On February 10th, our group interviewed Judith Mack about her work with Open Hearts. Judith works at LREI as a learning specialist meaning that we did the interview in person and not on zoom. She talked about how she met Shams Dabaron who is also known as Da Homeless Hero and how she thought he was an outstanding person because of his view on homelessness.

Something that I remember specifically from the interview is when Judith said that the reason she got involved with fighting homelessness is because she believes in the phrase “treat people how you would like to be treated” also known as the golden rule. She noticed that homeless people were being treated as criminals and at that moment decided to make a change for good.

Our Group is glad that we met her especially in person. This interview made me realize that if everyone treats homeless people how they want to be treated then experiencing homelessness would not be looked down on. Even if everyone followed the golden rule the whole world would be a better place .

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Our group interviewed Nicole McVinua from Urban Pathways on January 31st. She is the Director of Policies at Urban Pathways and has been devoted to her goal of ending homelessness for the past 3 years. During the interview, Nicole went over her whole story and why she chose to work with Urban Pathways. Something that I specifically remember from the interview was when she said that her clients/patients are mostly African-American then Latinx.

She also said that even though there are many reasons for homelessness, the most common reason for homelessness is that housing is too expensive. I personally live in one of the biggest cities in the world and one of the most expensive as well. New York City has one of the biggest homeless populations in the US. Nearly one in every 106 New Yorkers is homeless. This interview was essential to our research and I am glad that we spoke to Nicole.

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In this fieldwork we interviewed Shams Debaron. Many people know him as Da Homeless Hero. For me, what made the interview so interesting was the fact that he is a former homeless person, meaning that he knows how many homeless people feel. I learned that if it were not for books, he probably would not be where he is today and they had a tremendous effect on his life.

Something that specifically stuck with me was that when he said that him being from the “hood” (as he described it) many people around him did not understand how to turn their lives around and how society has forced the image that people who have grown up in rough neighborhood have to sell drugs or continue to act tough. I was also really surprised that he chose to create a homeless play. I like that idea because he did it to be different from the rest. This interview gave our group a ton load of valuable new information and I thank Shams for taking time out of his day to speak to us.

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Last week my group presented an overview representation of our SJ topic. I was excited because we worked well together and I learned a lot. Here is something I shared about my topic after reading the articles, “In October of 2021 there were about 48,723 homeless people and about 15,346 were homeless children, sleeping each night in New York Cities shelter system” I was extremely baffled and was determined to make change.

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