A Decade Of Laws Can't Keep Problem Off The Street - Case Study Example

Economics for Planner Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Planning Issue 3 Concept from Text Book 5 Policy according to the Text Book 7 Policy as per the Report of Cincinnati 8 Recommendation for Policy 9 Pareto Improvement 10 References 11 Bibliography 12 Planning Issue According to the statistics of Cincinnati, between 1300 to 1500 people are homeless in Cincinnati at every night (Greater Cincinnati, n.d.). In Cincinnati, there are several opportunities for better serving to the homeless women and men. In this portion of the report the planning issues are discussed. The plan is all about to ensure that each and every homeless individuals of the city have access to appropriate and adequate shelter facilities along with the comprehensive services that can facilitate the progress from shelter to permanent housing. This issue has been taken from the plan from the Cincinnati Country Continuum of Care for the Homeless. In this paper, the actual and accurate data of homeless peoples in the community is used. It also provides recommendation of the local and national experts in the field of homeless services. This plan also corresponds to shift in the approaches, the way the community responds to the homeless persons. Apart from the shelter system, there are other three factors also that have been considered as the contributing factors to the homeless people. Those are: Availability of adequate housing to exit from the shelter system Accessibility of substance abuse and mental health services Finding sources of funding to have significant improvement in the system Currently shelter provides a place to the homeless to stay and to meet their basic needs. Now the problem is that the shelters struggle with the people who are there in the system on a daily basis. The shelters are also facing various problems to provide the best service to the homeless people. Another problem is that the agencies those have taken care of the homeless people are recommended to increase communication along with resolving the problems and conflicts in more productive and proactive ways to host their neighborhoods. Before discussing, what has been intended to do, it is necessary to know the background of the current system. Basically single homeless persons usually come to the emergency shelter which has been specially designed for the homeless people. Presently 422 beds are available for single individuals. Individual leaving the organization with the positive outcome as most of them are send to the mainstream housing or the transitional housing or to the permanent supportive housing. Rest of the homeless individual are sent for long term treatment program or go to live with family. As per the present data, the organization has 229 transitional housing along with the 863 permanent supportive housing. The organization has intended to establish a transition team. This team will look after whether the recommendation made in the plan is successfully implemented or not. Being the part of this process only, additional efforts must be given to determine the best practices that can be provided to the homeless. They should also take care of the medical services also. Apart from this minimum standards should be maintained for the shelter. As per the recommendation of the plan, City Council should have direct collaboration with the City of Cincinnati Administration to the home plan for incorporating the homeless (Cincinnati Country Continuum of care for the Homeless, 2009). Concept from Text Book The book has highlighted one of the traditions of the United States. The people of the United States consider home as the place through which people are rooted not only in family but also in a normal community. As per this tradition, rootless and unattached persons are homeless, irrespective of what physical amenities they have. It has been assumed that homeless women is lesser in comparison with men and homeless family is impossible facet as living as a family requires enough affiliation and thus they could not be considered as homeless. According to the view of the scholars and government officials, in US the word ‘homeless’ is used differently from that of the traditional usages. Officially in United States, homeless are defined as the set of people who sleep either in the place which has not been intended as the human habitation nor in shelter. From this definition it is clear that two aspects are increasingly emphasized. One of that is the physical access to the conventional facilities, such as toilets, beds, doors that are locked. The other one is the involvement in the right kind of community settings. Now it is difficult to say that exactly how many people would be deficient in the housing bundle in US. There are many people those who sleep in the homeless shelter and probably 1, 00,000 to 5, 00,000 people sleeps in the unconventional places such as abandoned buildings, subways and others. As per the report of Census Bureau, in 1990 there were 230,000 homeless people which had been increased by 50,000 within next ten years. The more interesting fact that has been revealed from this report is that the number of people experienced homelessness for a year is quite more than the number of people who experienced it for a day or a night. This book has highlighted the problem related to the homelessness in two ways. One is problem of homeless themselves and other is problem related to those who are not currently homeless. At first it can be discussed that why homelessness is bad for the homeless people itself. Health Problem: Basically the most important issue with the homeless people is arising from the exposure to weather. Because of lack of elementary shelter, there is a possibility of suffering from various cold-related diseases, such as hypothermia, frostbite and others. Even it has been also found that the more regulatory disorder and skin infection are common with these kinds of people who sleep in the streets. Even because of large amount of sleeping, standing up or walking they usually faces problem of venous and arterial diseases. Lack of kitchen and wash room facility: Food is one of the basic needs of any human being for surviving in this world. That leads to kitchen facility also. Apart from this, place for wash is another issue. People who used to live in the street face this problems and it resulted in food poisoning and malnutrition. Again poor hygienic food also cause for infectious diseases. Security problem: There are a huge security problem also as these homeless people are susceptible to hurtful injury from both assaults and accidents. The basic benefit that a home provides is the security not only to the people but also to their possession apart from shelter. Social Impact: It has been noticed that homeless of both street and shelter are not able to take part in the general community. Generally the homeless people are not happy because they have no home and other facilities and that is because of the lack of money. Therefore it indicates that money plays a vital role in this case and to have social implication. Now the question is why homelessness is bad for others. The life style of the homeless people is not hygienic and they suffer from various diseases and those diseases may spread to society at large. It may be harmful and the society may have to pay for it. Apart from this, homeless people acquired various public places and utilize large amount of resources. It may be very expensive if they use it continuously. This book has given the example of park bench. Mental illness is very common with the homeless people. They usually use various abuses and they require a good amount of medical services and once they are admitted to the hospital then it takes long time to discharge because they have no alternative place. It leads to occupy the hospital bed for longer time (Flaherty, 2005). Policy according to the Text Book Before fixing up the policy it has to be identified that whether the homelessness is the problem or the various attributes that has been revealed through the homelessness are the problems. It refers the economic condition of a country or a region such as poverty. If poverty is the problem then it can be only cured through the funding only. Again if money will be distributed to the homeless people then it can create incentive problem also. Other policies can be that of providing food to them. The most effective policy in this regard can be the mix policy of cash and work. Thus the incentive problem can be mitigated. Next, if homelessness has been considered as the indicator of the mental illness, then only those policies should be adopted that has a direct impact on prevent or treat the mental illness. In that case instead of long-term confinement in the psychiatric hospitals, a combined plan can be created which refers that out-patient treatment for most illnesses and confinement in the nursing homes for the patients having Alzheimer disease. Even few antibiotics can also be provided for curing mental illness. If homeless is the major issue and not the additional factors, then there are lots of general policies to implement and get the people housed. There are basically three policies. One of that is enforcement policy. Basically homeless people lived in various places such as transportation terminals, sidewalks, beneath bridges among others. So what enforcement policy has done is nothing but reduced the varieties of the homelessness through increase of shelter population. Next is the housing policy. In United States housing policy refers to the built shelters, where the homeless people feel that they get basic security and protection, without paying anything for that. Another policy is the personal characteristic policy which indicates that try to prevent or cure the problem as per the special characteristic of the each homeless people. Though this policy is very costly, also it is very effective (Flaherty, 2005). Policy as per the Report of Cincinnati In the planning issue it has been found that few recommendations have been made by the steering committee. It needs to check that whether the undertaken policy is as per the economic rationale of the text book or not. The report has divided its planning under five parts. The first one is related to the emergency shelter beds. They have decided to divide the shelter as the women shelter, young adult shelter and others. This plan is perfect and there is no need to change anything out here. Next is the transitional housing, the authority has a plan to shift the shelter habitants to the transitional housing. Permanent supportive housing is another policy through which individuals can be providing housing facility. They even plan for various services to integrate the shelter accommodation (Cincinnati Country Continuum of care for the Homeless, 2009). Recommendation for Policy The authority need not to change any of their existing policy. All those are fine but as per the acquired concept from the text book, few recommendations can be provided. First of all, with respect to the planning and the effort particularly to the shelter and housing accommodation, they need to give more emphasis to the medical services also. It has been found from the various researches that most of the homeless people are suffering from various diseases and therefore it is necessary to have a good arrangement of the medical service along with the shelter. They may appoint a small team of doctors and nurses to provide service as per the requirement for all the section of the shelter and should stock adequate amount of medicine in the shelter itself. Apart from the medicinal effort, it is necessary to arrange educational training to them; it will not only help the homeless people but also to the society at large, as most of them are abusers. It has bad affect on the society also. Pareto Improvement Whatever the recommendation has been provided, it will bring Pareto improvement in the system. At first it is important to know that what Pareto improvement is. It indicates that an economical action taken should be such that no one will be affected but at least one person will be got benefited from the improvement. It will be become possible with the transitional housing along with the medical and education facility. Even with personal characteristic policy also Pareto improvement is possible (Investopedia, 2010). References Cincinnati Country Continuum of care for the Homeless, 2009. “Steering Committee Recommendations.” August 20, 2010. Homeless to Home. Flaherty, B. O. City Economics. Harvard University Press, 2005. Greater Cincinnati, No Date. “Total Population”. August 20, 2010. Facts about Homelessness. < http://www.cincihomeless.org/content/hfacts.html> Investopedia, 2010. “What Does Pareto Improvement Mean?” August 20, 2010. Pareto Investment. Bibliography Curnutte, M, 2010. “Giving a voice to Cincinnatis Homeless”. August 20, 2010. News. < http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100808/NEWS01/8090339/Giving-a-voice-to-Cincinnati-s-homeless> Fischer, B., 2007. “A Decade Of Laws Cant Keep Problem Off The Street”. August 20, 2010. Homeless in Cincinnati. Todd, E. P. Homelessness: is Society Looking the Other Way? Nova Publishers, 2006. Read More