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Value CriterionMy value criterion will be Consequentialism – defined as doing the most good for the most amount of people – as we will prove – discrimination on housing rights is obviously worse than the alternativeAdv. 1There are numerous benefits to ensuring the right to housing – the first is to combat homelessnessHomelessness as a phenomenon has continued to grow in America as housing prices go up – current statistics are inadequate representationsAlastair Gee, February 16, 2017, (Homelessness editor in Los Angeles, “How America counts its homeless – and why so many are overlooked”, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/16/homeless-count-population-america-shelters-people)//natmart They dressed in several layers of clothing or donned old hats. They carried blankets and cardboard boxes. It was approaching midnight in New York one night in March 2005, and recruits who had been paid $100 each to pretend to be homeless were fanning out across the city. There were 58 sites dotted throughout the metropolis. Pseudo-homeless people arrived at subway stations in Manhattan, back alleys in Staten Island and Queens, the front steps of a church in the Bronx. Then they waited to see if anyone noticed them. The actors were taking part in a peculiar experiment led by Kim Hopper, a researcher then at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research. The purpose: to analyze the effectiveness of the city’s count of homeless people. Hopper and his colleagues found that actors at almost one in three of the sites reported being missed by counters. And these were people who wanted to be counted. They did not include the swaths of genuinely homeless ensconced in corners of the city. “Invisibility serves the purpose of security and uninterrupted sleep,” the researchers noted. Just over a decade later, questions remain about the reliability of America’s biennial street count of homeless people, an extraordinary undertaking in which thousands of volunteers head out into the darkness in cities, forests and deserts around the country. It still takes place mostly at night, relying on volunteers who are often equipped with nothing more sophisticated than clipboards, pencils and flashlights. But supporters of the count, which is run by local communities in return for federal dollars and may be the largest tally of homeless people in the world, argue that it is a crucial mechanism to keep track of people who often exist outside of government bureaucracy. Even if the figures are open to question, they provide a window into the landscape of America’s homelessness problem – and a sense of how it is changing over time. “The bottom line is that it’s imperfect, but I don’t know that we could do a better job,” said Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania researcher and a principal investigator on the homelessness reports that are presented to Congress annually. The most recent report found that on one night there were 549,928 homeless people in America. That figure has gradually declined across the nation over the past decade, although homelessness appears particularly entrenched in western states. Of the 10 states with the highest rates of homelessness, seven are in the western half of the country. Today the Guardian launches Outside in America, a year-long series focusing on the people and places scrambling to cope with a homelessness crisis across the west. One in five homeless Americans live in California, where the problem is especially acute. In the Golden State and three other western states – Hawaii, Nevada and Oregon – more than 50% of homeless people are categorized as unsheltered, meaning they are living in the streets, vehicles or parks, in places not fit for humans to stay. In New York, by comparison, the number is less than 5%. Often people are discriminated against when applying for housing – recent studies have shown that LGBT citizens in Los Angeles are less likely to access shelter – a study from Simon Costello that was released last week says the following…Simon Costello, March 2, 2017, (Director of Youth and Family Services at the LA LGBT Center, “Opinion: A ‘Yes’ Vote on Measure H Will Help Homeless LGBT Youth”, Wehoville, http://www.wehoville.com/2017/03/02/opinion-yes-vote-measure-h-will-help-homeless-lgbt-youth/)//natmart My day at the office typically begins and ends with the sounds of laughter and tears. That’s generally what I hear when I walk through the front doors of the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Youth Center, in the heart of Hollywood. What I always see is a line of LGBT young people who are hungry not just for food, but for a place to sleep and for the resources to build a better life. That line isn’t getting any shorter. LGBT people are no strangers to poverty and unstable housing. According to a 2012 study by the Williams Institute, up to 40% of the youth experiencing homelessness identify as LGBT. In another study by the Williams Institute (2013), it was found that lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people, particularly LGB people of color, were more likely to be vulnerable to poverty. But homelessness is more than a statistic. Homelessness is the growing number of tents scattered throughout the city; it’s the person at the end of the 101 freeway off-ramp asking for food; it’s the hundreds of LGBT youth and seniors who come through our doors every day. Alarmingly, homelessness has become a norm in Los Angeles County, but we can all be part of the solution by voting “Yes” on Measure H on Tuesday, March 7. The City of Los Angeles recently took a tremendous steps to address the problem of homelessness through the Prop. HHH bond, approved by voters last November. It helps fund housing for those experiencing chronic homelessness, but the issue cannot be solved by the city alone. Homelessness requires a multi-pronged approach to meaningfully impact the lives of people living on the streets of Los Angeles County. Measure H, also known as the “Los Angeles County Plan to Prevent and Combat Homelessness,” offers a real solution to end homelessness. It generates funds through a quarter-cent sales tax that can only be used for homeless services and housing, creating a 10-year sustainable funding stream to address the inadequate housing and services that have been desperately needed for more than decade. Most importantly, it’s estimated to end homelessness for 45,000 families and individuals throughout Los Angeles County. Though I’ve seen how LGBT young people can be resilient after experiencing family rejection and discrimination in school, resiliency is rarely enough. Measure H gives me hope that eventually I won’t see a line in front of our youth center; that the Center programs experiencing the greatest demand from youth will be our mentorship and leadership development programs; and that eventually the only sounds I hear when I walk through the doors in the morning are of laughter. This type of discrimination is morally bankrupt – rejecting citizens based on their beliefs is a direct infringement upon the rights of thousands of individuals across the united states – therefor it is absolutely the obligation of the United States, as a champion of human rights, to actually protect them and ensure that such discrimination is not allowedAdv. 2Download 36.72 Kb. 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