The Rise of Homelessness

What is Civic Engagement?

1.) The two definitions I found were, "Civic Engagement means making a difference in our communities and developing a combination of knowledge, skills, values, and motivation needed to enact change." The second one was "Civic engagement is individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern."

2.) My definition of civic engagement would be participating in community issues to make a positive impact in citizens lives. 

      3.) A major social issue affecting our neighborhoods is the rise of homelessness. This is a serious crisis that I am seeing on a daily basis. Homelessness has disproportionately affected low-income families, men, women, and adolescents. Especially in communities like El Sereno, Echo Park, Downtown Los Angeles and even in the nicer places like Hollywood and Santa Monica. Due to the lack of affordable housing, poverty, and unemployment people have no where to go and are living in tents, old motor homes, and homeless encampments. 

Problem Definition

1. Step 1 Research: 

a. My two resources are articles that address the homelessness crisis, explain how it affects the community, and discusses possible solutions. To begin, I'd like to state that people become homeless for a variety of reasons, including mental illness, addiction, and trauma, but the primary reason is high rent. My first article is called "California’s homelessness crisis and possible solutions explained" by Matt Levin and Jackie Botts and the second article is called "Houses, rental vouchers, spending money: Can LA fix its homeless crisis?" by Elijah Chiland.

b. Homelessness has become more visible in recent years, but there are still no realistic, long-term solutions. The biggest challenge to tackle is trying to reform the system in a way that gives these homeless people a sense of purpose and a second chance at a better future. Due to the high cost of living there are at least "150,000 of its residents sleep in shelters, cars, or on the street" (Levin and Botts, 2020). 

Step 2 Personal:

a. This problem directly affects me because I am seeing an increase in the number of homeless people migrating into my neighborhood. It is heartbreaking to see people living in tents, under bridges, and in our local parks. When they move to our communities, they are less likely to seek or find help because they lack access to health care, mental health treatment, and are therefore dangerous to the community.

b. I chose this issue because there needs to be more awareness about the the harsh reality of homelessness. The truth is that anyone, particularly during these difficult times of the pandemic, can become homeless. Many people have lost their jobs, businesses, and homes as a result of the COVID-19 and have been forced to live on the streets. As I drive through Downtown Los Angeles, I see tents after tents of people living on the streets next to one another. It is upsetting to see so many people are struggling, forced to live in tough conditions, and in desperate need of assistance especially in Skid Row where "nearly 5,000 residents live in the half square mile of Los Angeles Skid Row" (Levin and Botts, 2020).

Gathering Evidence

1.) Skipped due to COVID-19

Dissemination of Research to a Public Audience

1a.) I believe there would be more community involvement if more people were made aware of the harsh reality that homeless people face. Luckily, homeless people sometimes receive limited assistance, such as federal housing vouchers. Unfortunately, these vouchers can be easily used up with only "20,000 spots on the list available for an expected 600,000 applicants" (Chiland, 2020).  People who want to help the homeless can donate equipment, food, or even rent out vacant rooms. 

1b.) This issue affects the community because they are setting up encampments on the streets and in parks. Residents are worried because homeless people living so close to homes can increases crime, they leave their garbage on the streets, and some people do not feel safe. There needs to be a long-term solution to homelessness, so far "emergency shelters are facilities that provide temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness" (Levin and Botts, 2020). This temporary shelter is only available to a limited number of people, leaving many with mental illnesses and others to fend for themselves.

2.) This issue is important to me because I want to see the homeless community improve. It is frustrating that elected officials provide little or no assistance to those who are in need. I chose this issue in the hopes of raising awareness and encouraging people to treat homeless people with more compassion. I am seeing more and more people volunteering all over Downtown Los Angeles as a result of the pandemic. These people are donating their time and providing hot meals, beverages, masks, and hygiene products. Seeing people step up to do the right thing has inspired me to volunteer my spare time to donate food and drinks to those in need. Despite the fact that I am just one of many people who donate their time, I believe it makes a difference. I hope that one day, a more affordable housing system or initiative can be developed to help these people get off the streets and back into the community

 

(Just one of many sections of homeless people living in Skid Row, Downtown Los Angeles)

 (A line waiting outside of Downtown Los Angeles Homeless Shelter)

Reflection

1.) By participating in this assignment my understanding of civic engagement has not changed. However, I think I am now more attentive and aware of the significant impact that working together with our community can have on social issues.

2). If I had a chance to redo this assignment, I would not change anything. I am glad that I am able to spread awareness about this issue and the more research I conducted helped me learn more about homelessness. I only wish that I was able to reach out to members who were also affected by this issue, due to the pandemic this was not possible.

3.) Out of all the assignments we had this one by far was my favorite. This was my first time using Blogger, so I really enjoyed sharing my own personal reflections to the topic.

Resources 

Chiland, E. (2020, January 21). Can LA fix its homeless crisis? Curbed LA. https://la.curbed.com/2020/1/21/21071123/homelessness-los-angeles-how-to-fix. 

Civic engagement and voting: What is civic engagement? (n.d.). Retrieved March 07, 2021, from https://guides.library.unlv.edu/civicengagement

 (Links to an external site.)

Civic engagement. (n.d.). Retrieved March 07, 2021, from Civic engagement. (n.d.). Retrieved March 07, 2021, from https://www.apa.org/education/undergrad/civic-engagement

Matt Levin and Jackie Botts. (2020, June 24). California's homelessness crisis - and possible solutions - explained. https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-crisis-explained/. 

Suicide Prevention for the Youth

           Whether you know someone, have heard of someone, or yourself been an attempted victim, of suicide, the situation goes without saying that not enough social acceptance of the underlying problems of the cause of suicide is made daily. “The suicide mortality rate in 2015 was 10.7 per 100,000, which means about one death every 20 seconds”( Bilson 2018). It’s been three months since my brother took his own life and every day I wish I could go back in time and prevent it from happening. This event has personally affected me in a great amount along with my family members. There are very few words for what there is to say about what happened but there are many emotions to experience instead.

“It was found that 1–6% of people attempting suicide die by suicide in the first year”(Bilson 2018).

Growing up during my youth, now 22 years old, I experienced a lot of psychological changes, stressful situations, trauma, and confusing moments. I come from a Hispanic family and having to adjust to a daily American lifestyle while having parents with strict Mexican parenting has disrupted any easy life into adulthood. Through my own experiences and reflecting upon my brother’s death, I have come to an understanding that there is a large community of young adolescents struggling to cope with the many changing situations in their daily life. 

Suicide awareness has always been a spoken subject during my four years in High School. Our district experienced several suicides by high schoolers and graduates over the decade and so our high school establishes several resources for students. And throughout those years I often thought this was the solution to preventing suicide, or so I thought…

Even though suicide affects every age of people, the youth tend to have greater risk factors that lead to a high number of youth suicides every year. Some factors include mental disorders, previous suicide attempts, and family factors(Bilson 2018). And of course, there can be many other factors that influence one’s mind to perform self-harm. And it said that attempted suicide is also on the rise as well as suicide numbers( Belz 2019).

 

Personally, I have been affected by the many risk factors that any young person can experience, whether that is family pressure to achieve certain goals established by family members themselves, personal identity problems, black and white mindset, anxiety, and so many more. These risk factors have strong impacts on young people the most because of the transitional period between teen/young adult to adulthood. 

As I mentioned before, the solution for suicide is not just awareness and school counseling but because suicide has been such a taboo subject in many cultures, the open talk about it has made it difficult to assemble itself within the youth. And I believe we can push the steps back even further of preventing suicide by allowing youth problems to be a concern and identified as a real problem. Often times adults who have passed this transitional period from teenager to young adult have had several years separated from those life experiences and a gap in new social problems among youth to fully understand and take young peoples problems serious. I personally feel that schools should have the responsibility to not just check on the student’s health but also to be open and socially accept the problems that any young person may be having. I believe that waiting until one has attempted suicide or self-harm is long due to understanding why this person is in this situation in the first place. When we decided to ignore or not discuss our problems because of fear of any form, it can often lead to isolating one’s emotional and psychological problems. Which is never good because of the weight it can put on someone and later lead to a change in mentality and motive. 

What can you or I do about this? 

The answer is actually easier than one might think. And that starts with accepting that the youth have problems that need to be discussed, whether that is with a family member, friend, or even teacher, just opening up and being taken seriously is the right step to helping someone from falling down a bad path. 

NationalSuicideHotline:

800-273-8255

References

Bilsen J (2018) Suicide and Youth: Risk Factors. Front. Psychiatry 9:540. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00540https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00540/full

Levi-Belz Y, Gvion Y, and Apter A (2019) Editorial: The Psychology of Suicide: From Research Understandings to Intervention and Treatment. Front. Psychiatry 10:214. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00214https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00214/full