Alina Moua

People who are considered homeless are unable to maintain a secure home. Those who become homeless are veterans, children, women, and all types of classification. People become homeless because of domestic violence, unemployment, no support system, severe illness, and the list goes on. Homeless people reside from place to place, that can be problematic to society.

In the article, Revisiting the Contact Hypothesis: The Case of Public Exposure to Homelessness, the authors, Lee and Farrell's, mission was to see how contact with homeless people affects the in group's attitudes. The homeless was considered the out group population. To analyze their hypothesis, Lee and Farrell used national telephone survey data in 1990. For their independent variable, there were fourteen different types of exposure measured.

After 14 different types of exposure, it came down to four main exposure that made a difference. From their findings, people with exposure on information, observation, interaction, or membership had positive attitudes toward homeless people. If individuals increase their contact with homelessness, it increases their positive outlook about homeless people. Those who are exposed to homelessness are more willing to help and support the homeless people. To further test their hypothesis, they found out that there is a limit of exposure to homelessness. An interesting aspect is overexposure. Overexposure causes people to dislike the outsiders. If an individual is around them all the time, have a family member who is an outsider, or is considered homeless themselves, can cause a more negative approach towards the outsiders. Another last finding is race. This pattern did not work for African Americans the way it did for Whites. African Americans were found to still have a negative attitude throughout the analysis due to their overexposure neighborhoods. The attitudes of people depends on the amount of exposure to homelessness.

In 2007, the authors Bourgois and Schonberg published an article called Intimate apartheid: Ethnic dimensions of habitus among homeless heroin injectors, where they observed and tried living the life of the people they were studying. They helped and observed middle age African Americans, Latinos, and White people who used drugs such as heroin and crack.

From their finding, Bourgois and Schonberg made distinctions between African American, Whites and Latinos in the way the homeless use drugs. There are different techniques and methods for using drugs. African Americans and Whites both prefer IV heroin use. IV use makes the rush faster, yet the problem is they become scar. When using this technique, African Americans are not as careful, while Whites do not overuse IV because they still want to keep their normal features. Race differ in how people make their money for drugs. Whites often work part-time for small business or beg using signs saying "please help, Vietnam Viet" and so forth. Compare to African Americans, they offer a service such as washing windshields or burglary warehouses and car trunks. African Americans are rarely employed due to akin with slavery. The author emphasize on how people get their money and how people shoot drugs has everything to do with the history of race relations.

Homelessness is ubiquitous around the world. The amount of exposure people come in contact with homeless determines their point of view, which can either be negative or positive. Those who are homeless have a different system to obtain money for drug use.