Becky Blanton: The Year I Was Homeless

There has been debate over whether poverty can be eradicated if people donated money and implementing the right social policies influenced by advocacy, claimsmaking and media attention (Best, 2013), that homelessness and poverty could be eradicated if structural barriers such as government funding, affordable housing and living costs were to occur. However, since neoliberalism ideologies became prominent in Australian government for instance, inequality has become apparent in society with competitive labour markets, marginalising low income earners and allowing the rich to profit (Mendes, 2008). As a result, individual issues such as domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse are affected by structural barriers due to welfare cuts and high cost of living. This essay will discuss what structural barriers have impacted the individuals in the videos “Becky Blanton: The year I was homeless” (TEDGlobal, 2009) and “Mia Birdsong: The story we tell about poverty

Mackenzie and Chamberlain (1992), created three categories in recognition of diversity within homelessness; primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary homelessness is defined as individuals without conventional accommodation, such as sleeping on the street or living in improvised dwellings. Secondary homelessness is defined as individuals who frequently move between temporary shelters, such as couch surfing or emergency accommodation. Lastly, tertiary homelessness describes people like Becky Blanton (TEDGlobal, 2009), who live in accommodation that fall below the standard of housing, such as caravans and boarding houses (Homelessness Australia, 2012). The causes of homelessness lead to social exclusion, the inability to belong and loss of