Homlessness

A Reflection on Chapter 35, Helping People Off The Streets: Real

Solutions to Urban Homelessness by Robert V. Hess

Homelessness has always been a topic that interested me from way on back. I was born to a family that while not homeless, was considered working poor. We had enough to eat, and some money for clothes on our backs but that was about it. My parents and my older brother meanwhile grew up extremely poor often times going days without eating a normal meal. For a very brief time in the late 1930's early 1940's they were homeless. At the time the government was an observing entity offering little in the way of assistance. People helped each other. Friends made extra when they had it, some restaurants offered care packages and some people even resorted to rummaging through thrown away food.

At the time of this round of homelessness (depression and right after) many of today's ills weren't in vogue. Street and prescription drugs were almost unheard of. Sure, you had reefer, but even that was contained to certain southern areas of the country and was not considered an epidemic by any means. Alcohol was somewhat of an issue, but with no money alcohol couldn't be bought. Plus for a period you had prohibition. Families were intact---you had very few single parent households. Crime was extraordinarily low even with the dire economic situation. As my father used to say "you could walk the streets 24 hours a day back then in any neighborhood in the city and not worry and you could leave your things outside and no one would steal them". To top it off there is not a true welfare system in place.

Today homelessness is a problem; there is no denying that. There will always be some homelessness just as there will always be some unemployment. But my point is that today we are in relatively affluent conditions. Sure, as I stated in previous papers the family has disintegrated and people work more than ever before, but the fact remains that if people wish to work there is usually a job to be had. Now the jobs aren't the best, and the minimum wage needs to be addressed so that the affordability index can be raised for things like food and housing, but we are better off today, financially, than at almost all point in the past.

Today's homelessness has many components not see before. A lot of what we deem to be homelessness today, are actually mentally impaired individuals let out of psychiatric institutions in the continual