Systems

Health inequities resulting from Homelessness, unemployment, and poverty are a central theme and system in Catching Homelessness. People with major mental illnesses and/or chronic physical ailments who lack health insurance run the risk of losing their homes or living in unstable housing. Homeless people experience greater rates of sickness and pass away on average 12 years earlier than the rest of the US population. Homelessness is a severe health condition that can lead to more significant issues, like infections or pneumonia (National Health Care for the Homeless Council, 2022).

Some frequently mentioned financial obstacles preventing unhoused individuals from receiving medical care include money for transportation, access to health benefits, or coverage for prescription drugs and allied health services (Campbell, 2015).

We can improve access to health care for the homeless community by Expanding access to care, reducing harm, and housing. One example of a harm reduction program that seeks to reduce the risk of a drug overdose, HIV infection, and hepatitis C transmission is using naloxone (NARCAN), fentanyl test strips, and syringe exchange programs for homeless people (Firth, 2021).

In Catching Homelessness, Ensign (2016, p. 58) writes, "Most of these patients were black, so I called it the almost-colored-only hospital. The prisoners, shackled to their beds and accompanied by brown-clad armed guards, were from the State Penitentiary located across town."

The prison industrial complex is an economic model capitalizing on free labor that disproportionately affects people of color. The school-to-prison pipline and in turn, the prison-to-homelessness pipeline is a problem that is getting worse in the United States. According to Disrupting the Prison to Homelessness Pipeline (2020), "formerly incarcerated individuals are about ten times more likely to experience homelessness than the general public."

Research from Schneider (2018) shows that after incarceration, securing housing is critical to reducing the likelihood of recidivism. Yet, those with criminal records— a group that's disproportionately made up of racial minorities—frequently face housing discrimination, regardless of how minor their crime was. Prison is a violent place for anyone. However, for other disenfranchised groups like the trans community––it is flat-out dangerous. The stories Marcel and Angie told on Episode 55 of The Ear Hustle Podcast was heartbreaking and angering. Marcel, a trans male, was abused sexually and physically throughout his life, was housed in a woman's prison in LA, was grouped with "aggressive" labeled inmates, and had to fight all the time. Marcels says, "violence was a way to control and release the stuff that was going on in my mind that I really didn't understand or put words."

Angie, a 44-year-old trans woman, talks about joining a gang ended up in prison for robbery because she was "considered a freak... I was beat up along the way a lot. I was abused... all sorts of abuse. I had to... I couldn't get a job, so, I had to go to the extent of selling myself on the streets to survive. It was a survival tactic for me because I couldn't work. But I knew that the way I was made me happy. Even though society didn't accept me; I was being laughed at, things thrown at me, jumped by other gangs... So, I had to find somebody to help me and protect me."

One of the hardest part to listen to was when Angie said, "I didn't do what they asked me to do, and they sent people into my cell. and um.... Ooh. Certain things happen to me that um... I don't think... I was in the hospital for three months afterward. So, um... and they put me back on the same yard after I got out of the hospital."

Prison is not a rehab; it is a violent and deplorable place. The worst part of the episode was learning that Angie would still choose to go to prison for gender reassignment surgery because it was permitted there, thanks to a trans protection law. However, she could not afford the surgey if she was out. That is injustice at its finest, no doubt!

(Poor & Woods, 2021).