University Seminar 101

It is a small group that is ruining things for the whole. Certainly not all homeless are drunks and druggies, but a select few are so bad that they tarnish it for all. The same is true with auto emissions (smog) in Denver. William Gladwell tells of a man by the name of Donald Stedman, a chemist and auto-emissions specialist, who has invented a device to remotely check a vehicles carbon emissions and rate it either “Good” or “Poor.” (Gladwell) The majority of vehicles on the highway are decent or responsible about their carbon emissions, but a certain few are so terribly kept, they are nearly two hundred times worse. “We have at least one car in our database,” says Stedman, “which was emitting seventy grams of hydrocarbon per mile, which means you could almost drive a Honda Civic on the exhaust fumes from that car.” (Gladwell) Despite Denver’s attempts at managing the problem with emissions checks every year, it is still a small percentage of cars on the road causing over half of automobile pollution.
In both cases not all participants are huge contributors, but the major issues still remain. Homeless and dirty drivers are running amuck in the U.S. causing problems for everyone. So those very elite individuals should be well taken care of. Monitors should be strategically placed to catch those who fail the remote smog check and they should be dealt with. Homeless men and women with serious drug and alcohol problems should be given the attention and treatment they need to fix the problem, not simply manage it. Hospitals bills are piling up, but the problem is only being dealt with there. Those people lucky enough to care and try should be given the chance and the focus they deserve so that no money will have to be spent thereafter. Therein lies the problem with all of this- money. Who should have to pay for this, if anyone? Local communities who truly care and desire to fix the problem should rally to it and offer their say. If people acted locally on a national scale and devoted themselves, a change can undoubtedly be seen in time. Some cities and towns may bus bums to neighboring areas to manage their problems, but with treatment many of these problems can be eliminated for all.

If you plant a seed, it will eventually start growing, with rain and sunshine. The wind will blow and more seeds will spread throughout the soil. And if one watches them grow, they will keep growing until there are perhaps thousands of them. In this case, the seed is a homeless person. And now there are thousands of people without a roof over their heads, to say the least.
It is true that a program [Colorado Coalition for the Homeless] literally giving homeless people a key to an apartment is unfair to the people that work for what they get. But some of these people are mentally unstable or extremely sick, physically and emotionally. If we all work together, though, to get the thousands of people off the street, we can all be on the same track towards a better nation, all working together. Plus, taking these people off the streets saves our nation money. The medical bills that they create add up and put America more in debt. Ignoring this situation that has been going on for more than thirty years will just make this matter grow. Like the famous saying, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but if we all can support these homeless people getting help and starting new lives, after years of hard work, we can lessen the amount of people without a job and shelter.

What if our government gave every American citizen eighteen and over twenty-five thousand dollars, instead of bailing out the banks? People would pay off there debt’s and purchase new vehicles, new boats and, one could even put a down payment on a house. Then tell homeless people, if you clean can accomplish a goal that is set-up for them and, every one of them would to receive that money. America needs to help the people as a whole not just those with out a home. Twenty-five thousand dollars can go toward a young adolescent’s college tuition. More American would attend universities.
The money would be spent in everyday convenience stores and gas station putting the money back in the local companies. Our country can then purchase local goods rather then importing them from China. China owns the world that’s a simple fact. America owes China over four-trillion-dollars, when all of our money should have stayed in the states. The government needs s to stop worrying about the world and start thinking about the people.
Together as a nation we can help the homeless while helping everyone millions of Americans barely get by as it is and, money is the reason. Give the homeless the help that’s necessary, give them the counseling. Help them get out of there everyday cycle of living on the streets, people who help other people get help. What goes around comes around and everyone needs to realize that simple fact. United we stand and united we shall fall.

My personal opinion on non-chronic is homelessness is that society should give them a hand to recover from their misfortune. Our goal should be to rehabilitate them as fast as possible so they can go back to contributing to society. I believe we should take a different stance on the chronic homeless because most of them cannot become functioning members of society. Like Murray, they need to have some sort of structure in their lives so they can function. One idea would be to have them permanently on parole. Another idea is to put them into the Armed Forces as janitors or other low stress jobs. Both of these options would provide structure in their lives which they could then live somewhat normal lives.

In response to the essay I thought that it brought out little about what the homeless actually go through. Sure it may seem that they are a burden to society, but they themselves have their problems as well. The text talks about a homeless man, Murray Barr, who roamed the streets and allies of Reno, Nevada. He was considered a drunk and an alcoholic. Although he aimlessly wandered, everybody new he was sweet, kind, and meant no harm to the society. He was clearly being who he had been for years. He gained help from those who knew him and he took in very well. He worked and saved his money, but when they let go of his reins, he went back to the streets. So this brings up the question of whether or not he had the choice of being homeless or not. I believe that he did have the choice and his choice was to be homeless. Even though he wasn’t being monitored anymore, Murray still could have stuck to his job and made it through. The question that comes to mind is does everyone have that choice to be homeless or not. I believe that people have the choice to be homeless or the choice to not be homeless.

To remedy the problem, we must throw away any ethical views of helping the homeless in a way that gets them a job to support themselves without handing them money. I had a very hard time with this until I found that it is the only way to dramatically cut costs while improving the lives of the homeless. Philip Mangano, the director of the Interagency Council on Homelessness, proposed an idea which if taken at face value, sounds completely opposite of a solution that would work. His solution is to offer the extreme cases a low-cost apartment to live in, cost free. This gives them a clean and healthy environment to live in, dramatically cutting the amount of emergency visits. A section I would add to his plan would be to require a certain amount of hours they would need to work a week in order to keep their residency. Without this, I could not feel decent about giving them a place to live for free. They will no longer be leeching from the homeless shelters and rather than costing millions to keep alive and sheltered, they will cost thousands. Mangano claims that at the most, it costs fifteen thousand dollars to shelter and feed these individuals, a fraction of the cost of living on the street.
The advantages to this plan are getting the homeless person off the street, saving you and me money, showing them the quality of working, keeping health care prices lower, cleaning up our streets

The Gladwell Essay goes over another point. What effect do the homeless have on the hospitals themselves? At a minimum of 1000 dollars a visit, you can see how the bill could add up quick. The San Diego Medical Center followed 15 chronically homeless drunks. They found that over eighteen months, those 15 homeless, were treated at the hospitals emergency room four hundred and seventeen times, and each of them ran up a bill of almost a hundred grand. These homeless are so drunk all the time, that they actually have a build up of vomit in their lungs. It is this group that shows up to the hospital after getting hit by vehicles or stumbling and falling and causing damage to themselves. James Dunford, San Diego’s emergency medical director, states that “There is no end to the issues. We do this huge drill. We run up big lab fees, and the nurses want to quit, because they see the same guys come in over and over and all we are doing is making them capable of walking down the block.” That to me is saying, all we are doing is fixing these people so they can go right back out, get drunk, and hurt themselves again.
When talking about homeless people, there is one big underlying fact. Something, anything, must be done, but ignoring it is getting us nowhere. Numbers are on the rise, and ideas for helping these people are not coming in at a high enough pace. Whether homeless or not, they are people, they are Americans, and the U.S. is still their home. It is our responsibility as U.S. citizens, and even more as just everyday people, to help those who cannot help themselves.

This day and age everyone is so consumed by what they have and what more they want, but what about those who are less fortunate? No matter how much time and money we put into trying to solve homelessness and poverty it will never be completely fixed. There aren’t enough people in this country who believe in the cause. Yes I believe in the saying that one person can make the difference, but that one person is going to need the support from people who also believe that no one deserves to spend their lives on the streets. So I guess it’s the matter of do people think that it will cost more to shelter and give these people a chance of pulling their lives together, or just leaving them on the streets being subjected to illness and the temptations of drugs and alcohol. It seems to me that this is a moral issue. I completely agree with the housing that is being provided to those in Denver. I think that if it is going to help with getting people off of the streets, and out of the cold it is the best possible solution. There is a glitch though; what about those who abuse the housing they are being given? For example the twenty-seven year old who kept thrashing the apartments he had been given. How many chances are you they willing to give a person? How long are they able to reside in these apartments? You think they would give them to the people who actually want to get out of the situation that they are in, but who has the right of choosing who wants it and who doesn’t? It a really tough choice and what if those people you give housing to are using the housing to sell drugs or to do other illegal things? I guess that is a risk that we must take to weed out those who want it for the right reason.

When their is a mom trying to support her three children and in debt then they should be the ones that should receive the free apartment. it is more likely to stay a little cleaner and with no broken windows. That mother is contributing o America even if she is having a hard time doing it. A program should b put at work so the homeless could contribute back to their community. The homeless should have to do something whether it is working on one-hundred community hours or more. By making them work for the free apartments, the homeless would be able to gain responsibility and a sense of a work ethic. When they allow the guy who trashed the apartment, breaking the windows and just moving him to a new one so he could do the same thing over and over again, does not show any improvement with the issue at hand. Further more, making the homeless work for what they get for free could solve a lot of America’s main problems in dealing with the chronically homeless.

What is ethically acceptable? What is ethically acceptable differs between each individual. Some may believe everyone deserves a second chance, but others may think they have already gotten their shot. While some homeless do deserve a second chance, a limit must exist and be enforced. A man mentioned in Gladwell’s essay was handed his second chance and chose to trash the apartment not only once, but twice. In cases like this, the incentive of another apartment should not be granted. Giving him more than one opportunity may encourage him to repeat his belligerent behavior. Certain guidelines must be instated to help prevent situations like this from occurring. The idea of giving an apartment to the chronically homeless seems ethical, but what about others who are in need? For example, someone who works hard day in and day out and still cannot make ends meet, does not get their life handed to them. Although some do, just giving to the chronically homeless does not seem fair. Ethics should be strongly considered, but there are also financial issues that contribute to the problem and need to be resolved as well.

Gladwell did not delve into the main reasons for homelessness and it was never told why Murray became homeless. It would have been an appropriate addition to the article if housing prices and mental illnesses were discussed in greater detail. The fact that even if an individual has a full time job, it is still plausible that they are homeless is a statement that sounds wrong in the United States. “The National Coalition for the Homeless, the most prominent advocacy organization for homelessness, data suggests that there are places in every state where someone working full-time for minimum wage, or even above it, will not be able to afford housing”(homelessness.suite101). The People that have no other choice but are striving to be independent are the well deserving few of this free housing. In the article this circumstance is not mentioned in great detail. Any personal quotations from hard workers or mothers struggling financially would have brought insight to the unfair situation of social benefits.
From a moral standpoint, the homeless that are not trying in life do not deserve handouts and therefore should not receive them, though it is more efficient to house them.
Gladwell never discussed any correlation between crime and homeless individuals. Shockingly, the homeless commit less violent crimes than housed individuals do. “Dr. Pamela Fischer, of Johns Hopkins University, studied the 1983 arrest records in Baltimore and found that although homeless people were more likely to commit non-violent and non-destructive crimes, they were actually less likely to commit crimes against person or property”(nhchc.org). Although the homeless are far more likely to trespass or violate drug laws, they are far less likely to harm or violate anyone. It would be a logical assumption that the homeless are so desperate that they will rob or assault anyone who has something of use, but that is just not the case.