Included in the Syracuse University London program fee is £175 — $267.67 — weekly housing allowance that students use to find a flat. In Syracuse, that much money would nearly cover the rent of a Park Point apartment and is double the amount that many students pay for a home on Euclid.

Along with five roommates, I used my allowance for a flat in Paddington off the northeast corner of Hyde Park. The area is upscale — as Audi R8s, Porsche Panameras and Ferraris cruise the streets regularly.

Yet every night, I round the corner to my flat and see a person covered by a faded green blanket asleep in the nook next my building. When I get off the Central Line after 10 p.m. at the Marble Arch tube stop down the street, I see at least a dozen people sleeping in a makeshift community in front of Sainsbury’s market.

London is known as one of the wealthiest and most expensive cities in the world, so it doesn’t make sense to a foreigner’s eye to see this dichotomy between extravagance and homelessness just outside my door. I was handed thousands of pounds and a list of flats in some of London’s most luxurious areas while 280,000 Londoners asked for homelessness assistance in the last year, according to The Guardian.

The homeless problem in London shouldn’t be surprising to me, having grown up in Los Angeles. Just last week, LA’s city council announced a $100 million plan to build housing and provide services for the homeless. Clearly, it’s a problem in my hometown, and the homelessness problem in Syracuse is well documented as its the 23rd poorest city in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But living on or around the Syracuse campus hides the homeless problem. An ignorant student could easily avoid this knowledge if they didn’t leave campus. Living off Edgware Road in London makes it obvious.

This contradicts the image of London I had before I moved here. Now, I can’t think of the area I live in without remembering the dozen or so multicolored “beds” lined up in front of Sainsbury’s.

It’s shocking how each and every place in the world — no matter how nice it looks on “Downton Abbey” — deals with many of the same fundamental problems that we have in America. As instinctually positive people, we don’t like to think about the problems in Paris or Rome. Instead, we remember the towers and coliseums they erected decades ago. An offender of this myself, I have a postcard view of the world that I hope to continue to change throughout the rest of my travels.

A friend of mine told me an Instagram trick she discovered while traveling in Greece a few weeks ago. If she took a picture of a postcard without the border, her followers would think she photographed the incredible landscape directly. At the time, I thought it was clever.

But Instagram is the new postcard of the world. It’s important to be aware of all the issues that surround us, both at home and abroad. I hope to send home shots of lush scenery and colorful stained glass windows, but I can’t forget the faded green images that confront me every night.

Jack Rose is a junior broadcast and digital journalism major. You can email him at jlrose@syr.edu or follow him @jrose94 on Twitter.

Published on September 30, 2015 at 9:58 pm