Minggu, 15 Januari 2012
A GIRL'S GUIDE TO HOMELESSNESSBy Meredith Jaffe
In 2008, as the bubble of the world economies burst, 23-year-old California girl Brianna Karp lost her job and the house she rented.
She had no option but to move back in with her abusive mother for a couple of weeks. As weeks turned into months, her hopes for finding a job that paid more than unemployment benefit declined. Her mother's behaviour became increasingly impossible until one night, in a seething rage, she threw her eldest daughter out on the street and Brianna Karp became one of the homeless.
The Girl's Guide to Homelessness is a confronting memoir of a young girl's struggle against the system, her upbringing, and an uncertain future.
It challenges every preconceived notion about what being homeless means. As we start 2012 with whole countries teetering on the brink of financial collapse and more and more people falling victim to the harsh prevailing economic conditions, it seems timely to look at such a deeply moving story.
Brianna Karp spoke to The Hoopla's Meredith Jaffé.
How did you find yourself homeless?
It was a chain of events that spiraled out of control. I was an Executive Assistant in a job I loved but I was laid off in 2008 at the beginning of the recession. It was the first time in my life I had been fired and I was devastated but I thought I'd be okay as I'd never had any trouble finding work before. I moved back in with my family for what I thought would only be a week or two but that was a disaster and, very suddenly, I found myself homeless.
What is homelessness?
The definition I put at the front of the book is this: Someone who doesn't have fixed, long-term, adequate housing.
There are a lot of assumptions about being homeless; that it somehow says something bad about you as a person like you have a drug problem. But all it means is that you have no safe haven.
Poverty has been criminalised in so many ways. For instance, it is illegal to sleep in a public place and the police will move you on. There are so many rules that effectively make it illegal to be homeless in this country.
The recession is opening people's eyes and now many realize that “this could happen to me”. A large number of people are one or two paychecks away from homelessness. But for others they are quick to label; it's a knee jerk reaction born from their fears.
Has the GFC changed what it means to be homeless?
The GFC has definitely increased the number of homeless people and more and more middle class people are now homeless. The middle class is disappearing in America but that's not to discount people who are homeless because they have mental health issues or drug addiction and simply can't look after themselves.
On top of that, the number of resources available to help such people is limited and it was always important to me that I did not hog resources that should be available to people truly in need.
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