No roof. No food

Dianna Huerta

English A

09/14/2015

No roof. No food.

Los Angeles has the highest homeless population. According to “The 2014 Annual Homeless Assessment Report 578,424 were homeless on a given night, which was an increase of 69 percent. We see them in the streets, underneath freeways etc. Homelessness has no ethnic background or age. Homelessness can include men, women and children. The racial backgrounds consist of 13 percent Hispanics, 39 percent Whites and 42 percent are African American. We may at one point be at risk of becoming homeless.

It’s always easy to pretend like we don't see them. If they speak to us, we pretend as if we don’t hear them. Not all homeless people are bad news. We have a tendency to judge them based on their appearance. We see them as lazy, dirty people. We see them as criminals and drug addicts. Many times we create negative stereotypes of people in this case homeless people, because society makes us believe that in order to be successful we have to work hard regardless of the circumstances. Without taking into consideration some of the hardship people encounter in their lives. We think that because we work hard in order to be successful they should be doing the same, instead of asking for money.  However, a homeless person at one point might have had a career but could have lost it for various reasons.  These stereotypes we create affect our everyday life such as when we go shopping.  Many times when we are out shopping we see homeless people but prefer not to go into a particular establishment because we might be scared of them attacking us or simply do not want to deal with them “bothering” us asking for money.

When you see a homeless person, we do not know what their story is or why they are living in the streets. It can be a runaway teen, coming from an abusive home. Many facts could be named as to why they become homeless. Many people go homeless because they lose their jobs. This means no roof over their head and no food to eat. Many are asking for money to buy food yet were a bit hesitant to help out because we think they might use it for drugs and alcohol.  Another one might be because of a mental disability such as a veteran coming home from war.  

Some are nice like John, a war veteran, a father and a loving person. He didn’t come from a wealthy family. He had a brother who he loved a lot. John’s brother lost his life in the line of duty. John joined the military because of his brother. His been in the VA hospital because he hears noises due to the war. John has consideration for the people where he sleeps on the sidewalk yet there are others that have a bad attitude, no respect and bad manners. 

John proves that not all homeless people are bad. This proves how we can stereotype the homeless. We should feel lucky to have a roof over our head and food in our table because there are people that are less fortunate.