this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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The problem is there are a lot of NIMBYs that would rather them trash their cities than hang out in their neighborhoods lowering their property value. They want the government to fix the problem, but don’t want their taxes raised to accommodate it.
The people who protect the homeless are every bit as responsible for the problem as anyone they accuse.
Sorry that we don't like seeing people die because they're mentally ill and can't operate in society like the rest of us. We need an actual social safety net funded by all the wealth that society has created rather than letting robber barons take it all.
When you learn how things actually work, I’ll Have this discussion with you. But I can see that it will be a complete waste of time to continue.
Lol, you have nothing to say when you're confronted with the fact that you're OK with people dying because we choose to call them a problem. Examine yourself, fellow human.
When you learn how things actually work, I’ll Have this discussion with you. But I can see that it will be a complete waste of time to continue.
You'd never know any of us have worked with homeless neighbors before, known homeless family or friends, or dealt with it ourselves.
We just don't know how things actually work, gosh darn it.
If you did, you’d be singing a different tune..
Hi, I work in food banking and homeless services. I know what I'm talking about and it sure seems like you have closed yourself off to the notion that other people might be able to further educate you on what you're talking about.
I have as well. In Seattle and in Central Florida. And I know it’s not so simple to solve as “give them houses.” There’s nuance to it all. There different reasons for everyone and everyone seems to like to pile all homeless into conveniently definable camps of “downtrodden” and “mentally ill.”
But there’s also addicts and willfully homeless. There’s felons, and crippled. There’s a LARGE portion that don’t want to do anything to get better or improve their situation.
But let’s just throw houses at all of them. Because as we all know, houses grow on trees.
OK, so no one who is serious or understands the problems surrounding homelessness and mental illness is saying that we need to simply give houses to people. It can't happen for the reasons that you seem to understand - these people need both shelter AND support. That's what basically everyone is saying. "Give them houses" means "get them indoors and cared for." Nuance is lost in slogans.
But I feel that you don't quite understand mental illness. If they're on the street, nearly all those people that you described are likely suffering from mental illness. Mental illness can be something you're born with or something that develops at some point in your life. Stress is a major factor in developing mental illness and folks on the street are living in one of the most stressful situations we commonly allow people to be put in. Disabled folks (FYI it's not really cool to call physically disabled people "crippled" anymore) are hit even harder by this. Felons have to deal with having a huge stain on their record that makes things like finding gainful employment WAY more difficult and with the mental baggage that long-term incarceration leaves you with.
If you've worked with the homeless before and talked with them, you probably understand how bad it can be out there. You have to worry about holding on to your things because you have nowhere to lock them up, your feet and back ache because your shoes are shot and you slept on pavement last night, you have to worry about finding your next meal, you have to worry about having a place to sleep that's both sheltered and safe, you're itchy because it's been a hot week and a half since you had a shower, you have to worry about the person camping next to you trying to assault you for some imagined transgression, your tooth has been hurting for a month and it's just getting worse, you have to worry about cops coming to make you move all of your stuff because the people in the houses nearby are tired of looking at your tent - it just goes on and on and there really isn't an end to it. Take a person already in a rough spot (they don't have a place to live) for whatever reason (lost their job, are being abused by a spouse, run out of the house at a young age, rent went up and they can't cover it and food and one literally has to eat to not die) and then throw all this shit and more at them all day every day and it grinds them down. Being homeless takes a person on the margin and rips what little rug there was out from under them. I don't think I need to say it at this point, but being homeless will make you crazy if you're not already there. And if you're already there there's a really good chance you're going to end up homeless because it's hard to do the things you need to do to exist in society when you're also dealing with severe mental illness.
They need supportive services to exist in society the way that society needs them to. The services have to be tailored to the person and their issues that are preventing them from being on solid ground. Some people are assholes and will be assholes if they live in under a bridge, in a halfway house, in an apartment, in a house, in a mansion or wherever. But we all know the impact that homelessness has on everyone, so we must do our best to help everyone.
Some people will refuse help entirely. Can't really do much about that, but you can make sure that they're well taken care of so their problems don't become other people's problems. Someone who has access to food, water, shelter and at the very least some basic medical care is much less likely to become a blight on a neighborhood than someone who is scrounging for everything.
In an earlier comment you said "The people who protect the homeless are every bit as responsible for the problem as anyone they accuse." Personally, I blame the wealthy class for using power and influence to gradually wipe out the social safety net through tax cuts for themselves while simultaneously turning their corporations into stateless parasite nations that funnel wealth from the less wealthy classes' efforts into their own pockets, while pushing their media outlets to blame anything but the tax rate for the top earners for the homeless issues to distort public perception and placing all the blame on the people themselves. Since I work for an organization that feeds, clothes these people, am I culpable? We provide medical care, showers, laundry services, housing placement services and give out free groceries. We give them a dumpster to throw away their trash. Is all of this our fault?
Fair enough, but we both know that there’s a lot of people out there that think that the government should just hand how free residency to them. Of course not houses. But that IS what was said.
The problem is that there’s no nuance with any of this here. Everyone is incredibly extremist and overly reactive without knowing how things work. Which is what I was trying to explain. It’s not so simple to just put people in houses. And it’s not so cheap to assume it’s even remotely possible.
Yet these kids use this as a reason to be outraged over yet another social injustice they know nothing about.
Meanwhile, the actual crux of their needs remains unaddressed as they become distracted by the next social issue to be outraged by.
These people aren’t props for these kids to use appear charitibile and just.
I was with you until that second paragraph. Are you saying people shouldn't protect the homeless??
The homeless should be helped out of homelessness. Not protected to the point that they enable it.
By providing them with homes?
By proving them with the ability to get their OWN homes. Help those willing to help themselves and you’ll actually help them.
What happens when they’re too mentally ill or overwhelmed with addiction to be helped? These folks used to be institutionalized against their will but we as a society decided decades ago that this was a violation of their rights. So we kicked them out of hospitals (where they had access to shelter, hygiene, food, medication, education, and recreation) and onto the streets (where they have none of those things).
Housing first advocates like to believe that giving all these deeply troubled folks a rent-free apartment will magically solve all their problems. It doesn’t. All of the filth and despair of their situation simply gets moved off the streets and into the apartment. And then all of the problem of dealing with the unhygienic situation gets foisted upon the landlord and all of other tenants who live in the building. Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself.
You’re using small portion of them to represent the whole. This is a nuanced issue that won’t resolve with a single fix- but just… giving them houses is t the way it gets fixed either.
The people who don’t have these issues are the invisible homeless. They’re sleeping in cars or couch surfing. They have resources and their period of homelessness tends to be temporary. At any one time there may be a lot of them but very few are long term homeless. We could eliminate homelessness for these folks by providing them with an apartment and it wouldn’t be a problem.
It just wouldn’t do anything to solve the highly visible problem of hard core street homeless people. And so for many people it would seem like nothing at all had been accomplished.
So no interest home loans?