This past weekend I came across a documentary about a man in Oakland who collects illegally dumped furniture and materials, and builds miniature homes for homeless individuals. He is able to build one home a day at no cost. These miniature homes made from materials found on the street give people a safe, dry, and respectable place to call their own. However, with this being one of the many videos I have seen floating around Facebook with individuals doing the exact same thing, it rings up the question of where these miniature homes can be placed. Homeless individuals are subjected to move where they live within a moments notice of police or greater authority telling them, so what would a homeless person do if they had to move their miniature home? Could they even manage to move their miniature home? Could permits possibly be given out for these new tiny homes?
Similarly in Seattle, a tiny house village just opened consisting of 14 tiny homes with access to a building with toilets and showers. This tiny house village is located on a piece of land owned by a church and will cost a total of ninety dollars of month to live there. While tiny homes aren’t a solution to the bigger homelessness problem, it sure is a creative and interesting way to help get some homeless people off the streets.

Check out both links and tell me what you think about tiny houses!

A Big-Hearted Man and His Calling to Build Tiny Houses for Oakland’s Homeless

http://www.kiro7.com/news/seattles-first-tiny-house-village-homeless-open-we/40000629

Have you ever volunteered? If so what have you done? I had the opportunity this morning to volunteer my time at Redlands family services. This is something I will continue doing these next couple of weeks. Today being my first day I got to experience the clothing room and if you haven’t ever been to thrift store they can be kind of crazy and messy sometimes. This was no different; there were stacks of clothing everywhere, which was very frustrating to say the least.

After one hour of hanging and organizing clothes the customers started to arrive. This lightened the mood up because they were so grateful of what they were able to take and all of the behind the walls things we could offer for them, specifically if they had babies.

The process of them receiving the clothes was interesting to me. Each person is allotted fifteen minutes to shop around then they much check out. They are also allowed to take fifteen items per family member they have along with one pair of shoes for each person. They are allowed to come in for clothes every two plus weeks. When they enter someone working takes there slip, which has family member information and when the checkout the number of clothing pieces they take is counted and recorded. There could be faults in this, but to me it seemed pretty reasonable and would not lead to many issues.

If you have never volunteered your time I highly encourage you to do so. It can open up your train of though to think in a way you may not have previously. These people brightened my mood and helped me realize I have so much and cannot get upset over small things.

Last week’s book presentations demonstrated the difficult life that homeless people live in the streets. The way in which they are constantly degraded by citizens, police officers and people in homeless shelters. Initially I had a strong belief that every organization was there to help and support people who willingly showed up to their agency. After hearing what my classmates had to say, I realized that sometimes asking for help is not enough. That people in these agencies believe that only they know what is best.

 
This weekend, news articles from the Bay Area made me realize that above all of the challenges that homeless people face, there are still good people in the world. An article from Mission Local: Local News For A Global Neighborhood wrote that several homeless people were provided with access to port-o-potty’s and several received a meal and pairs of socks. The article also pointed out the GoFundMe campaign that a celebrity launched in order to buy tents for the city’s homeless. Mission Local also points out to their readers that the current policies on homelessness have not fixed San Francisco’s problem. This only comes to demonstrate that there is something that is not being done right.

Super Bowl Party in SF Mission Feeds Homeless

This week in class, we will be reading, learning and discussing about the practices and methods behind homeless counts. I came upon an article published today, Monday, Feb 8, 2016 titled “New York City to Embark on Annual Count of Street Homeless.” New York City will be undergoing the HOPE count later tonight with several thousand volunteers. In recent years, the homeless problem has been a serious issue in New York City and has been a frequent topic in the news.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently launched a new program called HomeStat, a program that covers 7 blocks in the city each day, making contact with the homeless in that area. The outreach workers make efforts to encourage the homeless to gain access to the shelters and services in the area. However, many of the homeless do not believe that the services offered are affective.

The volunteers will be trained for a few hours prior to heading out on the streets to count. Last year, the count recognized about 3,200 people as homeless. However, recently, many have noted that there are probably much more homeless that have gone uncounted. I find it interesting that there are so many issues and controversy surrounding homeless counts. While I do not know much about the processes around homeless counts, it seems that it will be interesting topic to continue learning about. I am anxious to learn more about homeless counts and hear from some experts about the counts.

Here’s the link of the article if you’d like to read more. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/york-city-embark-annual-count-street-homeless-36790261

We’ve gone over and over about how there isn’t enough housing for homeless people, that there needs to be more transitional housing, and it needs to be available to those who need it. Well with L.A. County officials spending millions of dollars, and promising to spend more on transitional and permanent housing programs they’ve been able to help someone out! James Lonon was homeless for a year until Marsha Temple and her colleagues at Integrated Recovery Network were able to get him his own room in a six-bedroom apartment near USC as well as a part-time job just before the recent homeless count. He has a bachelor’s degree from Cal State Long Beach and after losing a nine-year job as a clerk became homeless in 2014 when his unemployment benefits ran out. While on the streets Lonon was a very active homeless man; when Carla Hall (author of the article) met him on a bench in November of 2015 she noticed he was quite good at meeting new people and making money for himself. He had a cellphone, an email address, and a storage unit. He spent most of his time trying to get a room because he did not want to go to a shelter, and had turned down an offer for a regimented group living arrangement. In the article he says, “All the people out here in Santa Monica – it would seem like they would have an empty room that they would offer to someone, it’s just a waiting game – waiting for the right person who will respond to that type of request.” The main thing that stood out to me in this article was Lonon’s refusal to go to a shelter and regimented living arrangement. What makes these options unattractive to homeless people? There is the factor of shame, but I think that’s just another way of saying our current solutions just aren’t good enough, nor do I think it is the only reason why people don’t want to sleep at shelters. I think answering the above question can help us determine how we can improve our shelters, and ways shelters can work with transitional housing agencies to get a steady stream of people in to the shelters, and from there in to transitional/permanent housing.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-street-journey-homelessness-20160204-story.html

In the article “Living on $2 a day: Exploring extreme poverty in America,” written by Lauren Feeney, interviewer Hari Sreenivasan, from PBS News Hour, speaks with Katherine Edin, coauthor of $2.00 A Day: Living On Almost Nothing in America to get a better grasp at the real issues of poverty that need to be uncovered. Sreenivasan poses questions at first addressing what most Americans believe is true about welfare, government policy, and poverty, then asks what the reality of people living on $2.00 a day is like. The reality, Edin, mentions, is that they are not surviving. No one can on such a low budget. To hear her explain just how these 1.5 million Americans are getting by, it is disturbing, painful, and calls for action.

In the interview, Sreenivasan asks Edin, “How do we get out of it?” Edin’s first solution is to expand work opportunity, and I think this goes without saying, but after the recession in 2010 many of the middle and lower class citizens would accept this as a foolproof solution. But she goes on to say more about these job opportunities. They cannot just be low minimum wage working jobs, they must provide a family with “a little give” she states. Low-income families often have severe unfortunate situations occur during employment, so it is necessary for an employer to have compassion or a slight allowance of slip ups to ensure that these families can continue to be provided for. Improving relationships with employees and employers in these job opportunities was another solution not only mentioned in her book but during the interview as well. There is a need for a mutual understanding between low-wage workers and their employers and I highly suggest that Americans read about the exposed reality of these relationships in $2.00 A Day.

You can find the interview here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/poverty/

Also please scroll to see the comments section of this article. Thoughts?

The super bowl is a very big thing in our culture, it is a time were people get together and bring food and have fun sitting around watching Americas favorite sport. We never think about the people that are homeless and how they have to move their belongings and stuff around when super bowl or some big event is is their city. For instance in USA today they wrote an article about a man named Otto that lived in the bay area and was forced to move from his corner because of super bowl Sunday and the city and police didn’t want homeless people around festivities. Otto told the reporters his life story and how he lived in the spot were he was told to leave for over a year. They interviewed a group of homeless people about how they celebrate the super bowl and majority of them said its just another Sunday to them other than the crowds of people nothing really changes. The article goes on to interview the homeless population around the super bowl of the memories and thoughts about super bowl and all the ones interviewed said they remember the barbecues, having fun and the gathering of people, majority of the people said that they would watch the super bowl because they had no television but were going to stay in high hopes and not get down to much. When having a home and a roof over your head we sort of take things for granted, like instead of figuring out were your going to go for super bowl you could be trying to find your new home!

As a native from San Francisco I was thrilled to hear that Super Bowl 50 would be held in the Bay Area. This meant that the city would be bustling with Super Bowl events, hundreds of people flooding into the city, and celebrities visiting. However, for the immense homeless population of the city, this would not be good news.

The homeless wander all over the city, including the popular Downtown area of the city, which does not look nice for the hundreds of celebrities and people visiting and staying in the city. The mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee, has sent a message to the homeless people camping out in the Embarcadero (a popular area of the city) that, “They are going to have to leave.” According to Mayor Lee, “…[they] are going to have to leave. Not just because it’s illegal but because it’s dangerous.”

My question is who is it dangerous for? I love my city, but I am truly disappointed in the fact that they are kicking the homeless off the street when they have nowhere else to go. Mayor Lee has announced that he has started building housing that should be done by the end of this year, but that can be too late. It’s unfair to force these people to leave and not have a place to move them to. This reminds me of the documentary we watched in class about the homeless in Santa Monica. Once again, the police try to move the homeless away, but make no effort in  resolving the actual problem. I hope after the Super Bowl craze dies down, my city legislators begin enabling a plan to improve the homelessness in the city rather than hide it.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/S-F-mayor-Homeless-have-to-leave-the-6465209.php

When we tell people we are taking a course called “Hunger and Homelessness in America,” what do they think? Signing up to take this course, I thought about the very poor, the people that are invisible and cast out of society. I think our initial reactions to discussing poverty we think about people that are the most disadvantaged.

When do we talk about the working poor? This week we are reading about the working poor- people that may or may not qualify for social services, may or may not have a minimum wage job, may or may not feel stuck.

This weekend I read an article titled “Job Market Leaves Fed in Limbo” in the Wall Street Journal and investigated its contents to reveal some hidden truths about the United State’s recent job growth. Last month, there were 151,000 jobs added to the labor market with the unemployment rate at 4.9%, the lowest since 2008. Wal-Mart says they’re giving their hourly employees a raise in February. This sounds pretty good doesn’t it?

On the flip side, I think there are some factors we should consider and unpack as sociologists. The jobs that added in January are in the two lowest paying sectors- retail trade and leisure and hospitality. This creates potentially more part-time work and gaps in skill to be able to have a higher paying job.

So while there might be more availability with low paying jobs, the opportunity in the long run is not looking up for people closer to the bottom of society like the working poor.

How else do you think this effects our economy and the working poor?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-january-nonfarm-payrolls-up-by-151-000-jobless-rate-4-9-1454679110

Help. We all need it at some point in our lives and hopefully we all have received it in some form in our moment of need. But for those in poverty or living on the streets, help is most always needed but can be difficult to come by. In a world where we pride ourselves in helping others, why is it when our own people need help that we have a hard time providing that help? Why has welfare, food stamps, safe housing, or even a shelter become so hard to come by in so many places?

This struggle for help from those in poverty has been a common theme in so many of the books and articles that I have read so far. From the removal of funding for welfare, to the lack of affordable housing available for those living on barely anything it seems as though those in charge of our country, the ones with all money and power, don’t want to provide for those in need. Now this is obviously a vast generalization of our money holders, but after reading so many stories about the lack of help and the lack of funding in so many areas it makes me question the integrity of our people of power.

There is a belief that floats around among those who are not aware of what goes on underneath the surface of those in poverty, that poverty is a self-fixing problem. That if the people got themselves into it then they can get themselves out of it just as easily. But it’s not that simple. Once someone falls into the cycle of poverty it is almost impossible for him or her to get out, and our government is the one who makes it that way. For example, food stamps are the most popular form of aid from the government, but these can only buy food, nothing else. So when kids need clothes, or cars need gas, or rent needs to be paid, food stamps get you nowhere. And there are millions of people out there who food stamps are there only form of income and who will probably never break out of the poverty circle because of this restriction. To break out one needs some form of cash flow, and welfare use to be a provider of such help. So why did the government stop funding such a program? Why did help stop being provided to those in need?

We could go back and look at all of the politics and all of the bills past over the past 50 years and could probably find many reasons why government aid slowly decreased. But in my mind I think there has been a shift in society, a shift in the heart and the care that we have for others. Of course it is not fair to say that everyone has lost their heart, but I feel that a good majority of society feels that they are better than those living on 2 dollars a day and that this self fixing problem of poverty is not their problem. This mind set angers me because it shows me how naive so much of society is to what is happening around them. What about compassion? What happened to helping others? Have all of these virtues died with the changing of our society?