Ana Munoz
Ever since 2008, work in the United States has drastically gone down. This has affected a lot of people, mainly families. Racing up a family can have its challenges and one of the biggest is supporting them. Some people have up to 5 children. Imagine with the economy crisis how hard it can be to care of your loved ones. I love you and I miss you is not going to pay the bills rite. You have to have a job to make money for your family. Since the economy has gone down crime rates have gone higher throughout the U.S, children have been getting sick/diseases, and have had an increase number of families becoming homeless. These are just a small part of the consequences of poverty in the U.S.
We all know that people turn to crime when having trouble paying bills, lack of work, etc. Crime rates in America have gone up ever since 2008 and will keep on going up. People are in need and some turn to crime because it is the easiest way to fufill their need. A really scary thing has recently happened to my cousin, his car got stolen a month ago and this happened rite infront of his house which is a really scary thing. This happening in my family made me think about how unemployment is affecting people in the U.S. Gilbert Geis, the writer of “Newspapers, Criminologists, and Crime Statistics.” Supports that “The FBI report focuses heavily on street crimes and attends peripherally to mundane white-collar offenses, despite the deluge of catastrophic economic violations, many of them criminal, that were highlighted during the Enron and Arthur Andersen debacle and onward through the subprime lending fraud and what became known as the Great Economic Meltdown.”(Geis1). Geis supports the idea of crime being a result of the lack of money. The “Great Economic Meltdown” is a great explanation of what is happening today. Crime is the biggest meltdown rite now and can get worse if economy decreases as years pass. I don’t even want to think about what can happen in result to that.
Families that are having trouble finding a job may not have the same amount of food on the table as other families have. Kids need to eat because they are growing up and need every nutrient as well as water to not get sick. If this is not given to a child they do have a risk of getting sick and especially if they don’t have proper clothes for the seasons. On Ulla Beijer’s article Physical diseases among homeless people: Gender differences and comparisons with the general population she reports “Not having shelter also can be a risk for children as well as adults. There were a number of gender specific diagnoses, where risks were considerably elevated, such as diseases of the genital organs, viral hepatitis, and poisoning for homeless women, and cerebrovascular diseases, diseases of the liver, and concussion for homeless men”(Beijer). Having no job can affect these homeless men and women and can even be difficult to keep their health in good conditions. Not being able to pay for some medicine that can be necessary must be really hard too. Diseases such as hepatitis, poisoning, disease of liver etc. are serious health problems and need attention and if not noticed can become even more dangerous than before.
It is also very hard to find a good paying job and sometimes families are in debt because of credit cards or other expenses and don’t have enough to pay rent. What happens now? Yes, its sad to say but people loose their houses. My friend recently lost her house last week. It broke my heart seeing her family in the street. You can see the pain in their face while they looked for another house. Just knowing that they would have to sleep on the streets just gave me a bad feeling, especially since im really close to her shes like my sister. No one really pays attention to people on the streets that are homeless and don’t appreciate until it happens to them. Anderson and Koblinski acknowledge that “For years the most popular stereotype of the homeless in the United States was the bum on skid row, drinking wine from a brown paper bag or seeking handouts from passersby. However, during the last decade, the scarcity of affordable housing—-coupled with other social and economic changes—thrust many faces into the homeless population”(Anderson1). Anderson and Koblinski make a lot of sense with the stereotype although there is still some people like that there is also the same amount of families. It breaks my heart seeing them like that but I know they wont give up and try their best to help out their family.
Poverty has always been around but has caught our attention even more since the fall of 2008. We have seen crime rise, from car stealing to breaking into people’s houses. We have also seen more homeless people being hospitalized and in urgent care. More people have also lost their home and are left homeless each year. The best way to help these families is by free marketing because some cant work. Not all homeless people are alcoholics or drug addicts, they are just financially unstable. Hopefully there are more work opportunities in the future because it is really sad to see all these families going through such a tragic life.
Work Cited
Citation
Anderson, Elaine, and Sally Koblinsky. “Homeless Policy: The Need to Speak to Families.” Family Relations, 44.1 (1995): 13-18.
Geis, Gilbert. “Newspapers, Criminologists, and Crime Statistics.” Crime, Law & Social Change, 58.2 (2012): 131-138.
Beijer, Ulla. “Physical Diseases among Homeless People: Gender Differences and Comparisons with the General Population.” Physical Diseases among Homeless People: Gender Differences and Comparisons with the General Population. Journal of Public Health, 10 Jan. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://sjp.sagepub.com/content/37/1/93.short>.
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