Street Culture Paper

Homeless teenagers are a vulnerable population that faces many challenges just in terms of daily existence in addition to their overall development in the transitioning to adulthood. Current studies are reported to indicate that the primary cause of homeless among youth is "family dysfunction in the form of parental neglect, physical or sexual abuse, family substance abuse, and family violence." (Runway & Homeless Youth and Relationship Toolkit, 2009, p.1) Homeless youth are generally defined as "an unaccompanied youth ages 12 and older who are without family support and who are living in shelters, on the streets, in cares or vacant buildings and who are 'couch surfing' or living in other unstable circumstances." (Runway & Homeless Youth and Relationship Toolkit, 2009, p.1) Son (2002) writes that it is "...unknown how many homeless youth are out there. Most of them are not in the child welfare, juvenile justice, or mental health systems, making it difficult to accurately gather statistical data." (p.2)

In an effort to end homelessness in Washington, DC, low barrier shelters, such as the Harriet Tubman Woman’s Shelter were implemented. Located in the center of DC General Campus in Southeast, DC, the Harriet Tubman Woman’s shelter, “is a 100 bed low-barrier emergency shelter for women over the age of 18 who are in urgent need of housing, food or case management” (Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Washington, Inc., 2010). A low-barrier shelter is “usually primarily short-term shelter for individuals. Low-barrier shelter is designed to keep people safe, is often open only 12 hours a day, and is often in a congregate setting. This type of program is provided, on a first come, first served basis, to any adult presenting as homeless. It is sometimes also referred to as emergency shelter” (Interagency Council on Homelessness District of Columbia, 2010, p.4) For all shelters in the Washington, DC area the women are to be out of the shelter from the time of 7am until the doors open again at 7pm. For those women who are not a part of the work program or have nothing to do during the day, the women have a chance to participate in the day program located in the shelter.

Homelessness is a major problem in the United States. An incredibly vulnerable group is the homeless youth due to their young age and lack of education. According to Edidin, Ganim, Hunter, & Karnik (2012) on any particular night in the United States there are ~2 million homeless youth living on the streets, in shelters, or in other temporary accommodation. Youth become homeless for multiple reasons whether it be because they have aged out of foster care, ran from home, were kicked out of their home, or because they have become homeless along with their family members. Within the umbrella categorization of homeless youth there are high at risk subgroups, common misconceptions, and a serious concern of lack of support and medical services.

Many youth who have or are still living on the streets have faced sexual or physical abuse from an adult at some point in their lives and the data states that 61% of all youth face this (McKay, E, (2009). Seeing the Possibilities. The Need for a Mental health Focus Amongst Street-Involved Youth: Recognizing and Supporting Resilience. Toronto: Wellesley Institute.). Approximately 1,500 – 2,000 homeless youth make up the total amount of homeless people sleeping on the streets every night in Toronto; this number is considerably large and it continues to grow because the issue of youth homelessness or homelessness in general is not thought of as a priority by various levels of government and therefore

I write today to request your permission to research solutions that will enable LGBTQ youth who have become homeless to find safe and appropriate services tailored to their special needs. In order to properly investigate the available options and make recommendations to my community, I will have to research the circumstances that leads to LGBTQ youth homelessness, the challenges they face and what’s already available to them.

The ethnography With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets by Marni Finkelstein, describes the life of street youth in New York City. The ethnography attempts to debunk myths that prior studies have formed of these street youths. The author, Marni Finkelstein is an Anthropologist renowned for her work on urban populations at risk. She graduated from the New School of Social Research in New York City with her PhD in Anthropology. Finkelstein has also conducted studies on substance abuse, sexual assaults and drug use of youths in New York City. Finkelstein achieves her goals, by using a scientific approach when observing the street youths. A few methods she utilizes are similar to that have been previous used but

In this paper, I plan to first describe the “Code of the Street” which is a term coined and a book written by Elijah Anderson. I would also summarize and describe two journal articles that test Anderson’s idea of the “Code of the Street” for a more definite explanation. I will tell how the two articles that I have chosen relates to some of the concepts that Anderson talked about in the book. I will then define general strain theory and social learning or differential association theory. Lastly, I will explain how general strain theory and social learning theory or differential association theory explain some of the behaviors that were seen by the individuals in the book published by Anderson. I will point out some of the individual’s behavior and demonstrate whether it may lead to crime or whether the behavior was learned in any way.

Imagine a young child growing up, learning, and trying to further his or her life to obtain success in the future. For an “everyday” child this can be challenging, however “everyday” obstacles can be overcome. For thousands of children in the United States, this dream is almost impossible to achieve. These children are a part of the homeless population that is spread throughout the United States. Many times these individuals try to hide this major secret from the rest of the world, but homelessness is very prevalent among these youths today. Various problems occur in these peoples’ lives that others could not even begin to understand. Homelessness affects children in every stage of life physically, mentally, and emotionally.

In the early 2000s—after a 15-year push to create emergency shelters for the burgeoning homeless population in U.S. cities—shelter funding began to decline, nationwide.    For  Pine  Street  Inn,  Boston’s  foremost  homeless

Beacon Hill is a programed aimed to aid homeless youth find permanent housing. This program evaluation plan is intended to analyze the effectiveness of the program with the youth populations. It is also a trial run for the program to make sure that is suitable to meet the goals and objectives once it is officially implemented. It is meant to identify any weakness and fix them before the program starts. Through the use of various evaluation techniques, which include individual interviews with participants as well as surveys/questionnaires, program evaluators will be able to acknowledge the usefulness of the program and verify that it will meet the needs of the homeless youth population.

With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets is an ethnography which describes the lives of youths living on the streets of New York City. The author attempts to conduct her own research in order to dispute the false impressions that many previous researches have formed about the youths living on the street. The ethnographic method she uses aids her study of the “street kids” in acknowledging the facts behind their choice of lifestyle and their experiences while on the street. Marni Finklestein received her PhD in Anthropology from the New School of Social Research in New York City. She has also managed to organize many other studies based on drugs and substance abuse as well as sexual assaults in the streets of

According to my last service learning experience at ROOTS in 2014, the clients in the shelter were mostly young male adults. The homeless people’s age range in the ROOTS are young, which is mentioned as ROOTS instruction with age 18 to 25. The ethnicity in ROOTS are wide too, which includes whites, black, Latinos, and very little of Asian. In the shelter, some of the people were unemployment and some of the people has a job. Some people in the shelter exchange their life event with each other and some people were quiet and seeking for peace. Since the client’s information is private as the law stated for every shelter. I did not have the way to check on the health status on each client. However, based on my observation on their appearance in the past, people were healthy in ROOTS and very few of physical disability people that I have seen in ROOTS. Also, clients in the shelter mostly looked nice and friendly to chat and play. The most common risk behavior may be that some of the people may use some words of sexism to the female volunteers. However, those clients in the shelter did not like to talk and would like to avoid any type of communication. Therefore, the physical violent situation did not occurred according to my past experience. The clients in the shelter can all speak English, even though several of them may not take English as their primary language. Overall, these clients all have their different stories

The discourses surrounding homeless youth were an important factor contributing to the implementation of the SSA. For instance, Parnaby (2003) suggests that the legislative response was made possible because of the way “squeegee kids” in Toronto were constructed in the media and public discourse. Through examining newspaper articles in three publications in Toronto, Parnaby (2003) notes there was an increase in print media which constructed squeegeeing as a sign of urban decay. Notably, there were three themes which stood out: the increased size of the social problem, the unruly appearance and demeanor of the youth, and the public’s fear of crime (Parnaby, 2003). Furthermore, Glasbeek (2006) examined how fear of crime intersected with gender and safety in the rhetoric against squeegee kids. Gendered conceptions of safety contributed to the perception of the “squeegee kids problem”. What this means is that, there was discourse in the media of “dangerous” squeegee kids “intimidating” “helpless” women (Glasbeek, 2006; Parnaby, 2003). Parnaby (2003) and Glasbeek (2006) highlight debates in the Ontario parliament, which draw on these gendered

Homelessness Youth Services in Barwon Youth Southwest Region – specifically the Youth Entry Point workers and management, who are primarily involved in undertaking specialist assessments to gain a greater understanding of the young person’s current housing situation, who explore barriers such as Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD), Mental Health or Family Violence concerns etc.

Shooting street photography is something that many photographers aspire to but few every do. Too often photographers fear actually shooting on the street. They feel that street is a skill with too many demands. Or, they feel that other people will judge them too harshly. The great thing is that none of these things are true. With a few tricks of the trade nearly anyone can be on their way to creating world class street snaps.