Name: Clara Cornick
Social Justice Group: 2019-2020, Child Hunger & Homelessness
Date of Fieldwork: November 26, 2019
Name of Organization:
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Professor Brendan O’Flaherty
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
We interviewed this professor from Columbia University and asked him many questions.
What I learned:
We learned a lot about how mental illness can be a big cause of people who live on the street. A lot of money is spent on shelters. You can enter whenever you want with no qualifications. It is very hard to get families into shelters. To get into a shelter you have to convince people you have no alternative to get into a family shelter. Shelters run by nonprofits. A lot of people get even more sick from standing on the street. Almost everything is free in shelters.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
I learned that many people on the street really don’t want to be bothered. Not a lot of homeless people fish for money and most of them just want to be alone. We also learned that when you see a homeless person on the street you should call 311 to make sure they go to a shelter and stay safe.
