Defense Paper
Content
Defense Paper
By Hao Djur
Everyone makes choices on a daily basis whether it’s for oneself or their family. The
individuals who have very little money to spare have to be critical when deciding which choices
are a top priority. Their choices include housing, healthcare, food, transportation, technology and
grocery shopping. Individuals living in poverty and homelessness raise a special concern in our
community because they lack not just money, but food and support as well. According to bls.gov,
there are 8.6 million unemployed people in the United States,1 and there is an estimate of 3.5
million homeless Americans.2 These two specific statistics reveal that a large portion of
Americans are not earning enough, and therefore are unable to afford housing. When these
individual’s housing and jobs start to disappear, their welfare does as well. The challenges that
the unemployed are facing cannot be ignored and as middle-class citizens we cannot abandon the
forgotten ones.
The US welfare program was created to help provide assistance to families with no or
little income during the Great Depression. After the Welfare system was initiated many began to
complain that some individuals were abusing the program by not looking for work, which made
it a huge topic. A case worker must be assigned to someone who is applying for welfare to gather
information such as family size, income, and any crisis situation to determine an individual’s
eligibility.3 Taking this into consideration, are the ones who use the welfare given to them not
1 “THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION—MARCH 2015.” Bureau of Labor Statistics U.S.
Department of Labor. Accessed April 4, 2015.
2 “Fact Sheet.” Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition. April 8, 2014. Accessed April
4, 2015.
3 "US Welfare System - Help for US Citizens." US Welfare System - Help for US
Citizens. Accessed April 27, 2015. http://www.welfareinfo.org/.
applying for jobs to receive more aid from the government? The answer is not concrete because
our community is filled with decent and also selfish people.
To show the challenges of unemployment and homelessness, I wanted to create a
scrapbook to share two diverse childhoods of boys named Kyle and Joe. Both of them were born
to middle-class parents, but Joe’s family experienced homelessness, whereas Kyle never had to
worry about the issue. Each page shows the gifts and what each character was and is going to do
on their birthday. When the scrapbook is opened, the left page portrays Joe’s birthday
experiences, while the pages on the right side represents Kyles’s birthday celebrations. My
scrapbook includes when both boys turned five, twelve, sixteen, eighteen and twenty. In addition,
I wanted to put their thirtieth birthday to show how they would be spending their special day. I
chose to start at age five because it is an important age since most children start to their first year
of school. Twelve is the last age before becoming an official teen and that is an important time
for many children. I included a sweet sixteen because it is very well known. Turning eighteen is
another critical age because it’s a transition from a teenager to a young adult. And since my
audience for my Inquiry Product is college students, I thought it would be best to have age
twenty. At the very end, I wanted my audience to see a birthday where both Joe and Kyle will
celebrate the day together. No one really thinks about how fortunate they are to be part of the
middle-class or the struggles and hardships of people living in poverty and homelessness when
they have nothing to support themselves. This is my main reason for creating my genre, which
was to make college students more aware of their privileges and challenges that many people
have to endure on a daily basis.
On Kyle’s birthdays he was always surrounded by many close family members and
friends who gave him tremendous amount of gifts. His father, who was a family physician and
his mother who worked as a high school teacher could afford Kyle all the presents he desired.
On the other hand, Joe experienced a much different childhood than Kyle. At age five
Joe’s father lost his position as an accountant at Wells Fargo, while his mother worked as a nurse
at their local hospital. After his father lost his job, it caused his family to start becoming
financially unstable and his parents could not afford to throw him a huge birthday party. Instead
they tried their best to give him a small celebration with just the three of them and his parents
even baked Joe a homemade birthday cake. Seeing that his parents try to make the best of their
situation, Joe grows up to be a humble man. And since Joe was starting his first school year, his
parents managed to give him new clothes. As for Joe’s father, he struggled to find work after
being laid off.
Not being able to find a replacement job after losing one makes it difficult to find
employment in the future. Janelle Jones, a researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy
Research believes there is a discrimination against the unemployed. In an article, she said, “The
longer you are unemployed, the harder it is to get another job, and as you’re waiting, your skills
are deteriorating, [and] the labor market moves along without you.” 4 Her statement shows that
the long-termed unemployed, which are individuals who have been jobless for 27 weeks or
longer, face a challenge where they are victimized. The longer someone stays unemployed it
makes it harder for them to be hired because employers want to hire someone who is up to date
with their skills. Joe and his father went through situational poverty (living in poverty due to a
crisis in Joe’s case it was unemployment) and it caused Joe’s father to struggle with finding
4 Fortino, Ellyn. “Progress Illinois.” Long-Term Unemployed Face Continued Economic
Challenges. May 28, 2013. Accessed March 31, 2015.
employment. The longer his father couldn’t find a job, the tougher it became for him to provide
for his family. This was a reason why Joe didn’t have many birthday gifts growing up.
After Joe’s father was laid off his job the family soon experienced another crisis. Joe’s
mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her diagnosis forced her to get immediate medical
treatment. Then the year Joe turned twelve, he went through another hardship where he lost his
mother to cancer. While struggling with both unemployment and not having the money to pay for
his mother’s hospital bills, Joe and his father lost their home and became homeless. The
scrapbook was supposed to give an insight into the difficulties Joe faced. Although all these
crises should have brought him down, Joe turned out to be an appreciative person because of his
humble parents.
One of the barriers faced by unemployed individuals is that most job applications are
found online. To find employment, most jobs now require access to online applications according
to a Cheri Honkala a Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign advocate. The
availability of technologies such as computers are hard to gain access to when someone is
homeless, but prevents individuals from finding employment and applying for them. Not having
a device to gain access to an online job application made it harder for Joe’s father and other
unemployed individuals to obtain work.
In another article I stumbled upon, an unemployed worker advocate, Mitchell Hirsch,
gave his view on a barrier he found that many unemployed individuals sometimes go through.
He said that having to go through pre-employment screening, which mandates looking at a
potential employee’s credit history is a barrier.5 When an individual has a poor credit history and
is also seeking employment, then they are unlikely to secure a job because of their poor credit,
5 Traub, Amy. "Why New York Needs The Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment
Act." Why New York Needs The Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment Act.
September 10, 2014. Accessed April 27, 2015.
and cannot escape their debt. They also cannot escape their debt and improve their credit since
they are not able to find work. One way to eliminate this particular barrier is the initiation of the
employment act, intro 261, which prohibits the checking of personal credit history in
employment. Most employers look into a job-seeker’s credit history, but yet there is no proven
link between the performance of a job and someone’s credit report. Overall, this article wants to
stop the examination of personal credit histories, to ensure a fair access to job opportunities.
Joe’s story revealed that homelessness can affect anyone. Really. It could happen to our
friends or family members one day. It is to the community’s benefit to support the ones currently
struggling with unemployment and want to transition out of poverty and homelessness. One
thing the middle-class should consider is being aware that the unemployed are not all lazy and
find ways to help these individuals.
The experiences that each one of us go through impact us in different ways. But, the most
important thing to remember is that unemployment and homelessness are crucial issues that need
to be made aware of. Many unemployed people are seen as lazy and abusing welfare aid, but
there are many factors that prevent them from finding work, which unfortunately can lead to
homelessness.
From the research about my topic, I realized that the most important aspect that many
unemployed and homeless individuals lack is support from their community. For the last page of
my scrapbook I made a page dedicated to Joe and Kyle’s thirtieth birthday. Although Kyle was
spoiled his whole life, I didn’t want his privileges to make him a selfish man. I have learned that
our privileges are given to us and we have no control over them. I also wanted to make Kyle a
guy who used his spare time to give back to his community by volunteering. Somehow their
paths meet and the two become friends. I met a guy named Joe who went through a similar
childhood like Joe’s character. I have no clue how his future will turn out, but I want it to be full
of happy birthday celebrations and the last page shows that he will.
By Hao Djur
Everyone makes choices on a daily basis whether it’s for oneself or their family. The
individuals who have very little money to spare have to be critical when deciding which choices
are a top priority. Their choices include housing, healthcare, food, transportation, technology and
grocery shopping. Individuals living in poverty and homelessness raise a special concern in our
community because they lack not just money, but food and support as well. According to bls.gov,
there are 8.6 million unemployed people in the United States,1 and there is an estimate of 3.5
million homeless Americans.2 These two specific statistics reveal that a large portion of
Americans are not earning enough, and therefore are unable to afford housing. When these
individual’s housing and jobs start to disappear, their welfare does as well. The challenges that
the unemployed are facing cannot be ignored and as middle-class citizens we cannot abandon the
forgotten ones.
The US welfare program was created to help provide assistance to families with no or
little income during the Great Depression. After the Welfare system was initiated many began to
complain that some individuals were abusing the program by not looking for work, which made
it a huge topic. A case worker must be assigned to someone who is applying for welfare to gather
information such as family size, income, and any crisis situation to determine an individual’s
eligibility.3 Taking this into consideration, are the ones who use the welfare given to them not
1 “THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION—MARCH 2015.” Bureau of Labor Statistics U.S.
Department of Labor. Accessed April 4, 2015.
2 “Fact Sheet.” Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition. April 8, 2014. Accessed April
4, 2015.
3 "US Welfare System - Help for US Citizens." US Welfare System - Help for US
Citizens. Accessed April 27, 2015. http://www.welfareinfo.org/.
applying for jobs to receive more aid from the government? The answer is not concrete because
our community is filled with decent and also selfish people.
To show the challenges of unemployment and homelessness, I wanted to create a
scrapbook to share two diverse childhoods of boys named Kyle and Joe. Both of them were born
to middle-class parents, but Joe’s family experienced homelessness, whereas Kyle never had to
worry about the issue. Each page shows the gifts and what each character was and is going to do
on their birthday. When the scrapbook is opened, the left page portrays Joe’s birthday
experiences, while the pages on the right side represents Kyles’s birthday celebrations. My
scrapbook includes when both boys turned five, twelve, sixteen, eighteen and twenty. In addition,
I wanted to put their thirtieth birthday to show how they would be spending their special day. I
chose to start at age five because it is an important age since most children start to their first year
of school. Twelve is the last age before becoming an official teen and that is an important time
for many children. I included a sweet sixteen because it is very well known. Turning eighteen is
another critical age because it’s a transition from a teenager to a young adult. And since my
audience for my Inquiry Product is college students, I thought it would be best to have age
twenty. At the very end, I wanted my audience to see a birthday where both Joe and Kyle will
celebrate the day together. No one really thinks about how fortunate they are to be part of the
middle-class or the struggles and hardships of people living in poverty and homelessness when
they have nothing to support themselves. This is my main reason for creating my genre, which
was to make college students more aware of their privileges and challenges that many people
have to endure on a daily basis.
On Kyle’s birthdays he was always surrounded by many close family members and
friends who gave him tremendous amount of gifts. His father, who was a family physician and
his mother who worked as a high school teacher could afford Kyle all the presents he desired.
On the other hand, Joe experienced a much different childhood than Kyle. At age five
Joe’s father lost his position as an accountant at Wells Fargo, while his mother worked as a nurse
at their local hospital. After his father lost his job, it caused his family to start becoming
financially unstable and his parents could not afford to throw him a huge birthday party. Instead
they tried their best to give him a small celebration with just the three of them and his parents
even baked Joe a homemade birthday cake. Seeing that his parents try to make the best of their
situation, Joe grows up to be a humble man. And since Joe was starting his first school year, his
parents managed to give him new clothes. As for Joe’s father, he struggled to find work after
being laid off.
Not being able to find a replacement job after losing one makes it difficult to find
employment in the future. Janelle Jones, a researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy
Research believes there is a discrimination against the unemployed. In an article, she said, “The
longer you are unemployed, the harder it is to get another job, and as you’re waiting, your skills
are deteriorating, [and] the labor market moves along without you.” 4 Her statement shows that
the long-termed unemployed, which are individuals who have been jobless for 27 weeks or
longer, face a challenge where they are victimized. The longer someone stays unemployed it
makes it harder for them to be hired because employers want to hire someone who is up to date
with their skills. Joe and his father went through situational poverty (living in poverty due to a
crisis in Joe’s case it was unemployment) and it caused Joe’s father to struggle with finding
4 Fortino, Ellyn. “Progress Illinois.” Long-Term Unemployed Face Continued Economic
Challenges. May 28, 2013. Accessed March 31, 2015.
employment. The longer his father couldn’t find a job, the tougher it became for him to provide
for his family. This was a reason why Joe didn’t have many birthday gifts growing up.
After Joe’s father was laid off his job the family soon experienced another crisis. Joe’s
mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her diagnosis forced her to get immediate medical
treatment. Then the year Joe turned twelve, he went through another hardship where he lost his
mother to cancer. While struggling with both unemployment and not having the money to pay for
his mother’s hospital bills, Joe and his father lost their home and became homeless. The
scrapbook was supposed to give an insight into the difficulties Joe faced. Although all these
crises should have brought him down, Joe turned out to be an appreciative person because of his
humble parents.
One of the barriers faced by unemployed individuals is that most job applications are
found online. To find employment, most jobs now require access to online applications according
to a Cheri Honkala a Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign advocate. The
availability of technologies such as computers are hard to gain access to when someone is
homeless, but prevents individuals from finding employment and applying for them. Not having
a device to gain access to an online job application made it harder for Joe’s father and other
unemployed individuals to obtain work.
In another article I stumbled upon, an unemployed worker advocate, Mitchell Hirsch,
gave his view on a barrier he found that many unemployed individuals sometimes go through.
He said that having to go through pre-employment screening, which mandates looking at a
potential employee’s credit history is a barrier.5 When an individual has a poor credit history and
is also seeking employment, then they are unlikely to secure a job because of their poor credit,
5 Traub, Amy. "Why New York Needs The Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment
Act." Why New York Needs The Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment Act.
September 10, 2014. Accessed April 27, 2015.
and cannot escape their debt. They also cannot escape their debt and improve their credit since
they are not able to find work. One way to eliminate this particular barrier is the initiation of the
employment act, intro 261, which prohibits the checking of personal credit history in
employment. Most employers look into a job-seeker’s credit history, but yet there is no proven
link between the performance of a job and someone’s credit report. Overall, this article wants to
stop the examination of personal credit histories, to ensure a fair access to job opportunities.
Joe’s story revealed that homelessness can affect anyone. Really. It could happen to our
friends or family members one day. It is to the community’s benefit to support the ones currently
struggling with unemployment and want to transition out of poverty and homelessness. One
thing the middle-class should consider is being aware that the unemployed are not all lazy and
find ways to help these individuals.
The experiences that each one of us go through impact us in different ways. But, the most
important thing to remember is that unemployment and homelessness are crucial issues that need
to be made aware of. Many unemployed people are seen as lazy and abusing welfare aid, but
there are many factors that prevent them from finding work, which unfortunately can lead to
homelessness.
From the research about my topic, I realized that the most important aspect that many
unemployed and homeless individuals lack is support from their community. For the last page of
my scrapbook I made a page dedicated to Joe and Kyle’s thirtieth birthday. Although Kyle was
spoiled his whole life, I didn’t want his privileges to make him a selfish man. I have learned that
our privileges are given to us and we have no control over them. I also wanted to make Kyle a
guy who used his spare time to give back to his community by volunteering. Somehow their
paths meet and the two become friends. I met a guy named Joe who went through a similar
childhood like Joe’s character. I have no clue how his future will turn out, but I want it to be full
of happy birthday celebrations and the last page shows that he will.
