By Laura Van De Walle ~ Unwritten – Bing images
Sometimes when I hear the older generations complain about kids now, I can’t help
but feel a little offended. Not so long ago, I was the kid they were complaining about
and to be completely honest, I never thought we were that bad. Although the older
I’ve gotten, the more I’ve come to realize that there is one area in which I truly do
understand and see their reason for complaining about us. This area is our lack of empathy.
I look around me, and I often feel like my life is not so different from those I see. I go to school and work, I go out with my friends, I watch Netflix and scroll through Instagram.
From the outside, I feel like I fit in. Yet, a part of me feels entirely different as well.
I constantly feel like I’m looking at those I care about and absorbing their emotions.
Maybe it is through writing that I learned to put myself into another’s shoes; after all,
that is how you create the world outside of your own.
Perhaps it’s from all the reading I do, as it has allowed me to learn to lose myself
in any world that is laid out in front of me, despite how different it is from my own.
In the end, I’m not entirely sure where it came from. All I know is that I don’t ever want to be the kind of person who doesn’t see the people around me, and I mean really see them.
Having empathy sounds a lot nicer than it really feels. It makes you look like this wonderful person who cares about everyone around you.
RELATED: People With These 5 Personality Traits Have No Idea What Empathy Means
However, this also means carrying the weight of other’s burdens, feeling their pain
like you do your own, and letting your own mental health slide simply because theirs is.
It sucks the energy from you and sometimes makes it difficult to find time and patience to face your own life and problems.
RELATED: What Is Empathy & How To Be More Empathetic In All Of Your Relationships
Perhaps, the world we live in, where mental health awareness is so immensely essential, we have finally come to realize that protecting ourselves is important. This is an argument I have no issue with.
However, what I can’t understand is why we haven’t come to find a happy medium.
Why can’t we live in a world where it’s okay to protect yourself and those around you?
I see illness and death strike down numerous people in my community, and less and less young people stand up to face it. What they don’t realize is that if they don’t stand strong for others, then how can they expect others to stand strong for them when their time comes.
Life will always, always be easier when fought together. My generation, although unique and strong, hasn’t learned that lesson yet. Independence is necessary, but it has a time and a place. We have spent so much time fighting for the right to do things on our own terms, that we forgot what it means to help the person next to us.
One day life won’t be so easy for some of us, and when we need help, we will look around and no one will be there. Maybe a few older members of our family or community, but not the people we expect. While I’m proud to be a part of my generation, there are many, many ways in which we have excelled and grown beyond our years.
When we think we have it bad, always look at the others around you.
They may have it worse off. All I ask is that next time you fight a battle, hold hands with the person next to you because God knows they’re fighting a battle of their own.
RELATED: 10 Subtle Signs Someone Has Low Emotional Intelligence —
Be aware Be wary Be Leary & Be Weary.
Laura Van De Walle is a student writer and a contributor to Unwritten. She writes primarily on topics of health, self-esteem, and relationships. This article originally appeared on YourTango
“The task of a modern educator is not to cut down jungles,
but to irrigate deserts.” ~C.S. Lewis
Major cities are cracking down on homeless encampments. But why are so many people ‘living rough’?
Understanding America’s homelessness crisis
The Week Staff
Here’s everything you need to know:
How many are homeless?
It’s hard to determine with any certainty, but in January 2020, more than 580,000 people were homeless in the U.S. on a given night, with an estimated 226,000 of them sleeping outside, in cars, or in abandoned buildings. The 2021 numbers indicated an 8 percent decrease in homelessness, although that may be misleading: The pandemic delayed or suspended counts in half of the 400 communities that report data to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
During the height of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised against breaking up homeless encampments out of fear that dispersing people would spread COVID, and cities such as Dallas, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon, saw double-digit growth in tent cities.
In New York City, from 2,300 to 5,000 people are living on the streets, with 45,000
in shelters. In San Francisco, nearly 1 percent of the city’s population of 875,000 are homeless. Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin district last December, after it became littered with human excrement and used syringes. “Too many people are sprawled out all over our streets,” Breed said, adding that homelessness “has destroyed our city.”
Why do people become homeless?
The reasons vary, but a few common factors stand out.
One is mental illness: The deinstitutionalization and defunding of psychiatric care preceded a spike in homelessness in the 1980s. By 2015, one quarter of all homeless people were suffering from a serious mental disorder such as schizophrenia. Drug and alcohol use is also often a factor: More than a third of homeless shelter residents struggle with substance-abuse disorders.
But researchers say that the role of economic factors — particularly the cost and availability of housing — should not be underestimated. Many cities have seen housing costs skyrocket, and a 2018 Zillow study found that homelessness rises wherever people have to devote more than 32 percent of their income to rent.
Poverty can trigger a downward spiral of domestic violence, arrests, jailing, and eviction, which in turn lead to drug use and psychological distress. “You experience what they experience,” said pastor Wayne Walker, who runs a Dallas homeless mission,
“and you are going to have mental health problems, too.”
What effect did COVID have?
As closed businesses pushed the unemployment rate close to 15 percent in April 2020, federal and local governments mobilized to prevent an exponential surge of homelessness. Trillions in relief spending helped fund an 11-month eviction moratorium and let hard-hit cities and states house the homeless in newly vacant motels.
COVID’s disruptions exacerbated another crisis: the opioid epidemic. In San Francisco, deaths among homeless people doubled in 2020, 82 percent of them overdoses.
How are cities responding?
In response to a growing public outcry, many cities have returned to sweeping up
camps of homeless people. The National Coalition for the Homeless reports that at least 65 communities now criminalize or systematically remove homeless camps. New York Mayor Eric Adams recently vowed to remove the approximately 1,000 people who are essentially living in the subway, and police cleared more than 300 outdoor camps within a month. But many who choose to “live rough” refuse to bunk up with hundreds of others in barracks-like shelters, where theft, lice infestation, and confrontations are commonplace. Some now also cite the fear of catching COVID. Homeless advocates argue that sweeps merely shuffle homeless people around and result in the loss of their belongings; with so many cities short of shelter and psychiatric beds, said Bill Johnson of the National Association of Police Organizations, “jail becomes the default.”
What else can be done?
Some states, such as Alabama, Washington, and Texas, are clarifying their involuntary commitment laws to make it easier to hospitalize people with serious mental illness.
Other states, aided by millions in pandemic relief funds, have adopted a “housing first” approach, which prioritizes putting people under a roof before addressing issues such
as mental illness and addiction. Dozens of “tiny house” communities, some based on Portland, Oregon’s Dignity Village, provide transitional housing with more individual privacy than traditional shelters.
Since 2007, the U.S. has added more than 373,000 units of “permanent supportive housing,” which a study in the medical journal The Lancet showed was 90 percent effective at preventing future homelessness. “You heal better when you have a door
that you can lock,” said Gail Gilman of the San Francisco–based nonprofit All Home.
But it takes an investment of millions by local governments to provide free housing for thousands of struggling people, and many advocates argue that any long-term solution must include market incentives for building more affordable and low-cost housing. Getting people off the street “takes consistent, intensive effort,” said San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria. “This crisis did not emerge overnight, and it won’t be solved overnight.”
The Golden State’s woes:
California, which has some of the country’s most expensive housing, is estimated to have more than 25 percent of the nation’s homeless population. About 70 percent of the state’s homeless live outdoors rather than in shelters, and in January 2020, a federal survey found that 70 percent reported being homeless for the first time.
The state’s homeless service providers helped 91,000 people move into permanent housing in 2020, and last July Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $12 billion bill to address homelessness.
But the state had already spent $13 billion on the problem over the previous three years, and a withering auditor’s report last February blamed the lack of visible results on tangled, uncoordinated bureaucracy.
In Los Angeles County, the nonprofit Economic Roundtable expects the number of homeless to rise from 66,000 in early 2020 to nearly 90,000 next year, and neighborhoods such as Venice Beach are crowded with tent encampments.
“We have failed in so many respects,” said advocate Theo Henderson, an Angeleno who once lived on the streets. “There are families with children living in automobiles.
There are elderly and the infirm on the streets. It’s a dark time right now.”
Laura Van De Walle – Home (weebly.com)
Laura Van De Walle, Author at Unwritten (readunwritten.com)
My Humanities Degree Is Anything But Useless | HuffPost Communities
Why You’ve Lost Touch With The Holiday Spirit And How To Get It Back (readunwritten.com)
This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine.
If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.
Source: Understanding America’s homelessness crisis (msn.com)
Biden touts $1.5 trillion budget deficit reduction — but he’s not telling the whole story.
Biden addresses state of the economy ahead of expected Fed rate hike | Watch (msn.com)
Biden goes after the ‘Ultra-MAGA agenda’ as he sharpens his midterm message (msn.com)
Biden calls conservatives the ‘most extreme political group’ in history – Washington Times
Biden talks up deficit reduction, as watchdog says it’s ‘highly misleading’ (msn.com)
Biden is close to the point of no return with Americans on the economy (msn.com)
Biden says U.S. will pay down national debt for first time in 6 years (msn.com)
Tax-Hike-Happy Democrats Are Economic Illiterates | Opinion (msn.com)
