Homelessness in D.C.

In Washington, D.C. it is hard to go anywhere without seeing homelessness. Whether it is a person on the metro asking for a few extra cents to pay his transportation fee, or someone on the street selling a street newspaper, or even the man outside Starbucks who is there every morning to bless your day and ask for something to eat. Who are these people? How many of them are homeless? How did they become homeless? The questions go on and on. The fact that most of us can’t answer a single one of these questions is heartbreaking and shows that something needs to be done.

Firstly, some background information about homelessness in D.C.: nearly 1 out of 5 (19.1% of) D.C. residents, that is, 104,000 people live at or below the poverty line. This fact makes D.C. the jurisdiction with the third highest poverty rate in the nation. In the entire USA, the percent of the population living at or below the poverty line is 13.3%. Clearly when there is increased poverty, there is increased homeless, or near-homelessness.

Next it is important to understand why all these people are homeless. It is not enough to simply give money or temporary supplies to homeless people. To solve the problem we must attack the cause. The leading economic causes of homelessness are: lack of affordable housing, stagnant wages and slashed public assistance, lack of services (health insurance, mental health facilities, day care facilities), and physical and psychological abuses.

Washington, D.C. is the tenth most expensive city to live in, in the US. D.C. is a central city to the nation, and many important things are found in D.C. including government offices, museums, monuments, etc. These characteristics make it a very desirable place to live in, and people come here hoping to make money. However, people do not realize how expensive D.C. really is, and the dangers it includes. The prices of housing are very expensive in D.C., so many of the poor people who have come to D.C. to get rich (and end up doing basic work for rich people like cleaning, janitoring…) pay a lot of money on housing and are left with a small amount of their income to cover their basic needs and transportation costs.

Looking at these poor people’s jobs, they rarely include massive pay increases, and even though the prices of other things go up, their salary remains the same. Sometimes poor people are forced to take on other jobs. These other jobs might stress the poor people out (causing them physical harm, or making them turn to drugs/alcohol to help with the stress), and/or give them less time to care for their families (making them search for day care facilities, and the like).

With these extra services needed as a byproduct of poverty, poor people desperately search for help. However, in D.C. and throughout the United States (areas that have many rich people who can pay for these services) successful programs have not really been developed to provide the poor with the health insurance, mental health facilities, and daycare facilities that they need.

Logically, these shortcomings in our society and the destruction of the dream to come to D.C. and magically become rich lead to physical and psychological problems. Think about it. If you spent your entire life intending to do one specific thing and achieve a certain goal and then all of a sudden realize that your hopes have been smashed, two key things would be bound to happen: you would get stressed out, and you would have psychological issues. Perhaps to deal with this newfound pain you would resort to drugs and alcohol, or even projecting your anger on others violently.

Aside from the four main economic causes of homelessness, there are also social causes of homelessness. These include: poor health, low school performance, violence, and teen parenthood. It is obvious why poor health can lead to homelessness: poor health results in higher medical costs which subtract from the income left to pay for housing, transportation, and basic needs. Low school performance makes it difficult to get a high paying job, which makes it difficult to pay for necessary things. Violence can be a weapon that was used on the person or that the person used. For example, if, as a child, the person was beaten they have a very low self image, won’t be motivated and will not get the money they need. If, on the other hand, the person is violent, others see that person in a negative way which also makes it hard to get a good job and earn money that is vital for survival. Finally, teen parenthood causes many people to drop out of high school in order to take care of their child. Without a high school education, and with an extra mouth to feed, it is difficult to find a job that will bring in the necessary income. Teen parenthood is a huge cause of homelessness in the DC area because DC is the jurisdiction in the US with the highest child poverty rate (3 out of every 10 children/ 32% of children).

Even though at some times these staggering statistics can cause us to despair, it is important to look at the positive things that are being done for the homeless. In DC there is a street newspaper (a newspaper about poverty, homelessness and other social issues that provides an income to the homeless individuals who sell it) called Street Sense. Street Sense can be bought for one dollar. 35 cents goes to the production of the paper and the remaining 65 cents goes to the vendor. The articles in the paper elevate voices and public debates of poverty, and sometimes tell personal stories about homelessness. The homeless writers also put their photography, poems, plays, and other creative works in the newspaper.

Here are some hopeful articles found in Street Sense. One of the articles is about Thrive DC, a nonprofit organization in DC that “offers a broad range of services: crisis assistance, referrals, peer support, intensive employment training and self-esteem workshops” all of which directly help the homeless in DC. Another article was about a hip hop artist called Speech, who, in some of his songs talks about homelessness: “to give him money isn’t charity/ He gives me some knowledge/ I buy him shoes.” Speech points out that “music helps to break down the walls and the tension that develop when people want to address” homelessness (a very touchy subject, especially in America). A third article tells the story of the American Girl doll company coming out with a homeless doll called Gwen Thompson. This doll helps raise awareness of homelessness, and the American Girl organization has given more than half a million dollars to HomeAid (a nonprofit group that helps the homeless find permanent housing). However, the doll costs 95 dollars, and homeless children will probably never have one (especially since the dolls are limited edition, which decreases the amount of time a homeless person would have to save up enough money to buy the doll). A final article states that two homeless war veterans were recently laid to rest and received full military honors. This is a major breakthrough in equality regarding the homeless.

While Street Sense tells us some important current stories about positive things being done regarding homelessness (albeit most of these are on a small scale), it also sobers us with stories of the actual life of homeless people. For example, Tommy Bennett lives at shelter 801, a place that “hasn’t changed yet [and is] getting worse” since he first arrived nearly two years ago. The shelter houses about 400 people, among these 400 people “a lot of the guys are gangsters” and there are drugs and alcohol present in the shelter. Bennett stays to himself because he’s in Alcoholics Anonymous and doesn’t want to break his seven years straight of being sober. This place that is his home for now is “just like jail” to him. “The food is lousy and the bathroom is not sanitary.”

We see homeless people all over the place throughout our day, and yet as Talia Roth (a friend to many Street Sense vendors) points out “the difficult thing to do is look them in the eye, and consider the possibility that they might not be exactly who you judge them to be.” Talia is saying that it is far too easy for us to ignore homeless people, and simply blame their problems on drug addictions (and other bad things) and turn them into bad people in our minds. As the afore-mentioned causes of homelessness show, this is clearly not the case. Most of homelessness is caused by flaws in our society, not because the homeless person is a bad person. Talia tells us that all people are the same, we all “hurt, love, win and lose.”

Every year, in DC, a Help the Homeless Walkathon is held on the National Mall and is sponsored by Fannie Mae. The Walkathon raises a lot of money to help battle homelessness. Along with the Walkathon are many nonprofit organizations like Thrive DC that help battle homelessness on a small scale, individually, but until there is a large scale change in many aspects of the law regarding poor people, homelessness will still exist. It is our moral duty to look at these homeless people, realize that their homelessness is not their fault, and do something that will eliminate homelessness.

SOURCES:
• Harper, Jessica, et al. "New Executive Director Broadens Thrive DC's Scope;
Speech speaks to homelessness then and now; Hell Hole 32; My
Not-So-Separate Lives." Street Sense 15 Sept. 2009: n. pag. Print.
• Heitz, Dianna. "Homeless Air Force veterans given full honors at burial."
Street Sense 13 Oct. 2009: n. pag. Print.
• "POVERTY & HOMELESSNESS Washington DC." www.some.org. So Others Might Eat, n.d.
Web. 15 Oct. 2009. .
• "Fannie Mae’s Help the Homeless Program." helpthehomelessdc.org. Fannie Mae,
n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2009.
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• "NYC tops list of America’s most expensive cities." msnbc.msn.com. N.p., n.d.
Web. 15 Oct. 2009.
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