The Homeless Research Paper

The Homeless

Understanding Society-Soci 1015/Dr. Kauppi
January 28, 2012

The Homeless
Amid an economic crisis, debt consumes what little assets people have and slowly drives them towards becoming "homeless". Pay check after pay check spent on paying debt which is accumulated as a means to live while paying of other debt; it’s an endless cycle. People encounter a homeless person every day without taking a second to think about or acknowledge them. Sometimes you get the odd person who will just turn their head in disgust and in some cases give them change. In my personal experience I have been with my friends when they either put them down or sometimes yell at them
The biggest complications arise due to lack of education and/or competitive work skills, and lack of transportation. The government sets up workshops for the homeless with intentions it will help them assimilate in the work force and prosper in society. The downsides to all these workshops are the skills they administer to the homeless are "very thin", rather than expanding their horizons. Meaning the homeless are introduced to jobs of the minimum wage variety. For instance the Winnipeg based Siloam Mission, a shelter for the homeless; have on their website pictures of the homeless working. The work depicted in these pictures often demeaning, shows the homeless picking up garbage by hand or those ‘Picker-uppers’. Although a good entrance into the work force, minimum wage jobs are not enough to take you off the streets let alone pay for rent, food and all of life's other expenses that’s comes with renting or owing a house. In order for society and the homeless to benefit from these workshops we need the government to implement programs that meet higher standards of jobs that pay above minimum wage. In a recent conversation with my father he was discussing with me how he had been discriminated in the workforce for not having an address written on the application. He described that when they see that there is no written address or that the shelters address is on the application
Personally I don’t think that’s enough. The homeless only stay in there for one night and lucky if they can get a bed the next night. In one night I highly doubt that some of these citizens can get over their addiction that fast. Other services are out there that they could attend but there are hefty barricades that can get in the way of the homeless attending them. With 99% of the homeless not having money they have no way of transferring them self’s to the session. As I stated before lack of transportation is a major problem in them attending sessions. Who really wants to go walk 4.5 hours to the other side of town for a meeting that they might not even get included in? The homeless that are addicted to drugs will also need a different type of assistance in their program than the ones who are addicted but live in house. These programs need to be addressed to the needs of specific groups. Overall I applaud the workers that are trying to help the homeless, but these drug and alchol programs need to be strengthened considerably. A solution that I have thought up was what if the hospitals hold certain treatment programs. The downside is we now that a lot of people look the other way when they see the homeless. Meaning if we had the homeless attending the hospital some of the citizens might get scared or shy off from there. Witch could lead to multiple