Blog post 16- Final speech- Chuck Logsdon

The Christmas of my 8th grade year I received my very first smartphone. I actually still have it today, a Samsung Galaxy S7. Upon receiving my new phone I was ecstatic. I now could play games and watch movies wherever I was, and finally join social media to communicate with my friends. Once I got back from winter break I pulled out my new phone to show my classmates and much to my chagrin I was immediately mocked for not having an I-phone. This wasn’t a singular occurrence. In the roughly 3 years that I’ve had this phone I’ve seen me and my fellow android users mocked by I-phone users all because of the type of phone we carry and while this teasing was clearly in good fun and never truly bothered me it just goes to show how quick we as a society are to judge people based on the most minute and superficial things. This subconscious judgment is the most prevalent in society's perception of the homeless. In America homeless people are regarded as almost less than human, and undeserving of a home. People tend to view the homeless as lazy bums who just need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and “get a job.”   As a society we need to change the way we view homeless people in this country and rather than passing any personal judgments on to homeless people themselves, we need to first recognize housing as what it is, a human right. In this speech I will be detailing how the current treatment of homeless people in America is degrading and cruel, and then explaining why we need to change our philosophy regarding housing the homeless.

America criminalizes homelessness. I say this with no exaggeration, in fact the extent of which the United States criminalizes homelessness incited the U.N. to condemn the US twice for human rights violations due to their decriminalization of the homeless. In many cities there is little to no places to legally sleep without a home and what's worse is that according to a survey by the Western Regional Advocacy Project 74% of homeless people do not know where it is legal to sleep. These laws are supposedly put in place to curb the homelessness issue but instead unjustly penalize the homeless.

This systematic persecution of the homeless extends beyond laws and regulations. There is a new trend called “hostile architecture” or “anti-homeless architecture”  which is essentially architecture that physically stops homeless people from being able to sleep in public spaces. Some examples of this “hostile architecture” would be putting dividers on public benches so people can’t lay on them or putting spikes on underpass’s or other spots where homeless people frequently sleep. I know I am echoing the same sentiment over and over but are their lives not already hard enough?

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 26% of homeless people suffer from a severe mental illness whereas that rate in the general population is a little under 5%. On top of that there are obvious mental health concerns involved in the degrading nature of homeless life. In an interview about homeless life, a 45 year old homeless man who had been on the streets for 7 years stated that what homeless people need the most is “compassion, understanding, and consideration” three things that are the exact opposite of how I’d describe the governments criminalization of homelessness and hostile city architecture. As I have stated before I believe housing should be a human right. At the moment it clearly is not. The latest White House report on the State of homelessness in America states that there are roughly 500,000 homeless people in America and many argue that the US isn’t capable of housing that many people. That may be true, housing 500,000 homeless people spread out over an entire country would certainly be a daunting task. Regardless, the United States is definitely able to be more supportive of the homeless population than it currently is. The US government needs to remember that the homeless people are still US citizens and they are still under obligation to provide for their common good. It is the Government's duty to work for the homeless people in America, not against.  
Work CitedLange, Jay, director. Interviewing the Homeless of Detroit | Episode 2 William. YouTube, YouTube, 1 Nov. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRs02YefT4M.Pearson, Geraldine S., and Sheila Linz. “Linking Homelessness With Mental Illness.” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, vol. 47, no. 4, Oct. 2011, pp. 165–166. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1744-6163.2011.00317.x.Park, Alice. “Study Tracks Changing Perception of Homelessness.” Yale Daily News Study Tracks Changing Perception of Homelessness Comments, 24 Oct. 2017, 1:17, yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/10/24/study-tracks-changing-perception-of-homelessness/.Pogorelec, Nichalous. “Society Needs to Change Perception of the Homeless.” The Badger Herald, 18 Sept. 2014, badgerherald.com/opinion/2014/09/18/society-needs-to-change-perception-of-the-homeless/.“The State of Homelessness in America.” Whitehouse.gov, Sept. 2019, www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/The-State-of-Homelessness-in-America.pdf.Sanders, Julia-Grace. “When Existence Is a Misdemeanor.” August 17, 2016 | Real Change, Real Change, 23 June 2017, www.realchangenews.org/2016/08/17/when-existence-misdemeanor.x

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