One Step Towards Change
One grows when they finally see reality. I have done a lot of research and have been coming up with my solution to better make the situation for the homeless. Through my research I have seen things that have given me a whole different perspective of how I see the homeless now since my Slate Blog #1. In Slate Blog #1 I talked mostly focused on the misconceptions about homeless people. How they are seen as lazy, drug addicts, and people who take advantage of their situation. I focused only on how they were viewed, treated, and reasons why they were in the situation they were in. Never did I focus on how their life was like before they came into the situation they are in. I never mentioned the true definition of homelessness for me. Most people would think about why the homeless didn’t they just go to homeless shelters instead of staying outside. I was no different from these people. I have better prepared myself by making myself more opened minded and even went out to find information from a person who has indeed experienced homelessness. I researched more about the reasons why people go homeless and even went deeper with it. I also found possible reasons why people don’t go and stay in homeless shelters. With the information I have gathered I came up with my own definition of what it means to be homeless.
What does it mean to be homeless? For me being homeless isn’t just not having a place to live, but you can also be considered homeless if you have a place to live but you can’t really keep up with the rent or you can maintain yourself or your family, also fleeing from domestic violence can be considered homelessness. For me this is what it means to be homeless, for others there’s more to it. After you see what I have gathered here, you can up with your own definition of being truly homeless. In Slate Blog #1 I got most of my info from a site that was reliable but it was updated in 2015, I recently got new information from a site that was recently updated in 2017. The site was a pdf file of The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development, it gave me a lot of updated facts in 2017 about the homeless. When going through it I found out that 553,742 people were experiencing homelessness in the U.S, 65% of the people that were homeless were in shelters or had housing support while the other 35% were unsheltered. 61% of the homeless are men while 39% were women. Race is something that shocks many of us because each race is given a stereotype and many believe them, people believe that hispanics and blacks are more prone to becoming homeless but in reality whites have a higher chance of becoming homeless. 47% of the homeless population is white, 41% are black, 22% are latino or hispanic and 7% identified as multiracial.
For many of us when we hear the word homeless we think of someone lazy and is a drug addict who just doesn’t want to work and keep things easy for themselves. The truth is that this isn’t the case for many of the homeless. It’s different from what we hear and it’s hard when you are in this situation and you have to change your life around. To get a better perspective i went to the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission and got the chance to interview Eric who was homeless and now he helps other homeless people turn their lives around. This homeless shelter is located in 1010, 302 N 13th St, Philadelphia, PA 19107. In this interview I wanted to get a better insight from someone who was homeless to understand the truth of how some people become homeless and how their experience was. I wanted to hear Eric’s opinion of how he feels about the stereotypes about the homeless and what he would do to change this problem. Of course, before I asked him these questions I had to first hear his story. This is the document of my questions.
My inquiry was an interview and my questions were answered in a very detail way by Eric because I could see what he said and feel what he felt. Eric helped me better inform me about the homeless by telling me about how he got in the situation of being homeless, telling me his experience, and how he got out of that situation. He proved my point of the misconception of homeless people because they are people who were just in the hard times in life, some got beaten down by life, and others picked themselves up.
There is homeless people that are in the street because of mental illnesses. These are the people that need a lot of support, about 25% of the homeless population suffer from mental illnesses. You may be asking yourself, why didn’t they just get support when they were with their friends and families? The reason is that they lose their communication with friends and family because of their delusional thinking. When this happens they are left all alone and unable to take good care of themselves because they lack sustainability of employment. Many others have mental illnesses after they become homeless, that is because the fact that they are in the situation that they are in stresses them, encourages anxiety, causes fear, depression, causes them to sleep less, and this eventually leads up to drug abuse. It’s sad but the truth is that people with mental illnesses experience homelessness for a longer time when compared with someone who doesn’t suffer from mental illnesses. Domestic violence is the reason 75% of women experiencing homeless have mental illnesses. Hospitals and prisons have a big role of why there’s people with mental illnesses in the streets because they release them into the streets knowing their situation and that many of these people don’t have family to go to.
There’s many homeless people in the streets and many of us just wonder to ourselves, why don’t they just go to a homeless shelter? The truth is there’s reasons why many homeless people don’t go to shelters and one of them is that many homeless people can’t bring their best pals around with them, meaning there is no pets allowed in the homeless shelters because of the lack of resources. Many homeless people don’t want to give away their best friend who has been loyal to them.
Another reason is because homeless shelters deny the entry to people who suffer from mental illnesses because they can be a threat to others. I believe that they should be allowed in because all they need is somebody to talk to and what better people than the people who are experiencing the same problem these people with mental illnesses are experiencing. Many people also don’t go to homeless shelters because they don’t let people with parasites, lice, and bedbugs because they can spread and ruin the shelter. Others don’t go at the fear that they could be raped or assaulted.
Some people know that they have a disease that can easily spread and they decide to stay away from shelters to not spread it and they can’t even get in the shelters because they deny entry to people with diseases. A very high reason why people don’t go to shelters because they can’t be helped with their drug abuse. The main reason why people don’t go to shelters is because of the lack of available beds. There is many more reasons why people don’t go to shelters but you can check more out at this site (where I got my information). Many of the homeless people are in shelters and the people with mental illnesses and drug addictions are left in the streets and this is what caused the stereotypes of homeless people because that’s all we get to see.
Now that I have done some research I can give my opinion on how I truly see the homeless. I believe that the homeless are people who were beaten down by life and that does who stay homeless haven’t necessarily given up but they don't feel motivated because they are alone. But, for the people that picked themselves up, they were motivated at the fact that they wanted to help their family, prove people wrong about them, or both. There’s many things I still wonder about, I wonder If with the help of others, we will be able to end poverty? For Slate Post #3 for change, I am thinking about going out to the streets and telling all the homeless people I see that they aren’t alone and that me, others, and god support them. I will give them food and money so that they can start their life again. They don’t need much support, they just need a boost. One only cannot make change but one and others can.
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