I'm a Bit Late

I was in a conversation with one of my peers about homelessness. One of the writers of my PR team asked if I had heard about the homeless man in New York. I had only heard about the police officer giving a pair of shoes to a homeless man on the street, but my colleague was talking about how the homeless man was revealed as being fake. I never heard of this and I have no idea how I could have missed this news.

Anyways, even though I'm late to the news, I still went to research it. I found this New York Times story that describes the "homeless" man's situation in detail. I was bummed to hear about this news. I felt that the police officer was trying to do a good deed, not for attention or good publicity, but just because it was the right thing to do. Then it turns out, the man wasn't homeless and didn't wear the boots the next time he was on the streets.

It's a bummer when you try to help someone who you think is in need, but really they have the means to provide and live comfortably.

College and the Homeless

So I was browsing Pinterest and thought to myself "I wonder what results I would get if I typed in homeless in the search bar." So this is what turned up.

I was baffled that college women would stoop so low and actually go about such a tasteless themed party. However, it got me thinking how the college population in a town affects the homeless population.

A couple days ago a student with a camera set up approached me on campus. She asked if she could interview me, and being a journalism student who's always looking to interview people, I thought it would be nice to be interviewed for once. Coincidentally, she wanted to interview me about the homeless because she was working on setting up a club on campus that would help treat the homeless problem in Chico.

The article above mentioned that the college students harass and embarrass the homeless people in the bar scene. I don't spend a lot of time in Chico since I'm a commuter student, but students I've talked to say they feel bad for those that are homeless and will sometimes give food or money to them. It's the complete opposite kind of behavior compared to the students in the article above.

It's just an observation, but it just never occurred to me the college population would cause problems for the homeless population. Honestly, I thought the homeless people loved the college scene because there could be more opportunities for help.

A Flow of Thoughts

I've been really trying to sort out all of my thoughts on how to tackle an investigative project. I really want to see if there really is a cultural influence on today's new population of homeless people. Generation Y is centered around technology whether it's social media, text messaging or the constant use of different phone apps. How is technology related to homelessness though? Well, I've seen too many times people pretending to be homeless, usually young adults who would count as Generation Y. Technology fuels deception and I think a culture of deception has influenced young adults to be wanderers, vagabonds and even phony homeless people. Hopefully I come up with some research and really come to a conclusion about this problem.

A Glimpse at Homelessness in Chico, CA

Since I'm looking to see if there is a correlation between being young and deceptive, I decided to look at the homeless numbers in Chico. I've had many encounters with some homeless people in Chico, and some seem like they are really in tough times, and some are wearing brand new clothes and don't look at all like they are in dire need of money. So here are some of my brief findings.