Hakyung

New Heaven
This article deals with different individuals related to homelessness. Firstly, we know about Joe, a homeless man, who lived on the streets under the stars for the past two years of his life. However, we learn that Joe is rather different from the ‘homeless people’ we are prejudiced about. According to this article, Joe chooses to live on the streets as he doesn’t want to go to a shelter made for homeless people. He cites that his decision was due to the fact that majority of people at the shelter are addicts, thieves, mentally ill or disturbed. And as he is not one of them, he wants to have a little of that to hang on to.

Reading about Joe on this article, it made me feel that our misconceptions and discriminations against homeless people can be judgmental and wrong. For example, many of us would get an impression of homeless people as those who are unskilled, lazy, dirty and uneducated. However, this helped me understand that there are homeless people who rather choose to be homeless on the street and those who are homeless but got the skills, the education and the place to live in. The article also personally touched me on the matter that Joe didn’t want to mingle with those who were mentally ill, addicts or thieves. Wholeheartedly, I understood Joe’s opinion on this view that he doesn’t want to be affected in any way from those people. This article also left an impression on me that homeless people should be cared and nurtured vigilantly appreciating individuality rather than their problems and issues. In many homeless shelters, it is unable to cope with the large amount of people and different problems/ illnesses/ individuality. Therefore, shelters become pointless in some aspects. In order to protect homeless people, appreciating their individuality and treating as one rather than ‘homeless people’ would be better.