Writing
The Issue, Homelessness
Michael Piscopo
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Homelessness is a problem. Every day, there are thousands of people across America who wake up without a roof over their heads, who wake up not knowing if they’ll be able to eat today, who wake up to find streams of people ignoring them as if they weren’t even there, who are at times struggling just to survive. Some of them struggle with addiction, some face mental issues, others are handicapped and many more are unable to find and hold a job for one reason or another. Their struggle is real, it is a problem, and it is an issue that plagues Phoenix.
“It’s hard to put the actual horror of homelessness into words,” Jared Vuijic, a frequent participant in six different charity and homelessness aid charities said. “From the people that I’ve talked to, for a lot of them, there’s this sense of isolation and you just get hopeless with your situation. Some even turn to bad things like drugs to fill their bad life, and that just makes it worse. Arizona needs to help these people get back on their feet and try to make it harder for people to fall into this downturn, or only more people will end up in this same situation.”
Ever since 2020, the United States has seen a gradual growth in its homeless population, but in Arizona in particular, this number rose by a staggering 23%, and many of the people based in that number reside in the city of Phoenix, which itself has seen a 21% increase in homelessness since 2020. There are a number of reasons why homelessness may occur, such as drug addiction, a general lack of affordable housing in an area, and an inability to find stable work in some fashion or other. One of the particular reasons why homelessness began to greatly expand ever since 2020 was in part due to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the spike in inflation that has been seen in recent years which shortly followed. The housing market has increased significantly in cost, gas prices are up, the price of basic goods has increased and with all that is going on many Arizonians are finding it significantly harder to make ends meet causing an increase in homelessness across Arizona and the rest of the nation.
“One of the go-to stereotypes of big cities like Phoenix is that many people are poor or homeless, I don’t like that, no matter how true or not I don’t like that,” Phoenix resident Nathan Cruz said. “It takes a devastating pandemic, and the issue has become prominent now more than ever, when I walk to McDonalds from my apartment, it is impossible to ignore.”
There are many ways that even a single individual can combat homelessness. First, and most importantly of all is spreading awareness. There is a serious issue at play, homelessness is real, homeless people are real and they are not invisible. The first step to combating this crisis must be to identify it as a crisis in the first place, by letting others know about the issue of homelessness and how to combat homelessness, broader efforts can be made across larger numbers of people and, hopefully, more homeless people will be able to get back on their feet. There are a number of ways to help the homeless that begin to sprout from this awareness, one could donate old clothes and other essentials, even something as small as buying a homeless person lunch is a good step in the right direction. Better yet, participate in or join credible charity foundations that are dedicated to giving to the homeless. Many of these types of charities focus on giving food, clothes, essentials, and other services to members of the homeless community in mass, and by supporting these types of charities, the homeless crisis begins to become less and less prevalent. Some examples of credible and reliable homeless-based charity foundations in Arizona are Andre’s House, the Phoenix Rescue Mission, as well as Project Humanities, which finds its origins in ASU.
“Homelessness is an issue, right? That’s our problem that we try to solve,” Chuck Gauthier, a homelessness aid organizer, said. “By bringing all of these people together, by building towards this common goal of being decent human beings and helping one another, as many do in charity and fundraising communities, the issue begins to fade away. Helping people actually helps people, and the more people helping other people, the more people who are helped.”
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Charity organizations serve to meet this broader issue of homelessness that has only been increasing for the past few years, but what comes front and center to this topic is not what homelessness is or how a person became homeless; what matters is that something is being done to actually combat and change the issue. Be it some charity or something as fundamentally basic as just buying food for a homeless person; it is important that everyone plays their little part so that this crisis may finally subside.
Broader Impacts of Homelessness
Michael Piscopo
Homelessness is not just an issue that a person must deal with, as it can have a wide range of effects on communities surrounding said, homeless individuals. Examples of such impacts include, most notably, an increase in crime rates, as well as any possible factors that are inherently linked with crime.
“Living a homeless life can cause people to become desperate, and with that desperation comes an increased incentive to partake in dangerous or criminal activities, which in turn typically hurts the community in the long run,” Andre’s House attendee Anna Belisle said. “If a person looks at it from that point, homelessness gradually goes past the individual and starts causing everybody more issues. This makes homelessness a much broader issue than most people would give it credit.”
Glancing back at an individual, it is also seen that homelessness usually carries with it a lot more baggage than just these implications of living without houses. Jobs are harder to keep and hold, and mental health has been reported to deteriorate the more people live in a homeless environment, usually, an individual will experience profound social and economic isolation, and many often wake up every day just to survive. The effects of homelessness, on a community but especially an individual, are broad and notably far-reaching.
“It feels metaphorical. Those who are homeless can’t stay anywhere, they move about, with no central connecting point to find themselves and build themselves up, all while people walk past them ignoring them and minding their own business, it’s the definition of depressing,” Erin Falks, an Arizona State University student said. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s a deep-rooted issue that indirectly causes much more than meets the eye, and is to the truest extent, a serious problem.”
Homelessness’s effect on communities and society can be considered profound. The issue ingrains itself in a variety of structural, political, and socioeconomic issues, making it difficult for many people to see an end to it, and with the amount of variance between homeless individuals, coupled with no one size fits all solution being directly put forward, it’s clear combating homelessness is a complicated endeavor that has both deeper and broader impacts on both person and community.