Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee the right to housing
Homelessness leaves people vulnerable
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Homelessness leaves people vulnerableStephanie Watson, "How Homelessness Works," HowStuffWorks, http://money.howstuffworks.com/homeless4.htm Living on the street makes homeless people more vulnerable to abuse. Over the last decade, there have been more than 600 attacks against homeless people, says the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. Homeless people have been brutally attacked with baseball bats, chains and other weapons. Women have been raped. Homelessness tears families apart. Some shelters won’t take boys. Others won’t accept children. A mother may have to watch helplessly as her children are taken from her and placed with relatives or in foster care. Negative CardsTop of CaseValue: Progress Criterion: Quality of life Contention 1: Tragedy of the CommonsFirst, The Tragedy of the commons can be modernly applied to public housing–Dalton, Rowe ‘03(Tony Dalton & James Rowe, [professors and author at the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute], RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia) The demand for this housing is considerably less than might be expected on the basis of a simple supply/demand calculation. This is because existing tenants are trying to relocate away from these estates while prospective tenants are turning down offers of accommodation on these estates. Bernie from the Brotherhood of St. Laurence describes the extent of demand for relocation: The local housing outreach team would say that the principle amount of work that we’re doing at the moment is processing priority applications to leave the estate. That’s a sad indictment when you know your support network is effective in moving people out of housing. The rejection of offers of housing on these estates also demonstrates, how unpopular they are as places to live. Across the three estates in Yarra, the acceptance rater as a percentage of offers ranges from 17 to 50 per cent (Office of Housing, 2001b). This pattern of rejection even includes heroin users who are homeless. Those interviewed knew that they were eligible for priority housing because they were homeless and, in many cases had special needs, such as mental illness. In other words, they expressed a preference for continuing homelessness in order to separate their own living arrangements from the drug trade and in particular the degradation of the surrounding areas and the predatory violence. Mike, a squatter in a derelict warehouse, was one of those unwilling to apply for public housing despite his frustration with his squat. His experience of buying drugs on public housing estates led him to reject any possibility of living in high-rise public housing. Download 95.74 Kb. Share with your friends:
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