It’s possible to provide a handout that is also a hand up writes Chris Hicke. And Utah is showing how.
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Like many things in America nowadays, homelessness has become an incredibly polarizing issue. While few disagree that homelessness is a problem, the approaches to dealing with or addressing it vary greatly. Some places, like Columbia, South Carolina and Tampa Bay, Florida, have taken to outright criminalizing homelessness, while Hawaii state representative Tom Brower briefly took to smashing their shopping carts with a sledgehammer. Don’t worry though; he was kind enough to remove what few possessions the homeless had before destroying the thing they used to move them around.
These are the actions of those who would rather address the issue by sweeping it under the rug; after all, is anything really a problem if you don’t have to see it every day, perhaps as a constant reminder of one of the greater failings of your community that such conditions are allowed to exist? Perhaps most laughable is the fact that some proponents of jailing the homeless insist that giving them a criminal record is an improvement to their state of living. Such actions are, at best, a temporary stopgap on the road to real solutions that address the core issue.
The argument against helping the homeless tends to fall somewhere along the lines of “they’re lazy and/or drug addicts who just want to mooch off of others.” Such blanket statements cannot possibly account for all cases of homelessness. I don’t deny that such instances exist, but it completely ignores the mentally ill who were kicked to the curb after the mental wards were closed, or the children who are homeless for reasons that, I would assume, are largely beyond their control. To ignore the plight of people who’s situations are beyond their control, or little more than bad luck, is intellectually lazy, and callous to a degree that is becoming all too common in recent years.
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This is why I would like to comment Utah for their novel solution to their homeless problems. Instead of criminalizing homelessness and trying to hide them away, they’re providing homeless citizens with apartments and caseworkers to help get their lives back on track. By providing basic housing and living assistance, Utah has cut the cost of homelessness from $16,670/yr for jail and ER visits to $11,000/yr for housing and an assigned caseworker. Few can argue with the savings to taxpayers, and I’m almost positive nobody will take offense to moving these people out of parks and off of streets.
This is an important step in several ways that opponents of providing homeless (or any impoverished people, it seems) should have a hard time disagreeing with. Providing homes helps to take these people off the streets, and it’s a cheaper method than jailing all of them. Additionally, the assigned caseworkers will help fill out resumes and find jobs so they can become self-sufficient. This is made much easier with the provided apartments; in addition to the shelter they provide, being able to show a home address and regular access to showers will help immeasurably in securing a potential job. While I’m not a big fan of anecdotes, I don’t think I’m alone in noticing that most employers tend to want applicants to provide a home address and maintain decent hygiene, which is quite difficult to do if your bed is a park bench.
It goes without saying that I really like this idea, though I admit there are a couple of questions that I would like to have answered regarding this program. I am mostly curious as to how far employment assistance goes. Speaking from experience (again, not a fan of anecdotes, but bear with me), lengthy periods of unemployment make breaking the cycle incredibly difficult. Even with a home address, it may be difficult to land a job anywhere. If this is less an issue than I’m assuming it will be, great, everyone wins. If my concerns are proven valid, I would like to see some kind of education programs set up to help learn new, relevant skills.
This story is perhaps best known through the story of Leo Grand, which went viral towards last half of 2013. Through an act of charity, he learned code while living on the streets, which he used to create an app that allows residents of New York City to set up carpools and save on gas. Does that sound like the actions of a lazy person who wanted to get by on the donations of others instead of hard work, or someone who was down on their luck and simply needed someone to help them get back on their feet? I have a hard time believing that, were such opportunities made more widely available that it would not be widely utilized or fail to yield the desired results.
I’m lucky enough to have friends and family to fall back on and support me; in fact, I can almost guarantee I’d be among the homeless right now were it not for them. Not everyone is that lucky, and I do not accept the idea that we write them off as “lazy” or “addicts” because it’s easier (and cheaper) than being proactive and charitable. It is entirely possible to provide a handout that is also a hand up, giving these people the opportunity to better themselves in a way that benefits everybody. And I would very much like to think that there are more people willing to provide that assistance to those who want it than there are people who would rather ignore the problem and hope it solves itself.
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photo: jimfischer / flickr
Awesome! I love this! I hope it catches on nationwide!