Beyond Four Walls: Empowering the Homeless
“If you had all the money in the world, what would you do with it?”
“All the money? A limitless amount?” I stare into a dusty reflection of myself on screen, the sound of my laptop fan buzzing in the background.
“Yeah, sure. Money to pay for absolutely anything you can think of.”
My finger hovered over my chin and my eyes wandered the ceiling of my room. Through the lens of my camera, it looked as though I was looking upward, asking a higher omniscient being.
I filled the thought with a hum, and then a pregnant pause.
“With a limitless amount of money, I want to build shelters for the homeless.” They stare back at me with eager expressions. “It doesn’t make sense that there are people sleeping on the streets. It doesn’t have to be that way – no one should be sleeping on the streets. But we have to make sure that they can become self-sustaining in the future. We can give them access to training to upskill for jobs.”
As a budding first year in university, my sights were untainted by the moral greyness or the capitalistic greed underpinning the rungs of the corporate ladder. One word I would use to describe myself was as an ‘idealist’.
The idealist
Homelessness is a cruel humiliation perpetuated by neglect and indifference. The epidemic, across developed and underdeveloped nations, is rooted in the cyclical nature of poverty, addiction, and illness.
The Land of the Free, superpower, and victor of the second World War, the United States is the fourth largest homeless population, with New York and Los Angeles accounting for 40% of the pie.
Mayor of the city of Los Angeles, Karen Bass won her 2023 election on a single campaign promise to “solve homelessness”. While 46,000 homeless individuals crowd the streets of Los Angeles, Bass plans to have 30% of the homeless population housed by the end of 2024 with her housing relief program: Inside Safe. With this, she sees progress and success in placing almost 2,000 individuals in temporary housing by the end of the first week. This momentum launched into a policy proposal that offered vacant hotel rooms as interim housing for unsheltered individuals.
In the meantime, a shortage of affordable housing was dubbed the ‘big bad wolf’ of homelessness, leading a slew of humanitarian activists and government officials to make sure the perpetrator doesn’t ‘huff and puff and blow’ their efforts down.
Namely, Bass enacted expedited construction of residential property and shortened wait times on building permits. Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, CEO of the not-for-profit LA Family Housing, provided housing for struggling, unemployed folk. Secretary Marcia Fudge of the Department of Housing and Urban Development raised the value of housing vouchers and dedicated up to $50 million for the unsheltered youth in LA.
Evidently, it seems that leaders like Karen Bass are emerging as the light at the end of the tunnel for a city fractured by intergenerational destitution. This hopeful outlook is reflected in the Biden administration’s ambitious goal of reducing homelessness in America by 25% within the next year.
Emboldened by the celebratory spirit of the upcoming FIFA World Cup and Olympics, Bass hopes to “bring the city together” in solving homelessness. Going beyond the status quo of an idealist, Karen Bass has given legs to her words, and they are sprinting towards the finish line that is her promise to the city of Los Angeles.
Nonetheless, the realist is the idealist’s natural enemy.
The realist
Bass’ single campaign promise injects hope into a corrupt and crippling landscape, but with closer inspection, it reads as more or less a fairy tale. To put things into perspective, LA needs more than 450,000 housing units to meet their population’s demands. With $67 million spent already, only 3,500 unhoused individuals have found permanent places to live.
Barbara J. Schultz, Director of Housing and Justice at Legal Aid Foundation in LA, has already voiced that Inside Safe’s interim housing policy for unsheltered individuals disrupts the livelihood of low-income individuals that utilise motels and hotels as permanent housing. She goes on to add that as the majority of housing projects are taking place in already-poor neighbourhoods, this will inadvertently further segregate the poor, a problem that America is no stranger to.
Although the prospect of fewer people sleeping on the street seems appealing in theory, it is at best a makeshift and temporary solution to a deep-seated problem.
A block away from the ‘Walk of Fame’, I saw shopping carts, tents, and endless piles of waste – a sea of tarps lined the sidewalk. “Bless your soul,” I heard a mumble, and then I saw the pass of a syringe. My pace became quicker and quieter.
Substance abuse exacerbated by poverty and mental illness are corrupting these roadside communities. Though it may seem acceptable to regard them as uncivilised and therefore different, we are contributing to a gross disservice in our blatant dehumanisation and ostracization of those within our community.
Of course, my reaction was not unfounded. In saying that, being hyperaware of the rampant city crime, leads to the inevitable deduction that it too, originates from poverty, addiction, and illness.
It is simply insufficient to provide temporary or even permanent housing to homeless people. Let alone the lagging rate at which homeless individuals are finding permanent housing, without meeting adjacent needs like a living wage or universal healthcare, these efforts will quickly become for nought. In the words of Dr. Margot Kushel, Director of UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, “…housing costs have skyrocketed. The disconnect between what people make and what it costs to live is widening and widening.”
A cardboard box may house an abandoned cat, but the cat is still hungry, and tired and cold. While meeting basic survival needs like shelter and clothing will undoubtedly dignify those lacking, empowering these impoverished communities will require a far greater effort.
Temporary or permanent housing neglects the reality that poverty-stricken communities continue to face immovable barriers in upward mobility. Marcia Fudge highlights the importance of demonstrating home ownership prospects for younger generations to even place youth in a position to strive toward generational wealth as their parents did.
The idealist is not the realist’s natural enemy. An idealist is not stunted by a lack of information or practicality but driven by a reluctance to accept reality as lastingly true. The relationship between a realist and an idealist is much like two sides of the same coin. More often than not, it is an evolving identity within a single person.
Puppeteering all of this, is the one true enemy: capitalism.
The capitalist
The aAlleged culprit to all of America’s greatest fortunes and misfortunes is the infamous ‘capitalism’.
The idealist and the realist argue on the legitimacy of a utopia. Capitalism betrays the idea of a utopia altogether, and instead, only wants one for itself in its backyard. I imagine Capitalism hissing to itself while in the foetal position, “No one else can have this trinket!” – the ‘trinket’ being vast amounts of wealth that fulfills their base needs, and then some.
The City of Angels, home to Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood, is a melting pot of diverse culture and talent. Its glamorous exterior is a façade that casts a shadow over its miserable underbelly.
While Capitalism waters the plants in its utopian backyard, six homeless people die every day in California. Left with no healthcare, education, or bedding, fatalities stack up from overdose, heart disease, hypothermia, and heat exhaustion. Regardless, this is not important to Capitalism because housing the poor is not profitable – not after the market slowdown from the pandemic that also killed very many people.
“With an infinite amount of money, I would build enough homeless shelters to house all homeless people.” I look back down at my screen, after having finished my answer to the question.
“Thank you for that answer.” said the Vice President of Initiatives and Vice President of Operations.
I remember this to be the last question that I answered when I sat my interview to become a committee member of MMI. I will never have all the money in the world to solve homelessness, nevertheless, homelessness can be solved. Like a coin, I have two sides: the idealist and the realist.
Bibliography
Filipenco, D. (2023). Homelessness statistics in the world: causes and facts. Development Aid. https://www.developmentaid.org/news-stream/post/157797/homelessness-statistics-in-the-world
Homeless World Cup (2023). IMPACT. https://www.homelessworldcup.org/impact
Homeless World Cup (2023). UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. https://www.homelessworldcup.org/united-states-america
Homeless World Cup, (2023). GLOBAL HOMELESSNESS STATISTICS. https://www.homelessworldcup.org/homelessness-statistics
Johnson, S. (2023). Lack of Affordable Housing Is Driving Older Californians Into Homelessness. KQED. https://www.kqed.org/news/11953216/lack-of-affordable-housing-is-driving-older-californians-into-homelessness
Lara, J.C. (2023). Oakland Officials to Proceed With Controversial Move to Rename Airport. KQED. https://www.kqed.org/news/11982744/oakland-officials-to-proceed-with-controversial-move-to-rename-airport
Levin., S. (2023) Los Angeles unhoused population reaches 75,000 amid humanitarian crisis. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/29/los-angeles-county-homelessness-unhoused-population
Miller, M., & Breen, K. (2023). Los Angeles mayor works to tackle city's homelessness crisis as nation focuses on affordable housing. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/los-angeles-homeless-karen-bass-affordable-housing/#:~:text=As%20of%20November%202023%2C%20only,those%20living%20in%20temporary%20units.
Statista, (2023). Estimated number of homeless people in the United States from 2007 to 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/555795/estimated-number-of-homeless-people-in-the-us/
World Population Review, (2023). Homelessness by Country 2024. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/homelessness-by-country