This article was featured in the May 27 digital-only edition of Street Sense. Until it is safe to resume person-to-person sales, you’ll always be able to find the current digital-only edition at streetsensemedia.org/Digital Thank you for reading! Please continue to support our vendors through our mobile app (streetsensemedia.org/App).
The world we live in has produced what we now call the new normal. Things are now being accepted that weren’t accepted in society years ago. This can be viewed from several different angles, but yet all angles point to the same outcome: Things will never stay the same and have to change at some point.
As a Street Sense Media vendor and a black male in the D.C. community, things in life have always fluctuated like the stock market, so I have learned to readjust well in life no matter what the circumstances may be. As a child, I never thought there would come a day where we had to wear a mask to walk in a store or be told when we can live and where we are allowed to go in the world.
Some say others now know how the homeless feel because their right to live as they please has been taken away. When I think about how things have truly affected me, I see no difference in my everyday routine. I’m still at home, taking care of myself and making the best decisions I can make to progress in life.
Now that Covid-19 is here, our society’s mindset will never be the same. There is always going to be someone that feels everyone on earth should have on a mask and that Covid-19 will take out the entire world at anytime. I’m not saying that Covid-19 isn’t a serious threat, but I am saying that it is not being dealt with properly in my opinion.
While a lot of people are actually enjoying not having to work and being paid a $1,200 stimulus check for doing nothing at all, this crisis has also shown people that they can work for themselves without having to have the middleman or corporations involved.
There are several options and opportunities to make money from home, which is what I want to build from to help prevent homelessness and to help others in such a time of need. I heard of one story that really gave me hope: Someone bought an old hotel and turned into mini apartments for the homeless that had nowhere to go because of COVID-19. I just feel like it shouldn’t have taken something so serious to happen for someone to really help the homeless community. My goals are to provide jobs and housing opportunities to the homeless community that wants to work and wants to change.
