Homelessness

In English, we read A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. This sparked a conversation about homelessness and possible solutions. I was amazed that the entirely of my English class (excluding me and two of my friends) thought that homeless people are there because they want to be. I'm not saying that there aren't people that take advantage of people, but not even close to the majority are there because they want to be.

The majority of homeless people are youth. Of the homeless youth out there 40% of them are LGBT (as of 2011). Their parents kicked them out. Just because our dinky ass crap community doesn't have any homeless people doesn't mean that when you see one somewhere else they're just a con artist. I'd love to see these kids in my class figure out what to do if their parents kicked them out and they had nowhere to go.

My class was talking about how the pictures my teacher showed us didn't actually look like legit homeless people. "That guy's jacket looks too new." "That girl's shirt is too white." I'm sorry, but I wasn't aware that four pictures on an overhead represented the entire population of homeless people. I also wasn't aware that you had to have been homeless for a certain amount of time in order to be considered homeless.

It's not as easy to get out of a bad situation as people think. Living at home you can go online to get information on whatever you want or need. When you're living on the street you don't have that access. Finding the information that could help you is far from easy.

I'm not saying that you have to give them money or anything. Just treat them like an actual person. I don't care if they're a scam artist or not they still deserve some respect. Hell, it doesn't hurt anyone if you give them an apple or something. Seriously, if you were in that situation you'd be grateful for anything someone was willing to give you.