RSSHome Sweet Homeless
It was the start of the second semester, during my senior year in high school that students began applying for college and trying figure out what they were going to do after graduation. There was the small collection of “brainiacs,” who were receiving academic scholarships and knew they were attending college. Then there was the smaller group of athletes, who were blessed enough to be good at a sports and smart enough to get accepted to a university. And of course, the large number of students who had no idea what the fuck they were going to do after the culmination of their high school career.
Many pondered about what new ventures they would get into, but there were no guaranteed answers. Lot’s of individuals turned to a last resort, “The Military.” Although it was sold as a positive outlet, given to the kids in search of a dream or simple place of belonging, I understood the broken promises that came with it.
Once soldiers are done, having been exposed to combat and being away from their families, they begin their journey to deal with post-dramatic stress. The problem with the journey back into the real world is that most times vets go back to the same poor and working class communities, which they recently escaped
New studies have been taken on veterans, after their military term is finished. The studies indicate a large number of homelessness amongst U.S Veterans. Statistics show that 1 out of 4 homeless people are veterans, and 11% of our populations are vets. The number of homeless veterans in New York alone, has skyrocketed to 60%. “Wow” those numbers are startling, but continuous. The problem of U.S Veterans becoming homeless is not new problem, In Fact, it dates back to the beginning of the Republic. The current predicament is a new chapter in a fuckin old ass book. Post war homelessness traces back to Elizabethan Times. It was a problem after The Revolutionary War, World War II, Vietnam and today.
The Big question that comes into play is “What is being done to eliminate homelessness amongst U.S Veterans?” The G.I Bill, which guaranteed soldiers two-years paid compensation to remove them from the labor force and give them an opportunity to go to school and continue their education, was implemented after World War II. But what solutions are being explored currently? Aside from the obvious, taking a stand and increasing anti-poverty measures around the country, military agencies should recruit from a cross section of America. They must not focus all their attention in the hoods, targeting the lower class kids.
Interestingly, studies indicate that it is not exposure of combat, being away from home or post-dramatic stress that causes homelessness among veterans in the United States. It is the back round of the soldiers from these poor, working class communities that make them more susceptible to homelessness. Why do recruiters focus their military prospect list on the hood?
Also, check this out for more on the subject.
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
Malia
Why do recruiters focus their military prospect list on the hood? Great question!!!! I believe it’s because black povery stricken, housing project, ghetto children’s lives are disposable. Sadly enough, the hood has an overwhelmingly amount of “great kids” that unfortunately can’t afford to go to college, so spending 4 years in the military and then receiving the GI Bill for college funding seems like a feasable answer. All four of my cousins paid their way through college that way. My youngest cousin is over there now on his second tour and when he gets out he plans on going to med school. Over 3,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq. To date, over 17,000 American soldiers have been wounded. Everyone on the United States Senate has sons and daughters but when interviewed and asked if they would let THEIR children fight for our country, there was a resounding NO! Most of them didn’t even want to be seen on camera for fear that their children would defy their blue blooded veins and white collar homes to take a stand for what their parent’s CLAIM to believe in. LIFE, LIBERTY and JUSTICE FOR ALL. Yeah right, justice at the price of OUR youth.
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PB&J
informative.
[Reply]
Ashle
It is statistically likely that every American knows someone who is or has been homeless at some point in his or her life. Americans are so conditioned to ignore homeless people or to imagine them as lazy, criminal, or otherwise unsavory that the homeless are hardly perceived as human beings. Homeless people are normal people who have, for any number of reasons, fallen on particularly difficult times without any kind of safety net to catch them. A single injury can put a person making minimum wage into crippling debt. A drug addiction combined with a stigma against seeking help can send someone to the streets. A solitary person with a debilitating mental illness and no support can fall through the cracks in the system and be left to their own severely diminished capacity.
Homelessness is a self-perpetuating social illness: homeless people, for example, tend to have very poor health, which makes it difficult to land a job, which makes it harder to look after their health. Many homeless people are clinically depressed or otherwise mentally ill. The U.S. government is criminally deficient in its handling of the homelessness problem. In February 2006, President Bush sent his proposed 2007 budget, which would cut $600 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), to Congress for approval. Meanwhile, Bush’s bill grants tax cuts to citizens who make $200,000 or more annually.
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DEEP BLU SEE
Americans are accustomed to hearing that our country has a homelessness problem. Since the 1980s, newspapers and television broadcasters have been showing us images of soup lines in winter and families crammed into emergency shelters. While government policies and a strong national economy were pushing up property values, however, the same forces were not making for a similar increase in the wages of low-income Americans. Homelessness, once considered the affliction of alcoholics and drug addicts, suddenly becomes the not-so-surprising symptom of a much larger social illness. Despite differing conclusions about how many Americans struggle with homelessness in any given year, local governments and poverty advocates are reaching the same frightening conclusion: the number of people who experience homelessness in this country has gone up every year for the past two decades. The fastest growing population of Americans experiencing homelessness is children, and given the recent instability of the U.S. economy, these numbers are only likely to continue climbing.
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