Rebecca Ezrin
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Cal Poly’s annual Homeless Awareness Week (HAW) is coming up starting on Monday, with a variety of events taking place throughout the week.
Run by Student Community Services (SCS), HAW includes five days of events in which students can be educated on the topic of homelessness in San Luis Obispo County.
“The goal of Homeless Awareness Week is to help students at Cal Poly be aware of homelessness in San Luis Obispo County. Cal Poly students can be really far removed, so it’s easy to be unaware,” HAW Director Janet Brazil said.
According to a presentation on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) homeless youth, as part of a Social Justice Series presentation for Cal Poly’s Pride Month, there are approximately 3,500 homeless people in San Luis Obispo.
“I think that because SLO is such a well-off community, people are coming from somewhere else and are thinking that they can get more support here. Homeless shelters are pretty good here, though,” HAW Coordinator Carly Matera said.
As stated in the 2011 San Luis Obispo County Homeless Enumeration Report, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) considers a person homeless when they reside in places not meant for human habitation like cars, parks, emergency shelters or transitional housing.
Additionally, HUD defines a chronically homeless household as an unaccompanied individual or a family with at least one adult member having a disabling condition who has either been continuously homeless for a year or more or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.
The Enumeration Report revealed that most of the homeless people in San Luis Obispo County reside in San Luis Obispo, as well as in the North County.
Men comprised 66 percent of the total homeless population in San Luis Obispo County, and of those surveyed, 59 percent were white. About half of the homeless population was made up of children under 18.
In terms of family life, a survey in the Enumeration Report indicated that 70 percent of respondents were living alone.
In another survey within the report, homeless people were asked where they slept at night, with the common response that they slept outside.
In a survey question within the report that asked homeless people the reason behind leaving their last permanent place of residency, the most common answer was they were unable to pay their rent or mortgage.
For HAW, SCS is collaborating with some of San Luis Obispo County’s organizations that serve the homeless for volunteering events.
“For the shelters, they’re really burdened. So anytime we can help them out, we try. For homeless people, we show that we care and are respectful,” Brazil said.
To kick off HAW, staff members of the Maxine Lewis Memorial Homeless Shelter will be delivering a speech at Cal Poly about negative stigmas attached to homelessness.
“Unless you’ve been to a homeless shelter and engaged with the people there, it’s easy to carry past experiences of running into aggressive panhandlers on the street and assume those are the same characters that are sleeping in the shelters at night. Many of the people you see panhandling are not the ones utilizing our services,” Maxine Lewis Memorial Homeless Shelter lead staff member Heather Hiramatsu said.
In addition to collaborating with the Maxine Lewis Memorial Homeless Shelter, SCS will also be sending volunteers to serve at the shelter’s sister program, the Prado Day Center.
The Prado Day Center offers a variety of services including breakfast, lunch, showers and laundry service. They also work to try to get more homeless people into permanent housing.
“Cal Poly volunteers are going to come in and serve breakfast a couple of days (during HAW),” Prado Day Center lead staff supervisor Penley Sharp said. “We will be doing a garden planting event with Cal Poly as well. We’re going to work on incorporating clients with the students.”
SCS runs eight programs in order to better the Cal Poly and San Luis Obispo community. HAW is a part of the Beyond Shelter program. Beyond Shelter focuses on volunteering with the homeless in San Luis Obispo County. In addition to having an annual HAW, the Beyond Shelter program also includes a See The Need Week, which is dedicated to raising awareness about local and global hunger.
From April 20 to 24, there will be an event held daily for HAW. Events include speeches, serving food to the homeless and even a sleep-out in the Julian A. McPhee University Union (UU), which will include a discussion on the epidemic of homelessness in San Luis Obispo County.
Throughout the week, SCS will also be holding a food drive in the UU plaza from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily. The funding for the event will come from the Dean of Students Office.
“We want Cal Poly students to be understanding. It’s really easy to just walk by them (homeless people) downtown and ignore them or be rude. We really want to humanize them, as they’re normal people, and everyone needs to work to erase the sigmas on them,” Brazil said.