Andrew Reese Speech

               Andrew Reese Speech

We all know homeless people exist, but we also don’t seem to like talking about the issues that surround it. After all, homelessness is a big, important issue that seems to get much less discussion than it deserves. About one in every two-hundred Americans is homeless, a fact that should be alarming. Many people have tried to solve this issue, but, none of the solutions have been permanent. From what I have read, the best solution seems to be to provide for more low-income housing so that people who are currently at risk of homelessness do not end up homeless themselves.

               This solution does pose its fair share of challenges. For one thing, there is the cost to be considered. How, exactly, would we find the money for such a proposal? Indeed, to house that many people would probably take quite a bit of money. That number may be large, but I have found a solution to it. We just need to build around eight fewer fighter jets. Okay, the real number probably looks a bit bigger, but the point still stands. We live in a country that can apparently afford to spend twenty percent of its budget on crap it barely ever uses, but can’t afford to house its own citizens. That should boggle the mind, it should cause anger and indignation in the hearts of the people. But it doesn’t, for reasons that escape me. This could be an affordable strategy, but people continue to act like paying for someone to not die of exposure is like giving them a free brick of solid gold.

               There are other reasons people object to the ideas presented thus far. One of the biggest and most important argument states that providing for such housing incentivizes people to not work and just mooch off of the government without ever having to work. That may be true to an extent, but the alternative is for people to sit on the street, being unable to work. The old “get a job” argument remains as popular as ever, but have any of you tried getting a job while you smell like a garbage truck threw up, died, and then somehow threw up again? If you have, please talk to me after class because that sounds like an absolutely fascinating story. In addition to the lack of hygiene caused by the limited resources available to people whose address is “the space behind the gas station where somebody died”, quite a few homeless people also suffer from a mental illness. So please tell me how to find a job when your brain renders you literally incapable of acting like a normal human being, or at least normal enough to hold down a job.

               Related is the argument that we shouldn’t be giving money to drug addicts. There are a number of flaws with this statement, the most glaring of which is how it misrepresents addiction. People like to think of addiction as something that only happens to those who lack the will to just not do drugs. This is a gross oversimplification of how addiction actually works. Some people start when they are young and stupid. Other people start to deal with some sort of trauma or constant source of mental pain. Often, addiction continues long after these issues have ceased to be relevant. Besides, addiction is one of those things that a lot of people like to give solutions to without having any actual first-hand experience, and while I could say that seems unfair, I am giving solutions to something with no first-hand experience myself right now. But even if being addicted to drugs automatically makes you a terrible human being deserving of death, these people still have children. Saying that a child should starve because their parents are drug addicts is like saying that children should starve for any other reason, because saying children should starve is pretty hard to justify in any context.

               So I see no good reason that my idea is bad. The money poses a significant issue, but it can be overcome with effort. The incentive to not work is overridden by the inability to find work. And the whole “giving stuff to drug addict” thing doesn’t hold any water either.

Bibliography

Steel, Danielle. A Gift of Hope: Helping the Homeless. New York: Random House Publishing, 2012. Print.

Gulcur, Leyla et. All. Housing, hospitalization, and cost outcomes for homeless individuals with                                                                                                                psychiatric disabilities participating in continuum of care and housing first programmes. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology. 9 April 2003. Web. 20 June 2015.

Hendricks, Kevin D. Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness. Monkey Outta Nowhere. Saint Paul: Minnesota. 2010.

Napper, Thomas Q. Lost Angel: Skid Row Is My Home. Krasnoff Foster Productions. June 2010. Film.

(Yes, I know it's bad. I did what I could.)