Chicago Approach to Homeless Problem

The issue of homelessness has unfortunately become a major bone of contention in American politics, and the perception is that very little works to reduce the problem of the homeless. In the current political climate, in fact, the homeless are seen by many as having caused all their problems themselves, and personal responsibility is held out as the solution. In a sense, what some are saying is that the poor would be better off if they worked and earned money, though how this is to be accomplished is to be left to the poor themselves. Homeless people are seen more and more as irresponsible people who could have homes if they wanted them, but it is not at all clear that this really characterizes any significant portion of the homeless population. instead, it seems that homelessness is a complex and multi-dimensional problem that requires some kind of coordinated effort to overcome. Two opposing attitudes toward homeless can be seen in newspaper articles on the subject, one from Chicago about a Chicago building program, the other from Boston about a response to the homeless in California. The Chicago program advocates positive action to address the problem, while the California court decision allows cities in effect to outlaw homelessness, to make it crime, and to drive the homeless away so they become someone else's problem. The Chicago approach offers some hope and in any case is a reasonable, ethical, and just social response, while the California approach reported i

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region "has long made it clear who is welcome there and who is not" by the fact that there is no public housing and precious little in the way of mental-health programs. The question has long been asked as to whether we should regard the poor as victims of exploitation or as simply lazy, and to a degree these two responses show how this argument shapes policy. The fact that there is a poor class in American society is undisputed, but what is disputed is the reason why there seems to be a persistent core of poverty which we have been unable to eradicate. We have addressed the issue in a variety of ways over the years, and we have spent billions of dollars on work programs, welfare programs, and the provision of a variety of services to try to educate this class of people and get them into productive work. Yet, it seems that instead of solving the problem, we have only made it worse. The degree to which we have failed has become more apparent as American society as a whole has progressed economically, leaving this underclass of the poor further and further behind. Some believe that society has created the conditions leading to the institutionalization of poverty, while others believe that the poor remain that way because we

Category: Government - C