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Categories Of Homelessness

Decent Essays

Questions type 1
Poverty is defined as the deprivation of opportunity, for example lack of access to education, health are and basic needs such as food, shelter, clothes. In Seattle, the most common characteristic of poverty is homelessness. Riv Rick, a representative of the Night Watch agency, said that over 10,000 people in Seattle are homeless every night. He divided these people in three categories. The first category consists of people who have no access to basic needs. The second category consists of people with Seasonal Affective Disorders. The third category includes those who have a one-time homeless experience. To be homeless in Seattle means not having a place to sleep, no address, no social capital and being economically and socially …show more content…

I am not sure who is high on drugs and who is not, and so all the time I am always scared that something is going to happen to me and I am pretty sure that this is not only me; there are other people that feel the same way. But one thing is that I do not give these people a chance to even talk to me when they approach me. Now this is what I call social isolation. These people on the streets are avoided, not because they have done something wrong but because they have been generalized as drug addicts or mentally ill. Iceland explains food assistance as one of the programs that benefit very poor families. Iceland mentions that in 2011, “when families’ receipt of food assistance was included in the measure of family, the number of extremely poor families was 795,000” unlike 1.5 million families when the food assistance was not included (p. 47). One of the things that Night Watch does includes providing food for about 147 homeless people each night. Therefore, providing food for these people removes them from a category that others still belong to; those that are still struggling to get food. Besides Night Watch, there are still other organizations that are committed to alleviating …show more content…

Katrina Hale, a representative of the Catholic Community Services, mentioned some of the programs they have that help the homeless in Seattle. These include providing facilities for the homeless to bathe, wash their clothes, have medical care, and other services that help to make their lives stable. In addition, this organization also provides adoption, foster care, youth tutoring and other services that help the children and youth to grow up in a more secure and loving environment. Tara Hoyt, one of the speakers we had in class, explained her experience visiting the tent cities and other homeless people in Seattle. She explained how different it is to learn about the hardship pf poverty from books and from actually visiting the poor. There is such a small space with a large quantity of people occupying it. She also explains how these places smell so bad because people barely take a shower. The reason as to why they do not bathe is not because they do not want to but because they have little or no access to a place where they can bathe from. Therefore, these people are deprived of resources that most of us have and

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