Lara Kyzylova

Humanities 1100
Mrs. Theresa Simonsen
4-20-2015
Homelessness
Homelessness appears to be one of the biggest issues here in the United States.
Throughout the country, approximately, there are 2 million of homeless people and 1.5 million
out of them are kids. There are a lot of reasons of becoming homeless, such as economic
problems, unemployment, or drug and alcohol use, mental illnesses and runaways.
Homelessness in America has been around ever since the Colonial times and not much progress
has been made since then. Many people are fighting for what they have, but no one expects to
become homeless. No one is immune from homelessness and every man, woman and child
should have a safe, dignified place to live.- stated HomeAid America.
There are many people who are getting laid off work, or there is a rise in the cost of
housing, that has nothing else to do but end up without a home. Many married women get
violently abused by their significant other and have nowhere else to go, so they choose to live on
the streets. Many teenagers who are being forced out because they turn 18 years old, and parents
no longer want to deal with them -end up on the streets. Drug and alcohol abusers become
homeless because simply they dont have money, they dont have education, and they wont get
hired because they are uneducated and inexperienced. If all that adds up, we have about
1,750,000 homeless people in the United States. Typically, these homeless individuals and
families merely need a second chance to get their feet back on the ground, attain self-sufficiency,
and move quickly toward acquiring some sort of permanent housing.- says the HomeAid
organization.
I live in Salt Lake City, Utah and I see homeless people everywhere: on the way to work,
on the way to school and other places. I see people trying to stay warm, by snuggling in very old
and used blankets. They are everywhere: by the railroads, bridges, parks, and even parking lots.

Some people would do anything to survive- some would ask for money and some would ask for
a daily labor job.
For this class, I was required to complete a civic engagement for 2 hours and the social
problem Ive chosen to work on is Homelessness. Many people that I see on the streets have
different reasons to be homeless. To find some answers, and to help some people in need out, I
decided to go to the Rescue Mission organization. Arriving there was a bit sketchy: driving past
the organization and seeing many different personalities, the way they were acting and dressed
gave me a little bit of doubt of going in. Good thing I wasnt volunteering by myself, and I have
few of my friends with me. When we went in, it was hard locating the manager of the place. The
first person we ran into was a tall guy, wearing a grey shirt with a Rescue Mission logo. We
asked him if they needed an extra hand with clothing drive or passing out the food, and it seemed
like they needed help more than they needed the supplies. The place was packed with bags of
clothes and different selections of foods. It appears that many people care about this social issue
and actually do engage the problem by donating some of their time, food and clothing. We were
asked to help few other volunteers with food. The room was too crowded to be able to move
without running into anybody. The organization had a lot of supplied canned food that we could
cook and pass around. It wasnt as hard as I thought it would be. Many homeless people were
really grateful for the food, and clothes, and even shelter that were presented by the Rescue
Mission.
This social issue reminds me a lot of one of my favorite articles that Ive read during this
course called We Are Our Values by Susan Anderson. In the text, Susan talks about people, and
how we treat each other and how we behave around each other. In other words, she is trying to
present the way we look and treat each other is our value. She gives many examples on the
ethical theory and to present the definitions of each theory, she compares todays values with the

values in the past such as freedom issues and slavery. An important aspect of the philosophy of
individualism is the idea that each individual should be able to pursue a life in accordance with
his/her own values. This would seem to presuppose that certain conditions are satisfied: (a) that
one has the basic necessities for survival (e.g., food, clothing, shelter, medical care), and (b) that
where opportunities are contingent upon ones having certain advantages- It Begins with Our
Questions pg. 13. Susan is absolutely right by saying that we, people, have needs, and those
needs need to be worked for, but some people in this world dont put as much effort into their life
as others do. Homeless people tend to give up if a small problem occurs.
There are local communities and shelters here in Utah that offer help for homeless
people: Rescue Mission and the Road Home. HomeAid is another national well known
organization that offers help to people with no shelters. We could help prevent homelessness by
coming up with programs that will help find jobs and homes; we could volunteer a little of our
time to the homeless shelters and see if they could use a hand with organizing a clothe drive, or
serve dinners. Homelessness is a top priority and fixing it could also help fix other issues around
the country like economy, minimum wage and unemployment.
Reflection Page
What I have learned from this class is to never judge a book by its cover meaning to
never judge people by their culture, religion, race and ethnicity. This course provided many
interesting topics to discuss. In Humanities 1100, weve done quite a bit of reading for each
class. The articles, partial texts from novels, and even song lyrics that were covered during this
course were very interesting and resourceful. Ive learned that the way we treat other people is
going to be the same exact way we are going to be treated. Ive learned many different concepts
of different religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc. I also discovered many
different points of views by authors of the articles published in It Begins With Our Questions.

The main idea behind this class is to learn how to see other people, to learn how to treat them,
and how to get along with them no matter what race, culture, religion they are. Who are we to
judge, after all?!
Works Cited Page
http://homelessutah.weebly.com/statistics.html
http://www.nationofchange.org/utah-ending-homelessness-giving-people-homes-1390056183
https://projecthome.org/how-to-help/advocate/facts-homelessness
http://www.directessays.com/viewpaper/54072.html