The Women's Pre-Health Leadership Society (WPHLS), a new student group on campus, recently hosted a "$2/Day Challenge," where fifteen students lived without shelter and off of only two dollars a day. This page praises WPHLS for bringing the important, but often ignored, issue of homelessness to campus. We hope the Hopkins community sees the event as inspiration to create more awareness about homelessness and to come up with constructive proposals for dealing with it.
Homelessness should be an issue dear to Hopkins students' hearts. Whether grabbing a sandwich at University Market or bar hopping downtown, we witness it every day. The same cannot be said of other problems dominant in Baltimore such as drug trafficking, prostitution and unemployment.
But perhaps it is because students see homelessness everyday, that we have learned to ignore it. Events such as the "$2/Day Challenge" are impactful because they force students to empathize with the plight of the homeless, and better understand the social and logistical issues faced.
Another reason that homelessness gets less attention than other social issues is that it is incredibly complicated. Social issues, such as abortion or unemployment, only have a finite number of variables, but homelessness can be caused by myriad factors. However, this should not be reason to shy away from the issue. It should be motivation to invest more resources and human capital into understanding it. Furthermore, since every homeless individual's situation is unique, there are no one-size fits all solutions. The impetus for change will not come from Washington, D.C., but instead needs to be homegrown in Baltimore.
This issue could really come to the fore if student groups brought in speakers, lobbied for an intersession course or engaged more with local soup kitchens and non-profits that work to help the homeless. Hopkins has many resources at its disposal, and we are lucky to have a station in life on top of the world. It is time to stop casually ignoring the issue of homelessness and to instead utilize our resources to address it.
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