By MisTy
The overwhelming fear when you fall asleep, you are at your most vulnerable. The long dark, harrowing hours endured every night, a fight with your inner fears. The reality of your situation, the judgements, the abuse. The stigma attached to those who find themselves homeless. The pain and anguish associated with the people in this YouTube clip may have been two years ago, could easily be time-stamped present day, the stories remain similar if not worse. Life on the streets with the loss of family, the substandard housing called emergency accommodation. Families are living in overcrowded situations or poorly converted garages. Is this a solution for the homeless?
For whatever reasons be it self-inflicted, maybe blameworthy substance-abusing addicts’ or delinquents that have chosen their path, alcoholic drunks that drink their lives away. Many New Zealanders are walking past them quickly, ignoring them. They are not worthy of acknowledgement because their mere existence is a blight on society. Is this how New Zealanders view their homeless, is this the truth behind their plight that resulted in them living and trying to survive on the streets. The prevailing discourse and stigma surrounding them, begging for money to obtain drugs and alcohol. The lack of moral standards and being somewhat less than human.
Seriously can this be the truth of the homeless? The reality for many destined to live in poverty due to the expensive housing rents. For so many a payslip, a redundancy, an unexpected pandemic. Now is it your reality, fear of being so close from eviction, overcrowding, even possible homelessness.
For the many homeless adolescents and young adults, the experience can have long term ramifications on their health and life course trajectories. Alcohol and substance abuse, along with risky sexual encounters have an accumulative effect over time. Being female and homeless has an even higher risk of victimisation with sexual and violent abuse on the streets. These types of stressors increase the risk for other chronic conditions as the body is operating at a heightened level for more extended periods. Unfortunately, even if the episodes of homelessness end for them, their health, education and relationships could still be significantly impacted later in life (Stablein & Appleton, 2013).
With the recent pandemic, the standard way of life has changed. Society must decide what matters. Battling economic and racial inequality will worsen without attention to social services, it is the people that matter. There have been stories of many acts of kindness along with immediate responses to food, shelter and medical care. That collective good, rather than individualism, must be kept in momentum. Everyone should have an income that supports them out of poverty, homelessness. A significant change for better fairer and dare we say well-being for all whanau and communities, a new normal (O’Brien, 2020).
Would this future not be obtainable? When a deadly virus was knocking on potentially anybody’s door, the lengths that the government went to and how deep the money purse was. The challenge of homelessness in Aotearoa in comparison to a global pandemic, they can do better.
References
O’Brien, M. (2020, April 18). The ‘new normal’? [Blogpost]. Re-Imaging Social Work. https://www.reimaginingsocialwork.nz/?s=Mike+OBrien
Stablein,T., & Appleton, A. A. (2013). A longitudinal examination of adolescent and young adult homeless experience, life course transitions, and health. Emerging Adulthood, 1(4), 305-313. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167696813495682
TRT World. (2017, September 25). Money talks: New Zealand’s homelessness problem getting worse [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=vXMZMs7tp2I&feature=emb_logo
Photo by Dan Burton on Unsplash
socialworkdiscourse2020 