The New Homeless

Everyday we see them on the freeway intersections, busy streets, or sometimes they haunt our store parking lots. They do not play hide and seek- they are visible, and are not ashamed of themselves; why should they be? We visualize them as un-bathed individuals having more than just scruff faces or five o'clock shadows where they are holding up signs that state they will work for food. Secretly, we wonder, will they really? We hear about their arrests for panhandling from our Television news media; however, they do not have a name; instead, they have all been put into one category even though the reasons for being homeless will vary. Some of us believe the homelessness population's success in receiving donations is too organized to be random, perhaps part of an organized marketing scheme. One fact, the individuals who hold up those signs, it must be working because otherwise they would not still be doing it.

Our beliefs on the homeless do not just come from driving by them or by being asked for money; rather the media defines the homeless as individuals that would rather stand up all day in the rain, snow or sunshine asking for money as if that is an ideal job. Moreover, of course, when the media and other sources remind us we are paying for them via our taxes...emergency care, more E.R. visits for this population due to no health insurance, which we think is the direct result of them refusing to work, consequently, our buttons pop and we join the crowd of bias and typecast.

Some may believe the stigma of the homeless may change with today's economy. There is a new homeless population out there today. They are individuals who were not too long ago working but got layed off due to the failing economy. These individuals were holding down fulltime jobs, had a home, and a car. The irony in this recent development is how society will distinguish these two different populations given that the former homeless are categorized as bumps, lazy individuals that refuse to work because they prefer to sleep outside versus having a bed inside his or her own apartment and the latter group of the homeless where they are seen as victims of a falling economy.