American Dream?

As I met residents, everything that I felt so strongly about was clearly confirmed. People were not homeless because they wanted to be or chose to be. People weren’t homeless because of personality traits or lack thereof. People weren’t homeless because of something they did to themselves. It may have felt good to be confirmed in my strong view, but it was hard to see so many people suffering because of a system that had failed them.

As a Leadership and Healthcare major and a Sociology minor, systemic issues, disparities, and inequity are all things I have read about in textbooks and talked about in class. I believe that these topics are even the reason I landed on this combination of majors and minors. Due to things such as systemic issues, disparities, and inequity, people in this country fall into unfortunate circumstances because of uncontrollable factors. The American Dream: “If you work hard enough, you can be successful” is something that has been a long time belief. But this cannot be the case for everyone. This American Dream also implies that if people don’t work hard, then they won’t succeed and that they have only themselves to blame for that. Meeting residents at one of the VSH buildings proved this completely wrong.

I met hard-working, passionate, and strong individuals from different backgrounds and walks of life, all who tried their best to make their own success but who all ended up homeless.

One of the top values of VSH is ‘Housing First’. This means that despite the circumstances and obstacles in someone’s life, they guarantee to house them regardless. In order to conquer other obstacles in life, one has to have a roof over their head and some sort of security first. Even if a resident is unemployed and so can’t pay rent, they have a serious mental health illness that they can’t control, they have a criminal record, or all of the above, they can find housing with VSH.

This value of the culture allows VSH to help this community that has found themselves homeless based off of no reason due to themselves. This really struck me. It was especially clear as I met residents. Like the man I met that had a stroke and lost his job, or the man that got a disability from getting shot and so lost his job, and many more like them, these people became homeless based off of unfortunate life chances; one could even say bad luck. By being housed first, these men had access to the necessities for survival, like a warm place to sleep, but also resources to help them overcome their medical problems.