Wednesday, September 17, 2008 9:12
Beyond managing homelessness
In Main Stories, Ravi Philemon • 1,035 views • 10 Comments
Ravi Philemon
“Meet Singapore’s Nomad Families”, a recent Sunday Times article welcomes the average Singaporean. Homelessness is a major issue in all large cities. The numbers of homeless people worldwide have grown steadily in recent years. A recent estimate states that there are 100 million people worldwide who are homeless. Although the homeless are often “hidden” in a society like Singapore, Singapore is by no means exempted from this worldwide dilemma.
To be sure, a homeless person obviously needs a home. But such a simple observation overlooks the reason why the homeless have no home. Simply demanding more housing for the homeless is like saying that a person with a fever can be cured with a cold bath to bring down the temperature and ignoring the infection causing the fever.
People who are homeless are so for various reasons. Some have made poor choices in life, some are involved with alcohol or drugs, yet others are part of the system of generational poverty in which inadequate life skills are handed down from one generation to the next, resulting in an entire culture of people who do not know how to take advantage of the educational, cultural or employment advantages available to them. Some of the homeless are also those who may have had some education, a job and a place to live, but without a “safety net” of family or friends to help them through a difficult time, found themselves evicted from their homes after they lost their job or had a financial crisis. But whatever the circumstances, homelessness is but the symptom of root problems.
In addressing the problem of homelessness, the focus has to shift from emergency shelters to prevention. Emergency shelters should only be temporary and transitional solutions, to provide a safe housing environment in the interim. The different agencies who want to focus their resources on preventive efforts should:
1. Involve local governments; because the homeless usually qualify for various kinds of public assistance. Voluntary Welfare Organizations need to be involved in coordinating services and referring clients to various programs.
2. Encourage retraining and upgrading; because the workers in the low-income bracket are the most vulnerable to be homeless. As such, they should upgrade and/or retrain, so that they can develop marketable skills to take on and succeed in new, higher value-added, and emerging jobs in the knowledge based economy.
3. Enhance families’ capacity to help them; policies and programs should aim to support and supplement family functioning. Wherever possible, policies and programs should encourage and reinforce marital, parental, and even extended family commitment and stability.
4. Create awareness; about services available for the “at-risk” group among mainstream service providers like schools, utilities suppliers, banks, religious institutions, etc.
5. Launch Public Education campaigns; through public service advertising to modify public attitudes and to promote responsible home ownership, to encourage homeowners and homebuyers to seek housing counseling.
6. Consider forming an inter-agency coordinating body; to coordinate between all the relevant players who are involved in prevention of homelessness (e.g. shelters, Voluntary Welfare Organizations, schools, religious institutions, government, etc). This inter-agency will do a “gap-analysis” to determine the character of the homeless and potentially homeless in the community, the services most in need and how best to provide these services in a coordinated manner.
The problem of homelessness is very complex and simple solutions are often not available in trying to address this dilemma. It is precisely because simple solutions are not available that different agencies with various expertises in service must work together. Long-term plans must be developed not to manage, but to end homelessness.
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About the author:
Ravi Philemon is TOC’s new writer. He serves in a community services agency serving the homeless in Singapore. He recently returned from the United States, where he worked in a directorial position for a faith-based community outreach service, serving the homeless.
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The Singapore Daily » Blog Archive » Daily SG: 17 Sep 2008
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dennis
hmmm, i always thought that the way government agencies deal with it when informed of a homeless person is to ask that person to sleep somewhere else. and don’t disturb the area where the call is made from
Soul Asylum
Heres a suggestion,
The MP’s should take a torch light and walk around the neighbourhood to really feel and understand what is going on after the lights go off. Please have a reality check after dark.
They should not come out every five years like vampires in hybernation to smile, shake hands and walk around with other peoples babies. (Sorry side tracked)
Once they identify the people that need assistance, they should personally see to it that from start to finish, this person has a better means of coping with life as a Singaporean.
They should then keep a case file on the party to render assistance at anytime.
This is how we can ensure we don’t have homeless people looking for food and tin cans in the rubbish bin.
Please note, this is just a suggestion I am sure the MP can do a better job with the full disposal of resources at his or her hand.
The MP can then produce stats with valid case studies for consolidation to understand the bigger picture of the lower income.
Amused
“Encourage retraining and upgrading; because the workers in the low-income bracket are the most vulnerable to be homeless. As such, they should upgrade and/or retrain, so that they can develop marketable skills to take on and succeed in new, higher value-added, and emerging jobs in the knowledge based economy.”
This has been done for like the past 10+ years. If it works, why is the situation not improving?
not a cent
and the lowest 20 percent is having a lower pay over the past 10 years, PAP has failed miserably in its quest as a social democratic society. Only the pap ministers and civil servants have been enriched.
More good years, how I wish they were true,.
Ultimately, we still need to provide a social security welfare net
dodo
i thought they can just go to jail and make it their home (at least got security, shelter, foods)
Ravi Philemon
[quote]“Encourage retraining and upgrading; because the workers in the low-income bracket are the most vulnerable to be homeless. As such, they should upgrade and/or retrain, so that they can develop marketable skills to take on and succeed in new, higher value-added, and emerging jobs in the knowledge based economy.”
This has been done for like the past 10+ years. If it works, why is the situation not improving?[/quote]
That is a complex question without easy answers. But one of the key reasons is because a substantial number of people who upgrade and retrain, often do not possess the accompanying mind-shift. They basically go back to the same pattern of living, work patterns, choices of life, etc. Another important factor is many who upgrade and retrain are not paid a living wage.
puddleofmark
Great article! I’m glad to be able to read any sort of analysis of Singaporean homelessness. Particularly acknowledging that it is a ‘complex phenomenon’ that isn’t easily solved is a good thing.
Just a clarification though –
“…yet others are part of the system of generational poverty in which inadequate life skills are handed down from one generation to the next, resulting in an entire culture of people who do not know how to take advantage of the educational, cultural or employment advantages available to them.”
This statement takes a very ‘culture of poverty’ perspective. This perspective states that the problem of the poor is that they do not have the correct culture to be not-poor ie their situation has trained them to be lazy, shoddy, not opportunistic etc. While that is probably true for some poor people, I’d also like to point out my experience that other poor people cannot ‘take advantage of the … advantages available to them’ not because they have some poverty-culture character flaw but because they don’t have the resources to take advantages of the ‘advantages’.
Let me give an example:
I know a few people who hold education as vitally important, as it will help their kids to get out of the poverty situation they find themselves in. And so, these parents would do their best to send their kids to school. However, because – say, they had their hdb flat repossessed because of loans and so were forced to move into a open-market rented 500 dollar master bedroom far away from their kids school, when their household income is 700 dollars – they suddenly find it very difficult to pay the 26 dollar concession pass for their kid to go to school. Maybe one or two crisises happen during this time whereupon the family runs totally out of money (and this of course after they’ve already tried not too and found that they had to borrow money from friends) and so the kid ends up not going to school for a few days when his/her ez-link runs out. Then think about the teacher’s possible response – ‘what? you say you ponned school because your parents never gave you ez-link money? That is such a ridiculous excuse!’. And after several such incidents, the student becomes labelled as a ‘bad student’ and so does not do wonderfully in exams etc.
Anyway, my point is that blaming the poor’s inability to get out of poverty because of their own lack of motivation kind of cheapens the reality of their situation – that they have to work harder and against more constraints than we middle class people do to achieve the same result. So when we glibly say ‘they aren’t motivated’, we ignore that they’d have to be more motivated than the average person to achieve the same result.
Sorry Ravi – I’m not saying that you said the above in your article. I’m just adding to it by venting about this whole culture of poverty thing – it makes it easy and convenient for us to be judgemental.
If one does identify any homeless people, pls do call MCYS at 1800-2220000.