Satire Essay On Homelessness

Homelessness “Sometimes it’s easier to walk by because we know we can’t change someone’s whole life in a single afternoon. But what we fail to realize is that simple kindness can go a long way toward encouraging someone who is stuck in a desolate place”. -Mike Yanksoki
Statics suggest that in North Carolina alone over 25% of the homeless population are children, 15% out of those 25% children are the mothers and/or parents. Statistics also suggest that nearly half of the homeless population are single men. Meanwhile single women make up 15%, and veterans take 9%. You may never know the reason that they became homeless, what they went through or anything. But when they’re hungry, and begging for change for food. Is it genuine? Do they really need the food for money. Or is it to buy some alcohol or drugs. But who is to say that they might really need some of those things just to be able to function and have a clear mindset on things. There is 9% of the homeless population who are veterans, they probably went weeks without food and survived and maybe need a drink to clear their head from the things they have seen, heard, and done. Are we supporting a habit for the next “junkie” you can say or are we saving their lives by giving
them money to get a beer to stay sane. You never know the circumstances people are in and how they got there.
No one likes driving up and seeing someone begging for their next meal, or standing in line for the next place to lay their head. No one likes seeing a child not having the right nourishment, proper rest, or even dirty clothes on. There was an article in the New York Times paper about a lady who had two kids, a twelve year old and a sixteen year old. She lost her job and soon lost her place to stay. Her oldest sister let her and her two kids move into her two bedroom apartment. The mother sought out government assistance but she got denied every time and they did not give her anything. The landlord over the older sister apartment found out about the lady and her two kids staying there so he gave them a certain date to move out, or the sister would have to leave to. When that date approached they then had nowhere to go and was forced to sleep on the streets if the homeless shelters got to packed or if they did not get there in time. Just imagine being a teenager, having to go to school every morning, and you do not even have a place to lay your head that night. When things like that start to happen the kids start to fall off in school, they start misbehaving, they get angry and their aggression goes out to anyone who comes there way. To be young and homeless has to be a hurtful thing. To not even know where your next meal not even come from. To know you might have to sleep in the cold, or heat. The worst thing about it is, it is not really anything they can do about it. In just North Carolina alone children make up 34% of the homeless population. Imagine what it is like in other states, how bad it probably is.
The root cause of what is caused chronic homelessness comes from mothers who are homeless with children five and under. Most of the reasons for being homeless has came from being in a domestic relationship, lack education, has very poor social skills and etc. Most of the women that go through this only go through it one time and deal with being homeless for months not years.
It has been said in New York Times paper by a reporter that because most kids are not sleeping on park benches and things like that they you may not even know there homeless. Reporter Rebecca Alexander spoke with a homeless woman who told her that most of the time she sleeps with her children on the train during the night, so they can be warm. It was also stated that by doing that the parents are taking big risks. They could be reported by anyone and have their children taken away from them by the state. But yet because the city have not seen any of them they have gotten away with it, but they still are taken risks everyday. Nevertheless, these children still make up over 40% of the nation population for homeless children. There are 9% of the homeless population who are veterans, these men and/or women spent years fighting for our country and they cannot even be provided a place to stay. Some of them have lost arms, legs, and even lost mindsets. A lot of them suffer from PTSD and alot of bad memories.Family members probably have had to try to let them stay with them but not realizing they have became traumotized by a lot of things. Being homeless changes a lot of things about you. You start to appreciate things more, and you realize that anything can be taken away from you quick. Robert Davis is a homeless man who has been homeless for over five years. Robert talks about how hard it is for him to go through life everyday having to stand on the corner begging people for money just to be able to afford a sixteen dollar room for twenty four hours. People yell rude comments to him call him a bum, spit on him and all types of rude things. He stated how he would go looking for jobs but because his appearance was so bad they would turn him down. There would not be anything that he could do about it because that is all he had. There were days where he was at his lowest point, and lonely and just needed someone to talk to, but he did not have anybody or anything to turn to. He gets judged everyday by people saying he does not need the money for food or shelter he is just going to spend that on drugs. When in reality he really is not, he really just wants to find a place to stay for the night. He also says how its been times when he could not even scrape up sixteen dollars for the hotel room so he would have to go sleep downtown or somewhere in the park on a bench, and at about five or six o’clock in the morning the security guards would come and wake him up and make him leave. It has to be such a humiliating feeling knowing that the only way you can lay somewhere and be warm and comfortable is by begging people for it. Majority of homeless people got that way because of something they messed up with not because they chose that lifestyle. Nobody on this earth would really want to have there hand out begging for change, food, clothes, shelter, none of that. People always tend to think that when you give a homeless person money that they’re going to go spend it on drugs and alcohol. It is even to a point where people would rather keep food in there car then to give them money, which is sometimes good but what happens when you become the fifth person to give them food but yet they cannot make thirty dollars to get a hotel room, or they do not make it to the shelter in time and still are forced to lay on the streets. People always have this mindset that it could never happen to them which is not true because in reality it could happen to anyone. Then there are people who make it hard for everyone who really is homeless, an example would be on channel 10 team news they did a story on how a pregnant woman and her son would stand on the corner of strip mall all day with a sign asking for money and food. One day a lady was parking her car and noticed the lady and her son walking towards a Mercedes Benz. They got into the car took all the money out and started laughing and counting it. Some kind of way they got in front of the lady and she followed them to another strip mall where the pregnant woman and her son got out there doing the same thing. The lady started taking pictures and recording what she was witnessing. The pregnant lady spotted her and then picked up a big rock as if she was going to throw it at the lady’s head for recording her. Another witness spotted her and began to call the police and shortly after she ran off. They have not been able to find the pregnant woman or get any information on her but things like that become reasons why real homeless people don’t get treated right. Why is it so easy for people to give money to a lady who has a child and is pregnant again, but find it hard to give money to a old man who is dirty and has not had anywhere to change his clothes or wash at, but he automatically fits the description of someone who is on drugs. That is not right and people should not be that way. Looking at another video where people were doing an experiment to see how many people actually cared about people around them. Well basically they had a little boy pose as if he was homeless, in the middle of the day but in twenty degree weather with no coat on. For four hours straight people walked up and down there street with loads of clothes on, looking at him, making a face, and watching him shiver like no other for four hours straight. It took another homeless man to take off his coat and had nothing up under but a thermal shirt and give it to the little boy. Nobody cares about other people in bad situations until it becomes them in the bad situation. They sit and judge people everyday because of their appearance, or the way they walk, talk, look, and even smell. You can go to sleep one day and have everything you need and wake up the next day and have everything taken from you with in the blink of eye. Yet and still we sit and judge people because of the situations they made, we make them feel like because they are on the streets they are automatically drug addicts, alcoholics and all the above, which is not true. Even if you live on the streets, in the biggest house, stay in a shelter, halfway house, jail all that you are still a human being. You tend to get caught up with everything around you that you forget you could be in those same shoes, you could face those same problems and there would not be anything you could do about it. Sometimes it is not always about what you do for a homeless person sometimes it is about how they affect your life or how you affect theirs. It does not hurt to have a conversation with someone who is not on the same boat you are on. Sometimes people just want to to know that people care, that they can talk to someone. It has to get lonely in the streets not having anyone to call on or not having a support system. It gets lonely walking up and down a street looking for somewhere you and/or your family can lay their head at night. You get tired of being judged because of the mistakes you made throughout your life. Everybody does not have the resources to be able to get back on their feet. Once you lose yourself it becomes hard to get back where you started. 1.3 million children will be sleeping on the streets in America tonight.
They face being, cold, hungry, afraid, and alone. Almost half of America’s homeless children are under the age of six, they cannot survive by themselves. Six percent of homeless children die before the seventh birthday due to malnutrition, as a result of living on the streets. Yet and still nobody cares. You get too comfortable in the life you live and take it for granted. You see people who need help and still act as if they did something to you and they cannot be helped. You call them “bums”, “dirtybutts” and all types of names just because that is what society teaches you. But you forget that one day you could be in that same situation going through the same
thing.
“I am not a bum, I am a human being.” - Robert Davis