Free Essay Sample about Homelessness in Indianapolis

Homelessness is a universal problem in cities and countries. People are struggling to live in the new world's economy. As the world gets more and more expensive because of inflation but the wages aren't increasing. Homelessness is when people do not have their own homes. People who are homeless could be living on the streets, in homeless shelters, or couch hopping at their friend's houses. In Indianapolis, Indiana, homelessness is one of the biggest urban problems because of background, unemployment, and the city itself. 

Background plays a big role in people being homeless. On social media, people always hear the rags-to-riches stories but these stories are one in a million. People see these stories and think everyone can rise against them and get rich but that's not always the case. One part of the background is what you are born into.“[P]eople who are homeless generally have a history marked by poverty and social disadvantage, including considerable poverty in childhood and lower levels of education, and they are likely to belong to an ethnic minority. (psychiatric times)” People who were born into poverty or low-income areas are more likely to be homeless because they do not receive the necessary resources to succeed in life. Therefore, people who are born into middle or upper-class families are more likely to succeed in life because they have the necessary resources to do so. Another major background factor is race. African Americans account for 39% of people who are homeless (end homelessness). This is due to the systematic racism they have faced for decades. The black community is more likely to be redlined and districted, so they are placed into lower-income schools. With this sociological background like where you are born this is what they are most likely to grow up through. 

Mental illness is a huge impact on many people throughout the world. If people do not get the right care they need then things can be detrimental for them. Drug and substance abuse is a huge mental illness that leads to homelessness. People like to say that those people are doing it to themselves and to stop taking drugs or whatever they are addicted to but it is not that easy, it is a mental illness that takes a toll on them every day. “Mental illness had preceded homelessness in about two-thirds of the cases (times).” Mental illness has had a stigma around it for a very long time. Before people would tell them to get over it, they are overthinking, or they tell them to suppress it so no one knows but that is not how it works. This stigma about mental illness causes people not to get help for their illness which causes them to spiral. This leads to mentally ill people being more likely to be homeless than people who are not.

Unemployment plays an effect on homelessness. It isn’t a direct line because many people can have a home but be unemployed and homeless people can be employed. The employment rate in Indiana is 2.3% which has been lowered from 4.3% last year due to Covid-19 (y charts). “If a person can’t earn enough to keep up with the rise in rent and other utility costs, they will either be evicted or forced to give up their home(cauf).” When you are unemployed, you don’t have an income to help pay your bills. When people can’t pay their bills, landlords get mad and evict them then they become homeless. “There is also the stigma associated with being homeless.” This stigma is that homeless people are dirty and impure. When homeless people go and try to get a job, the employers will ask what their address is for paperwork and such and when they can not provide one, employers look at them differently after that. Sometimes they won't get the job after they learn this because of the stigma. This leads to homelessness becoming worse because these poor people can not get a job because they do not have the same place they stay. These people can go into the job the cleanest person you have ever seen but once they learn that sometimes not have this one thing they will not get the job. 

Some cities are struggling with this major problem but not doing anything about it. Indianapolis is one of those cities. In a documentary called Naptown to Super City, people discussed how disappointed they were with the city. Indianapolis used 70 million tax-paying dollars to build a new stadium for the Indianapolis Colts football team to get the Super Bowl to come to Indianapolis. That 70 million dollars could have been used to build more shelters or do something to help the part of the Indianapolis community that needs help the most, not the football players who get paid millions each year. 

Covid-19 was a huge pandemic that wreaked havoc on everyone. It mostly affected people who made minimum wage and could not work anymore because the business closed to help stop the spread or did not make it out of the pandemic. Homeless people were hit harshly as well. Where could they go during this? Everyone was supposed to be quarantined in their house, but they do not have one. If they were unemployed, many places weren't hiring because they were closed so this was the worst possible time for them. Graciously, some cities opened hotels for them to stay at since no one was allowed to travel (we forum). Indianapolis did not open hotels to its homeless they did open some churches thought (indy star). This only helped so much. Indianapolis made the distancing guidelines down to three feet in those shelters to accommodate those people but made them more susceptible to getting Covid-19 because that is not what the CDC recommended (indy star). Indianapolis was not trying to look out for these people, they were just trying to get them off the streets for the time being to look like they were. The smartest plan would be to put them in hotels because Indianapolis has so many and that would help distance them to their own rooms and lessen the spread of this crazy virus. 

Through COVID-19 Indiana did help people who are unemployed due to Covid-19 but stopped paying those benefits in the summer of 2021 (the hill). This caused a huge disruption for many people. Many people lost housing and medical care. This caused homelessness to spike. Even with this spike in homelessness, Indiana did not do anything to help. Citizens tried to fight this but got nothing but lawyer bills. With these people not getting the benefits they deserved after getting laid off due to Covid-19, it made it hard to get jobs. When people are homeless because of the stigma it is always harder for them to find employment. They did not deserve this since the pandemic was nothing they caused. 

There are many ways that Indianapolis can help these people. They can help stop the spread of the school-to-prison pipeline. If there was a survey to go around the city of Indianapolis to its citizens that asked which schools had this pipeline, the same 3 schools would pop up. This is due to the fact that redlining is a huge problem within the community that needs to be stopped. It is also due to the distraction that has been made so that what schools that Indianapolis wants to be good and to send more money to are the ones in the richer whiter parts of the city. Another way is to make available low-income housing (digital). Housing has become too out of reach for too many people. This is due to the inflation in the city going up but the minimum wage going up. Another way Indianapolis can help the homeless rate go down is to make mental health help more accessible. Most of the care that is available for mental health could help decrease the homeless rates, such as therapy, in-patient and out-outpatient therapy, pharmacology, etc. 

In conclusion, Indianapolis has a huge issue of homeless due to people's backgrounds of where they are from and mental illness, unemployment, and the city itself. Indianapolis has lots of improvements to do to help homeless people get off the streets and to lose the stigmatism of homelessness.