There are various factors that contribute to someone being homeless. Such factors could be financial restraint, mental illness, and family issues.

Homelessness has been recognized as an economic issue. The National Low Income Housing Coalition declares that families nationwide need to earn $15-37 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. That is three times the current minimum wage.

In the U.S. alone, more than 3 million people per year experience homelessness. Programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families has experience cuts, limiting the number of resources for the homeless.

There has been concern on whether the government is attempted to get the homeless on their feet. Members from Love Wins Ministries, a North California church group, was at risk of being arrested for feeding the homeless.

The following piece is written by senior Kyle Blow, who interviewed several homeless individuals. He examines the relationship between the homeless and the police.

******

Police in cities all around the country are interacting with homeless people on a daily basis, some with positive interactions, others with negative consequences.  Police have to do their jobs and sometimes the job is enforcing the law with the homeless population.

The police and local government need to create a long term solution to get the homeless population off the streets and safe from whatever harm they are facing now.

I’ve made a documentary on homeless people awhile back and got to talk with several of them about what it is like to be in their position.  At first glance, homeless people appear to be bums looking for trouble.

But on closer inspection, they appear to be just normal people who are simply down on their luck.  Why would a person want to harass someone without a home?

At the start of this project I was under the assumption that the police abuse homeless people because of one particular interview I did. I have since learned from several new interviews that the original interview was either an isolated incident or simply exaggerated on the interviewee.

In the other interviews, the homeless people said that’s not the case. For the most part, the police will leave the homeless alone and treat them with respect if they themselves are respectful and stay out of trouble.  Some even went as far as defending the police by saying they deserved it and the police were simply doing their job.

But there have also been minor incidents such as the homeless people getting tickets for ridiculous things, like not having a license for a bike, or for littering when they weren’t.

In an interview with a homeless man named Bubba I was told, “I was sleeping on the grass one time and had my bike next to me.  They woke me up and gave me a ticket because I had no license on the bike. So if that’s for no reason, then yeah.  Once in a while they do it.”

It appears that for the most part there is not much of a problem with the police, but there are always going to be some problems no matter what.

The Fish and Game officers, however, are a different story. A common theme is that they tend to be more vocal with the homeless population and try to intimidate, and tend to be more ready to write tickets.

I was talking to a homeless man named Vince about his experience with Fish and Game.

“I have been approached by the police, more like Fish and Game and they threw me face down on the ground and said ‘Where’s the heroin?’ And I don’t even know what heroin is, I’ve never done heroin, I’ve never seen heroin, I’ve never messed with heroin and they just assumed that I was on heroin,” he said.

“They raided me, they threw me on the ground, and treated me really bad. They handcuffed me then unhandcuffed me, then let me up with a ticket for littering within a 150 feet of the waterways.  I guess that’s the law here and I never litter. I bring a trashcan with me everywhere I go.  So I was manned by the cops for no reason whatsoever.”

The Fish and Game Management do have their jobs of keeping the river clean, but they are putting the blame on people that aren’t contributing to the problem.  In fact, the homeless population that I talked to keep their areas clean and pick up after themselves.

Bubba, another interviewee of mine, even cleans up other people’s trash.  Ever since he got to the river he’s been picking up trash in the surrounding area.  He even picks up trash elsewhere.

“I just moved down here and I’ve been cleaning up everywhere and all over the bushes and I’ve been cleaning all that trash out,” Bubba said. “Everyone that comes here, they just want to see a clean place.”

Rather than making a problem with the homeless population they, the local government and authorities, should make the homeless people part of the solution.  One idea is to pay the homeless to pick up trash.

Most of them are already doing it, and would probably pick up a lot more if they got paid to do it.  It would be hitting two birds with one stone: the area would be cleaned up and the homeless people would get money to help them out.

The police and local government need to create a long term solution to get the homeless population off the streets and safe from whatever harm they are facing now.  Although I grant that there are some homeless people who really do deserve to be locked up in jail, I still maintain that the population as a whole does not deserve that kind of treatment.

There are average everyday people that can be far worse than the homeless.  I can’t speak for the entire homeless population, but I can say that for the most part that they aren’t this horrible trash that society has made them out to be.

They like to say how other homeless people truly are bums and drug addicts, however the ones I’ve met so far are nothing like that.  The million dollar question is whether or not homeless people deserve to be helped or abused by anyone, and the answer is no.

The homeless population does not deserve to be kicked while they’re down.  They are some of the most humble people I’ve ever met.