Research Paper on The Homeless Senior Accommodation Program (HOSAP)

Introduction

The Homeless Senior Accommodation Program is a project that aims at providing comfort, accommodation, and welfare assurance for homeless older male adults aged 60 and above. The project offers warm and safe temporary housing for homeless male seniors who have little or no capacity to take care of themselves or meet their needs on their own. It is, therefore, a temporary home for homeless male older adults (Erickson, & Wilhelm 2017).

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The main aims of the HOSAP projects are as follows. First, the project seeks to enable the clients to feel comfortable by providing safe and warm housing for them all year round while helping them find better and permanent homes for themselves. The project seeks to shield these clients from the winter cold that is very lethal to their health. Most of the homeless older adults suffer from cold-related infections, especially during winters. The infections such as pneumonia make life so difficult for homeless seniors, and thus it can lead to even loss of life if not taken care of carefully. For this reason, the project seeks to prevent them from the adverse effects of winter cold by providing them with temporary housing while the professionals assist them to find more stable and permanent residential homes.

Second, the project seeks to boost the self-esteem of the older adults who are at risk of homelessness. When they are spotted and brought to the HOSAP, they find a wide range of opportunities interacting with the qualified professionals at the project site whose work is to offer psychological services such as guidance and counseling to help boost their self-esteem and make them emotionally strong and fit to live a purposeful life.

Third, the project aims at keeping these older adults to be physically fit to prevent them from growing senile rapidly. When they are left idle, older adults tend to be weak in their bodies, therefore, become senile faster. This project is one of its kind in that it has very beneficial activities that have been designed, planned, and carefully implemented in the site to help keep the residents both active and lively, therefore, enhancing the quality of life they live both whiles at the site and after they find and move to their new homes.

Fourth, the project aims at conducting rehabilitation especially for those enslaved by drugs. There is an alarming rise in the number of homeless older adults. It is miserable that these people spend their nights in the streets, some in bus stations, some in the public spots, and others in the dark and lonely places that endanger their lives from the uncertainty of the night. Their lifestyle is marked with stress and untold depression that makes most of them rely on drug abuse as the measure for relieving themselves from the stress and depression associated with their lifestyles. The habit of drug and substance abuse is unhealthy to their life and lead to ill-health and poor living. It is for this reason that the HOSAP comes in hand to free them from drug and substance abuse through the rehabilitation programs that are friendly to older adults. In so doing, the project restores their freedom and the ability to enjoy the drug-free life.

Moreover, the project also aims at reducing the number of older adults who are homeless or are becoming homeless. The project aims at absorbing as many homeless older adults as possible, and nurture them properly to give them the hands-on capacity to live, survive, and be able to secure stable and permanent homes for themselves without going back to the streets at the end of the program (Glynn, & Fox, 2017). By getting and nurturing them, HOSAP project helps in lowering the number of homeless older adults significantly and therefore, contributes to the general welfare of the society.

However, the project faces some of the challenges that if not appropriately addressed would result in the untold mess and consequently lead to the general failure in the project delivery. Those challenges involve the following. First, it is very challenging establishing the sufficient housing stock that will be enough for accommodating the vast number of homeless older adults especially the supportive permanent housing. This would make it difficult in helping them exit homelessness. Second, the differences in preferences, ideas, and opinions concerning what services should be provided and the target population would also cause some challenges especially among the financiers of the project since every donor might come up with diverse opinions and suggestions that may be contrary to the agenda of the project. It would be very difficult for integrating these ideas to reach a fairground where donors would be at peace to support this project wholesomely (Lucas 2017).

Another challenge that the HOSAP project would face is the short of money to cater to the needs of these clients. The program runs on the donations of the well-wishers. Therefore, when the donors have not released funds for the project, the management is forced to cut some of the services that are very crucial to the project, and this can lead to the inadequate provision of services and the general deterioration of the quality of services delivered at the center.

There are also constraints associated with the project. First, the project faces a continuous increase in the number of older adults. As the number of clients increases, the number of resources also rise. Therefore it leads to the need for more resources that would be sufficient for the efficient running of the project. There is also a terrible need for more professionals who are skilled and are willing to work in the center for the homeless rendering services to older adults who are in need.

The desired outcomes of the project include the settlement of homeless older adults into permanent homes where they are safe and secure (Cox 2015). At the client's have passed through the services of the project, they are expected to be independent and free to live without necessarily depending on the project support even at the end of the program. The older adults are expected to demonstrate reliable and robust self-determination after receiving the services offered by the project and display usefulness to the society through actively participating in the community affairs that are crucial for the development of the society.

The project offers various services that seek to address the defined aims. The services offered include psychiatric care, health assessments, money management services, drug abuse recovery, on-site foods and drinks, warm and safe housing against the winter colds, and support to find permanent homes through the provision of financial support to purchase homes for themselves or land to construct their own homes. Psychiatric care is offered to older adults who suffer from mental disorders and residing on the project site. They are guided and cared for to make sure they do not face strong effects of the mental illness that would corrupt or rather influence the quality of their life.

Older adults residents of the HOSAP project site have free access to an assessment of their health conditions and free medication if they contract any infections. This helps them keep safe and healthy at all time. As a result, they remain active and lively and can be helped through other programs offered at the center. The center has qualified experts that assist the clients to be self-determined through wholesome guidance and counseling. They are taught ways of managing their resources accordingly such as money and other resources that are useful for their survival. Those that are already addicted to drugs are taken through recovery processes help them become free from drug abuse and make them sober even as they are helped out of their situations. In addition to that, the center offers free foods and drinks for all clients and ensures they are well served every day to enhance satisfaction and prevent them from fleeing back to their previous residential sites.

The number of homeless persons is shockingly increasing. According to Lucas (2017), more than 550,000 persons were homeless every night in the United States. Out of that figure, about 58,000 of them represented families with children who lacked permanent and safe places to sleep. These persons spent nights either on the streets; some slept in vehicles, others slept in either public or private places. This rise in homelessness affected most cities in the United States. According to Glynn (2017), the New York City held the largest population of the homeless population, leading with 4% increase from the number in 2016 to more than 76,500 persons every night. In San Diego, the number of homeless individuals increased by 5% to 9,200 while in Los Angeles, this number shot up by about 26% to more than 55,000 persons per night (Erickson 2017). According to Lucas (2017), the "Skid Row" in Los Angeles is the nation's embarrassing den for the homeless persons crowded with tents and tarpaulins in which the homeless persons spend their nights.

According to the Glynn (2017), not all homeless individuals may necessarily sleep in the streets. Most of the homeless individuals involve those who lack a proper place where they would spend their nights regularly. This has been caused by several factors such as the low income of most people that makes them unable to afford better accommodation in the better houses. Instead, they find out the places where they can spend their nights during the night in places other than their own homes. As a result, these persons end up sleeping either in the streets, vehicles or in the public places. According to Glynn (2017), more than 40,000 persons in Los Angeles do not have safe and permanent homes or secure places for their normal sleep. As a result, these persons end up spending nights in the streets or their vehicles.

According to the Erickson (2017), homelessness has increased mainly among the elderly males 60 years and above. This is because of the loneliness experienced while growing older making them have less social relations with other members of the community. After studying the aging process in humans, Warren Earl Henry and Elaine Cumming came up with the disengagement theory claiming that aging is the unavoidable disengagement that results from the reduced interactions between the aging person and the rest of the people in the social system in which he belongs. According to the disengagement theory, elderly persons would become homeless due to loneliness when they have a low income that cannot help them secure a better place for accommodation and if they have anyone to help them (Cox 2015).

In response to the findings that the aging process disengages people from their social system, Robert J. Havighurst conducted his study of aging and came up with a theory that was later known as the activity theory. In his theory, Robert claimed that the older adults experience the happiest life when they keep active and maintain their social interactions (Cox 2015). According to this theory, it would be helpful if the older adults are engaged in some purposeful activities in their old age that would help them stay active and maintain social interactions in the social systems where they are found in. Activities that bring people together is the best way of enhancing the productivity of their life as well as making them age decently.

Conclusion

The HOSAP project is compassionate of such needs of older adults as the need for purposeful activities, self-determination, and independence. In response to such needs, the project will avail a variety of on-site activities for the older adults receiving the service at the center. The activities will be engaging, to help the older adults maintain the social interactions with the other people in the s...