger people, like us. I agreed. I was glad to have a few students comment. One student discussed how he had participated in the San Bernardino Homeless Count last year. When the students finished with their comments, my professor asked the class if we were surprised at all by the large number of homeless youth. Some students said yes, but most were not surprised. I had my friend film the presentation. After class, my professor thanked me for the presentation. I was glad that I had the Child Development class and the supportive professor to share what I had learned about homelessness.

This week,  we got to hear from our fellow peers once again about the internships they have taken up this semester. They all range from dealing with adults to the homeless youth and each person has had a difference experience, even if they were at the same location as someone else. Overall, it is interesting to hear what people have to say about their organizations and what they have learned from them throughout their time there. This time for our presentations we included a piece about evaluating the organization as a whole. So this meant that we included what we thought they were doing well, but also what we thought could be improved on, whether or not it was in their control, we still wanted to give a general idea of how we think the organization could potentially function better. Not that is was necessarily nice to hear that everyone faced some sort of challenge or at least noticed one with their organization, but it was comforting to know that not every place is perfect and is still constantly striving to do better. We heard from organizations that have been around for over a hundred years and from some that have only been around for less than a year. With everyone having such a wide range of internships that have been around for different time periods it really allowed us to see what works and what doesn’t work. One of the most common themes that I found within the organizations that all have a lack of funding. Money is what allows these organizations to function and provide resources and programs to their clients, but without they are unable to. It is becoming harder and harder now to receive funds and grants for these types of organizations, but the few that do I only hope they put the money toward good use as I am sure they will.