When the thought of camping is referenced the idea of families going hiking through the woods, having a entertaining time telling stories by the fire comes to mind. Camping is viewed by the public as recreational event families and friends take part in to get away from society for a short period of time. Scott Bransford author of “Camping for Their Lives” sees camping in a completely different manner. Homeless are colonizing in areas around or outside cities; the government refers to these areas as “tent cities” rather than the slums, in which they resemble. Scott Bransford stresses the addictions, living situations, job market, and the role government assistance has little to no help towards rehabilitating and getting the homeless off the streets. Whenever Scott Bransford references government assistance it is a negative event; he never mentions support or aid given to the homeless into a successful career without calling a tent a home. His article is very well structured, but the credibility seems to be very …show more content…
corrupted and a one sided argument; he tends to leave out crucial statics such as the homeless’ education level, reason for not being financially stable, and the addictions some may have. Scott Bransford begins his article interviewing a married couple just outside of Fresno, California; he goes into grave detail about a place they call home, a weather battered tent. Scott Bransford continues to discuss throughout the essay the struggles the homeless face daily. When the government intervened, they raided a tent city to sweep out the homeless. After the government finished using brute force to solve their problems; the homeless filed a class-action suit against the city and received $2.3 million in damages. Ontario officials started a campaign to punish squatters for making makeshift homes on land they clearly did not possess. Officials soon built a chain-link fence around the camp and established rules that the homeless must follow. It was ultimately compared to a prison for the homeless and after a few months less than half remained inside the fence. When Scott Bransford interviewed a person who had escaped Mexico to start a new life he said it was better in Mexico and he was trying to head back. The overall tone Scott Bransford achieves is sympathetic.
He attempts to appeal to the emotional side of a person by showing the struggling times the homeless face. When he interviewed a homeless a woman who did not graduate from high school, he says “ashamed of a learning disability that got in the way of her reading” (p.395). This line appeals to the emotional side of the reader because it shows how this woman did not pass because she had a disability and because of it the world had shut her off forcing her into a tent city. Scott Bransford later in his article refers to these tent cities as the Hoovervilles and slums. This allows the connection with the environment to compare the historical past of America to give a better sense of understanding to add a connection with the Great Depression. The slums reference also allows a connection to be made by how the American society resembles a struggling nation rather than the stable nation it portrays to
be. The intended audience for Scott Bransford’s article is society as a whole; he wants to educate the public on how difficult the lives of the homeless and how they receive little to no assistance. He emphasizes their struggles when he refers back to the married couple and how they are forced to cook on top of an oil barrel to survive. This placed a visual image in the reader's mind seeing a struggling couple barely able to survive a day because homeless shelters are overcrowded and society has given up on the couple. Even though the homeless are in a challenging situation Scott Bransford makes a hasty generalization; when he discusses the involvement of government assistance and their little help he profoundly states “if they are neglected, they will be lost to crime, addiction, and illness”(p.396). This statement indicates that without the government getting involved in a positive fashion a tent city will fall to corruption. The corruption of these tent cities are evident because Scott Bransford points out that in a proven static approximately 41 percent of the homeless have been incarcerated. He later closes his article with a quote from a homeless man abruptly saying “sometimes hunger can make a person do crazy things” (p.397). This is a subtle hint towards the crime involved with living in these tent cities. Scott Bransford’s “Camping for Their Lives” was a very well organized article that appealed to the emotions of the reader; however a problem Scott Bransford never truly elaborates on is the positive involvements that have been made to support the homeless. He tends to focus his attention towards the negative aspects of the government, because of this it enables the reader to take action and help the homeless. Scott Bransford’s goal in writing this article is to educate and ultimately want society to take action in aiding the homeless. This article may not be for everyone because it is not an objective argument being portrayed. Scott Bransford continuously throughout the article begs for services to help the homeless, but only receiving negative actions for instance sweeping the homeless out of cities.
Lars Eighner's short essay, "Dumpster Diving," reveals the stereotypes about homelessness in America. In order to confirm these known stereotypes about American culture, Eighner includes autobiographical accounts of the economically inferior class, as well as revealing his elitist rules that governs the life of a homeless person. According to Eighner, homeless people fall into the following categories, 'can scroungers', 'Dumpster divers', and 'scavengers.' (Eighner, 1993). In addition, Eighner's blatant demonstration of his superiority to the people he scavenges from reveals his true character of snobbery.
...th the dismantling of government housing assistance and gentrification, getting off the streets were only becoming harder for the members of the Edgewater Homeless, leaving drugs as the only things to turn to. I get that and I think that Bourgois and Schonberg displayed this well.
Today's world is filled with both great tragedy and abundant joy. In a densely populated metropolis like New York City, on a quick walk down a street you encounter homeless people walking among the most prosperous. Unfortunately, nine times out of ten the prosperous person will trudge straight past the one in need without a second thought. A serious problem arises when this happens continually. The problem worsens when you enter a different neighborhood and the well-to-do are far from sight. Many neighborhoods are inhabited only by the most hopeless of poverty - ridden people while others downtown or across the park do not care, or are glad to be separated from them. Such is the problem in New York City today and in Mott Haven in Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace. I have lived in New York City all my life and I had no idea that these problems were going on so close to home. If I live about three miles away from Mott Haven and I am not aware of the situation there, then who is?
Mark Peterson’s 1994 photograph, Image of Homelessness, compares the everyday life of the working class to the forgotten life of the lowest class in society. In the image, the viewer can see a troubled homeless man wrapped in a cocoon of standard manipulated 12in by 12in cardboard boxes and yarn. The yarn is what is keeping the man and box tied to the red bench. This bench has chipped paint and is right in front of a black fence. Underneath the bench is dirt and debris from the dead fall leaves. The center focal point is the homeless man on the bench. He is the focal point because he is the greatest outsider known to man. Behind this man is vibrant life. There is pulsating people crossing the clean street, signs of life from all the advertising on store windows, families walking and blurred cars filled with
Homelessness is one of the biggest issues society (Unites States) faces today. Homelessness is caused by lack of affordable housing, economic situations and decline in federal funding for low income families and the mentally ill. A homeless person is defined as an individual who lacks housing (without regard to whether the individual is a member of a family) including an individual whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public or private (shelters) facility that provides temporary living accommodations and an individual who is a resident in transitional housing. This definition of housing is used by the U.S Department of Healt...
...on the homeless community. I previously held preconceived notions that the homeless consisted of people who were either unable to connect and form relationships with others or didn’t desire to do so. Yet, I observed most everyone greeting one another and reminiscing with those who have been absent from the community for a while, as well as, expressing concern for those missing. I recognized that the homeless may live in a non-traditional way, but they have established their own communities and are successful in forming and maintaining cohesive relationships.
Poverty and homelessness are often, intertwined with the idea of gross mentality. illness and innate evil. In urban areas all across the United States, just like that of Seattle. in Sherman Alexie’s New Yorker piece, What You Pawn I Will Redeem, the downtrodden. are stereotyped as vicious addicts who would rob a child of its last penny if it meant a bottle of whiskey.
A main factor in the storyline is the way the writer portrays society's attitude to poverty in the 18th century. The poor people were treated tremendously different to higher classed people. A lot of people were even living on the streets. For example, "He picked his way through the hordes of homeless children who congregated at evening, like the starlings, to look for the most sheltered niche into which they could huddle for the night." The writer uses immense detail to help the reader visualise the scene. She also uses a simile to help the reader compare the circumstances in which the children are in. This shows that the poor children had to live on the streets and fend for themselves during the 18th century. Another example involves a brief description of the city in which the poor people lived in. This is "nor when he smelt the stench of open sewers and foraging pigs, and the manure of horses and mules" This gives a clear example of the state of the city. It is unclean and rancid and the writer includes this whilst keeping to her fictional storyline.
Tunstall, L. (2009). Homelessness: an overview. EBSCO Publishing Service Selection Page. Retrieved February 5, 2011, from http://web.ebscohost.com/pov/detail?hid=119&sid=d5f751fa-0d0d-4ed1-8deb-483e701af50c%40sessionmgr111&vid=3&bdata=Jmxhbmc9ZW4tY2Emc2l0ZT1wb3YtY2Fu#db=p3h&AN=28674966
Johns, G. (2012). Paved with good intentions: The road home and the irreducible minimum of homelessness in Australia. Agenda : A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, 19(1), 41-59. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/docview/1032658396?accountid=14543
Homelessness is a problem that happens in many different countries around the world. Definitions of homelessness are defined in different meanings by different people. However, the Stewart B. McKinney Act defines a homeless person as “ one who lacks a fixed permanent nighttime residence or whose nighttime residence is a temporary shelter, welfare hotel, or any public or private place not designed as sleeping accommodations for human beings” (McNamara 1025). It is impossible to find out exactly the number of homeless; however, the researchers can do a study to estimate that number. Based on different statistics from different researchers, the homeless population in America has been increasing as “an alarming rate” (Markos and Lima). Therefore, even though America is one of the most powerful countries in the world, homelessness, which has many common causes, has always been a big problem in society.
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.
In Charles E. King’s “Homelessness in America”, he writes about the population of homeless people in America and the fact that children are part of the growing population of the homeless in America. Also, in “My Anger and Sadness Over Pesticides”, Cesar Chavez writes that pesticides have endangered the lives of farm workers and their families. In addition, in “The Gulf War is Still Being Fought”, Joelle Foshee writes that even though the gulf war has ended, a new war is still being fought and this new war is known as the “Gulf War Syndrome”. These are all injustices in America today. However, homelessness in America is the injustice I have chosen to address because the population of homeless people has grown higher due to insufficient help from the gove...
Her use of connotative language creates many harsh images of her experiences in a life of poverty, a life of poverty. By using these images, Parker is capable of causing the damage. reader to feel many emotions and forces the reader to question his or her own stereotypes of the poor. With the use of connotative language and the ability to arouse emotion, Parker successfully compels the reader to examine his or her. thoughts and beliefs on who the poor are.
This great nation of awesome power and abundant resources is losing the battle against homelessness. The casualties can be seen on the street corners of every city in American holding an ?I will work for food? sign. Homeless shelters and rescue missions are at full capacity. There is no room at the inn for the nation?s indigent. Anyone who has studied this issue understands that homelessness is a complex problem. Communities continue to struggle with this socio-economic problem while attempting to understand its causes and implement solutions. The public and private sectors of this country are making a difference in the lives of the homeless by addressing the issues of housing, poverty and education.