We gave our presentation on Homelessness in America to our sorority sisters. Coming into our presentation some people had negative stereotypes on homeless people and some were more empathetic, but no one really knew about all of the structural causes. This was a great opportunity for us to instill in them all that we know about the structural causes of homelessness.

We first went into detail about how housing loss, job market changes, hospital closures, and lowered social supports are all structural causes, which have taken part in causing homelessness. We then posed a question for them to think about, “In what degree have these structural conditions contributed to the increase of homelessness?” We helped them to understand this question by answering it with examples of the structural causes we mentioned earlier. We quickly realized that our audience was responding well to our presentation and it seemed as if they were really grasping the concept of structural versus individual causes.

The next part of our presentation we discussed the idea of raising awareness through Point in Time (PIT) Counts. We explained that PIT Counts are counts of homeless people in cities that are conducted by volunteers. Many people seemed interested in this particular section because there were many questions about the accuracy of the PIT Counts and their results.

Our next topic was on minimum wage and we started by asking our audience, “Do you think it is possible to live off of minimum wage?” Most of them answered with no, so it seemed as if they had enough knowledge on that because they are absolutely correct. We broke down some numbers showing the weekly, monthly, and annual income of those living off of minimum wage would be. Our audience was able to see how people cannot live off of minimum wage. Another example we gave was of the Barbara Ehrenreich book, Nickel and Dimed. We gave a brief overview of Ehrenreich’s experience working for minimum wage. During this part of our presentation we saw a change in our audience, we saw them grasping the concept of homelessness and that it is a bigger problem than they could have imagined. We could see this clearly because this is exactly what we went through when we first started taking this course.

The last part of our presentation was explaining our internship this semester at The Blessing Center. However, we explained that our example at The Blessing Center is on a very micro scale that does not reduce homelessness.  The Blessing Center does not help change the structural issues that cause homelessness but it does give hope to the community.

At the end of our presentation we gave our audience an opportunity to ask any questions.  Many of the questions that were asked were about our personal opinions and this was a struggle because we did not want to give a biased opinion of what we thought were the right things. Overall we feel that we gave an informative presentation to our peers and they felt like they learned more about homelessness, which was our main goal. We believe that we raised awareness within our sorority and we hope that they saw a new side to homelessness that they were unaware of before.

For my teaching project a classmate and I tabled at the Sustainability Festival on March 29th. We had the table from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm and were able to get to know a few of the people and businesses there and strike up some very interesting conversations with some of the people who were interested. It was tricky at first when we were trying to figure out how to engage passing people, not to mention we felt a little bit out of place originally. I was confused at first how hunger and homelessness applied to sustainability, however as the day progressed we were able to understand not only the role that we were playing in creating a sustainable future through our awareness of the legitimate reality of homelessness and hunger, but were also able to learn a lot from the people that we spoke to. What stuck out to me the most was that the whole experience was in one way or another proof that most people don’t understand the structural causes of homelessness and the ways in which government aid truly works. The only people who seemed to have any real knowledge about federal safety net programs were the ones who admitted to having received services in the past. I noticed a great deal of shame that the few people who had admitted to receiving assistance felt in association with their particular government aid. It was heartbreaking because there was one woman who admitted that the aid she was receiving wasn’t helping her, but she was still struggling with the guilt that she felt for receiving anything in the first place. It was also strange to hear to hear an old man say that he believed homelessness was perpetuated through laziness and a diminished need to work due to government aid. Although we have been discussing how many people do falsely believe that these are the causes of homelessness, it was strange to see a perfectly kind stranger voicing these beliefs in such a casual manner. What was most interesting was when Taylor or I was able to tell someone about some of the structural and political failures that have directly related to the perpetuation of homelessness, because most people were more than willing to try and understand a new way of thinking. There was one woman who I was able to have a discussion with about our theory of homelessness as not being an issue of the individual. She seemed mind blown by the thought that perhaps homelessness had to due with the structural aspects of our society, culture, and government. She was so intrigued by the idea that she stayed to discuss it with me until she felt she properly understood. While some moments seemed more productive than others, overall it was a great experience. I learned that we cannot be sustainable as a society with structural policies and discourses that are not made with all people in mind. The sustainability fair provided people from all walks of life. From different countries, cultures, religions, class,  etc. but nearly everyone we talked to was willing try to understand and create a discourse about homelessness that no longer perpetuated blame.   That for me, was enough to prove how important this class and the discourse that it can creates is. I am glad that  I was able to have such an incredible experience teaching what we have been learning and discussing in class. While at times it was hard to get people to actually talk about how they really felt about homelessness, the few that did proved that a new discourse can possibly be created that perpetuates the real causes of homelessness, poverty, and hunger in the United States.

I lead a discussion and interactive presentation on the Real Structural Causes of Homelessness with my classmate Sam in our Intentional Integral Living Learning Community on our University’s Campus.  To advertise our event we made an announcement at a community meeting which 70 people attended, a facebook event, which we invited 350 students, we made posters and we sent out 2 community emails, a week before and a reminder the day of the event. Despite this, only 3 people attended our event. This was disappointing because we worked very hard on our presentation and wanted to have a community discussion on the important real structural causes of homelessness and solutions.

Presentation Outline: 

1. Visualization living on the street homeless
2. Real Structural Causes: Neoliberal Governance, Hegemony: Dominance Model, Social Inequality: Race, Gender, Class
3. Ethnography of Systemic Inequality
4. Causes of Homelessness
5. Stereotypes
6. Discrimination and Recurring Trends throughout history
7. African American Civil War, Civil Rights
8. Women’s Liberation Movement
9. Solutions given from Homeless People
10. Public Policy Solutions
11.  Local Solutions:
12. My Internship at Homeless Youth Shelter
13. Sam’s internship at Salvation Army
14. State of CA solutions
15. National Solutions
16. What can we do? Discussion and Q/A

During the visualization one of the students was brought back to past experiences in low in come neighborhoods and on the street in DC. He shared  he remembered distinct smells, and busy business people quickly walking through the streets. Hes watched people rush past homeless people asking for money.  He also stated that most people would rather give their money to larger organizations then give money to people they meet on the street.

During our discussion one of the students shared her experience on Skid Row in LA, working with her Church to serve meals. While working there she heard a homeless person’s story.  The man she met received a college education, had a job as a computer software designer but went into severe debt from surgeries for his health conditions. This is an example of a person,  who simply needs affordable health care to survive. This is a policy issue. I believe everyone should be given free socialized health care which is similar to healthcare in countries in Europe.

After the presentation I felt frustrated no Community members attended the event.  This community when I arrived as a freshman, was very activism and social justice focused. 2 Years later their are new community members with different interests.  I am disappointed that I was not encouraged or supported my Community for this event. This was a big wake up call! As an activist I want to reach out to all people, especially as a student to other students.  Its hard to get students on campus interested and care about social justice, a lot harder than I expected.  Students would rather go to Community parties and play video games together than go to a Discussion Group on REAL ISSUES.

For my teaching project I held a table at the Sustainability Festival on March 29^th with a fellow classmate.  We had the table from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm and so it was a significant chunk of time to get an audience.  We had created a pamphlet to pass out to the different people who came by stating who we were and what our class is about.  We included a brief description of the main causes of homelessness in America and what we think the answers are to the problem.  We also included the main questions we have been working to answer in our class thus far about counting the homelessness, what it is like to be homeless, etc.  We also reached out to local organizations and the community service center at the university to get fliers and pamphlets of the resources in the community.  We had items from Redlands Family Association,  Angels Closet, Option House, San Bernardino Sexual Assault Services, and a couple more from organizations who came up to our table and left their fliers with us.  The purpose of our teaching project was to attempt to educate some of the community about the causes of homelessness.  We wanted to see what people thought the causes of homelessness were and then teach them what we have learned to better inform them.  We accomplished our goal of teaching people about the causes.  Of course some were more on board than others, but it was a very good experience.  The answers people came up with as far as what causes homelessness were mainly on the same lines as the stereotypes of homelessness we read about.  A lot of the audience was surprised we were students and confused why we were not asking for donations or from an organization.  When we explained we just wanted to educate them, some were really excited about it and others just turned away and left the booth.  There was definitely a mixture of people whether it be age, gender, or profession.   I learned that I have to be more outgoing to get people to the table.  This was definitely my biggest weakness because I thought people would see our table and come on their own if they were interested but we really had to bring them in or they wouldn’t stay.  It was a learning experience for us and I think it went really well.

For mine and Sally’s teaching project, our vision was to tackle common stereotypes of the homeless population. As we have learned in class and from personal experiences at our internships and elsewhere, society in general has a negative image of those who are without a home or living through poverty despite the fact that it is not the fault of these individuals. The consensus in our capitalistic culture is to label these individuals as “lazy” or “deviant”, because blaming the individual is far less terrifying than the realization that as a society we are failing to prevent this problem. The ideas about homeless persons being at fault or to blame are far too prevalent and show a significant lack of understanding of structural issues that contribute to poverty. This is why we sought out to show our peers the real story of homelessness that is not often heard with the end goal to raise awareness.

In order to successfully carry out our teaching project, we thought that it would be beneficial to offer new information in a unique and attention-grabbing way. We complied shocking facts, quotes, and statistics which we placed on small cards and handed these to people as they walked in and out of the commons. Our goal was to distribute short cards that offered information versus any lengthy information that was too overwhelming. Over the course of two days, we were able to hand out nearly 200 of these fact cards. The people that we were able to hand cards to read them with their friends or alone and the overall response was shock.

As a follow-up, we also assembled a list of local organizations that many of our classmates have been able to get involved with for the internship portion of the course. Offering the chance to get involved in alleviating homelessness was a significant portion of our teaching project. While simply giving out information regarding homelessness is significant, we felt is was important to include options for outreach. Many people seemed curious about these agencies and how they could get involved.

One of the downsides to our project was the depression that it caused among our peers. While we did have a list of agencies which offer ways to get involved to give people the hope that they can change the situation for the better, the simple fact is that teaching about poverty is not a cheerful subject. In retrospect, to prevent such feelings of despair, we could have given facts about the impact that some people are making every day in the lives of the homeless.

Although our teaching project had some faults, overall we were pleased with the success of our project and the impact that we were able to make. Only after this teaching project did we become aware of how much information we had learned over the course of this semester. I know that we will continue to share our knowledge to others because it is a really rewarding experience.

I decided to look up some articles on hunger and homelessness and the actions being taken in regards to them. As I was searching I came across two articles about the actions being taken that DO NOT prevent hunger and homelessness. These two articles left an impression on me. One of the articles was about two police officers that thought it was okay to have a contest to see how many homeless signs they could take away from the homeless. That to me was beyond disrespectful, this brought into mind the flaws in our system. If the authority does not talk the initiative to help and instead make fun of those going through hard times then what example do they leave for the community. In addition to disrespecting the homeless and taking away a sign that is not in any way illegal and is a form of freedom of speech, their sanction for such actions was a three day suspension with no pay. Many citizens in the community were in disagreement of the sanction because they felt that the sanction was not  valid for the actions that were done by the police officers. The other article that I found was about bills and different actions taking place in larger cities that are banning any help being provided to those who are hungry and homeless. This to me brought me much anger. Why is our society continuing these awful patterns and yet they want hunger and homelessness to end? There is a lack of government support in regards to hunger and homelessness. Actions need to be taken.

Links to articles: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/27/police-officers-collect-homeless-signs_n_4865959.html?utm_hp_ref=homelessness

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/feeding-the-homeless-banned-in-major-cities-all-over-america

During the course, our class has explored and discovered how the organizations systems works from the observations in our internships.  We learned in our final internship reports that some organizations need structure, teamwork, and leadership skills managing the shelter successfully.  After reading the book, “Inequality, Poverty, and Neoliberal Governance”, the activist Vincent Lyon-Callo provided solutions in addressing homelessness by practicing methods to treat deviancy, and re-establish policies to provide practical assistance to the homeless people.  However, learning efficient solutions, and adopting new methods to prevent the cycle of homelessness can likely reduce the number of the homeless population, and improve the communities.

Last week, our class had a guest speaker via Skype named Dan McGuire from the Homeless Solutions Inc., (http://www.homelesssolutions.org/ ) the oldest organization in the county of New Jersey.  In his lecture, McGuire discussed many services that has been expanding throughout the years providing renovated projects to assist the homeless communities and low-income families.  I was impress in how the organization has grown their association and improving their communities productively. The Homeless Solution Inc. offers programs like affordable and transitional housing, as well as homeless shelters for seniors, and single individuals.  The Homeless Solutions Inc. addressed the issue of homelessness by providing the necessary assistance to help families obtain a home, and at the same time improving the communities using foreclosure homes, and abandoned building to convert them to new housing development with energy saving features to relieve economic crisis.  This practice has worked well due to the state courts enforcing counties to established shelters as a cooperation of addressing the critical issue of poverty.  Perhaps considering these ideas in the state of California can help keep the homeless people of the streets, and help low-income families keep homes for their families at a reliable rate, and period.