As this rather tame election season comes to a close, City Councilor Tito Jackson and current Mayor Marty Walsh are vying for the position as Mayor of Boston. As a strong incumbent, Walsh has many goals to continue the progress he has brought to Boston. Tito Jackson is the current city councilor for District 7 in Boston, which consists of Roxbury, Dorchester, the South End, and Fenway. While both of them are democrats, they have proved to be fierce competition for each other, even though Walsh’s current polling is about 35 percentage points over Jackson. Jackson has big plans for “his” Boston, while Walsh wants to continue to make Boston a better place overall by continuing change. Due to his previous successes, continuing policies, and …show more content…
A second issue that Marty Walsh focuses his campaign on is making our streets and neighborhoods safer. Walsh believes in the importance of “make[ing] our city safer by lifting people up rather than by locking people up.” Punishing people without regard to their situation does nothing but make citizens resent their government. By previously implementing a diversified police force and improving public safety, Walsh attempts to continue to reduce crime in the city. This is important because it allows children and adults alike to feel safe in a place that they can call home. One of his main goals is to reduce the illegal trafficking of guns. This would keep guns from falling into the hands of both the wrong people and children who do not understand the harm guns can do. Beyond its illegality, gun trafficking is not a safe practice and by expanding knowledge about guns, it will protect people and allow for less gun-related deaths. A final important issue that Boston struggles with, like many cities, is homelessness. Throughout Walsh’s time as mayor, he has aimed to end this for the city and to implement programs for those who are living on the streets to get basic care. In the past, he has housed over one thousand homeless people, launched the Southampton Street shelter, even appointed Sheila Dillon as Housing Chief. Although it was a controversial act, Walsh also closed the Long Island bridge and tore down the housing
In America’s finest city, vivid thoughts of beaches, sunshine, and excitement all come to mind. Pictures that do not come to mind are the streets that are lined with tents, trash bags full of clothes, old sleeping bags, and items that have value to the owner. All across America, homelessness perpetuates to expand and worsen. Homelessness has been a growing issue these past few years in San Diego and residents are finally speaking out about it. This is a concern that requires to be taken care in one way or another. Components of homelessness include lack of shelter, food, and medical care. One’s who suffer from homelessness are all different ages, races, and have a unique story of their own. It is time for the city of San Diego to find a solution to this matter of contention and pursue to put an end to homelessness.
Every New Yorker has the right to a safe and affordable place to live in. New York’s shortage of affordable housing has reached a crisis point. Poor and elderly people throughout New York City are at a greater risk of homelessness and forced low-income residents do not have food or medical care to stay in their homes. A sinful structure of homelessness in New York City is New York’s shortage of affordable housing. Millions of New Yorkers are desperate to find affordable housing and tens of thousands are forced to live either in dirty shelters or on the streets. Recent data indicates that nearly 60,000 people, including more than 23,000 children, stay in the city’s main homeless shelter system (Guelpa). A small amount of poor renter households received a housing subsidy from the local government. Little assistance is being provided which means that most poor families and individuals that seek assistance
Homelessness is a serious issue that is looked down upon within my community. Many homeless die when it’s too hot, too cold, or too wet. The New Orleans Mission sees this a huge issue and argue that homeless people are real people who need real resources, like shelter, food, and clothes. In addition, they have found that, without supportive services, housing is often not enough to end homelessness. From helping homeless youth, to providing assistance in obtaining disability benefits, to providing transportation, to offering intensive job training assistance to homeless veterans. The New Orleans Mission operate a number of innovative
For Father’s Day this past year my family and I treated our Dad to a Houston Astros baseball game. The game was held at Minute Maid Park in the heart of Downtown Houston. We were running late for the game and it began to rain. While driving around I witnessed more homeless people on the streets than ever. As we walked to the stadium after parking, I could not help but think about each of their (the homeless) situation. It was daunting to me that they were spending a holiday alone and it was a norm for them. Homeless people are often not given the time of day by everyday citizens. Chris Hadfield explains that when a problem exists, human nature causes us to bolt from the situation rather than approach it immediately (Hadfield 55). Currently (2016) there are approximately two million Houstonians (Suburban Stats) and of those, more than 5,000 citizens are homeless (Homeless Houston). It is easy to forget about the homeless because they are neglected from society. If homeless people were given a purpose, then they would not be occupying space on the streets.
The purpose of this paper is to bring acknowledgement to the homeless population in Philadelphia. Research will be provided from scholarly journals as well as published, credible websites. We will explore the overall statistics in the United States but will have a focus on the city of Philadelphia. The homeless population is large and its evident there is an issue with housing and mental illnesses. While there are programs to assist, the homeless population outnumbers the resources available here in Philadelphia. This paper will explore the different types of people impacted such as families, youth, veterans and the elderly. This paper will explain and acknowledge that Philadelphia doesn’t provide enough support to assist the homeless. This paper will focus on the resources and support of local services and but also bring attention to the lack thereof.
Being a former member of the Ohio House of Representatives, Matt Lynch discusses the prevalent issue of homelessness in his article. He introduces his work by developing a person with the name of Greg, who has an office job and stays at a homeless shelter. Lynch further discusses the motley of reasons why homeless people become homeless. He compares the shelter to a hospital waiting room where occupants are entertained, which span from playing cards with other residents to watching television. Thereafter, he describes bills and government programs
Imagine this, a family of four is trying to survive the night. They are lying on the ground in bitter temperatures with only a cardboard box and a blanket to shield themselves from the harsh nights that they are forced to endure. Men, women, and children wait for morning when the doors of the food shelter will finally open, providing many with their meal of the day. This is the setting for hundreds of families in the Phoenix area. It can happen to anyone, anytime. Sometimes it’s a result of circumstances beyond our control- job loss, eviction, domestic violence, mental illness, medical bills. Homelessness is a growing problem and I have a proposition to stop it. We must give homeless people permanent housing with no strings attached.
“Homeless is more than being without a home. It is tied into education needs, food, security; health issues both mental and physical, employment issues, etc. Don’t forget the whole picture.” (“Boxed In” 2005 pg. 108)
The issue of chronic homelessness is not just a political or academic debate but has become evident from men and women living without homes in the streets of America. Homeless men and women
The day after Mayor Schell communicated his pledge both Seattle newspaper dedicated its headlines to the new. According to Susan Byrnes (1998), “The mayor said … he would ask the City Council to immediately allocate $500,000 for additional shelter beds, short-term rent assistance to families about to be evicted and hotel vouchers for homeless women and children. Schell also released a list of 11 ways ordinary citizens can help address homelessness, including respecting and being kind to them” (The Seattle Times, para.2). Through this declaration the four (4) steps taken by Mayor Schell to reengineer the program are easy to identify.
Homelessness is another major factor affecting many people’s lives. Not only does it affect the homeless ones but it also affects the people surrounding them who might not help them and feel nothing but hatred towards them, or people who might help them but the help is not enough to get them back on their feets. A home and jobs should be given to the homeless. It’s not only grown ups living on the streets, it’s also kids who have no support system and it’s harder for them to get back on their feets. I believe mayor Bill de Blasio can help many of the homeless to actually live off of something, like provide them a well paying job and a roof to live under. “De Blasio argues, though, that he has programs in place—rental subsidies, eviction protection efforts, and street outreach teams, for example—that are working, but need more time and fine-tuning.” It is said that he has been able to move many homeless out of shelters and into stable housing. Helping the homeless will be one of the major factors that will help New York City in a positive way.
However, Murphy explains how the city does not put in further effort to help the homeless problem beyond banning them from sleeping in the public eye; with these laws many homeless are lost where to go. With this little help the homeless received, in 2003 the city was in the list of “Top 20 meanest cities” created by the National Coalition on Homelessness.
According to “The Coalition of Homelessness”, as of September 2015, there are approximately 59, 305 homeless people living in the urban streets in New York City. Despite the high efforts implemented to eradicate homelessness, numbers are continuing to increase over the past decades (2015). Non-profit organizations such as The Homebase Community Prevention Program, and Coalition for the Homeless have been helping New Yorkers overcome homelessness, develop and maintain current policies on homelessness, and help to implement extensive preventative measures along the way. The city’s current shelter population is the largest it has ever been since the era of The Great Depression, finding that there is an estimate of about 22,000 children living
In addition to Hazel story, news of the poorest city in America, Camden, New Jersey, has also risen. The federal government requires all states to have a homeless count every other year in order to fund homeless services, and this year in Camden, CNN brought homelessness into the spotlight. CNN interviewed with Michael Powell, a homeless man who lives on the outskirts of one of the “tent cities” that surveyors often find, and discovered that Michael Powell, and some others, had never been accounted for in the homeless count. In fact, Michael Powell did not know that a count even existed. “’It's set up to be kind of an impossible task,’ said Maria Foscarinis, founder of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. She said one way to get more accurate findings would be to extend the count over a longer period of time or to do multiple counts per year.” (Ellis 1) However, this may never happen because federal assistance and programs that provide assistance to the needy are experiencing cuts in their fund.