The Issue of Homelessness

[Dio]

If your interest in this is based in wanting to do those poor people a favor, I cannot too strongly suggest that you think very hard about their own wishes in the matter, no matter how wrong they may be to feel that way in your eyes.

2. That's why they get a choice: They can be treated, or they can fend for themselves.  However, their own wishes are not enough to justify a public burden.

The problem with the fending for themselves option arises because many areas make that action nearly impossible without violating a law.

[Yitzi]

I mean none of this as personally as it may sound, and I shout for emphasis/from passion, not actual anger.


You. will. RESPECT. my wishes about my life and my person, no matter how wrong I happen to be, or we WILL tangle.  I'm speaking rhetorically, (if also truly) but the biggest difference between me and the people we're talking about is that I have a hermit cave to hide from the Group Mind in.

I've had pieces of this conversation with Dr. Buster's Daddy, both in argument and agreement.  Coercion of ANY kind MUST always be the very last resort with the crazy ones who are not an immediate danger to themselves or others, or YOU ARE GUILTY OF ADVOCATING WHAT THEY"RE ON THE STREET TO AVOID.

It seems we disagree there.  While I agree that a high standard is needed to justify coercion, I think that it's not as high as "immediate danger".  "Clear and significant harm" will do, even if it is neither great enough to be considered "danger" not immediate.

(It occurred to me that the same disagreement would likely occur between  and  as well, and for similar reasons...though like them, we both agree that  is unacceptable.)

It's complicated, is all.  More complicated than you seem to see.  They need your respect as fellow human beings, not just your compassion.

If they're mentally ill (as opposed to just unwilling to do what it takes to get past an addiction), they have that respect, but their current mental state does not.

If your interest in this is based in wanting to do those poor people a favor, I cannot too strongly suggest that you think very hard about their own wishes in the matter, no matter how wrong they may be to feel that way in your eyes.

2. That's why they get a choice: They can be treated, or they can fend for themselves.  However, their own wishes are not enough to justify a public burden.

The problem with the fending for themselves option arises because many areas make that action nearly impossible without violating a law.

Well, then that law is what's saying "you have to conform to a certain standard of society".

[Buster's Uncle]

[shrugs] They assumed the risk of trouble with society's enforcers when they put themselves outside the System without actually leaving.  Getting hassled and busted when they break the rules comes with the deal, and I don't suggest that respect involves immunity to the po-po.

[Geo]

This conversation reminds me of a scene I partially witnessed in San Diego last winter. I went to a grocery in the mall, and saw an appearantly drunk homeless man slumping in a corner of the mall. It was late evening. A cop seem to try to get him moving out of the mall.
When I returned from the grocery, there were 4 cops around this man, he was hands up against the wall, appearantly on the verge of arrest.
Don't know if this makes a difference, but it was an open mall. no indoor passages or such.

[Lorizael]

Well, at least he got a place to sleep for the night.

[Elok]

My uneducated impression is that our social woes have a number of very deep roots, about equal parts social and economic.  I don't think homelessness can be solved in isolation; you'd have to fix prisons, healthcare, education, the economy, finance, and our generally messed-up culture.  Just how you're supposed to do that, I have no clue.

[Buster's Uncle]

^This.

Gentlemen, pay attention to what the fellow wearing his great-grandfather says; he has many lifetimes of wisdom behind saying it's complicated, little as you want to believe otherwise.

[Elok]

Playing my own devil's advocate hear, bear in mind that it's very easy to say "welp, it's really complicated so let's not try."  It's a kind of default that absolves you from responsibility while making you appear clever.

Playing devil's advocate to my devil's advocate, in this situation it really is quite complicated, and it helps that all those constituent problems are worth solving for their own sakes.

Education: make teaching a less abysmally crappy job--better pay, less treating them as presumed moochers until proven innocent.  That will, over time, encourage much better raw material.  There are other issues but that's the most obvious; as is, the job appeals to the extremely passionate and people with degrees but no real prospects.  The latter are more common.

Prisons: we're already making drug policy less crazy.  Plea-bargaining gives far too much power to prosecutors, and we need more emphasis on rehabilitation.  Right now a lot of jails are basically dungeons.

Healthcare: let's just go with state-provided already.  It works much better than what we've got.  I can say from experience that Peru's healthcare is in many respects superior, and while Peru is a wonderful place, it's also so poor that just saying that is embarrassing.  Healthcare is a definite factor in homeless misery; lots of them use the emergency room as their primary care provider, for lack of a better option.  The results are horrifying.

Economy/finance: Can we pull a decent source of living-wage jobs out of our butts?  And while I'm wishing, unicorns are cool.  Going back to jails, it's extremely hard for ex-felons to get a decent job.  More openness to redemption would go a long way, though like much of the rest of this, it's a tall order.

Culture: Crikey.  Don't even get me started.

In closing, my avatar is C.S. Lewis as a young man.  No relation.  My actual great-grandfather lived in Ohio, and as my father never tires of telling me, was Dean of Students at Oberlin.

[Lorizael]

I suspect humans may not be smart enough to solve all those problems. Fortunately, that presents us with a very simple solution...

[Elok]

You think cybernetic group-consciousness overmind thingies don't have a homelessness problem?  It's a real PITA when transistors get wet.

[DrazharLn]

Half of those problems have been solved in other countries. Most of Europe has sensible healthcare and welfare, the Nordic states have criminal justice focussing on rehabilitation.

Education is trickier, but is done very well by Finland, Switzerland, South Korea, etc.

For the Economy, I dunno about full employment, though Modern Monetary Theory says that's easy, but again, lots of euro states have generous welfare and back-to-work schemes. These make it easier for the dispossessed to return to society and to keep some dignity.

Some of these states are very rich, but most have less GDP/capita than the US. The US could do these things, if it wanted to.

[Green1]

BU directed me to this thread. I believe I should educate because there are A LOT of wrong and some just mean spirited opinions here. Plus, I have been there.

FIRST.. let's establish this. If you do NOT own a place, you are homeless. If you have a mortgage, try not paying. You will be out in several months. If it is an apartment, you can be out anywhere from a month to a few months depending on where in the US you are. If you are in a hotel, MAYBE a half an hour after check out time if you are nice and immediately if you are doing something they don't like. If you are a guest in someone's house, immediately if your name is not on it if the owner or lessee desires.

Now, lets discuss what most people think. They smell dirty, filthy homeless. There is also the assumption they don't work or do some hard drugs, etc. But, the large majority of homeless work. The dirty guys panhandling usually have a place AND a crazy check and are NOT homeless. It is just that they figure, rightfully, why should they cope with a cruddy job that probably won't keep them anyways with a disability and mental illness? Plus, too much earned and disability is gone even if the job is temporary.

But, those guys are actually the minority. The largest group of homeless are those you do not see. They keep clean at all times and work. They are just at a time in life when it is impossible to keep a place. Rents can take up almost all a min wage salary. Even getting INTO an apartment takes THOUSANDS depending on where, particularly any city worth mentioning. Lord forbid you have an eviction because of a lay off, incarceration record, escaping an abusive situation, illness, etc. And, good luck getting a job that PAYS enough without having to live in a place with strict rules stacked with 10 folks sharing a restroom.

Rent in some cities is so bad, some folks are going to Circle K and downing a few 24 ozers to get into rehab so they can go to a halfway house for reasonable rent even though they don't need it.

[Dio]

I have recently read an academic journal by Anyu Fang of Standford Law School titled "Hiding Homelessness: Quality of Life Laws and the Politics of Development in American Cities." A few details immediately leaped out about this article. The first example appears as Fang states that laws against homeless individuals have appeared in many cities with regards to providing food:

In Eugene, Oregon, and Memphis, Tennessee, for example, beggars were required to obtain licences, a process that requires being fingerprinted and photographed. Beggars were required to carry their photo-licences at all times. In Berkeley, California, and Cincinnati, Ohio, it became illegal to beg from anyone getting into or out of car, near an automatic teller machine, after 8 p.m., or within six feet of
any storefront. Baltimore banned panhandling altogether after dark. Proponents of the law said the
panhandlers disrupt people who want ‘to go to Little Italy at night to dine or to Fells Point to barhop’ (4).

Even many politically ‘left-leaning’ cities have begun to use the harsh policing approach. They
include: Seattle; New Orleans; San Francisco; Denver; Asheville and Chapel Hill, North Carolina;
Santa Cruz, California; Austin, Teaxs; and Tucson and Tempe, Arizona.9 In a cross-section of fifty cities in 1999, 86 percent already had anti-begging ordinances and 73 percent had anti-sleeping laws
(National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 1999). The homeless immediately became
‘spatial anomalies’ in the landscape of the rapidly developing American city that was keen on
attracting corporate capital (Amster, 2002) (3-4)

These particular examples of 'anti homeless' laws illustrate the fact that the homeless, while not completely without blame, have the tendency to receive the worse treatment by a society that tends to define an individual by the material possessions they own. This further penalizes the individuals that want to provide food to these individuals unless they purchase or work through the government.

Work Cited

Fang, Anyu. "Hiding Homelessness: 'Quality Of Life' Laws and the
 Politics of Development in American Cities." International Journal Of
 Law In Context 5.1 (2009): 1-24. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30 Sept.
 2015.

[vonbach]

FIRST.. let's establish this. If you do NOT own a place, you are homeless.

By those standards everyone in the USA is homeless. No one "owns" anything in this country we pay property taxes.
In other words we rent from the government.

Economy/finance: Can we pull a decent source of living-wage jobs out of our butts? 

Sure its easy. Get rid of the usury banking system. The debt goes away the jobs come back and people get off the streets.

[Yitzi]

FIRST.. let's establish this. If you do NOT own a place, you are homeless.

By those standards everyone in the USA is homeless. No one "owns" anything in this country we pay property taxes.
In other words we rent from the government.

I am pretty sure that in modern times taxes are justified by appeal to societal benefit and services, not by "the government owns your land and you're just renting it".

Economy/finance: Can we pull a decent source of living-wage jobs out of our butts? 

Sure its easy. Get rid of the usury banking system. The debt goes away the jobs come back and people get off the streets.

I'm pretty sure that the banking system is not why companies are willing to only hire a certain number of people and not more.