Daughters, wives, sisters, and mothers, seek shelter from the busy streets of Los Angeles, unaware of what dangers may come their way. In Los angeles alone over 55,000 people reside on the streets, with no resources, fearing for their lives. Out of this number 31% are women. This leaves risks of rape, murder, assault, the possibilities are endless. This population of women has risen 33% in the last few years. They can't afford shelter, or to maintain an adequate lifestyle just for survival, especially those who bear children. This leaves a bigger question of how and when did women begin becoming homeless and what is the reason? It all began in 1870 after the transcontinental railroad, Los Angeles experienced a 350 percent increase in …show more content…
Many women between the ages of 15-30, migrated to los angeles, most to begin a new life. This created an issue for Los Angeles resulting in the founding of the Young Women's Christian Association, or the YMCA this gave women housing at a low cost. They had strict rules and a tight curfew that must be followed in order to board there. As women searched for ways to make money and create a living, prostitution began. Allowing them to acquire money and be able to afford necessities, providing for themselves. Oddly enough, prostitution benefited Los angeles from 1920-1960 as female homelessness was at an all time low. Consequently, following Deinstitutionalization, the release of mental patients in asylums occured, women homelessness rose rapidly. Many figured homelessness was mainly a male issue, women began appearing on the streets with nowhere to go or turn too. Homeless shelters did not
centres, as well as all that is proposed to go hand in hand with them,
period of American history. Those working for a social change did so under a variety of
Although most people know what homelessness is and it occurs in most societies, it is important to define because the forces of displacement vary greatly, along with the arrangement and meaning of the resulting transient state. The Stewart B McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 defined a homeless person as “an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence or a person who resides in a shelter, welfare hotel, transitional program or place not ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation, such as streets, cars, movie theaters, abandoned buildings, etc.” Resent surveys conducted in the U.S. have confirmed that the homeless population in America is extremely diverse and includes representatives from all segments of society, including: the old and young, men and women, single people and families, city dwellers and rural residents, whites and people of color, employed and unemployed, able workers and people with serious health problems. The diversity among people that are homeless reflects how difficult it is to generalize the causes of homelessness and the needs of homeless people. Robert Rosenheck M.D., the author of Special Populations of Homeless Americans, explains the importance of studying homelessness based on subgroups, “each subgroup [of homeless people] has unique service needs and identifying these needs is critical for program planning and design.” Despite these diversities, homelessness is a devastating situation for all that experience it. Not only have homeless people lost their dwelling, but they have also lost their safety, privacy, control, and domestic comfort.
Prostitution in Canada has had a long history. Prostitution is the exchange of money in return for sexual favors. The most commonly thought of form of prostitution is street-based but this makes up a portion of the trade. Other forms include escort services and brothels, to name a few. Prostitution has been legal in Canada for hundreds of years, as Canada inherited their laws from England, but there have been several laws aimed at preventing it. These laws include prohibitions on brothels, communication in public for the purpose of prostitution, and making a living off of prostitution. Therefore, while prostitution itself is not illegal, it is very difficult to engage in it without breaking the law. This leads to a lot of misunderstanding, as many men are not aware that these various laws exist, only knowing that prostitution itself is legal. In support of this, Wortley, Fischer, and Webster (2002) found that 17% of Ontario men who had been arrested under the communication or solicitation law in Ontario were apparently unaware that it was illegal to talk to a prostitute about buying sex (Morton 2012).
...ty for increasing the likelihood that women will become homeless. Female single parent families rose form 23.7 % of all families in poverty in 1960 to 52.6 % of all families in poverty in the mid 1990's. (Hagen, 1994). As a result of historical growth in women's poverty and female headed family homelessness, it has been increasingly important for research to focus on the unique sets of issues and problems that women's homelessness presents.
Almost 150 years ago, the United States eliminated slavery. Most Californians most likely would disagree and say slavery still exist, right in their backyards. Human sex trafficking is a substantial huge industry in California and about $32 billion dollars is involve. It is one of the furthermost challenging crimes to track. The United States did not start monitoring trafficked individuals until 1994; it started being included in the Department’s Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (Wordpress.com, 2009). There were more than 4000 convictions worldwide related to trafficking in the last year (Human Trafficking Awareness Partnership, 2013). Traffickers use young women and children as products and sell them to gain a profit (Free Legal Advice Help, 2007). These young women and children are often captured by the traffickers with deals where they were promised a better life. In other cases these victims are sold by their parents, husbands, boyfriends or outright kidnapped. The victims are then at the point their involuntary turn into sex slaves for money that they certainly never receive. These victims are exposed to painful and brutal treatment. They feel pain at the hands of their kidnappers on a day-to-day basis to ensure their complete participation.
McKinney Act, 42 U.S.C 11301. Et seq. 1994). There are facts and myths the haunts our displaced citizens, as a result of these belief the homeless youth population as has been stereotype and/or ostracized based on their circumstances. We will explore these myths to alleviate the misbelief or misunderstanding of this exclusive population of communal and societal members. There is a misconception that the homeless youth are solely blamable for their own circumstance. The fact is many homeless individuals have survived as victims of violence, child abuse, natural disasters, deficiency in employment opportunities and/or the insufficiency of affordable healthcare. Some are unemployed, mentally or physically ill, and many are
The increase in industrialization in the U.S. during the 1820’s caused a rise in homelessness. Women made up the majority of the homeless population. During the beginning of the nineteenth century, private charities helped provide food and shelter for the homeless. Towards the end of the nineteenth century men became the majority of the homeless population. The federal government created “mother’s pension laws” which were protective labor laws that assisted poor women and children. Shelters required a work test for men to enter and only allowed them to stay for a limited amount of time. Charities did not help men in the nineteenth century (Homelessness in the United States).
Homelessness can happen to anyone unexpectedly. Many poor people are at the risk of homelessness. The cost of living and trying to find affordable housing can be very difficult. Many who are homeless are in poverty, have a mental illness, or addictions. Homelessness happens from personal, as well as structural factors. Many aren’t able to make enough for rent, as well as, utilities, food, and other expenses each month. More than 6 million Americans pay more than half of their income towards rent (Reamer, 1989). The trend is once someone becomes homeless, it is likely they will be homeless repeatedly. To end homelessness, affordable housing will have to be created because it is peoples largest single expenditure (Anderson, 2013).
Homelessness is primarily a poverty issue. The persistence of poverty in the United States reflects more than just an aggregation of individual failings. Structural factors, such as the way we understand and define poverty, the inherent features of our economic system that produce income inequality, social inequities and our policy responses to these problems shape current trends. Economic changes have had the strongest association with trends in overall rates, regardless of how poverty is measured. Poverty rate is high amongst minority groups, children and female-headed households (Iceland, 2003). According to professor Iceland’s research, rates of extreme poverty are higher among children and African-Americans and lower for whites, Asians and the elderly. Among families with children, married couples were less likely to be poor (6.9 %) than single parent male (17.5%) and single parent female (35.3%).
In the middle of the nineteenth century, America experienced a boom of expansion and development. Miners in pursuit of gold and riches raced across the country, establishing mining and frontier towns along the way. A lot of these towns or settlements had high populations of men, like miners and army garrisons. With a rise in these developments, the West also experienced a rise in prostitution. Prostitution is defined as the contractual relation in which sexual services are exchanged for a sum of money (Davis, 1937). Prostitution in the early West was a cutthroat business. Predominantly a female occupation, many women, including those from overseas, were often forced into the lifestyle and found it very difficult to leave the profession (Oharazeki, 2013). Due to the skewed gender role expectations in the nineteenth century American West, female prostitutes often experienced abusive masters, pitiful wages, and an overarching poor quality of life.
There are an estimated 2,981 homeless people in San Antonio each day. Out of these, 1,243 were unsheltered and a staggering 31% of those are people with families. In addition, the average age of a homeless child in San Antonio is 6 years old. An overall picture shows that homelessness has dropped nearly four percent from 2012 to 2013. Further, an average of 610,042 people are homeless across the United States on any given night. “Of that number, 36 percent – 222,197 people – were in families, representing a drop of 7 percent for that group” (Chappell, 2013, p. #). More than a third of these people were not found in shelters, abandoned buildings, cars, or under bridges. Although, there has been a small decline in homelessness, it’s still necessary to drastically change these statistics by solving the causes of homelessness. Sleeping in vacant buildings and under bridges is unacceptable. These statistics are very alarming and a solution needs to be found.
Here in Tahoe, we are lucky enough to experience a great quality of life, and only a few have to face the horrible life of poverty and homelessness. However, nationwide, even right outside the basin, homelessness is a growing epidemic across the country. There are many ways one can become homeless; for the most part poverty. There are also different concentrations of homeless in different types of terrain, such as urban or suburban areas. Last, there is the ever- growing homeless population, and how much money it costs us for others to live in poverty. These are the questions we ask ourselves about homelessness, and the only way we can help is to know the facts about this lingering subject.
“Homeless is more than being without a home. It is tied into education needs, food, security; health issues both mental and physical, employment issues, etc. Don’t forget the whole picture.” (“Boxed In” 2005 pg. 108)
Over the summer my friend and I decided to join the Coalition for Homeless Women. I learned a lot while visiting the numerous women shelters and I can admit that I too had very stupid and naïve perceptions of some of these women. Even though I was not as “rotten” as some of the girls I attended school with, my parents sheltered me. I will always remember walking down the street one day and as I passed by a homeless woman I handed her my dollar. My father immediately looked at me funny and said “Sonia, you shouldn’t have given her your allowance, she will only use it to buy drugs or alcohol. She will not use it for anything good!” At the age of ten those words resonated in my head for some time. My perception of homeless people was somewhat flawed until I was old enough to understand the world for myself. I was really happy when I visited shelters and spoke to some of these remarkable women. They weren’t on drugs, they weren’t alcoholics, and these are wo...