Anti-Homeless Policies in the United States
Abigail Love
IUPUI – Masters of Social Work Application Writing Sample
Homelessness in the United States is a multifaceted problem, there are many factors to consider when examining this homelessness including access to health care, economic conditions and public policy as well as a host of other issues. Problems with homelessness that need addressed are the stigmatizations of being homeless and how this perception has led to anti-homeless policies, how reforming anti-homeless policies can lead to shifting society’s perception of the issue of homelessness, and finally why social workers must be at the forefront of the campaign to facilitate meaningful change to reduce the human suffering
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Many of the anti-homeless polices that have been previously mentioned focus on improving the quality of life for the community rather than reducing the causes of homelessness and for these reasons it is imperative that these anti-homeless policies be reformed. Reforming these polices can be tricky due to the way they are framed. For example, no one is going to advocate that public urination should be allowed. A more effective argument would be to advocate for increased public spending on public restrooms. This is just one example of how allocating public funds away from criminal justice and towards public services could help improve the issue of …show more content…
These stigmatizations have had a powerful effect on policy makers to implement policies that simply reduce the visibility of this issue. Social workers must work to bring this issue back into the spotlight and challenge the validity and constitutionality of anti-homeless policies. The current state of homelessness in the United States is an extreme social injustice and we as social workers must do all we can to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves and to ensure that basic human needs are seen as a right in our
Homelessness has always been a problem for the United States. Since its birth as a nation, there have consistently been individuals who find themselves without a place to live, looking for shelter with family, friends, or simply anywhere they can find it. These individuals have been targeted as candidates for social aid, but this was primarily provided by churches and other care organizations. However, in the past thirty years the homeless population has increased almost exponentially in numbers. While the cause of this is undetermined, it is quite certain that while the
Homelessness is one of the oldest problems that exist, fast forward almost 40 years since it’s been recognized as one and still there has been no avail to finding a real solution. The definition of homelessness under the McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act is defined as an individual: “who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence; and a person who has a nighttime residence that is supervised publicly or privately operated shelter, and c) an institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized, or a private or public place not designed for, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.”
Homelessness is an issue in American society today that affects anywhere from 800,000 to 3.5 million people. There are a substantial amount of people that are without shelter, food, or employment, and there are numerous other people affected by poverty and homelessness. People living in nearly every city in the United States are affected by homelessness due to the large amounts of homeless individuals living on the streets and begging for money, food, and other necessities. The issue of homelessness has been a constant problem since the conquering of the New World, and soup kitchens and homeless shelters have not been able to fully end homelessness. Especially today, with a lack of affordable housing and high unemployment rates, homelessness is prevalent.
Homelessness has been around for a long time, but crimination of the homeless is a topic that just occurred recently. When criminalization came about there was two groups in the U.S., one side opposed to it and the other supported it. The group that opposes criminalization of homeless people are advocates who believe that criminalizing homeless people will only worsen the situation and cause more problems to begin with, make our nation as a whole look bad, and violates their rights. Another reason why a person advocates against the criminalization of homeless people believe in what they believe is that they had a personal experience relating to this subject or out of concern for the citizens who reside in this country. Instead of wasting the
In the United States the homeless population continues to grow rapidly. Homelessness has been a public health issue for many decades. Often times these individuals feel as though society has turned a blind eye to them. This at risk population is seen by society as lazy or chose to live a life on the streets, but if one would examine this population closely would see that there is more to this at risk population than what society has labeled them as. The forces, which affect homelessness, are multifaceted. Social forces such as family breakdown, addictions, and mental illnesses are in combined with structural forces such as lack of low-cost housing, insufficient health services, and poor economic conditions. Many would
People drive or walk past a homeless person almost every day without thinking twice about the plight of that person or they may even unconsciously turn their heads the other way in disgust. Homelessness simply put, means without a home - therefore homelessness is an equal opportunity state that can happen to anyone. Even though we have seen some economic prosperity over the years, statistics show that the number of homeless remains very high. With this in mind, communities need to come together at the state, city, and individual level to come up with solutions to mitigate the spreading of this problem.
Homelessness in the United States can be ended, not just maintained. Allot of cities now have plans to eradicate homelessness. Homelessness and housing instability are large issues that afflict a diverse demographic such as: Families, youth, veterans, and chronically homeless single male adults. Ending homelessness may require specialized solutions that are specific to individual needs. Factors like these make defeating homelessness a difficult task. Although solutions exist for some of the demographics, such as housing for chronically homeless adults, scaling up best practices remains a challenge. For other subpopulations, such as transitional aged youth, evidence-based interventions need to be developed. In this paper we argue that ending homelessness is a Grand Challenge that is big, important, and compelling—one that the profession of social work should be adopt. Meeting this challenge will require a focused, organized response from social work researchers, clinicians, and policymakers. Ending homelessness will require innovation and interdisciplinary or cross-sector collaboration. Key words: Housing First, Permanent Supportive Housing, rapid re-housing, prevention, poverty. The notion that homelessness in the United States can be ended, rather than managed (Mangano, 2002; National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2012), represents a fundamental shift in expectations from the 1980s and ’90s. Since the early 2000s, researchers, policymakers, advocates,
Seeing homelessness develop is a process that the older generation can say they have been apart of. The young generation, on the other hand, cannot say they have seen the development of homelessness. People who are thirty years old or younger have grown up believing that homelessness was always part of the landscape. The younger generation has come to believe that there have always been homeless people sitting on park benches. When an individual is asked what they see most in a large city like Chicago or New York, ‘homeless people’ is a common response. According to the United States Census Bureau, 320.8 million individuals currently live in the United States of America. Imagine the proportion of individuals that do not own a car or even a house to live in. The National Law Center on Homelessness and poverty did studied to conclude that in America more than 3.5 million people experience homelessness each year. Those concerned with the issue of homelessness are curious as to what events had to have happened that lead to the individuals living on the streets. The reasons are different for each and every person. Some of the more major issues that contribute to this are lack of affordable housing, declining welfare assistance, and most importantly, mental illness. Resolving the issue of homelessness is very possible with new ways of housing and treatment for the mentally ill. The relation between the homeless and the mental illness has risen, and the United States as a whole
Did you know that Applied Survey Research counted a total of 4,539 homeless people last year in Sonoma County alone? I can vouch for the authenticity and methods used in this survey because I assisted as a counter. I am passionate about the social issue of homelessness, mainly because I was part of this population a decade ago. Applied Survey Research defines homelessness in part as, “An individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence…” The sad fact is that there are not enough resources to adequately shelter America’s most vulnerable citizens. Many cities have passed ordinances that have criminalized homelessness. These so called quality of life ordinances are meant to protect the society at large. Homeless people
While the government is active in providing subsidized housing and funding to programs to help homeless citizens, the majority of governments have utilized legislation in terms of public space regulation, rather than ameliorating the underlying causes of homelessness. Published in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, “Many communities across the country continue to pass ordinances criminally punishing homeless persons for engaging in necessary, life-sustaining activities such as sleeping in public places in the absence of an indoor alternative (Tars, Johnson, Bauman, & Foscarinis, 2014, pp. 740). The consensus of the authors is that homelessness continues due to “selective enforcement of public space restrictions such as loitering laws, park closure rules, and open container ordinances. Driven by business interests or not-in-my-backyard attitudes, the ultimate goal of such measures is often to remove the visible effects of homelessness and poverty from downtowns, tourist destinations, residential areas, and even entire communities” (Tars et al., 2014, pp. 740). Matching the constitutionality notion of Siebert, here the publication has asserted “Advocates have successfully argued that it is cruel and unusual punishment to penalize people for involuntary conduct, that is, engaging in necessary, life-sustaining conduct in public places when shelter or housing is unavailable, and that prohibiting a “necessity of life,” such as a place to sleep, impedes homeless persons’ freedom of travel or movement” (Tars et. al., 2014, pp. 740). However, even the authors agree that these actions do not help to end homelessness, rather just managing of the present problem (Tars et. al., 2014, pp.
Addressing homelessness, regardless of its cause, requires creativity, empathy and dedication. Oftentimes, the factors that lead to homelessness are complicated and intertwined, with no clear origin. Medical catastrophes, job loss, and foreclosure or eviction can be the catalyst into a life of insecurity and chronic homelessness. Once secure, stable housing is lost, a person faces a slippery slope. In Kansas City, like many other substantial cities, efforts to combat homelessness must be creative and comprehensive in order to succeed. Social programs that focus on stable housing and address the complicated causes of homelessness prove to be the most successful.
The plague of homelessness stretches across all racial, ethnic, and societal boundaries, and has the ability to touch anyone’s life at any
The increasing prevalence of restrictions on people experiencing homelessness does little to effectively confront the increasing homelessness in big U.S. cities. In fact, such restrictions have a potential domino effect. “A given community’s efforts to force its homeless residents out, if successful, will drive them into neighboring communities; these communities may then in turn pursue similar efforts” (26). The criminalization of homelessness is, in effect, a set of policies and laws that constitute banishment and therefore do more to serve the more affluent and more stable housed populations in than the people experiencing homelessness that may, quite literally, be left with nowhere to
As I stated before, far too often our society ignores that homelessness is a struggle for many people. Additionally, our society often thinks these people choose to be homeless. Terra talked about an incident at a gas station, and how one of the employees at the gas station said all the people at across the street are drunks and addicts. She talked about how upset she gets when people have these misconceptions about people that are struggling with homelessness. Hearing her talk about this broke my heart because our society should not shame people for being homeless; instead, we should be looking at solutions to end homelessness. It is a human right to have basic human needs, yet our society continually provokes their unjust agenda.
As the growth of Political values increases, followers of politics, see one major conflict rise, Homelessness. In 2013 it was estimated that 1 out of every 30 children were homeless. As this issue grows some people think the only way to fix homelessness, is by making it illegal. But criminalizing homelessness will have many negative effects, it will hurt the chances of the homeless getting jobs and getting off the streets, volunteer groups are creating projects to help create housing for the homeless, and the homeless are already treated poorly, and looked down upon by society.