Transient America
If the Cincinnati area could have one glaringly stereotyped representative, it would be a 34 year old lapsed Catholic with conservative values, wearing deck shoes and eating a bratwurst. This city is whiter than Wonder bread. Forget Kevin Bacon, you’d be lucky to find three degrees of separation in Ohio.
I both live and work downtown, which truly has as many pros as it does cons. I take full advantage of the farmer’s market, visit the many art galleries, get smashed at bars I can see my apartment from, walk a few blocks to work, and take full advantage of ballet, opera, and theater. However, downtown living has one major problem here in Cincinnati that afflicts every other city in America: the homeless. Most modern American cities suffer from a “population donut” (the idea that as the suburbs grew as a residence, it also grew jobs, encouraging more people to leave the city’s center) and Cincinnati is no different. During business hours, downtown is a sea of pressed shirts swarming in and out of endless buildings dedicated to insurance and corporation, strolling about the city on lunch breaks until 5pm when they beeline to parking garages and drive sensible four door sedans out to suburbia. All that remains after this exodus are the downtown residents; those of us with apartments and those of us without. By dinner time, walking the five blocks from work to my apartment building it is unusual to be asked less than three times for a cigarette or a dollar.
If Cincinnati proper had a glaringly stereotyped resident, he would be homeless and most likely, utterly ignored by the working class. He would be asleep on a bench, pissing in an alley behind a four star restaurant, sitting on the sidewalk with a cardboard banner, or attempting to get into any one of the already full shelters. It takes a lot to be homeless. For the majority of young Americans, if you lost your job and were evicted from your apartment, one would move home with mom and dad until your finances were righted. At the end of that terrible, humiliating day, you’d still have your health, your identification, and most of your belongings. You’d be clean and safe and utterly depressed. Being out of work right now is relatively common. To be actually homeless and living on the streets is to be without identification, a job, money, food, family, friends, a place to sleep, to bathe, and a bathroom. It is to be so entirely without means that you ask strangers for money every day and are perfectly ignored.
Every city in America experiences what is referred to as The Homeless Problem and every city accepts it easily as a byproduct of living in a moderately sized and populated urban area. There are homeless shelters that offer programs designed at assisting those without means, centers that offer free food and showers, laundry services, pay phones, and possibly some sort of health services, generally aimed at helping people become sober. However well-intentioned these centers are, they do not effectively end homelessness. They provide the basic human requirements of sleep, food, and hygiene and access to state run social programs. Why can’t these centers do more? Is it merely a lack of funding, overworked staff, a dismissive attitude by modern Americans, the lack of motivation or utilization of said existing social services within the homeless community?
It takes a lot to become homeless, but it takes even more to remain homeless. Although many Americans become transient because of an addiction, extended unemployment, lack of affordable housing, domestic abuse, deinstitutionalization, prison release, or even natural disaster, individuals become “chronically” homeless due to alcoholism, drug abuse, and unmedicated mental illness. These are the people that most think of when they think of the homeless. In actuality, approximately 80% of American homeless individuals are considered transitionally/temporarily homeless. They generally have access to medical care or a small income and once they locate permanent housing, will not be homeless again. It is the remaining chronic homeless that can remain homeless for years and if they acquire housing or a job, risk returning to the streets because of underlying issues like addiction and mental illness. Somehow, we have stopped seeing homeless people for who they are: people that need help desperately. How did we ever get to a point where we actively ignore and accept human misery and degradation in a modern, industrialized nation such as ours? How many people are even homeless? According to endhomelessness.org, there are 671,859 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in the United States, 20% of which is comprised of Veterans.
What does it take to end homelessness? Outreach programs for releasees of state-run institutions (i.e., prison, mental institution, foster care system) could provide affordable housing and health clinic access. Chronic homelessness would need halfway housing that does not mandate sobriety, but offers steps to reach sobriety and health care access. Subsidized housing or housing vouchers to give cheap, safe housing to both families and individuals while they utilize social programs already in place, like Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Medicaid. It is only at this point that permanent housing and income become viable, reachable goals.
More than money and federal or state programs, it will take a shift in how we respond to the homeless communities. It is a truly ugly characteristic of us to shun the homeless as beyond help and therefore, beyond our caring about them. Viewing transients as undeserving of assistance is remarkably cruel; accepting this dismissive nature towards suffering is an embarrassment to all of us. We need to recognize transient America for what it truly is: other Americans that we have the ability to help, Americans who deserve a safe home and good health. We have the ability to end homelessness in our country, it’s just a matter of finding the courage to give and to care.
Short URL: http://www.thesisweekly.net/?p=424
Posted by Erin Ragsdale
on Jul 26 2010. Filed under Philosophy.
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