Tent Cities Analysis

Savannah Georgia (GA) is home to a beautiful historic downtown area. The city of Savannah’s population is 145,674 people as of 2015 (US Census, 2016). On the periphery are abandoned or rundown residential areas. These areas are surrounded by various residential streets and businesses. Regrettably, Savannah has many homeless people living within these areas. Often they remain hidden in the woods just off the interstate where they live in tents. This area has been dubbed “Tent City” by the local population, and local news outlets. Savannah’s homeless citizens are the primary subjects of the vulnerable population. The purpose of this paper is to indicate the homeless as a vulnerable population

Austin is a large, yet still expanding metropolis from the great state of Texas; as many statistics show, with big cities come a considerable following of the homeless population. One of the first things that many people from tourists to new residents notice when entering Austin from I-35 is the homeless camp under the bridge. It’s certainly an eye catching scene, yet almost everyone forgets about it once it’s out of their peripheral vision. I, for one, felt dejected seeing such a somber scenery, yet when upon driving to a new vicinity, I’d forgotten all about it. Maybe it was my own way of coping with the fact that there were people who were and still are in need of help and I couldn’t offer anything substantial to them. Either way, as I’ve learned we can’t help those who doesn’t want to be helped. In this research I’m delving into the causes of homelessness, the reason why it’s so pervasive in large cities such as Austin, and how the gentrification happening in the city isn’t helping.

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

Communities often make more of an effort to chase out or hide the homeless rather than take steps that might eliminate the causes of homelessness. Laws usually include prohibiting loitering in public areas such as parks and train stations. Police officers sometimes take aggressive actions against homeless individuals to enforce homeless regulations (“Dealing With” 8-9). Communities that try to regulate the homeless have a negative impact on public support for rehabilitation programs. Laws that target the homeless support the view that it is not homelessness that is the problem but the people who are affected by it. Money that could be used to fund homeless agencies is instead used to bring homeless citizens to

“Supporters of strict laws barring behavior associated with the homeless argue that allowing large numbers of homeless people to commit quality-of-life offenses in urban neighborhoods is unfair to those who work, live, and play in those neighborhoods” (“Homelessness”).Allowing homeless people to linger in communities is unjust to the people who live there and work there. “Proponents of housing first note that the cost of providing homeless people with apartments is far less than the cost of letting them remain on the street” (“Homelessness”).It costs less to house the homeless rather than to let them stay on the street. “Housing first, they contend, has demonstrated that chronically homeless people are not beyond help but just require permanent housing before they can properly address mental or physical disabilities” (“Homelessness”).Housing first will help address a homeless person’s problems and will have permanent housing for the

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, a non-profit organization that voices the issue of homelessness, enlightens, “On a single night in January 2014, 578,424 people were experiencing homelessness – meaning they were sleeping outside or in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program” (The State of Homelessness in America 2015). Staggering statistics similar this inspired Matt Lynch to write his article titled ‘The Homeless Lack a Political Voice, But Not American Ideals’ and it also motivated Anna Quindlen to express her emotions in ‘Homeless.’ Both articles posed by Lynch and Quindlen contain comparative flaws, which range from logical fallacies to the utilization of unfair information. Each writing, however, incorporates multiple pieces of significant information relative to the topic at hand, yet Lynch’s work manages to pull ahead with the addition of minor, yet important, details that Quindlen failed to propose.

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.

One of the simplest pieces of knowledge we acquire in elementary school (for future growth and development) are the three basic needs a living organism requires for living: food, water, and shelter. However, not everyone has access to all of these essentials. Homeless people are faced with awful conditions and suffer more due to poor weather conditions, diseases, and lack of safety. There hasn’t been much progress on this issue, and if this continues, the number of homeless people will only increase. In a few states the topic is being named as a “statewide emergency”, but unfortunately this problem is national. Instead of focusing on state programs, local programs and non-profit organizations to fix the housing issue, we must all contribute to ending this epidemic. The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) released an article stating, “In January 2015, 564,708 people were homeless on a given night in the United States” (Snapshot of Homelessness). We must develop a solution to end long term homelessness immediately. The best way of solving this issue is to provide stable long-term housing, which is a term used to describe the home’s environment and financial status.

The paper discusses Mayor's Schell's zero homeless family pledge. Mayor Schell was determined to eliminate the homelessness in Seattle when he became the mayor in 1998, to achieve his mission he and his team came up with some strategies and restructuring which are discussed in the paper.

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that housing is a fundamental component to a decent standard of living, yet few city governments--even in the most developed economies--have proven themselves capable of ensuring such a basic right to their constituents (United Nations, General Assembly). Ranked 49th among the 50 U.S. states for its number of housing units per capita, California has notoriously struggled with chronic shortages in its urban housing market. With 118,142 homeless people recorded in 2016, California holds almost 22% of the nation’s homeless population (Fact Sheet: Homelessness in California 1).

Homelessness in Seattle has proven to be a tremendous issue. Fighting for years, Seattle has not been able to make any significant improvements when it comes to homelessness. Although eliminating homelessness may seem to have a simple solution, more housing, the causes of homelessness determine how difficult eliminating it will be. Seattle’s homelessness stems from many complex issues that can be traced back many years. One of the most significant causes of homelessness in Seattle is cuts in funding towards low-income housing combined with raised rent prices in both previously affordable housing and housing geared towards the affluent.

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.

The temporary solving of the problem, was the mass shelters that were built, but this solution was back-lashed with the “not in my backyard” reaction, and with limited government funding. The focus of the homeless, allows claimsmakers to advocate for “rights” of those homeless. The right for them, to do as they please in the public, as they would do in their own home. Those advocating, do not advocate for more shelters, more government assistance for those homeless, job security or affordable housing, but rather the right to sleep on a cold park bench, and begging in the subway

The state of Idaho has slowly began to lose its fight against chronic homelessness, as even after years of struggle, its homeless rates have only increased. Idaho has implemented a variety of tactics in order to combat its growing number of homeless citizens, however, all efforts had left the state with unsatisfactory results. Boise, Idaho had initiated, ‘Hiding the Homeless’ which used the method of harassing the homeless with the hope that they would gather their belongs and leave. For short amount of time, this strategy did act as a deterrent for the states homeless rate. But, Idaho was not victorious for long as the rates

The United States is currently experiencing a homelessness crisis, matched by the Great Depression. An estimated number of sixty-two thousand American citizens are restricted to living in shelters in New York City alone, which also does not include those who are not living in the shelters. Giselle Routhier, policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless, addresses this issue in her in-depth website article titled Rejecting Low Expectations: Housing is the Answer. Published in 2017 by the Coalition for the Homeless website (http://nationalhomeless.org), her primary focus in writing this extensive article was to bring awareness to the homeless problem (as of 2017) in New York City and provide the public with possible solutions. In her website