Homeless thread

[Larry]

This piece seemed worthy of discussion. But didn't seem to fit into the "economy" thread. (Which is discussing housing, but from a middle class perspective). Figured "homeless" was a broad enough topic for its own thread. 
 

 

California building things that are kind of a step up from homeless encampments. To provide those people with a transition to more permanent housing. 
 

Looks like what they get is four walls and a roof. But also three meals. Access to bathroom, showers, laundry. Mental health and social workers. 
 

The video is really light on details. But thought it could be a topic starter. 
 

[skinsmarydu]

18 minutes ago, Larry said:

This piece seemed worthy of discussion. But didn't seem to fit into the "economy" thread. (Which is discussing housing, but from a middle class perspective). Figured "homeless" was a broad enough topic for its own thread. 
 

 

California building things that are kind of a step up from homeless encampments. To provide those people with a transition to more permanent housing. 
 

Looks like what they get is four walls and a roof. But also three meals. Access to bathroom, showers, laundry. Mental health and social workers. 
 

The video is really light on details. But thought it could be a topic starter. 
 

I've always said that a person needs electricity (for the alarm clock to get up) and a shower, and clean clothes. 

It's basic stuff that we all take for granted every day.  Some people don't have even 1 of those things. 

Let's step it up to help.  Donating to local shelters helps.  Don't go wide, keep it local.  Do what you can where you can have the most impact.

[Larry]

I'd thought for some time about the notion of creating barracks for the homeless. 
 

My reasoning was that right now, if my mission is to provide housing for 1,000 people, then I'm handing people cash (or things easily converted to cash). And I'm paying the rent for 1,000 bedrooms, and 1,000 bathrooms. And I'm paying 1,000 people to go to the grocery store and buy the ingredients for 1,000 breakfasts. At full retail. 
 

And, because I'm handing people something that's easily converted to cash, I have to have a huge bureaucracy, to make sure people aren't cheating. At least from what I've heard, a lot of welfare programs, 50% of their money goes to overhead. 
 

But set up a barracks and a chow line, and you can skip the bureaucracy. If somebody wants to "cheat", and get a free meal, let them. It's cheaper to feed them than to support a bureaucracy. 
 

And, putting a bunch of homeless in one place, allows other support organizations to reach them. Things like addiction treatment, medical care, mental health. 
 

This thing seems a lot like my idea. 

[Renegade7]

A lot of countries, and even places here in the states, have figured out that waiting for folks to "get their **** together" before helping with housing does not work.

 

Its assbackwards, and only complicated for folks that don't want to spend the resources to do it (give folks housing, then help them get their **** together).

[gbear]

It's as if they have never heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  Nobody is dealing with personal stuff before food, shelter and safety are addressed.

 

[Yohan]

About 5 or so years ago in my town, Veterans Outreach started building tiny homes (I think roughly 30) for homeless veterans. If you ever watched Tiny House Nation, the hosts Zach Giffin and John Wiesbarth were here for weeks volunteering with their expertise and building construction. It is more or less a village, with a community center now, that offers a full kitchen for everyone to use, bathroom/shower rooms and other common areas for recreation. Veterans Outreach does many food drives for these people and many business donate funds for other amenities and facility maintenance. The program seems to be rather successful, and Milwaukee and Madison are adopting similar type areas for their homeless.

[Ball Security]

If someone were to ask you how many people in America are homeless, would you say 1 out of 50? 1 out of 100?  1 out of 200?  It’s actually (if I can do math correctly) less than 1 out of 500.  That kind of blew my mind with the way politicians and media portray the situation.

[TheGreatBuzz]

1 hour ago, Ball Security said:

If someone were to ask you how many people in America are homeless, would you say 1 out of 50? 1 out of 100?  1 out of 200?  It’s actually (if I can do math correctly) less than 1 out of 500.  That kind of blew my mind with the way politicians and media portray the situation.

 

That is still a ****load of people.

[tshile]

Makes me sad cause my understanding is addition and other forms of mental illness are significant contributors to homelessness. 
 

We’re getting better but we still treat those two problems with the justice system far too often. 
 

a big issue I see in topics like this is no one ever says what is acceptable. It’s always just one side saying we need to do more and the other saying no we don’t. 
 

sort of a stupid way to go about things. I can’t imagine running my personal life (something I have some level of control over) that way. No actual goal, no deciding what’s good enough or what’s not, just moving in a direction or not 

[dfitzo53]

Happens with so many policy issues. 

 

Turns out complaining is a lot easier than coming up with viable solutions. 

[gbear]

I wonder how much the 500 would have to give or give-up to allow the 1's to have housing?  I cringe because I think this likely comes down to a fairness issue where the 500 question why the 1 gets help with their lodging and they do not.  It comes right back to the questions from the 90's raised with "Million dollar Murray."  At some point, we can either fix the problem or be fair to everyone.  Until we decide as a society that fixing the problem is more important than total equality, I have no faith in our ability to solve the problem of homelessness, a prerequisite to dealing with other problems in the homeless community.

[Simmsy]

To keep it simple, I'm in the construction business. A little over ten or eleven years ago when I was starting out, I was making (at one point) $70 a day, for hard, hot, back breaking labor. One of the guys that I was working with was my age and he got a ride with a friend who was also working with us. I was living with my parents in a rural little town. I was talking with the guy and he asked where I lived, I told him I lived in the woods, he said he did too. I didn't find out later that he literally mean't that he lived in the woods. He had a tent and a hot plate at a homeless community out in Woodbridge. The worst part is, his "friend" was charging him $25 a day to pick him up and take him home...we were working outside of Woodbridge. After what the poor guy was able to bring in at the end of the week, he would never be able to get on his feet.

 

People don't care about the homeless...unless they can use them, I guess.

[TheGreatBuzz]

20 minutes ago, Simmsy said:

People don't care about the homeless...unless they can use them, I guess.

 

Like many topics, i think politicians would rather complain about an issue than fix it.  It's why I don't think the GOP ever actually planned on getting Roe overturned.  

[TheDoyler23]

 

People experiencing homelessness are among the highest order victims of our government and society. At least, among people in the United States. 

 

So many people experiencing homelessness just didn't thread the needle of avoiding addiction, specific trauma, generational trauma, illness and injury that one generally needs to be successful in our system. 

[Destino]

I think we need compulsory addiction treatment and optional mental health care.  We can’t just surrender entire city blocks to drug addicts and leave them there for overdoses and predators to pick off.  Get them clean, wether or not they want to, and then provide them with housing.  You can’t negotiate anything with an addict scratching at their arms between fixes.  You can’t tell property owners that addicts are allowed to ruin them by camping out in front of their shops.  
 

I do agree with simply providing them with housing, as long as we also remove the option of just setting up a tent anywhere they please.  Get them off the streets and get them help.  It should be impossible to convert old motels and the like into temp housing.  Buil micro housing if existing structures prove too costly or impossible.  They have to do something though.  Doing nothing clearly isn’t working. 

[gbear]

This is the exact reaction liberal areas of the 80's and 90's had to the million dollar Murray issue.  It turns out that it is cheaper to rent/provide shelters for the homeless and provide them with social services rather than have homeless people take over parts of the city and then treat them when the inevitable uptick in emergencies happen.  The problem comes 5 to 10 years down the line when people see Murray got his studio paid for and has a social worker despite never once paying rent out of his own pocket.  How is that fair when Martha has to work two jobs while taking care of her kids as a single mom so she can pay rent?

 

Yes, from a societal level, it makes a lot of sense to get these people off the streets, keep them clothed and even make sure they have food.  It's how to sell it at the individual fairness level where it has problems.  We are a society that celebrates our individuality and personal responsibility to the point where that is the level we reflexively go to examine right and wrong courses of action. We get stuck making decisions at the micro level even when deciding issues of societal import.   

Edited September 21, 2022 by gbear

[Larry]

16 minutes ago, gbear said:

This is the exact reaction liberal areas of the 80's and 90's had to the million dollar Murray issue.  It turns out is cheaper to rent/provide shelters for the homeless and provide them with social services rather than have homeless people take over parts of the city and then treat them when the inevitable uptick in emergencies happen.  The problem comes 5 to 10 years down the line when people see Murray got his studio paid for and has a social worker despite never once paying rent out of his own pocket.  How is that fair when Martha has to work two jobs while taking care of her kids as a single mom so she can pay rent?

 

Yes, from a societal level, it makes a lot of sense to get these people off the streets, keep them clothed and even make sure they have food.  It's how to sell it at the individual fairness level where it has problems.  We are a society that celebrates our individuality and personal responsibility to the point where that is the level we reflexively go to examine right and wrong courses of action. We get stuck making decisions at the micro level even when deciding issues of societal import.   

But part of the problem with "but what about...?" Is things that fade away too quickly. 

 

I'm going to use an analogy to welfare, because it's easier to just throw around dollar amounts. 
 

Analogy:  if you're broke, I'll give you $500. But if you have $10, you get nothing. 
 

Maybe the person who has $10 should get $490. 
 

I've long heard legends, at least, about people turning down jobs because they'd lose their welfare. And I've thought that maybe what's needed is a rule that, for every dollar you earn, your welfare only goes does 50 cents. 
 

Encourage people to become double dippers. And, help out the working poor as well. 

[tshile]

15 minutes ago, Larry said:

I've long heard legends, at least, about people turning down jobs because they'd lose their welfare

Yup. Know someone who would have made enough to lose assistance, which netted out as a loss. Because she had 2 kids as a single mother. We tried to convince her that the “loss” was temporary as she’d be starting a career and long term she’d make more. Plus - she’d raise her kids not on welfare which has potentially immeasurable benefits. 
 

But she couldn’t see it. So she stayed working at Walmart. 
 

now tax policy and assistance and ACA has created a number of changes over the last 10-12 years. So, maybe things would be different for her now. 
 

but she’s still on welfare (and whatever programs) and still stocking shelves at Walmart. the combined value of health insurance for the kids, rent and food money, and her income put her at about 50k and the entry level position was like 35k. This was probably around 2008/2009
 

🤷‍♂️ 
 

When it comes to this stuff I have two core problems with the liberals:

- they pretend these situations don’t exist
 

- they never provide a realistic goal. There is no % to shoot for. They just talk about saving poor people. And that sounds great, but to me it creates a bad situation if the idea is to come up with solutions.
 

 

 

[gbear]

Well for what it's worth, I acknowledge these situations exist.  I don't let myself get caught up on a percentage for a goal.  I just look for "better" with "better" being determined  by how much better, for how many, and at what cost.  I think this is the logic which got us the ACA even when many of us liberals would have preferred universal coverage.  Iterative improvements is the name of the game...except when a sizable portion of the decision makers want to just burn it all down.