Homelessness: What's a Few Billion More For Social Justice?

[Checkerboard Strangler]

I think there's probably homeless in Fargo. We have them in Minneapolis and it isn't much warmer.

In Minneapolis, as well as other frigid North areas, a lot of homeless exercise one of several options:

1. They "find Jesus" and join the missions.

2. They commit some kind of crime guaranteed to get them locked up with three hots and a cot over the winter.

3. If they're very lucky, they take advantage of some of the area shelters. Frigid cities simply have more of them.
Even the most hardcore righties flinch at the sight of large numbers of "bumsicles" being scraped off the sidewalk on a morning where it went below zero. It tends to drive the point home in a stark manner.
Shelters include low rent "flop houses" which still exist in cities like Minneapolis, Saint Paul and even Minot, ND.
I know, I experienced it in 1978 when I first arrived in Minneapolis and faced homelessness myself.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

There's a small strip mall a block from where we lived in the shabby rental home we found when we first moved back to Southern California. We were only in it long enough to find a real house to buy, which we eventually did.
We still like to go to the Mexican butcher shop in that strip mall, they have the killer steaks.

Anyway, there's a homeless guy named Freddie who lives in the back of the strip mall amongst the dumpsters and the crates. The property owners give him a few bucks every now and then because he sweeps the parking lot, picks up trash and keeps an eye on the place at night.

Freddie got beaten senseless as a young man by a family member. His brains are truly scrambled for good.
He's friendly and you can tell that once upon a time this was a guy who probably held down a job, because he talks about his past life when he had his own place, and even a girlfriend.
And they both worked and lived relatively normal lives, I guess. Sure sounds like it.

One look at his face though, and you can see that Freddie got his bell rung pretty hard.
I can't begin to imagine what he looked like that night in the ER, must have been pretty bad, because his face is a modern art masterpiece now. He must have suffered a traumatic brain injury because he has more than a bit of trouble with long term plans and complex patterns. And his short term memory isn't so great either.
But he's cheerful, helpful and honest. And apparently trustworthy, because he has stopped a couple of attempted burglaries and vandalism incidents. Even the local cops know Freddie and they know he's alright.

No matter how one tries to steer him to programs and services where he can get help, he seems to prefer his little DIY lean to in the back of the liquor store. He gums the sandwiches he buys with the little bit of money he earns, or finds another way to get his hands on some food.

I used to give him a couple of bucks whenever I saw him, whatever singles I had in my wallet, sometimes even five bucks. He even helped me clear out the trash and the odds and ends when we moved.
He spent four hours working hard and helped me get the dumpsters filled and the place swept out.
I gave him forty bucks. He couldn't believe it. It was maybe the most money he'd had in a very long time.

So you see, once you put a human face on homelessness, suddenly these are real people, with real problems.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

You forgot to call of them "deplorables."

You people taking pot shots at everyone you're jealous of are the deplorables.
The people I'm talking about, most of them may be decent people, they just can't make it here, that's all.
Lots of people can't make it in the Nation's Capital, Washington DC either.
Plenty can't make it in Houston, or Dallas.

Just because you aren't aware of all the Hoovervilles scattered across every part of this country doesn't mean that they don't exist. Yeah, you guys seem to miss the point about "deplorables".
You think we're looking down our nose at the folks down on their luck.

Nope, we're disgusted by petty tyrants who can't maintain one iota of humanity.
You sneer at social programs because you've never needed them.
Oh goody, did you expect an award?

You are the deplorables. This thread is the textbook definition of deplorable.

 

[danielpalos]

modern camping gear for modern times!

 

[Casper]

The homeless respond to incentives like anyone else. Remove incentives that defeat the purpose of alleviating homelessness.

So your answer is to let them rot. Incentives, is that what they call it now, making America Great, LOL.

 

[danielpalos]

By funding you mean MY money right?

Also, we already spend 5 billion federally. Money isnt the problem here, as usual.

Let's abolish our alleged wars on crime, drugs, and terror, the right wing doesn't wan't to pay wartime tax rates for them, anyway.

 

[LowDown]

So your answer is to let them rot. Incentives, is that what they call it now, making America Great, LOL.

Building little houses for them where they can go and do drugs and alcohol without restriction? Letting them piss and poop on the streets without consequence? That's not compassion. It's codependency.

Obviously they like it, being homeless in LA. They prefer it to working. So they flock there. Same with Hawaii, until the homeless started impacting the wellbeing of ordinary people and hurting the tourist business.

In Houston there is plenty of shelter for the homeless. But they have to follow the rules.

 

[LowDown]

You people taking pot shots at everyone you're jealous of are the deplorables.
The people I'm talking about, most of them may be decent people, they just can't make it here, that's all.
Lots of people can't make it in the Nation's Capital, Washington DC either.
Plenty can't make it in Houston, or Dallas.

Just because you aren't aware of all the Hoovervilles scattered across every part of this country doesn't mean that they don't exist. Yeah, you guys seem to miss the point about "deplorables".
You think we're looking down our nose at the folks down on their luck.

Nope, we're disgusted by petty tyrants who can't maintain one iota of humanity.
You sneer at social programs because you've never needed them.
Oh goody, did you expect an award?

You are the deplorables. This thread is the textbook definition of deplorable.

Arrogant, sanctimonious phony much?

I work with poor people every day, day in and day out. I don't think liberals don't know anything about them or what real compassion for them looks like. They have no idea about how to really help them.

Liberals think an abstract sense of compassion for the poor justifies them treating ordinary people like trash. We are not fooled.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Arrogant, sanctimonious phony much?

I work with poor people every day, day in and day out. I don't think liberals don't know anything about them or what real compassion for them looks like. They have no idea about how to really help them.

Liberals think an abstract sense of compassion for the poor justifies them treating ordinary people like trash. We are not fooled.

I just posted a personal story which was anything but abstract, and I've also shared my own personal experience with homelessness. Try again, you missed by a mile.
I had an idea how to help a homeless person. I hired him for four hours for ten bucks an hour.
I've hired other homeless people before whenever there's something that needs done that they're capable of.
If I ever have more work that a homeless person could do, and they're available, I am perfectly happy to hire them again.
I own a piece of property up in Santa Clarita which will need a cleanout, so maybe that's next on the list.

And when you say that "you work with poor people every day", that could be anything.
One thing a statement like that fits, is the very definition of "sanctimonious".
Not impressed in the least.
You're not even capable of reading what people talk about, or comprehending it, apparently.
That fits the definition of "obtuse". Is it intentional? I think it might be.
So, when you accuse me of being arrogant and sanctimonious, it's pure projection.
It's the very thing you're carrying around inside you like an infection.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Building little houses for them where they can go and do drugs and alcohol without restriction? Letting them piss and poop on the streets without consequence? That's not compassion. It's codependency.

Ignorance. The problem is, we're NOT building those tiny houses. One city in the entire state is experimenting with a tiny pilot program, that's it. We're not building tiny houses, we have Hooverville style tent cities springing up.

You say that they enjoy being homeless.
In your mind, millions more Americans "just decided one day to become bums for the fun of it", and to add to the already large homeless population, just for kicks.
That means that you're not even aware of the fact that many homeless are actually working families.
From this point forward, I will not believe one word that you say about poor people, because you've proven that it is you who don't know the first thing about the issue and that it's you who have no contact or experience with the poor.

And the reason my gut is correct is indeed directly due to my experience with them.
You'd never talk about poor people the way that you do if you had the least bit of experience with them, and if by some fluke you do, you're a bitter angry disservice to them in the worst way possible, and you probably get joy out of sabotaging whatever outfit you spend your time with.
No one who does anything to help homeless people ever lumps them all into one category, because they know better.
You don't, and it highlights your false anecdotes about your "work with the poor, every day".

 

[MrWonka]

Most homeless people have a choice: live on the street where they can do whatever they want or get a minimum wage job,

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Have you met a homeless person? About 90% of them are either physically disabled, mentally disabled, or severe alcoholics. Nobody is hiring these people for any job.

Unemployment is at an all-time low, but homelessness in LA has doubled in the last 6 years.

Because the jobs that are hiring aren't paying a wage that would allow them to afford rent anywhere.

The cost of programs for the homeless has skyrocketed,

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/magazine/mag-01YouAreHere-t.html

And so has the savings that they provide.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

I know an old lady up in Washington State who spent almost eighteen years working with programs that provide financial assistance to destitute people.
They had to fire her because she turned angry and bitter, and had started to have screaming matches with them instead of helping them.
Her husband had taken deathly ill, and she took out all the stress of her husband's situation on perfect strangers who needed help, and the HR dept brought her in to talk about it.
She unloaded, telling them about the stress in her home situation.
They tried to help, to give her some time off, which she refused, even though her husband was very wealthy.

They had to let her go. She was poisoning the atmosphere of the place and creating a hostile environment.
She now takes out her anger on people she talks to on Facebook.
One day, after knowing her for seven years as a friend, she suddenly blurted out that my wife (a 100% service connected disabled Navy veteran) was "just a moocher who probably fakes her disability" and that "I probably married her because I have some sick fetish for women in wheelchairs".
(I fell in love with her long before she was in the chair - she was going into the Navy)

So, the point is, the world is filled with angry bitter people who claim that they are "helping the poor" and those people are a cancer on assistance programs, every bit as much as firefighters who turn into arsonists.
It's a mental health issue and there's no doubt that programs that assist the poor probably attract some very sick minded sociopaths.

It is the very nature of the thing which attracts them. They seek out weak and vulnerable people for a specific reason, to hurt them. Something deep inside their twisted minds has them convinced that the weak and vulnerable "deserve their lot in life".

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

ADDENDUM: This old lady, the angry bitter one? I know her in REAL LIFE. She has met my wife and I on at least a half dozen occasions, we are all Leon Russell fans together. She absolutely knows that my wife really is a disabled vet.
So, this issue, with people who act all sanctimonious like Low Down, is a real problem, because it points to some disturbing signs.
The fact is, there are people in the world with a bit of sociopathic tendencies who seek out the poor and vulnerable because it gives them a feeling of tremendous power. It makes them feel like gods to personally hold the fate of these people in their hands.

It is easy to imagine that programs which focus on the vulnerable would attract some mighty sick minds.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Anything else you feel like adding today on the subject of helping the homeless, Low Down?
I've provided personal real life stories and will be happy to provide even more.
Do you have any personal stories you'd care to contribute?

You work with them every day, so if you're so proud of what you do, why not share?
You could even post it in our "The Good News" thread here on DP.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Because the jobs that are hiring aren't paying a wage that would allow them to afford rent anywhere.

He doesn't even understand that there ARE working homeless.
And yet he CLAIMS to "work with the poor every day".

Something doesn't pass the smell test for me.

 

[JasperL]

Its not easy availability...that doesn't address someone's desire to use drugs in the first place. The other one could be spot on, though.

Ultimately, psychological issues. This is a mental health issue.

I agree. I've been involved with charity serving homeless people for about 10 years, and lots of them are veterans (about half). Our place takes them into housing, all that can work must work or at least try to find a job, and they pay 'rent' but if they can't work or find a job, that's OK - no one is kicked out because they can't pay. We TRY to keep them at least six months, and a year is better. Shorter than 6 months and they nearly always go out and in a week or two are back to the streets.

The constant on both the civilian side and veteran side is pervasive mental illness. Most of them are dual-diagnosed (the center's term) which means mental illness and drug and/or alcohol addiction. On the veteran side, it's about 70-90% depending on the population on a given day, and probably similar on the civilian side, but getting non-vets ongoing mental health treatment is very difficult for people with no insurance, and they don't have kids (most of them) so don't qualify for Medicaid, which means uninsured. We have a county health facility but getting a mental health appt can take a month or more, so we frequently get guys in who are obviously mentally ill, but they wash out (usually go back on drugs or alcohol) before we can get that addressed. If we can get help on the front end, then getting ongoing care and fine tuning the meds then paying for the meds is near impossible.

At times the state has kicked in money, but it's always for a short period - six months, a year, then funding is exhausted and we wait for the legislature to approve more funds, which might or might not be the next year, so we cannot plan for anything. If we hired a mental health person, funding might last 3 months - we just never know.

But the bottom line is the drugs at least frequently FOLLOW mental health problems, and it's a way for the homeless to self-treat their mental illness. It's a disaster of course but when a person is mentally ill and can't get actual treatment, they do what they can, which is often medicate with drugs and/or alcohol - whatever they can find. The opioid problems recently have somewhat reversed the cause and effect because we get lots of young people now - 20s or 30s - who got addicted to pain pills then heroin who land on the streets that way, and the drug addiction caused the homelessness, but obviously once someone is addicted to drugs or alcohol, it's its own kind of real mental illness, requiring often treatment but if not that then lots of time to let the brain "heal" and act normally to outside stimuli. We use drugs/alcohol because they make us feel good - the 'feel good' chemicals are released. The more we do that, the less our body produces on its own, and it takes a long time to 'heal' that basic issue. I was in a meeting of alcoholics and the question came up - who has been on anti-depressants - and nearly all those who could get medical care had been, roughly 2/3 of the room. The reason is coming off a long spell of alcoholism will almost inevitably leave the person clinically and chemically 'depressed' until the brain heals, which might be 6 months or a year...

 

[JasperL]

You cannot force people into housing. So why keep talking about building housing for people who will not use it?

It's absolutely true some won't use housing, but many will. Our little charity houses as many of the homeless as we have beds to house them - around 300 now, with a waiting list as long as we want to make it.

One guy in particular I got close to wouldn't stay, though, and at times has been provided free housing outside our facility and decided he liked the streets better than dealing with the minimal obligations imposed on him. He was very smart - As and Bs in college - but obviously mentally ill, which seems likely in part due to growing up in a very abusive and toxic home.

There is no Yes or No, this will work, this won't, with a population with a host of issues from economic to mental health to abuse to addiction, etc....

 

[JasperL]

By funding you mean MY money right?

Also, we already spend 5 billion federally. Money isnt the problem here, as usual.

If at least half the homeless population is mentally ill, and they can't find treatment because there are no places to treat people without funds, then of course money is part of the problem. You might not think it's well spent, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that lack of treatment for mentally ill homeless contributes to the problem.

Thank goodness for the VA for veterans. They do provide mental health treatment, and in our little center, the veterans have much better outcomes because of it. It's an ongoing battle for many, with some doing OK for a year or three or whatever, then they come back. But that's what it takes. Hard to get and keep a job if you're mentally ill, go off the meds because they make some feel bad or 'drugged' all the time, which they are, but the alternative is full blown mental illness. Etc.

There is no easy answer and there are lots of barriers to addressing the problem long term - reliable funding for needed programs a big one but obviously not the only one.

What we do see frequently around us are places that get funding from state or local or the feds and they operate as flop houses for the mentally ill, and pocket the money intended for mental health treatment or whatever. So guys come in, stay till funding runs out, then are kicked out to the streets. More of those places won't change a thing for most.

 

[JasperL]

The homeless respond to incentives like anyone else. Remove incentives that defeat the purpose of alleviating homelessness.

A lot of them actually don't because of real mental illness. It's like saying the way to deal with insulin dependent diabetes is to just get over it, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you can do it! If the person can't get the diabetes treated, and on an ongoing basis, changing incentives won't work, ever.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

At times the state has kicked in money, but it's always for a short period - six months, a year, then funding is exhausted and we wait for the legislature to approve more funds, which might or might not be the next year, so we cannot plan for anything. If we hired a mental health person, funding might last 3 months - we just never know.

This is PURELY INTENTIONAL.
They kick in just enough money to be cruel about it, then cut it off, then point to the fact that the money did no good.
It's the typical Right wing "break the plow and blame the farmer" song and dance that they attack ALL social programs and ALL government administered programs with.

ALL. THE. TIME.

 

[JasperL]

Ignorance. The problem is, we're NOT building those tiny houses. One city in the entire state is experimenting with a tiny pilot program, that's it. We're not building tiny houses, we have Hooverville style tent cities springing up.

You say that they enjoy being homeless.
In your mind, millions more Americans "just decided one day to become bums for the fun of it", and to add to the already large homeless population, just for kicks.
That means that you're not even aware of the fact that many homeless are actually working families.
From this point forward, I will not believe one word that you say about poor people, because you've proven that it is you who don't know the first thing about the issue and that it's you who have no contact or experience with the poor.

And the reason my gut is correct is indeed directly due to my experience with them.
You'd never talk about poor people the way that you do if you had the least bit of experience with them, and if by some fluke you do, you're a bitter angry disservice to them in the worst way possible, and you probably get joy out of sabotaging whatever outfit you spend your time with.
No one who does anything to help homeless people ever lumps them all into one category, because they know better.
You don't, and it highlights your false anecdotes about your "work with the poor, every day".

That's very true. I don't know how many reasons we could come up with for homelessness, but a half dozen major reasons at least, a couple dozen if you broke out the causes. Our little charity is getting more and more veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from PTSD, leading to addiction, then homelessness and until we get the first problem, the PTSD, handled, nothing is going to work long term. Sometimes we're able to using new treatments, and it's a miracle to watch guys come around over 6 months or whatever.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Thank goodness for the VA for veterans.

Unfortunately thank NOT goodness for the Memphis VA, which has been the poster child for terrible VA's forever.
I keep hoping and praying that Memphis will someday step up its game and do better.
Minneapolis, Loma Linda, both major VA's in Alabama, Long Beach CA and West L.A. CA and many others are doing very well so it's time for Memphis to jump in and join them.

Is there anything specific about the Memphis VA that YOU happen to know about that's good?
I would love to hear some good news about that place for a change.

 

[JasperL]

This is PURELY INTENTIONAL.
They kick in just enough money to be cruel about it, then cut it off, then point to the fact that the money did no good.
It's the typical Right wing "break the plow and blame the farmer" song and dance that they attack ALL social programs and ALL government administered programs with.

ALL. THE. TIME.

I don't know if they're intentionally causing harm, but the point is true enough. Short term funding for mentally ill people without insurance is pretty worthless, because these people need LONG TERM assistance, and giving it for six months, then having funding dry up is guaranteed, 100%, to fail.

Physical (i.e. non-mental) issues are a lot easier - we just send them to the ER when it gets bad. It's a terrible and very expensive way to deal with a lot of problems, but it works well enough. Guy comes in severe alcoholic. We monitor his blood pressure, and when it spikes, we get him to ER where he gets ativan or something to get him through the week. He's homeless so it's a write-off, and a clinic with a nurse practitioner and a $10 prescription would cost 1/10th or less, but that's not available.

For mental health the options are NOTHING in most cases....

 

[JasperL]

Unfortunately thank NOT goodness for the Memphis VA, which has been the poster child for terrible VA's forever.
I keep hoping and praying that Memphis will someday step up its game and do better.
Minneapolis, Loma Linda, both major VA's in Alabama, Long Beach CA and West L.A. CA and many others are doing very well so it's time for Memphis to jump in and join them.

Is there anything specific about the Memphis VA that YOU happen to know about that's good?
I would love to hear some good news about that place for a change.

No, Memphis is 400 miles away so we don't deal with it. The local VA hospital is in the Tri-Cities area, about 100 miles away and we have clinics locally. The real thing the VA does is fund local treatments for mental health issues, and they pay us enough per night for a VA person to get them help, and the VA pays for drugs.

 

[maxparrish]

I know an old lady up in Washington State who spent almost eighteen years working with programs that provide financial assistance to destitute people.
They had to fire her because she turned angry and bitter, and had started to have screaming matches with them instead of helping them.
Her husband had taken deathly ill, and she took out all the stress of her husband's situation on perfect strangers who needed help, and the HR dept brought her in to talk about it.
She unloaded, telling them about the stress in her home situation.
They tried to help, to give her some time off, which she refused, even though her husband was very wealthy.

They had to let her go. She was poisoning the atmosphere of the place and creating a hostile environment.
She now takes out her anger on people she talks to on Facebook.
One day, after knowing her for seven years as a friend, she suddenly blurted out that my wife (a 100% service connected disabled Navy veteran) was "just a moocher who probably fakes her disability" and that "I probably married her because I have some sick fetish for women in wheelchairs".
(I fell in love with her long before she was in the chair - she was going into the Navy)

So, the point is, the world is filled with angry bitter people who claim that they are "helping the poor" and those people are a cancer on assistance programs, every bit as much as firefighters who turn into arsonists.
It's a mental health issue and there's no doubt that programs that assist the poor probably attract some very sick minded sociopaths.

It is the very nature of the thing which attracts them. They seek out weak and vulnerable people for a specific reason, to hurt them. Something deep inside their twisted minds has them convinced that the weak and vulnerable "deserve their lot in life".

Ahhhh yes, the Catherine Halsey character in the Fountainhead:

"...seeking spiritual power over the poor individuals she ministers as a social worker.

When Keating meets Katie by chance on the streets of New York, years after his abandonment of her, she is a bustling Washington bureaucrat, who exists to give orders, "not big orders or cruel orders; just mean little ones — about plumbing and disinfectants." She is neither angry, hurt, nor embarrassed at their meeting. She simply takes unstrained control of their time together, tells him what he will eat, and listens in amused tolerance to his heartbreaking admission that marrying her was the only thing he had ever wanted to do. Katie is Toohey writ small: She possesses no values or personal loves — she considers them "selfish" — only a desire to control small matters in the lives of weak people who are either unable or unwilling to control their own lives. As a consequence of possessing a soul devoid of personal values, she is an unfeeling automaton who bustles through her days in cold controlling efficiency. "

And now you friend is bitter, burned out, and resentful.