This blog was created to track the progress of "The Right to be Heard" project. Our project has 3 main goals: 1. Connect with the homeless population in Salt Lake City, to gain understanding of major issues they are concerned with. 2. Identify current city, county and state issues that affect this population. 3. Create an opportunity to raise awareness of these issues and ways to have their voices heard.
Be Heard!

Monday, December 1, 2014
If you don't vote it might be because you have other complaints.
I had two conversations about voting with formerly homeless individuals today at work that I thought were interesting and relevant to our project. The Department of Workforce Services application (for benefits like Medicaid and foodstamps) includes a question at the end that asks if the applicant would like to be registered to vote at their current address. This must have been included at some point in an attempt to increase participation in voting.
While helping two different clients with this application I read the question out loud asking both of them if they would like to be registered to vote. They both gave me a very firm no. One was more vocal about her feelings and explained that she has too much going on in her life to care about voting, and she did not seem to think that her vote would make much of a difference. Both of these clients are experiencing very significant family stressors and an inability to meet their basic needs. One of them had a severe toothache, and repeatedly apologized to me because her mouth was swollen and she had difficulty talking. Her primary goal in completing the DWS application was to secure medical coverage to address the toothache. The thought came to my mind that I was perhaps asking her to concern herself with a higher order need at a time when her lower order needs were screaming out to be met.
These experiences made me think about how one of the very big barriers to political participation in the homeless community is the fact that being politically active is much higher up one's list of needs compared to food, shelter, medical care, and knowing that your family is safe. I think this is probably one of the key barriers, and one that I do not know how to overcome.
Group Updates:
Since our last blog post we have all been working together to gather sources in preparation for our final paper and are looking forward to diving more deeply into our project next semester. Some things that we are currently working on include:
-Sue is scheduling a group at VOA Detox with a specific group of clients who are chronically homeless and remain in detox for a longer period of time while they work on attending treatment and attaining permanent housing. In this group they will do the needs assessment and have discussion around the issue of voting and political involvement in the homeless community.
-Wendy is planning to distribute the needs assessment to clients living at Freedom Landing, which is a housing program for homeless veterans.
-Josh is writing the first draft of our paper, and we will all work together to finalize it over the next two weeks.
-I looked up the 2013 Comprehensive Report on Homelessness done by the state of Utah (http://jobs.utah.gov/housing/documents/homelessness2013.pdf), which has a lot of interesting information about homelessness in Utah. It is estimated that slightly over 15,000 people experienced homelessness in the state in 2013.
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This post got me thinking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Obviously you were thinking about it as well. Voting, as you suggest, isn't one of those needs directly related to survival. Voting, in other words, isn't as important as food, shelter, medications, etc. So, from that stance, it makes sense why homeless people (and poor people in general) don't vote.
ReplyDeleteThis presents a paradox for me. To achieve change in the American system of governance requires political activity; most importantly, it includes voting. But, making such arguments probably won't get them out to vote, because there are so many more pressing concerns.
This is why your project is so important. It also highlights a theme for the project, a theme you might call "bringing voting to the homeless" - or something similar. If you and others can remove barriers to voting like transportation, needing an address to register, and finding time as they struggle to survive, then maybe most of them would vote.
Anyways, that's probably not any new information for ya'll. Good work! Your blog kicks ass. Preston Radford