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Sociological perspectives with homelessness
Sociological perspectives with homelessness
Defining the problem of homelessness
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While circumstances can vary, an individual’s first choice is rarely to choose homelessness due to the inability to afford housing or other unforeseen circumstances. The support of friends, family, and community programs/shelters are first suggestions when a person becomes displaced. When these suggestions become inadequate, living on the streets is the next favorable/affordable option. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, on a night in January of 2015, there were 564,708 people homeless in the United States (para 3).
In Jeremy Waldron’s “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom,” Waldron presents the argument that homeless individuals are less free than those with homes and other material resources. Waldron’s argument is based around the notion that every action must be done somewhere, and if a homeless person is not free to be anywhere (be it other’s private property or public property) then they are not free to do anything. In what follows, I will use Robert Nozick’s description of a free society in his “The Entitlement Theory of Justice,” to first argue that Waldron adequately defends his contestation that homeless people are less free than those with homes and other material resources because of their need to be heavily dependent on the government as central distributors for their income and physical properties. I will then describe how a homeless person’s inability to effectively partake in voluntary actions and exchanges with other individuals is due to their inherent lack of goods and education. In the third section, I will refute the idea that homeless people are equal to those who are not homeless, as argued by Friedrich Hayek in “The Atavism of Social Justice.”
Audience: People ignorant about the struggles of homelessness and would rather make homeless people “disappear” than help them Message/Goal of this piece: Addressing the issue of homelessness and raising awareness to this program as an alternative to making it a crime to be living in poverty. It shows that chromic homelessness can be solved Behaviors/ Aspects of society being satirized: The treatment and attitude towards homelessness and homeless people e.g. banning, arresting, and giving them fines. This piece shows the ridiculousness of the anti-homeless argument and that they are lazy moochers undeserving of help. People who would rather spend to criminalize homelessness than use the same time/money/resources to help fix this problem Background
Homelessness, while widely acknowledged, continues to be an ever-prevalent issue within society. This urged me to take action. In order to compromise an accurate, precise claim, I needed to heavily research and analyze the various aspects of this issue -- specifically regarding the causes of homelessness, addressing the stereotypes and stigmas surrounding it, and by finding solutions at a personal, local, and national level. Initially, I intended to include pathos as a primary theme throughout my sources, but I eventually found logos as a more prevalent, more central theme that appeared throughout each source. Presented primarily through statistics, logos stands as the central theme.
Currently, homelessness has become one of the major social problems in Australia. It is common to see homeless people sleep at street sides in major cities like Sydney and Melbourne. According to the latest statistics from the ABS Census of Housing and Population, there are 105,237 people in Australia who are homeless at present (Homelessness Australia, 2016). In other words, there is one person who is homeless in every 200 people in Australia. What is worse, the rate of homelessness has been growing in most states in Australia in the past few years.
Homelessness is not a new issue as it has already existed for many years ago and the existence of homeless people is often being ignored. The reasons why they end up sleeping on the streets is largely because of individual factors (Main, 1998), which is contributed by structural factors (Cyndy Baskina, 2007). It is unsure whether homeless people choose to end their lives in this way or are among the victims of situations? Many researchers contribute homelessness to structural factors but advocates of human rights debunk this and highlights that the main reason for homelessness is due to mostly individual
As time goes on, the rate of homelessness rises as the population rises. Homelessness then was mostly caused by a family’s history of being homeless, drug abuse, mental disorders, and tyrannical leaders forcing his people into poverty. In modern times, several organizations are now trying to end homelessness by building cheaper housing projects more affordable to the poor and homeless shelters; these projects usually cost a fair amount of money.
The social issue that I picked is homelessness. Homelessness is a real issue, even if we don’t always see it. Homelessness doesn’t just mean you don’t have a roof over your head, it means you don’t have food, a good education, a healthy lifestyle, or a warm place to sleep every night. Some people don’t think very highly about homeless people, they think that it's their fault that they are where they are in life. Homelessness is going to end up becoming a bigger problem.
Area of Conflict Homelessness can be understood in the perspective of conflict theory, which holds that capitalism is one the main reason for homelessness. “Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned” (Ayn Rand). There are many reasons why a person becomes homeless, an increasing number become homeless each year, with up to 5,000 people becoming homeless every year. Generally the experiences that lead to homelessness are determined by poverty and structural inequality.
Homeless: Choice or Chance? Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle is a story of one unparalleled family who constantly is moving from one place to another. The family seeks shelter in abandoned houses in extremely slipshod conditions.
Homelessness is a product of social inequalities. Karl Marx stated that the capitalist society produces two prominent classes which are in conflict with each other, bourgeoisie and proletariats. The bourgeoisie are the oppressors who own the means of production and the proletariats are the oppressed workers who labor for the bourgeoisie. Capitalism is distinguished not by privilege but instead by individuality of property ownership and that those who create the conditions of the oppressed group express this power in the form of laws that function to serve the bourgeoisie’s interests (Marx, 2004, p.129).
The issue of homelessness in America has been evident since the early 1600’s. Across the country men, women and children spend their nights on the streets not knowing when or if they will ever find a permanent home. States and federal officials or city councils have tried to alleviate or at least reduce the number of homeless over the last several decades at a city, state or national level but it continues to be an ongoing problem. There is a multitude of factors that account for the growing homeless population that affects each state in the country differently. Though there are many contributing factors that contribute to the amount of people living on the street at any given night in the U.S.
During the recent years homelessness has increased eminently. Although homelessness is not a new phenomenon it has become a huge social issue in today’s society. In urban areas homelessness is visible by the masses but ignored by society’s negative perception. Characterized as unstable individuals, alcoholics and criminals by society, these negative stereotypes have only escalate the issue. Homeless can occur at any stage of life for multitude of factors.
Homelessness is a significant complex societal problem. Many people think homelessness is an individual problem, but I think society has a large factor on why people become homeless. Individuals who are homeless are not lazy like most of society thinks. These people are struggling with societal problems such as living costs and mostly cannot support themselves financially. In my eyes, Homelessness is a factor of societal forces such as high cost of housing and living and also society having failed systems to support people who are stuck in these sorts of situations.
Homelessness is a struggle that most people don’t know, or that people ignore because they frown on homeless people. These people frown on homeless people because the homeless are often unshaven ruff looking people that had a bad turn in life, this life changing event that turned them into what some people frown upon. These people are frowned upon by so many but the people that frown upon them have no idea what their going through. Being homeless, a struggle known by too many in the United States, in fact there are estimated numbers of 633,782 people being homeless in just the United States alone. These people have found their self’s homeless for many different reasons like bad decisions, not a high enough paying job, or no job could be found,
