Help For the Homeless

The other project that I really enjoyed was Hotspot for the Homeless. Growing up in Memphis, I never personally experienced being homeless, but I know several people who has. Memphis has a higher percentage of homeless people than the state of Tennessee’s percentage. Even though this is quite an issue, most people do not think about it much, which is natural. If something does not effect a person directly they naturally push that to the back of their mind. I have heard personal stories from homeless people of how during the winter they have to go from place to place to find warmth. They put on all of the clothes they have, which is not much, to provide extra warmth. They keep moving in hopes that moving will keep them warm, until they cannot take any more on their raw, bloody, and blistered feet. If they have friends, they all huddle together, but they never are able to create enough body heat. Some of them even commit crimes just so they can go to jail to be warm and get a meal. The logical answer to this problem is shelters, but most shelters are overcrowded and people are turned away once a shelter gets too full.  The next logical answer to this problem is to build more shelter, but it is easier said than done. Building more shelters is not as simple as it seems, because where will the funding come from, where would it be, how many people will it accommodate, etc. I think that the first choice is to build more shelters, but seeing how complicated that can be, the second choice is to set up a Hotspot. The Hotspot for the Homeless is a brilliant idea. The use of solar power makes it cost efficient for the city, and it helps keep people from freezing to death. Also, it helps to prevent the spread of diseases, which can happen fairly quickly in a shelter, by allowing room for the people to spread out. The fact that Hotspots have Wi-Fi, so that if a homeless person does have a phone they can look up the weather and etc., is pure genius. I think that a major obstacle for implementing the Hotspots is how they are going to convenience people to allow a Hotspot to be put in their community. I am sure that a lot of people would think that Hotspots are a great idea, just as long as they are not in their community. I love this project and hope that one day someone actually creates Hotspots and they are put up in cities across America.