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follow the rule thees , cause, affect and 2 sulostion
English 101 – Essay II – Assignment
Texts Available to Use on EII (2
should be used in EII
):
“How Bad is Homelessness in America, Really?” by Daniel Neiditch
“Why Housing First” by Emily Kenney
PBS Now – http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/305/index.html (Housing first)
8 Website(s) from Homeless Org. Investigation
Ted Talk lecture – “Facing Homelessness” by Rex Hohlbein
1 student researched articles (w/ instructor approval)
Assignment:
In this section, we have read articles, watched lectures, and investigated issues related to the issue of homelessness in the US in an attempt to understand some of the causes of homelessness. We have also learned about the crippling effects homelessness can have on the diverse collection of ‘groups’ who experience life on the streets, and discovered ways organizations are trying to combat this long-term social problem. For this assignment, please focus on informing the audience on the cause(s) of homelessness, effect(s) of living life on the streets, and possible solution(s) to help raise someone out of this impoverished situation. Be sure to build your body paragraphs around a single, specific point related to a C/E/S (cause/effect/solution). The real danger in this assignment is going to broad with your focus, specifically in the main points of body paragraphs. Try to find a specific through-line allowing you to consider the issue without being too broad, and make sure TS’s are built around ‘single points’.
For example, the homeless community in the US consists of the
hardcore homeless, who suffer from mental/physical disabilities and addiction, homeless youth searching for a place of their own, women/children escaping damaging relationships, veterans lacking support searching for a new purpose, and the constant cycle of newly homeless – victims of the economy and circumstance. To create a proper scope of analysis, it can be beneficial to narrow in on a specific demographic for your body paragraphs.
Direction:
Reflect and brainstorm on the subject of homelessness and what you have learned thus far. Try to hone in on a specific ‘group’ affected by the issue (
examples above
). This should help you to focus in on specific points related to a potential cause/effect/solution in each body paragraph. It should also help you create/have a ‘through line’ connecting your points. Please plan for paragraphs built around a single C/E/S and avoid jamming in all 3 to one paragraph. It will be crucial to incorporate 3 different sources as support (in the “E” section) through either paraphrasing or quoting. Taking time to plan your essay is very important, because of the amount of choice you have on this assignment. A carefully constructed outline will be critical.
Requirements:
Essay Outline due on Feb. 7th, Rough Draft on the 12th, Final Draft 14th.
The essay must be 4-5 pages in length, feature 4-5 body paragraphs
MLA format – in-text citations and Works Cited.
Must include the use of 2 separate ‘texts’ as support in 2 separate body paragraphs.
Student Example Outline – remember that this is only
one
example -> one way to properly respond to the assignment. There are a lot of choices to be made by each writer that may direct the ‘ideas’ in your outline to be different – number of BP’s, ‘purpose’ of BP’s (C/E/S). Notice the basic requirements that are met in terms of thesis, TS’s, PIES, and source support.
Thesis: The long term homeless, specifically those suffering from mental health issues, need the public’s and government’s support on programs like ‘housing first’ in order to rise above the conditions that keep them from treatment and a positive existence.
(P)– Untreated and unwanted individuals dealing with a range of mental disorders may find the streets to be the only place that accepts them (
cause
).
(I) discuss stigma of mental health, lack of treatment leads to disconnect from society.
(E) “Most studies show that about ¼ of the homeless population suffers from mental health issues” (Brigette).
(S) Mental health key cause/effect of homelessness – addressing it is key.
(P) – Inability to properly treat homeless individuals struggling with their mental health leads to a chronic condition of homelessness that exacerbates the disorders they suffer from (
effect
).
(I)-
(E) Source Use or example – NEED 2 Separate Sources to Meet Requirements
(S)
(P) – One new approach to treating homelessness is ‘housing first’ which provides an immediate home to a homeless individual as the means to more effectively begin individualized treatment (
solution
).
(I) –
(E) Source Use or example – Only a minimum of 2 sources needed…
(S) –
4. (P) – Public support and government funding for organizations like Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission is needed to insure that mental health resources are available to the homeless community (
Solution
).
(I) –
(E) Source Use – … it is a good idea to have source support in each
(S) –
“How Bad is Homelessness in America, Really?”
by Daniel Neiditch
The GDP of America is an astronomical $18 trillion. To put it in perspective, if California seceded from the United States, it would have the eighth largest GDP of all the countries in the world (just beating out Italy).
When you start to consider just how much money exists in America, it makes the fact that we even have homelessness seems all the more absurd.
Depending on where you live across the country, you may have different ideas about how prolific the homeless situation is in this country. That’s why stats can help make the realities a bit more clear.
So the question is: how bad is homelessness in America, really?
How bad can it be?
Let’s start with the definition: an individual may be considered homeless when they lack permanent housing and have to stay in shelters, abandoned buildings or vehicles, on the streets, or in other forms of unstable situations. They may also be considered homeless if they have to “double up” with friends or extended family members because they are unable to maintain their own housing situation.
We’ve seen this issue arise in some form since the 1870s and it’s continued to pervade our society into the present day. On a single night in January 2015, for example, 564,708 people were considered homelessness in America, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. That’s over half a million people without a roof over their heads.
In a single night in California in 2016, 21.48% of the population experienced homelessness. In New York, 15.7%. That’s over 100,000 people in California and 80,000 people in New York.
Homelessness is an issue that pervades many societies around the world but it seems to be an exceptional struggle for the United States. Among the top homeless cities in the world, New York City ranks the second highest on the list, with Los Angeles following at a close third. Other American cities featured include Boston, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Phoenix.
Although the national rate of homelessness has gone down from 21.5 people per 10,000 people in 2007 to 17.7 per 10,000 in 2015, there is still a lot of work to be done––the rate of homelessness amongst individual states continues to be high and the amount of affordable housing remains painfully low.
So what can we do?
As a volunteer EMT, I’ve seen my share of what can happen on the streets. Many homeless die when it’s too hot, too cold, or too wet. These are real people who need real resources, like shelter, food, and clothes. We have to do more as a nation to stop treating the homeless as invisible, and start treating them as human beings. We must do more, as fellow neighbors, developers, lawmakers, citizens, to solve this problem and get people off the streets, because everyone, everyone, deserves a home.
But have we already built a system against homeless by design?
Anti-Homeless Design
Have you ever wondered why some public benches have that third armrest in the middle? Or why some are just not that comfortable? I never used to give it a second thought. I reasoned it was just the cheapest design available.
As it turns out, they were specifically designed in this way to dissuade people from sitting too long. Or to deter people from sleeping there.
This kind of design practice is subtle but everywhere in our cities and even has an actual term: hostile or defensive urban architecture. It’s used to discreetly target loitering and reduce the visibility of those deemed “unappealing” to the aesthetics of the city: the “reckless” teenagers, the poor, the homeless.
Other measures include camping restrictions and even banning private food donations to the homeless. In 2012, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg outlawed food donations because “the city couldn’t assess salt, fat, and fiber content” of the food. Apparently, it was more important to monitor the healthiness of what his people were eating, even if they were eating nothing at all.
A solution for $46 a year
For a more explicit solution, I think we should look towards Housing First, “a proven approach in which people experiencing homelessness are offered permanent housing with few to no treatment preconditions, behavioral contingencies, or barriers.” The project believes that the issues that cause a person to be homeless–unemployment, poverty, mental health, etc.–can be better addressed once they actually have a home.
And the best part is, the program’s proving to be working. Using this approach, homelessness could be eliminated at an annual additional cost of $1.7 billion. If this sounds like a lot––it’s not. It’s about $46 a year per person. Or put even more in scale: 88 cents per week.
Considering it can cost over $100,000 annually to support a chronically homeless person vs. the $35,000 per year to provide permanent housing, this may be a mutually beneficial approach.
Either way, we must continue to take steps towards eradicating homelessness in our country and ensuring that everyone has the basic necessity of shelter. I’d be willing to pay 88 cents more per week for that. Wouldn’t you?
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By Emily Kenney
Why Housing First?
I always thought I wanted to start a shelter. I knew from a very young
age—14—what I wanted to do with
my life: work with people experi
encing homelessness. “I know how
to end homelessness,” I thought. “If
people can just come into my shelter,
I’ll provide everything they need to
not be homeless.”
I have since abandoned that dream
of owning a shelter. Not because it was
too hard or because I didn’t have the
skill to make it happen, but because
homeless shelters are not the way to
end homelessness.
Really, if you think about it, that way
of thinking is so backwards. Instead
of focusing on the real issue, or the
person’s needs, I was focusing on my
abilities. I thought that if I could estab
lish a shelter and the structure that
was needed to live independently—•
like completing chores by a certain
time, going to bed by 10 p.m., waking
up by 6 a.m., and never losing one’s
temper—and the residents could prove
themselves to me, I would be teaching
people to be “housing ready.” Then, if
they succeeded in the shelter, I could
refer them to transitional housing.
Transitional housing was sometimes
an apartment but sometimes the same
living environment with a two-year
time limit and strict rules to follow
and checklists to accomplish. Then, if
they proved that they were “housing
ready” there, they could be referred to
permanent housing. And meanwhile,
that whole time, the person is still
living in homelessness.
And, what does that mean—to be
“housing ready”? In all honesty, as
one of my colleagues told me, we were
trying to make people show that they
lived like us. “But,” she said, “it turns
out people are pretty good at defining
and meeting their own brand of
success if you let them.”
So I no longer want to own a shelter.
But I do want to support people by
helping them define their own brand
of success.
It starts with two big concepts:
Housing First and Coordinated
Entry. Housing First flips the paradigm
from “housing ready” to one that
endorses first giving people their own
apartment and then providing supports
for their success. Research shows com
munities that embrace Housing First
have found that clients do better and
it’s cheaper. (Check out the Mother
Jones article1 or Gladwell’s article2 for
more information.) Our Milwaukee
County Housing First pilot project
revealed that, after one year, it cost an
average of $30/day to house people
and 99 percent of people housed kept a
lease for the full year.
Coordinated Entry supports people
by bringing together multiple agencies
to work in a coordinated system of
services rather than expecting clients
to gain access to multiple agencies on
their own. It enables agencies to better
meet the needs of all clients and to pri
oritize critical needs.
The basic tenets of Coordinated Entry
are these: a single prioritized list of
clients based on a standardized assess
ment and coordinated staffing, case
planning, and a program placement
component to meet individual needs.
Coordinated Entry utilizes the resources
the homeless service system has in place
to the fullest benefit of each client.
We have made many strides toward
positive system change in Milwaukee
County. We can already see the differ
ence it is making for some of the people
whom we used to assume would never
be housed. However, we can’t just
stop here. Recently, we had a client,
let’s call him Jim, who received per
manent housing right away. He had
been homeless for years, and we were
hoping that permanent supportive
housing would work for him. However,
he was still actively hearing voices that
caused him to tear up his apartment,
very literally, including tearing down
the walls and tearing up floor boards.
See Housing First on page 28
F e b ru a ry 2017 P o licy & P ra ctice 5
H O M E L E S S N E S S c o n t i n u e d f r o m p a g e 6
use of coordinated H/HS delivery.
Through the Rapid Rehousing model,
individuals and families are equipped
w ith services customized to their needs
in conjunction w ith housing. Rapid
Rehousing differs from Housing First
in that these provisions are delivered
on a tem porary basis and aim to help
participants (who are not chronically
displaced) attain economic stability.
The U.S. D epartm ent of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) stated in its
2011 report that 83 percent of people
who participated in Rapid Rehousing
programs were able to m aintain stable
housing even two years after their sub
sidies had expired.5
At a 2015 APHSA National
Collaborative for Integration of Health
and Human Services m eeting in
Arlington, VA, the Utah Departm ent of
Workforce Services gave a presentation
on the outcomes of their homelessness
relief efforts. Their study revealed
th at providing supportive housing for
at-risk populations improved quality
of life, greatly reduced the use of
emergency services, and reduced
interaction w ith law enforcement.6
Evidence has shown that it is fiscally
beneficial to house homeless indi
viduals, as these interventions help
provide safe shelter and facilitate cost
savings for H/HS provisions. HUD
estimates th a t the cost to finance
homelessness can cost up to $30,000-
$50,000 per person.7 As dem onstrated
by Utah’s implementation of the
Housing First model, costs related to
housing a chronically homeless indi
vidual ranged from $10,000-$12,000
per person.8 From an economic
standpoint, it is more cost effective
to provide housing for the homeless,
rather than rem ain idle. Supportive
housing initiatives could facilitate
timely access to appropriate medical
and behavioral health interventions,
in tu rn improving health outcomes,
and could significantly reduce burden
placed on H/HS resources.
Additional efforts of the federal
government enable states and hum an
services officials w ith opportunities to
strategize housing placement options
for Medicaid. A June 2015 inform a
tional bulletin released by the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services
detailed guidelines for states that
would help construct benefit designs
th at adopt a more holistic approach
to addressing social determ inants of
health.9 The bulletin illustrated that
Medicaid could reimburse states for
housing-related activities, including
services like Individual Housing
Transition Services. These are
housing-related activities and services
th at help states identify and secure
housing options for individuals with
disabilities, those who require long
term social supports, and w ith added
consideration for individuals who are
chronically homeless.
In order to secure valuable and
cost-effective services th at address
homelessness, it is imperative for
H/HS organizations to strategically
address chronic homelessness in their
communities. Facilitating greater care
coordination for chronically homeless
individuals could equip H/HS
programs to meet the significant level
of need in their communities, as well
as have a positive impact on addressing
other social determ inants of health.
To read more about social determ i
nants of health, check out APHSA’s
blog at http://www.aphsa.org/
content/A P H SA/en/blog/2016/06/
SocialDeterminants.html
R eference Notes
1. See http://w w w .w ho.int/
social_determ inants/en/
2. See http://www.endhomelessness.
org/library/entry/
chronic-homelessness-policy-solutions
3. See http://www.endhomelessness.org/
page/-/files/2016% 20State% 200f% 20
Homelessness
4. See http://w w w .npr.org/2015/12/10/
459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-
homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how
5. See https://www.hudexchange.
info/resources/documents/HPRP_
Year2Summary
6. See http://w w w .aphsa.org/content/dam /
aphsa/pdfs/NW I/Utah% 20Chronic% 20
Homeless%20Approach_Aprl5
7. See http://w w w .npr.org/2015/12/10/
459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-
homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how
8. S e e h ttp Z /www.motherjones.
com /politics/2015/02/
housing-first-solution-to-homelessness-utah
9. See https://www.medicaid.gov/federal-
policy-guidance/downloads/cib-06-26-
2015
N is s a S h a f fi w a s a P o l i c y I n t e r n
w i t h t h e N a t i o n a l C o l l a b o r a t i v e f o r
I n t e g r a t i o n o f H e a lt h a n d H u m a n
S e r v i c e s a t A P H S A .
H O U S I N G F IR S T c o n t i n u e d f r o m p a g e 5
Including a mental health assess
m ent and accompanying th at w ith the
resources th a t could help him stabi
lize his symptoms right away could
have brought him more success. The
Milwaukee County Behavioral Health
Division recently secured a grant
through the Kresge Foundation to get
assistance from the American Public
Hum an Services Association to figure
out how best to integrate the m ental
health and housing systems for clients
like Jim.
I am excited for the future. I still truly
believe that I will play a part in ending
homelessness. But it won’t be by bringing
people in to a building and teaching
them to live like I do. It will be by
shaping a system that allows people to
blossom into success as they define it. S3
R eference N otes
1. S e e http://w w w.m otherjones.
com /politics/2015/02/
housing-first-solution-to-homelessness-utah
2. See http://gladwell.com /
m illion-dollar-murray/
E m ily K e n n e y c o o r d i n a t e s t h e
C o o r d i n a t e d E n t r y P r o g r a m a t IM P A C T ,
In c . i n M i l w a u k e e , W i s c o n s in .
2 8 P o lic y & P r a c tic e F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 7
http://www.aphsa.org/
http://www.who.int/
http://www.endhomelessness
http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/
https://www.hudexchange
http://www.aphsa.org/content/dam/
http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/
http://www.motherjones
https://www.medicaid.gov/federal-policy-guidance/downloads/cib-06-26-2015
https://www.medicaid.gov/federal-policy-guidance/downloads/cib-06-26-2015
https://www.medicaid.gov/federal-policy-guidance/downloads/cib-06-26-2015
http://www.motherjones
http://gladwell.com/
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