Substandard Housing

The Sanchez family is the typical Latino family that you find in most neighborhoods. The mother, Celia Sanchez doesn’t speak English since she’s surrounded by people who speak Spanish. As a Latino mother she’s very religious attends church and participates in church events where she gets food as well. Since Celia’s English is limited this was an impediment during school conferences and other situations that she has faced. Celia wants to apply for food stamps but her husband Hector doesn’t agree and is completely against it. I kind of understand where Hector is coming from being the man of the house he feels that he needs to provide for his family and thinks he’s responsible for everyone. Thus, he doesn’t leave room for additional help and wants to everything himself.

Poverty is a main part of life for many people in the world, more importantly the United States. Jeanette Walls shows how big of a problem poverty is in her memoir “The Glass Castle”, with her stories of how she grew up and her family’s struggles. How her family was treated along with what the people living around them found important clearly shows their economical class. The problem of food scarcity, or not having the bare necessities are some of poverty’s main problems. In “The Glass Castle”, the issues of poverty are displayed through not having the basic necessities, not being able to provide for children, and how there is not always enough food to feed everyone in the family.

Thousands of Americans use some type of help from the government, whether it is finical aid or food stamps and more than half of those Americans have children that they are trying to feed but barely getting by. It must hurt those thousands of people prides that they can’t put food on the table to feed their own children by themselves without help from the government hoping that one day they can support them; but they do what they must do to provide for their families, they put their pride aside and their responsibility first. In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Jeanette’s parents Rose-Mary and Rex Walls have trouble doing this, they don’t accept hands outs or any form of charity because they think they can take care of their children by

In the video, Homeless: The Motel Kids in Orange County, I was shocked by the fact that many unfortunate families came from the richest counties. Initially, I assumed that poor families came from places where the county was in bad shape. Also, I was in awe with the reason why one family remained in Orange County and how the families lived every day. Personally, I liked the mother’s response when she was asked if the living environment was damaging for Rudee and the mother said it doesn’t matter where you live, if you live in the ghetto, you don’t have to act like it. Rudee’s mother believes they’ll make it because they’re survivors. I admire the mother’s mentality because it reminded me of my father’s upbringing with no electricity and how

These programs may include Welfare, food stamps (SNAP), and government housing projects. According to the authors, the results showed from the analysis of how many families are on food stamps is, in 2011 over 1.5 million households with about 3 million children were surviving on less than $2.00 a day, including a family member in the work force (Edin, Shaefer, 2016). It is amazing that these families are living on so little when on when many people spend more than that before they go to school, or work. For example, grabbing a quick breakfast before work can cost almost $7.00. The authors noted that they researched about a total of 18 families, but only 8 total are featured in the book.

Like the previous example of our class activity, you can gather some information about the family to personally consider whether you think the people portrayed deserve help. In the opening of the book, Andrea Campbell gives us information about the couple’s job status, income, and family size, which allows the reader to make a first opinion on the family’s deservedness. Once this introduction is made, the reader can see the twists and turns that can lead a family into needing government help, which is often the part of the story that gets lost – as most assume those in poverty are there because of their own ambition or actions. The wife gets in an accident, which forces the couple to take an insurance plan from the California government that is designed to keep them in poverty by taking away their income after a set cap is reached (Campbell 2014). The book continues to take the reader through the experience of trying to survive on social insurance and means-tested programs (those where recipients must hold a job or other status to maintain benefits), and ends with three Chapters discussing the difficulties that means-tested programs create for those in poverty. By forcing the reader to, in some way, experience a very average story about surviving in poverty, the book forces the reader

A documentary by Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, known as A Place at the Table, talks about food insecurity in America. The documentary starts off by showing different people in America not knowing when their next meal is. This theme continues by showing the story of Barbie Izquierdo, a single mother who has trouble feeding her children and barely survives on food stamps. The documentary shows Barbie taking part of a program called witness to hunger raising awareness for food insecurity in America. Barbie manages to get a job working to help people qualify for food stamps. Sadly Barbie no longer qualifies for food stamps and can barely afford to feed her children on her current paycheck.

Affordable housing has become the paramount issue of cities and dense urban areas. San Francisco is the posterchild of an unaffordable city that regardless of immense investment from blue chip firms like Google, Facebook, and their ilk of startups evaluated at $1 billion or more, policymakers and elected officials must wrestle with the housing affordability crisis that is considered endogenous to swaths of homelessness and record statistics on crime. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has made affordable housing the centerpiece of his legislation and championed the cause as a social justice issue—neighborhoods must remain affordable to maintain diversity for all races, ethnicities, and low-income families. A small sample of 827 New Yorkers by the NY1-Baruch College City Poll found the main concern of respondents was affordable housing while crime, jobs, and homelessness were peripheral problems (Cuza, 2016). The public discourse on how to address housing across the United States has pointed to negative externalities that surround rent-regulation and homeownership. Conversely, for this essay I will present various cases in order to illustrate the housing crunch is influenced less by housing and land regulations, or antagonistic homeowners but is induced by global market forces.

The housing crisis of the late 2000s rocked the economy and changed the landscape of the real estate business for years to come. Decades of people purchasing houses unfordable houses and properties with lenient loans policies led to a collective housing bubble. When the banking system faltered and the economy wilted, interest rates were raised, mortgages increased, and people lost their jobs amidst the chaos. This all culminated in tens of thousands of American losing their houses to foreclosures and short sales, as they could no longer afford the mortgage payments on their homes. The United States entered a recession and homeownership no longer appeared to be a feasible goal as many questioned whether the country could continue to support a middle-class. Former home owners became renters and in some cases homeless as the American Dream was delayed with no foreseeable return. While the future of the economy looked bleak, conditions gradually improved. American citizens regained their jobs, the United States government bailed out the banking industry, and regulations were put in place to deter such events as the mortgage crash from ever taking place again. The path to homeowner ship has been forever altered, as loans in general are now more difficult to acquire and can be accompanied by a substantial down payment.

There are 50 million people who live in poverty in the U.S, today. There are more than 30 million children growing up in bad conditions. Due to lack of money some people are unable to afford food and shelter which result in homelessness. On a night in January 2014, 578,424 people were experiencing homelessness. These people were sleeping outside or in an emergency shelter because they couldn’t afford to pay for a place to stay and had no family that would let them stay over. Included in the 578,424 homeless people were war veterans, people with mental health issues, people whose families have thrown them out, and more. During the winter, many homeless people freeze to death because they don’t have the appropriate clothing for the low temperature. Today there are about 795 million people out of the 7.3 billion people in the world, suffering from chronic malnourishment. Over a thousand people go through their day without eating including men, women, and children. These people are too poor to afford food for themselves or their families; although there are food stamps and other services to provide to help these families, some don’t want to accept this help because they believe it is their job to provide for their

In her quest to bring awareness to the lower class, she includes many statistics to add to her claim. When struggling to find housing, she mentions “that 59 percent of poor renters, amounting to a total of 4.4 million households, spend more than 50 percent of their income on shelter” (94). Much of the information she chooses to include adds insight to the severity of the situation, but these statistics are hidden away as footnotes at the bottom of the pages. While they add to her argument, her personal experiences take priority and diminish the credibility of her

Poverty in the United States today has many faces. There’s the pleading face of a middle-aged man on a city street holding up a sign that says “Hungry, Need Help.” There’s the anxious face of a young child in a schoolroom somewhere, whose only real meal today will be a free school lunch. There’s the sad face of a single mother who doesn’t have enough money to buy clothes for her children. And there’s the frustrated face of a young man working at a minimum-wage job who can't afford to pay his rent.

The HBO documental Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County shows us the cruel reality of one of the richest counties in the United States. Due to our previous economic issues that the country had suffered, families similar to the ones in the documental are not able to afford rent or own a home, putting families in situations where a family of five or more has to live in a one-bed motel, where the children suffer the most. The main reason for families living in such harsh conditions is unemployment; householders are not able to find stable jobs to support their families, and both parents have to work multiple jobs to sustain and provide a decent living to their families. In some cases families have to have more than both parents working to

“Homeless The Motel Kids of Orange County”, this is a film by Alexandra Pelosi. This film is about well the homeless kids in Orange County. The film starts off with a short text stating, “These are some of the poorest kids living in one of the richest countries in the nation”. The film’s purpose is to show the viewers how adults struggle, those that lose their jobs or are working 2 jobs and overtime and can’t afford to live in an apartment or house and can’t afford to buy their children clothes and school supplies. For women this could be said to be feminization of poverty, were most are single moms with young children working 2 jobs or if they alone support the family. It’s opening the eyes to the public showing a true definition of the working poor. Meaning people who are working yet can’t make it. Then the video provides the conditions the children are put in and how they feel about it. It also shows the way kids’ and families live in a motel and go to school and what they go through each day.

Furthermore, the declining availability of public assistance has also increased the number of families that are in poverty or homeless. Fewer families are receiving the help they need. There were once many federal and state assistance programs that were available for those in need, but because of budget cuts, most of the funding for these programs have been cut or eliminated. As a result of loss of benefits many continue to struggle. In Anna Quindlen’s, “Our Tired, Our Poor, Our Kids, Quindlen states how “[a] study done in San Diego in 1998 found that a third of homeless families had recently had