Reading “Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope” by Kevin Ryan and Tina Kelley has showed me that homeless people are not just adults, but kids as well. This book shows you six youth who went through poverty and homelessness. I learned that these kids all come from different backgrounds and all had different themes to their lives on what was going on. The six major themes in this book were not having a good education, trafficking, turning eighteen and no longer in the system, becoming pregnant, becoming addicted to drugs, and having different sexualities. A lot of these stories came from lives that these kids could not control. Especially, reading about the kids who were abused or watched their own parents being abused by each other. These teens are not getting the help they need and they are getting sent to the wrong path causing them to become homeless. We need to have more programs available for homeless youth to be financially independent, educated, and help them find homes to get them off the streets. One of the statistics that really surprised me was that “Sexual minority youth account for up to 40% of homeless shelter residents. An estimated 24,000 to 400,000 LGBTQ minors become homeless (Almost Home).” This is astonishing to me, because it is outrageous to believe that many teens are becoming homeless merely because of their sexuality. Every person should be equal, and your sexuality should not be costing you a roof over your head. Learning one more thing from the book, not only are programs a great help for homelessness but so is mentorship. Having a simple mentor can do as much of boosting someone’s self-esteem and hope in themselves. But in the end, young kids should not be living or trying to survive on the streets.
Counting and Identifying Unsheltered Homeless People
Many Americans quickly walk past homeless people they see on the street, refusing the recognize them, to many they are invisible. Homeless people deserve the same dignity and respect as all people. Everyone deserves to have shelter, food, and water. Therefore it is our responsibility to make sure all people are given resources to survive. Through the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development the Hud’s Homeless Assistance program identifies and counts unsheltered homeless people with the goal of planning future services, justifying and allocating resources for programs for the many different subgroups of homeless people. The program also raises public awareness and community involvement. An unsheltered homeless person according to HUD resides in a place not meant for human habitation, such as cars, parks, transportation hubs, tent cities, sidewalks and abandoned buildings. Encampments are areas where unsheltered homeless people live. people are harder to count because they are not living in emergency shelters or transitional housing. Many unsheltered homeless people still receive services such as street outreach teams, drop-in centers, health care for homeless networks, soup kitchens and mobile van food programs. There are a variety of approaches to collecting data on unsheltered homeless people. Approaches include direct street counts with or without interviews and data collection from service programs who may not be readily found in public places. Applied Survey Research (ASR) has helped its partners secure additional federal and state funding through its homeless census and survey data! The 2007 San Bernardino County Homeless Census and Survey counted a total of 7,331 homeless people plus 133 persons reported in County-wide Domestic Violence shelters. The total of all unsheltered individuals and families was 6,111. This means that there are only 1,200 homeless people in shelters in San Bernardino County. Below are a variety of bar graphs taken from the study.
“Community Action Partnership of San Bernadino County.” San Bernadino County 2007 Homeless Census and Survey. Community Action Partnership America’s Poverty Fighting Network, n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2014.<http://www.appliedsurveyresearch.org/storage/database/homelessness/sanbernardino/San_Bernardino_2007_homeless.pdf>.
126,000 Millionaires & 58,000 Homeless
In this Huffington Post blog post by Joel John Roberts, an interesting solution to homelessness in L.A. is presented. Roberts reports that there are 126,000 millionaires in the Los Angeles area, living it up in their mansions and driving their Lamborghinis past the 58,000 people living on the street. What if the millionaires of L.A. took care of the homeless? Roberts suggests a “Two-for-One” program, where two millionaires can “pay for a person’s mental health care. Pay for the cost of rehab. Provide the means to get a job. Cover the tab of an apartment security deposit. And pay $1,000 per month for a tiny apartment.” Though this suggestion is not a completely serious one, it proves a point. It shows how ridiculously huge the gap is between the rich and the poor and it shows how easy it could be to solve the issue of homelessness in L.A. and other stratified cities in the U.S., if the people at the top only cared enough to do so. As Roberts states, “We [Los Angeles] are the epitome of the first world clashing with the third.” I believe that this solution could work, if only there weren’t so many stigmas against the homeless. If we could open people’s eyes and show them the reality of the homeless issue, they would understand that it can happen to anyone and that the people who live on the streets are not “lazy” or “just looking for a handout,” and they would be eager to help.
What do you think about this solution to homelessness? Would it ever happen? If it did happen, would it really work?
What are some other creative solutions to homelessness that you think would solve the problem?
ASR Findings
Applied Survey Research (ASR) is a federal requirement under Department of Housing and Urban Development. Counties must count their homeless population every two years in order to receive federal funding. ASR uses several methods to count the homeless population including: street count, shelter and institution count, telephone survey, and homeless survey. I reviewed the data from the LA Continuum of Care in 2007. The count for LA Continuum of Care consisted of 68,608 total people, with the median age of 45 years. The survey counted 22,376 chronic homeless people. Chronic homelessness in this survey is defined as, “an unaccompanied individual with a disabling condition who has been continually homeless for one year or more, or has experienced four or more episodes of homelessness within the past 3 years.” Gender and race are significant in regards to chronic homelessness with approximately 70% male and 29% females, African Americans making up approximately 48%. The survey also indicated the services and assistance used by the chronically homeless. 42% use free meals, 32% are not using any services, 24% use emergency shelter, 22% use health services, and 15% use mental health services. The survey found the top two reasons for being homeless to be economic issues including lost job or eviction. A statistic that stood out to me was failure to access housing services due to the lack of available beds. The survey found that 35% tried to access LA county shelter or a transitional housing program or both within 30 days prior to taking the survey; of those 45% had been turned away, the main reason due to lack of beds. Data is available, yet the availability of data does not guarantee that the problem gets solved or that it draws public attention. Perhaps a problem is due to the media, which does not provide systematic evidence. I also looked at the homeless count from where I am from, Orange County. In 2009 the count was 8,333 homeless people. The number of sheltered people consisted of 31%, unsheltered 69%. This data is startling. In the book The Homeless by Christopher Jencks there is a statement, “the spread of homelessness disturbed affluent Americans for both personal and political reasons.” I see this statement to be true. For example, it can be understood that lack of shelters is a problem, a solution, create more shelters. Yet, nobody wants the homeless shelter in their neighborhood. Jencks poses the question, what is our moral obligation to strangers? What is wrong with the economic and social institutions? http://www.appliedsurveyresearch.org/projects_database/homelessness/
Here to Serve Not Save
After reading Deborah Connolly’s book Homeless Mothers I developed a better understanding of the jobs of social workers. This particular book was from the viewpoint of Connolly who did fieldwork as a social worker. Connolly worked at multiple organizations that housed homeless mothers and often their children. She came across many heart-wrenching stories of homeless mothers, their children, and their families.
To give these homeless mothers answers, suggestions and help is not simple and is not always possible. We can see from Connolly’s point of view that these jobs can take a toll on the social workers. Social workers are working closely with families who are trying to make better lives for themselves. Social workers are expected to have answers for all of these homeless people. In reality it is not always the social workers jobs to give these families a better life, it is up to the families to do that. However, these families are very unstable and they need guidance from the social workers.
I did not realize how hard it would be to have to hear these stories that were often hopeless. Many of the homeless women described in the book had no hope of making a better life for themselves. Sometimes social workers would have no solutions for these people. Even if there were solutions, often times the homeless mothers could not follow through with them because of the circumstances they were in. It was particularly hard for Connolly when she got close to the character Kristy in the book. Connolly felt that she wanted to take Kristy and her children into her own care because there were not any better options for them. However, she was constantly reminded by her coworkers, “We are not here to save families- we are here to serve them” (Connolly 131). This saying was almost like their motto. Social work is not easy and they have to remember that they are doing what they can to serve these families. There is only so much the social workers can do to get the homeless into shelters; the rest is up to them. Social workers cannot be held accountable for saving these families.
Sandy Banks: “Farewell, my Texas cowboy”
Los Angeles Times columnist Sandy Banks published a beautiful story this morning, about a homeless man she knew well. Eddie Dotson had been living on L.A.’s streets for many years by the time Banks met him. He was polite to everyone and helpful to others. He built a lovely and comfortable dwelling out of scraps and others’ throw-aways; he would rebuilt it without complaint when the street cleaning crews destroyed it (as they did every few months). Banks remembers his patience and tenderness.
Banks wrote about him in 2009, which is the first that Dotson’s family in Austin, Texas, had heard about him in years. They came out to L.A. and brought him home. He died last week, so Banks wrote a moving essay about him and about how much he taught her. Read it on Page A2 of this morning’s Times.
I want to praise Banks for her large heart and her clear prose. I also want to praise the Times for hiring columnists — she is one of several — who show us that homeless people are human beings.
What if we cared about those living in poverty as much as we care about celebrities?
I recently discovered through tumblr a project known as Homeward Bound, which is affiliated with Woodgreen Foundation and is a part of United Way Toronto. This particular project focuses on the life of single mothers struggling with poverty, and suggests giving these women’s problems the proper representation and time.
I think these magazine manipulations are powerful, because a significant portion of society does care about celebrity gossip and tabloid news. I think this campaign cleverly critiques our society’s obsession with the wealthy and famous and flips this consumption of popular culture on its head.
No doubt if we were exposed to the reality of poverty on a daily basis as we waited in lines at the grocery store where our eyes inevitably wander, we as a society would be much more enraged about the problem.
[For more examples of the campaign’s pictures, click here: (w) (x) (y) (z).]
The Cost of Not Caring
Our society is uncomfortable with homelessness and the idea that thousands of people live on the street as a result of societal causes. We enjoy the skewed version of the truth that tells us that people are homeless because of addictions, lack of drive and inability to “work hard like the rest of us”. Statistics like the ones presented in Tina Kelley’s “Almost Home” tell us that “As many as 2,000,000 people in the United States face episodes of homelessness” and that “Forty percent of homeless people are under the age of 18.” Society has failed youth and offers no credible soluitions on how to ameliorate or repair the homeless youth dilemma.
One of the main reasons youth homelessnes statistics are high is because a large number of youth age out of the system every year. Once a youth turns 18, they are left to fend for themselves and can no longer rely on government programs like Child Protective Services to assist them. Tina Kelley states, “Forty percent of youth who age out of foster care at eighteen become homeless before their mid-twenties”. This alarming statistic highlights a major flaw in our system. What solutions do we offer for people who age out of foster care with nowhere to go and only a dime to their name? Do we push them out onto the street and allow them to join the adult statistics of homelessness? Are there solutions that prepare “aging out youth” for life after foster care? What happens if homeless youth continue to go unnoticed?
The Human Condition
I have been noticing more and more as the course progresses, that everyone, homeless or not wants similar things from life. As listed in Grand Central Winter by Lee Stringer, love, respect, happiness, a sense of fairness and justice, a sense of well-being, a sense of purpose and value, and the feeling of being connected to something substantial, lasting, and secure. When I recognize the truth in this for me personally, and for most everyone I know, it allows for a feeling of solidarity, that all of us no matter what race, creed, gender, or walk of life, want pretty much the same thing. I then feel part of a greater whole, and a compassion towards my fellow humans, as they are trying to do the same.
In starting to understand how lucky and fortunate I am to have the things I do (food, shelter, entertainment, social relations, money, educational opportunities etc.) and the circumstance into which I was born, I appreciate it more. I realize that many others do not have such resources and beneficial circumstances. This dawning forces me to look critically at our society, and ask questions regarding the world and country I live in, and why it is the way it is, and what I can do about it.
Stringer states when talking about the human condition that, “The characteristic of absolute, unwavering devotion to something-common in those whom we might in error consider “lowlifes”-may well be, when directed toward spiritual growth, the essential element we readily assume drunks and druggies are by nature missing. ”
He talks further about the natural inclination and drive toward a spiritual path and how this has been replaced by the ever-present belief that material and physical things are more important and take precedence over the spiritual. He goes on to say “…religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell, spirituality is for those who have already been there.” as stated in AA rooms. This illustrates the clear division and disparity evident in the U.S. among those who have and those who do not. Stringer also states that “Policy is never the real issue, the real issue is in the hearts of men.” I find this to be a poignant reminder that we have failed in helping our own , and in search for success and happiness, we have ignored and marginalized others. We do such things blindly and often without concern for others, and all they can do is hope to simply survive. Clearly the invisible hand of free market capitalism has its preference on whom to assist, and who benefits. I am not aware of anything that seems to ‘trickle down’ to those who need it most. Stringer discusses policy and affirmative action, saying “concepts like affirmative action, while benefitting others, are essentially driven by our own desire to elevate ourselves.” This I agree with strongly, and in my experience have known to be true.
One of the powerful things stringer also states is “I’m sure most Americans take comfort in the fact that racism has been abolished in this country. Not the practice, of course, bus as a topic for public discussion…their response was not so much a true denunciation of racism as it was a response to the appearance of racism. The object being not to disturb the picture of America as we imagine it to be. ” I find this very powerful and true, because he touches on the elephant in the room that many try not to notice, let alone talk about. Racism. It makes people uncomfortable and the unfortunate response is to not create conversation and to quickly hurdle or whisk the topic away. Instead of dealing with the highly conspicuous issue, we rationalize the current situation, and quiet any inquiry into the true nature and status of the issue as to maintain the ideal of America.
“…before we can put bigotry to bed, we must clear away the great confusion about what are the proper parameters for interracial coexistence. And for that to happen, the subject of race itself, ugly, dispiriting, and prone to occasional blunder though it can be, must be taken back out of the closet. The current trend is to dismiss any and all dialogue concerning differing experiences among different racial/ethnic groups as liberal blather. ”
He goes on to say that anything that doesn’t support our one-nation version of cultural harmony is diverted, then allowing for the intolerance to be further implanted into our society.
We are all in this together so long as we are living on this earth, and to spend life ignoring the conditions in which so many live in order to protect one’s own sense of identity and comfort is to support the perpetuation of the endemic inequality, intolerance, and preventable suffering of so many. If we are truly the nation that so many believe, we will take action and start to face our demons head on, together.
@!%* Minimum Wage
In a study commissioned by the Department of Labor Dube states in “The Minimum We Can Do” that he reviewed data from the past two decades and found clear evidence that minimum wage raises have helped lift family incomes at the bottom: a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage reduces poverty by around 2%. I am glad that Obama stated in his State of the Union address that he would increase the Federal minimum wage for all workers from $7.25 to $10.10 via a bill from Democrats Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Rep. George Miller of California. This is great for all federal employed workers but what about all the state and city employed workers which continue to have low minimum wages? Dube explains that state and city minimum wages are essential in guaranteeing that geographic areas that have a high cost of living also have matching minimum wage standards. When my Mom (age 57) was my age (21) and moved to San Francisco she was paid secretarial and office intern jobs at $12 an hour in the Financial District, today the same kind of internships pay the same or less, are more competitive to get because they require higher levels of education, more professional experience and there are more people applying for them. It is almost impossible to get by and survive living on minimum wage, yet so many people are forced to do so. This is unjust and must change!
Dube, Arinjatit. “The Minimum We Can Do.” Opinionator The Minimum We Can Do Comments. The New York Times , 30 Nov. 2013. Web. 3 Feb. 2014.
<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/the-minimum-we-can-do/?_php=true&_type=blogs&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131202&_r=0>.
Berman, Dan. “State of the Union 2014: Obama to raise minimum wage for federal workers.” POLITICO. POLITICO, 28 Jan. 2014. Web. 1 Feb. 2014.
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/obama-minimum-pay-federal-contracts-102712.html>.