Before last night's reading (Homelessness over 50: The Graying of Chicago's Homeless Population), I was not aware of how difficult the elderly are living in the streets. Older people from the ages of 50-64 are the biggest group of homeless whose population is increasing as time goes by. What I found to be the saddest part about this statistic is that these people cannot work, they cannot afford three meals a day, they cannot afford to pay for any medications they can need. Keep in mind that most elderly suffer from diabetes, hypertensia or chronic illness.
After the reading, I still had many questions about the plenty of homeless people who are on the streets looking for a way to survive. I wondered if the city of Chicago is doing something to help the homeless by providing shelters and other facilities in order to help them survive. I see so many poor people on the streets all around Chicago and I always wonder why they all end up being homeless. Maybe bad circumstances, unemployment or just bad luck that lead these people to become homeless but in the end, we will never really know what happened to every poor person in Chicago.
Reuben Miller told us how he spent some time working and interacting with prisoners at cook county jail. He was telling us that most of the inmates were Black and Latinos. To my surprise, 80-90% of the inmates were Christians and/or Catholics, but what was even more shocking was to know that 50% of the prisoners were below the 50% poverty level. I was not aware about the fact that many if not all of the prisoners are poor. Once they are released from jail, these people have a harder time bringing themselves up and tend to fall into the poverty rate already existing in Chicago.
We also talked about welfare and what it is. As a class, we agreed that welfare is government assistance, its getting food stamps, the link card, social security and Medicaid. It was a very interesting lecture because we all had the opportunity to express our thoughts on welfare. As a whole, we thought that welfare was given to the poor people, especially mothers with children. It is also given to the unemployed, and to lazy people. Overall, our conversation on welfare was very interesting. Having us, four students, each from a different background and life style, we all came to the same conclusion about welfare, and I thought it was very interesting how we all think only the poor receive welfare.
Once we continued our conversation on homeless people, we began to talk about how homeless people abuse the money we give them. I believe this is quite true because in many cases, poor people do not want our help, they just want cash. I once offered food to a homeless man and he did not take it, all he wanted was money. The sad thing is that this money is being used to buy drugs and alcohol in order to feed on addictions. I think that being homeless is the worst thing anyone can go through. Living on the streets is so devastating especially when it is winter time when harsh weather conditions can be deadly.
Learning more about how people are trying to help out the most needed motivates me into doing something to help out as well. I give money to the poor because I believe that giving out a dollar or two to someone who has nothing is the right thing to do. We need to stop being so selfish by taking everything for granted and we need so start lending a hand to the poor. Even though some people are too greedy and have negative thoughts about the poor, these people should know that because of this same reason, this neglect towards the poor is the main reason why poverty does not end in our country. I believe we should all help each other out as much as possible even if it takes you to give a poor person a dollar once in a while.
After Reuben left us thinking about how much homeless people are suffering and why society treats them the way they do, we had Michael speak to us about CURL's involvement in a 10 -year plan to help end poverty in the city of Chicago. At first, I was not surprised to hear about this 10- year plan because I thought many people at one point, tried to do something about homelessness and probably failed. Once I heard Michael speak about how serious this project is, I was very impressed at how it is being handled. First, there has been a reduction in the amount of shelter home in Chicago, from 80 to 18. This is very terrible for all of the homeless people because now, where will they go? Well, the answer to this would be this project. Its purpose is to create emergency homes then transfer the homeless people into interim housing where they will be giving between 30-100 days to work and to improve their life styles a bit, after that they will be taken into permanent homes which will be available to them at all times.
When I was listening to Michael, I began to think so much about the possibilities of the project failing, what would happen next? Is there a back -up plan? I asked Michael a few questions about whether or not these homes will have enough space for space for so many poor people. I am actually worried about the older people who need the health care, hopefully they will receive the help they need.
What I found so shocking to hear was the fact that housing the homeless benefits society and the city by being cheaper than having people on the streets. Michael was telling us that it is much more expensive having people living on the streets, if they get arrested and end up going to prison, if they end up going to the emergency room, who will pay for all of this? It is just crazy to understand that yes, this definitely benefits the homeless but behind it all, this is primarily done in order to benefit society and the state from wasting time in their veterans and the rest of the homeless.
Over all, today was a very interesting day. I have learned so much more about homeless and the plan the city of Chicago has in order to end poverty and homelessness which is such a great thing. I am very happy to hear how many agencies and how many people are willing to take part in this project in order to make it a success. Hopefully we will see results in the next few years, even better, in the next homeless count which will take place in January.
No comments:
Post a Comment