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10 Actions You Can Take to End Homelessness
Published October 07, 2008 @ 06:48PM PST
Homelessness is an American atrocity. Don't just be a bystander as millions of Americans struggle to meet their most basic needs. Here are 10 actions you can take today to help address this worsening symptom of inequality in America.
1. Defend homeless people's civil rights
Sign on to the National Homeless Civil Rights Organizing Project, a grassroots-level effort to combat growing trends affecting the homeless, such as increased criminalization and the recent increase in hate crimes and violent acts against the homeless. Here's how they define their mission: "By definition, people who are homeless live in public. A lack of housing forces them to do in public what everyone prefers to do in private. This indignity is one of many reasons we seek to end homelessness. Unfortunately, it has also become the battleground for the most fundamental defense of people who happen to be homeless: the right to exist." Get involved in one of their nine field offices across the country: Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco, CA, Portland, OR, Chicago, IL, Jeffersonville, IN, Cincinnati, OH, Atlanta, GA, Austin, TX, and Washington, DC.
2. Respond to legislative alerts
Sign up for email updates from the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Not only will you remain up-to-date on what's happening in Congress affecting homelessness and poverty nationally, you'll learn how to get involved when it's most critical. This powerful resource will provide you with all of the tools and information you'll need to contact your legislator about timely legislation.
3. Learn how to appropriately react to panhandlers
You're walking down the street. Someone asks you for money - and you're stuck. You feel for the person, you want to help, but you're unsure of how your charity will be spent. You don't want to encourage destructive behavior. How should you react?
Regardless of your response, you must assess each situation. Always look out for your own safety and avoid confrontation. That being said, here are some alternative responses to requests for money or change:
- Provide information about local organizations serving homeless people. Educate yourself about services offered by your community here. Many organizations provide brochures for people to distribute in response to requests for money.
- Carry coupons for food (such as a sandwich or cup of coffee) or pre-packaged food (granola bar or tuna).
- Even if you're not planning on giving money, food, or information, it's best to politely smile and acknowledge the individual. Nobody likes to be ignored.
4. Stock up someone's new home
Across the country, homeless individuals and families are moving out of shelters and into permanent, supported housing. You can help make a formerly homeless person's new home more welcoming by providing supplies to furnish and equip their home for habitation. Consider providing towels, pots, pans, bedsheets, utensils, lamps, shower liners, trash cans, etc. Contact your local service organization to learn more about turning "permanent housing" into a home.
5. Take advantage of teachable moments
Thanks to NCH for this great suggestion. They said it best:
When you see others behaving in insulting ways toward someone who is homeless, take advantage of the opportunity to share your compassionate and informed view on the difficult circumstances and obstacles facing people experiencing homelessness. You may be able to take the damaging arrow aimed at a person who is homeless and turn it into something constructive.
6. Find creative ways to collect supplies for a local organization
Shelters are in constant demand of supplies to distribute to homeless individuals. Large scale donation drives are great, but you can easily gather supplies more frequently by incorporating charity into your everyday life. For example, next time you have a party, ask everyone to bring a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste. Buy an extra can of soup and jar of peanut butter every time you go grocery shopping, you'll be surprised how much you accumulate after just a few months. Be creative. Know that donations of goods in all quantities are useful and appreciated.
7. Help homeless kids be kids
Many children living in shelters don't have as much exposure to the simple pleasures in life that most kids experience. Work with your local shelters to sponsor a trip to a museum, baseball game, or park. Donate tickets to an event or aquarium so a family can attend together. Volunteer to organize host a game of whiffle-ball or barbecue at your local family shelter. Your time and energy will provide a welcome break from the stresses and challenges faced by homeless children.
8. Volunteer
You: talented, skilled, and compassionate. Why not lend your expertise and enthusiasm to improving your community? Shelters are always looking for dedicated volunteers to further their mission. Opportunities range from being a member of a board of directors to tutoring a homeless child. Planning a fundraising event to working as an overnight staff person at a shelter. The possibilities are endless. Contact your local service-provider, find out what they need, and determine how you can help.
9. Buy a street newspaper from your local vendor
According to the , "The benefits of street papers go far beyond economic opportunity. For the vendor, they offer a positive experience of self-help that breaks through the isolation that many homeless people experience. They offer the public a means to reach out with their dollar to help a homeless person directly and, over time, form a caring relationship." Find out if your community has a street newspaper; if they don't, why not consider starting one?
10. Think outside the box
There are no limits to the ways you can become involved in the fight to end homelessness in America. Whether it's connecting with an individual or family experiencing homelessness, becoming an informed and active advocate, volunteering regularly at an organization in your community, or raising awareness and funding, you can use your talents and concern to make a difference. Visit this blog often to learn about the creative ways people are using their talents to address homelessness in their communities.
Comments
Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.
Author
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Shannon Moriarty
- Boston, MA
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Shannon traces her passion for the issue of homelessness back to the summer she worked in the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco, which has the highest concentration of homelessness in the Bay Area. Since then, has worked in shelters in the Triangle region of North Carolina and now in the greater Boston area.
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The Case Foundation, a partner of Change.org, is running a campaign called "Change Begins With Me," which
calls on citizens across the country to get involved by answering the question: how will YOU commit to
bringing about change in your neighborhood, your community or your nation?
#4 Stocking up a home
Furniture and appliances can be found given away to save landfill space on www.freecycle.org - groups worldwide
Posted by Duncan Wallace on 10/14/2008 @ 06:43AM PST
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Very good sugestions. I'm a dual diagnosed veteran. I've seen the homeless problem from both sides, and don't think I would have gotten out of it without help. Now I try to help those who are still homeless.
Posted by Ismael Rodriguez on 10/14/2008 @ 10:56AM PST
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WHAT NO ONE WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT HOMELESSNESS: There's next to NO real help for most people that are homeless... that AREN'T either alcoholics, drug addicts, ex-cons, mental patients, etc., etc. Especially in terms of helping someone OUT of being homeless. The overwhelming majority of "homeless services" are geared to addressing the above "issues" and/or helping perpetuate homeless, if more comfortably. How do I know this? I was forced into homelessness earlier this year. At first, as I saw the possibility and began to try to "prepare" I was almost comforted by the number of organizations and agencies that appeared or outright claimed to help the homeless. And I began to contact them. More and more of them. Imagine my surprise when I found that one after another refused me any help to avoid homelessness and then, once I was homeless, STILL could do nothing for me. Some don't even respond to contacts, ignoring calls and emails. Think twice before 'donating' to any outfit claiming to "help the homeless" -- apparently their main "clients" are themselves and the paycheck they collect which keeps THEM housed and comfy, not anyone else. http://homeword-unbound.blogspot.com/
Posted by SlumJack Homeless on 10/24/2008 @ 08:17PM PST
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Slum Jack, you are closest to the truth here. The other fluff is just hugs and balony sandwiches used to sustain the problem.
There is also a great deal of truth in the concept of pay me to help them and let me add that if it isn't tax deductable people wouldn't even think of 'donating'.
Enough about what's wrong with this place and let's consider the only proposal that's worth considering that will actually cure poverty for folks like you and the people considering suicide and those millions of people that will be homeless in the next year or two.
What I am about to tell you is free. You, nor anybody else has to pay me or owe me or buy something from me. I call it 'open source philanthropy' so anyone that complains about the plight of the homeless can now shut up and go cure the problem. I think most of these people just like to hear themselves talk anyway. Y'know, like politicians.
Here in America we demolish 300,000 houses a year. If you want one of them just place an ad in the local classifieds or on Craigslist and write it this way.
FREE Demolition call Slum Jack at,.... or go to the library and use a computer and have them email you.
Buy the salvage rights and take almost the whole thing. There, you have a house. Now where are you going to put it? Go to any tax office, preferably out in a bit more rural county, and ask for the lawyer who handles the foreclosures. Go to his office and ask his assistant if they have any land you can buy for back taxes. They do. If not go to the next county. Today I can buy 6, 1 acre lots in Pelham County NC for under $3k each. Clean and clear title.
Now ask your friends and family to help you or go back to Craigslist and ask for volunteers to help you.
Now do carpentry. Gut the house. Throw away the roof shingles and plaster and keep everything else that's worth keeping. Dismantle the house into wall and floor sections, lay them on a trailer behind a pick up truck, it will take several trips, and pull it to the new place.
Let's say you have no money and need to raise some to buy beer, pizza, the land and have the foundation, well and septic put in. Auction the houses people call you about on EBay. It costs about $100 each to do this. Then take that money you got from the auction and use it to buy land or put in your mechanicals. Make sure you put "Must be moved" in the house description.
What you have just read is real live cure for poverty, a giveaway of $60 Billion a year in houses that anyone can go get if you are willing to do blue collar work.
Right now in Cincinnati Ohio the government there is going to spend $6 Million Dollars to demolish tens of thousands of houses. Wouldn't it make more sense if the authors and contributors of Change.org and people that wanted to do something about the less fortunate of us got together and lobbied the folks in local Government nationwide and Sen. Obama and the rest of our white collar welfare recipients, otherwise known as the U.S. Congress To put a ban on demolition of houses until we all had one?
It saves tax money, helps the environment, creates jobs, cuts down on crime to include murders and suicides and countless robberies when a people of a country have no other hope is what they end up turning to.
Maybe it's starting to dawn on you folks, America is a con job. A confidence job. If we can keep you in front of your tv's and keep you quiet and on occassion baffle you with BS then I (the rich, the politically connected and powerful) never have to answer to you and can pretty much do what I want, which we are doing now. Maybe it has already dawned on you that the American flag is no longer a symbol of freedom, it is a distraction similar to what a magician uses a pretty girl for, it is only a corporate logo.
If you are fed up and really want to change things then challenge our candidates to answer my/our challenge to them. Not afraid of them are you? They don't intimidate you do they?
How am I going to make this your challenge? If you can corner one of these slippery eels into actually answering this question.
What is your answer to The Benefactor Projects proposal?
Maybe, for once, they might answer and for once be useful and keep their word and do something that would make it worth a persons vote then if you will do that, I will give you a paying job and a free house.
Sen. Obama has hundreds of Millions of dollars to spend on commercials is he a good enough man to use just one of them to create jobs and save a families life? You ask him.
Call every talk show. Get in their face. Make them do something for us for a Change. Copy and paste this message all over the web.
What could you do with your life if you didn't have a house payment? How many companies could you start? How many jobs could you create? How many people would you give hope to?
My name is,
Tom Canavan
and I authored this message.
The Benefactor Project.com
Posted by Tom Canavan on 10/25/2008 @ 07:23AM PST
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Uh... "Buy the salvage rights and take almost the whole thing"
And just how do you figure a homeless person who can't even afford the cheapest rent is going to "buy the salvage rights'?
Posted by SlumJack Homeless on 11/15/2008 @ 07:54PM PST
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