Homeless people. Lazy. Criminals. Addicts. These are just a few of the many things that come to people’s minds. In all fairness, I had those same ideas too. Many people have driven or walked past a group of homeless people and ignored them or gone out of their way to not make contact. It’s just part of our culture. Homeless people are shunned and looked down upon. Over time, the word homeless has taken on a very negative connotation, and those labels such as, criminal, lazy and addict have taken over our perception of who homeless people are. This is not only a large generalization but also overshadows the real circumstances that caused them to become homeless. Over five years, I have been given the privilege of volunteering with The Boulder …show more content…
You see people on the streets begging for money, and a lot of time people question why don’t they just get a job. It’s consistently thought that a simple solution to being homeless is getting a job. If you need money than go work for it. This is an oversimplification and makes it seem as if it’s easy to solve homelessness. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that about 4.1% of the population is unemployed. This translate to over twelve million people looking for jobs. When employers want to hire people, not have a permanent residency and lacking a mode of transportation makes you look unreliable. When compared to someone else who has a car and place to live, employers don’t have to think twice about who they want to hire. Also many homeless people have a mental illness or disability making them unable to have a job. Even those with a job are unable to make a sustainable living off it. Wages are so low that one must work at least two jobs but with housing prices being so high, it makes find a place to live extremely hard. Washington and California have some of the highest minimum wage standards but even that is not a livable wage. We as a society have simplified a solution because many of us do not understand the complex issues that these circumstances