Chania LaGrone

ENG 102
Prof. Shipps
4/22/2022
Module 3
GREAT: Putting It All Together – Homelessness and Freedom

Homelessness is a human rights violation. It infringes on our freedom of living our lives and violates our
dignity as human beings just because we don’t have enough money. And it’s time the world sees it that
way.
Part 1: The Inquiry and the Research
Homelessness and it’s relation to the humane concept of Freedom are complex topics. It makes us
question whether allowing people to wander the streets without being provided a place to stay at is
humane, or even if we as a society should go as far as to make it so that no one can ever end up homeless,
despite the costs to the system such an attempt could create. As someone who has technically been
homeless at one point in my childhood, this issue strikes me as particularly important. I frequently think
about the time I lived in a transitional communal home, where I had to share a space with strangers and
share resources without overconsumption. We had to moderate how much we spent, how long we were
outside, and where we could even go. Our freedom was curtailed due to the rules of the owner of the
commune, for the sake of everyone else. I didn’t like not being independent.

Others describe it as, “Exposed, naked, alienated. It seems like the whole neighborhood knows all your
business, but doesn’t care. Soon afterward, human vultures pick over your possessions and steal what’s
not guarded.”(Dyan) The situation is to be greatly demoralizing and constantly unstable. Does this sound
like freedom? What about the right to privacy?

“If you reside in a shelter, you share a shower and toilet with something like 10 to 25 people. There is no
privacy. Some shelters are chaotic, dirty, dangerous environments with rigid schedules. You sleep
uneasily among a room full of people, a mix of mothers with children, people with mental or physical
illnesses, thieves and combative jerks.”(Dyan)

Our freedom discussions have been related to how our concept of personal freedom is connected to our
identities and fears. We learned that freedom isn’t just limited to the physical concept of it, where we
imagine it’s restriction as humans being chained down, blocked from traveling by a giant wall, or having
our right to open press and speech being subdued nationwide. In reality, we have fights for freedom from
our emotions (fear) and freedom pertaining to our identities, both perceivable on the outside and unseen.
(Identity)
I realized that freedom was more than just what’s written in the amendments, there’s also measures of
freedom in how we dictate ourselves, our emotions, and how society sees us. In my chosen topic
regarding homelessness and freedom, I bring in the UN views of true human freedom and question them
in how the UN and world governments would respond to the situation of extreme poverty and
homelessness when many of the hallmarks of these things violate the very core of these set rules. I find it
interesting that even though there are laws that dictate that all humans should have fair access to the
internet, food, and shelter, we still see people clustering around can fires for warmth, squatters inside old
decaying buildings, and men begging for alms on the streets from passing cars.

Part Two: Explain an Image

Homelessness is a human rights violation, plain and simple. (Photo by Cecille Carron)

I selected this image since it captures a homeless person struggling with the very fact that they can’t
access food, shelter, or clothing in the way that non-homeless people can. This captures my argument for
the idea that the homeless are being stripped of their freedoms by the system for being allowed to just stay
homeless. The image shows the desperation of the victim as they seem to have only clothes, the sign, and
the alms cup to their name, and the cold and uncomfortable environment that they are trying to survive in,
which is a cold and unforgiving city sidewalk.

The choices I made are meant to resonate with my views. I wanted something that captures the sad, lonely
image of struggle and how barbarian it seems compared to our idealized image of our supposedly
developed society. Our idealized image being one where we are living among advanced technology, free
from unscientific notions of racial superiority or eugenic thoughts in the top science circles, safe from
superstitious witch hunts and snake oil medicines that permeated older societies. Yet as we walk with
cellphones in hand, food in the fridge, and heating in our houses, we occasionally pass by a poor soul
begging for money while living in a tent under an overpass. This should not jive with our image of an
advanced world, and yet this is a commonly accepted image in life. It should not be. I believe that a
viewer may see the image and shrug it off as another daily sight, but upon reviewing the topic, they may
question to themselves as to why they think this is normal. Should it be normal? Why is this allowed?
What are our standards of a free society?
The sign has it’s own symbolism by stating flat-out that the sign holder is cold, homeless, and hungry is
an obvious appeal to passerby for help for the things they don’t have; warmth, shelter, and food. It’s to
appeal to the natural altruism us. Yet why isn’t that altruism aimed towards making a better system to
make this reality less common?

The image was originally circulated via a page for the World Youth Alliance, a group that fights for
human rights laws around the world. While the picture is subjected to bias on the group’s behalf, it can
still easily spread through social media. It should be circulated through discussions on world economics,
philosophy on the self-determination of man, and welfare of the common people.

Humanitarians, philosophy and economics students, and possibly big donors and organizations who can
help make a difference. Having them see it can make a massive difference when you consider that the
students can grow into fine politicians and leaders who can use what they learned to be useful.

While I didn’t get a different perspective from what I found, it gave me a much stronger resolve on my
argument.

More on the “resolve strengthening”, the discovery of this image led me to understand ways to appeal to
pathos and ethos in humans; the image exudes loneliness, desperation, and vulnerability. These are three
things that appeal to our inner primal desires for thousands of years, because we humans are social
creatures who desire to be independent enough to help ourselves as much as we are expected to help
others, and we do not want to be totally vulnerable to the point where we completely rely on someone
else with no agency whatsoever. My argument in my mind went from arguing on the basis of innate
altruism and logic, to appealing to the inner human fears of being rendered helpless and how we shouldn’t
let anyone else suffer the same way.

I hope that people will toss away their view of the homeless bum sitting in an alley and making
unsolicited crude comments to passerby as an artifact from a less caring past time. I want people to gain a
view that all we need to do is reach out to them to start the process of repairing society as a whole.

Terry Skolnik points out in his essays that, “we gain a richer understanding of the wrongs of
discrimination and the moral concerns underlying homelessness by appealing to the republican theory of
freedom (or republicanism) that construes liberty as non-domination.” (Skolnik)The research I did on the
concept of positive freedom and negative freedom gave me the idea that this picture is perfect to
exemplify why homelessness needs a fix. It’s because we live under the positive view of freedom, and we
need to actually apply it fully to be a truly free society.
And that research shows up in image when you realize that the man suffering in the lacks the aspect of
positive freedom: the ability to determine their own life decisions, get the things they need, and more.

Declarations have an appeal to riling up the reading with repetitions of the first phrases as a reminder to
why the reader should follow what the creator is saying. They are powerful, short and sweet, and simple
to get the message across more clearly.
A sample to be set here:
“Art is not business! It does not belong to banks and fancy investors!” (B&P Theatre, Page 1)
This line pits the reader against a group of people that are commonly stereotyped as scalpers, abusers of
the lower class, and withholding too much power because of their money. The speaker reminds us that we
should not let only the rich have access to things that can change the world for the better with it’s
“Homeless people are still people! Homeless people are just like you and me! They should
remind us that anyone, any one of us, can fall into that situation. They are to be treated as any man on the
street. Fairly. They deserve fair treatment.”
I have selected the Declaration Format as my go-to genre for my paper on the discussion of homelessness
and its relation to freedom in the eyes of human rights laws. This genre is designed to reach the common
man at any reading level, at most ages, and with most sensibilities by going for the most basic appeal. The
Declaration genre uses strong calls and repetition of key phrases to hammer it’s message into the
audience’s hearts and minds. If it’s to state laws and regulations, it outlines them in clear, short
summations that cannot be twisted legally by the common man. They are often bulleted and separated by
a space between each paragraph to make it clear that it’s a list of points that are to be universally
understood.

With it’s appeals to pathos (emotions and feelings) and ethos (credibility, morals, ethics), it has a strong
case going for how useful it is. (Logic is Logos. It is often left out however; Declarations do not seem to
store statistical data or information due to how it would make the article longer and more complicated. It
may also appeal to bias by removing hard numbers and simply appealing to emotions.) By appealing to
the human sympathy of seeing someone struggle for the basic needs of eating and having somewhere
comfortable to sleep, and the morality of not letting a preventable problem continue in plain sight, a
declaration quickly draws out the necessary emotions from the audience and convinces them to share the
fury and urgency of the author.

Despite the lack of logos, the appeals that the genre contains are still incredibly useful at influencing the
reader to take action, agree with the basic compact overall ideas present, and feel that they aren’t alone in
the frustration that they will feel when they read about a perceived injustice being heaped upon the
homeless of the world.

An example of my work in Declaration Format:

The purpose of human rights laws decreed by the UN(OCHR charter) are to protect humanity from rights
abuses.

But why are there homeless people? They lack our same rights to freedom.

Do they deserve to be left behind like this? They are still human just like us, only with less money.

Is that ok? To deprive people of their needs just because they’re not carrying a few shiny metal tokens
and green paper on themselves?

The answer should be clear. If not, you’re a bigger fool than our system thinks we are to allow this to
continue.

Years ago, someone asked, “why cheap art?”(2)Now we must ask, “Why no basic housing?”

The United Nations rapporteur on the right to adequate housing was created to “promote the full
realization of adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living;” and
“gender-specific vulnerabilities in relation to the right to adequate housing and land.”[Rajagopal,
Pg. 1]
It’s time to change things for the better. We have been slacking hard. Now, we must pick up the pace.
Autobiography

Waldron, Jeremy. “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom”, New York University, New York City,
2015.

This article by Jeremy Waldron attempts to explain why the homeless people’s situation is one that lacks
true freedom that is guaranteed by the UN charters to all humans. He also refutes points made by
opponents of this view by citing how they’re splitting hairs over what really constitutes freedom to
disparage the view. It’s a useful essay to help build up what freedom truly means and knock down
common criticisms that would break down the discussion too quickly if they went unanswered. I plan to
use Waldron in a more in depth fashion as I delve into my essay by quoting his exact refutations and
important sources.

Dyan, Paula. “How Does It Feel to Be Homeless?” Street Sense Media, 19 Dec. 2018,
https://www.streetsensemedia.org/article/how-does-it-feel-to-be-homeless/.

Paula Dyan outlines why it’s awful to be homeless. She spares no feelings or descriptions as she directly
quotes the replies of the unfortunate people she interviewed.

Skolnik, Terry. “Freedom and Access to Housing: Three Conceptions.” Windsor Yearbook of Access to
Justice, vol. 35, 2018, pp. 226–242., www.doi.org/10.22329/wyaj.v35i0.5690
Terry Skolnik argues that both views of freedom-the ‘positive’ view of freedom being self-mastery, while
the ‘negative’ view being freedom due to no oppressive interference by another power. Skolnik goes on to
discuss how it’s possible to help the homeless obtain their positive freedom, while avoiding a violation of
negative freedom, which is what opponents of his view claim is happening-that creating safety net to help
the homeless is somehow oppressing the right to live free without interference of an overarching power.
Skolnik’s important division of the positive and negative views of freedom in philosophy comes as a
great aid for my essay, as it makes it very clear what to argue from, and what not to use.

Rajagopal, Balakrishnan “Special Procedures for the Homeless and Human Rights”, Office Of The High
Commissioner Of Human Rights, United Nations.
www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-housing/homelessness-and-human-rights

This is the charter from the High Commissioner of Human Rights in the UN. It is the go to source for
citing what is considered to be the decisive authority in the modern world for what is considered fair for
human access. As an important legal standard, this article will frequently get referenced for usage.