Untold Story

When you see a homeless person sitting on the streets, what's the first thing that comes into your mind? Probably not something nice, right? You probably think the person sitting on the street without a job or shelter is a lazy drug addict who chooses not work because they need to suffice their drug addiction. What if I told you that's not always right? According to  the National Coalition for the Homeless, 23% of homeless population are veterans and 85% completed high school/GED, compared to 56% of non-veterans. The Coalition also tells us that 45% suffer from mental illness, which leads to substance abuse and most come from poor, disadvantaged communities. 

-this is good background info. Remember that we are focusing on California, so here you can begin to include stats that are about the homeless in California.  

So the person who you happen to look down to, might have been a private who fought in war, and when he/she came back home just got thrown away, forgotten, left to die by themselves, or just couldn't make it far because he/she happen to live in a poor community with few resources to help them achieve their goals. 

Human nature forces human to judge other based on looks but we can't just group a whole group of people and assume they're all the same.

-develop this more since here you are touching on stereotypes, specifically how negative stereotypes affect us.

- are these assumptions bad? where do they come from? how are they still around? to what extent do they affect our ability to understand, interact, and support the homeless 

Besides being victims (above you are going to want to show examples of what it means to be a victim of these stereotypes) of assumption and stereotypes; Homeless people also have to deal with being prosecuted by the law. According to http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/106/brown.html (rather than using the URL- use the title, author, or the organization), "In the past decade, cities have increasingly moved toward enacting and enforcing laws that specifically criminalize homelessness in response to their concern about the use of public space". Also, the site tells us that in 50 of the largest U.S. cities, found that 86 percent of the cities surveyed had laws that prohibited or restricted begging, meanwhile 73 percent prohibited or restricted sleeping and/or camping. Over one-third of the cities surveyed have initiated crackdowns on homeless people, according to the survey respondents, and almost half of the cities have engaged in police "sweeps" in the past two years. The government seem to be taking the easy way out instead of directly tackling down the problem by just getting Homeless people put of sight, just so you don't have to worry about them.

We automatically link being Homeless to something negative. Which is funny because if you actually had an interaction with someone Homeless, you'd find out that they're usually the most humble down to earth people who are willing to share anything with you, if you need it more than him/her. It's time we stop treating our homeless people and vets as human trash that we can discard anytime and start looking for a solution that will stop the homeless population from growing.