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People always blame the government for everything. But they go to the polls and vote for everything. Is it a fundamental problem with our system of government, that people see the government as the enemy, and spend their time trying to survive against that enemy, while not caring about others because they blame the government for those others' problems?
Where are the agitators who demanded the release of people from institutions because such people have a right to be free to roam the world and not be locked up. Why haven't the agitators created nice homey places for the homeless? Many of the homeless were much better off in an institution.
If anyone doesn't know how the homeless situation came to be, study up on it. Most were provided places to stay, food to eat, medicine to take, but a group of agitators decided these people needed to be free to roam around and not be locked up. The protestors demanded the doors be open for these people to leave the institutions. They made no provisions for how they would survive.
With a quick Google, there are about 600,000 homeless people in the United States.
All the ideas about building housing dorms for them, while great and compassionate to a degree, really rather naive, in my opinion. Who is going to pay for all the construction, the electric, the heating and air, the security, the maintenance, etc. etc? The last thing working people want is more taxes to support people they often consider to be 'bad' or undeserving or better off dead.
I think we need less "government take care of the problem!" and more "what can I do to help?" They are people, individuals, not just "the homeless."
the homeless people in my city area are just the worst, im hoping the winter gives me reprieve from them
What state/city do you live?
I think a lot of people think their areas are hardest hit by the homeless. Here in Ann Arbor, there are camps of these people (Camp Serenity - which has just received an eviction notice from the private property owner), and some have gone on record saying they don't want to go to designated places for the homeless.
At one point, Jeannette Walls realized that they could have been living in a house that her grandmother left her mother, that all the moving between one dreadful place to another was pointless. They had a house they could have lived in the whole time.
There is no doubt that her parents were not able to think straight.
Which is the situation with many homeless people. It is easy enough to call them a bunch of lazy bums, and while that could apply to some, it doesn't apply to all of them.
Amazing that most of the children were able to pull themselves together.
Many of the homeless I see in NYC are obviously mentally ill. Others are addicts. Some coworkers and I went to a local food pantry, daytime drop-in center to see if they needed anything. (They had so much food donated by the local downtown restaurants that they shipped it to other shelters.) They had a computer set up to look up agencies to see where they could get help for clients. The man in charge told us one sad story of a guy who wandered in one day looking for a meal. They talked to him and looked him up in the system. He was a veteran who had PTSD and couldn't function. The VA hospital had released him with a prescription for his medication, but when the meds ran out he lost control of his mind and just hit the streets. He had EIGHT YEARS of disabled veteran's benefits coming to him and no one knew where he was to send his checks. He'd been living on the streets all that time. That is shameful.
There was a good article some years ago when the mayor commissioned a count of the homeless in the city. They got volunteers to go out and ask people who appeared to be homeless if they were indeed homeless and if they knew where to find services. They saw one guy, and approached him slowly, and he turned around and said, "Hey, I KNOW what you're doing. I read three newspapers a day. Want to talk to me?"
A lot of shelters only take women and children, so if you're a guy you SOL. Heck, I remember they interviewed a homeless woman on the street and she said the shelter said they could take her and her 10 year old daughter but not her 14 year old son
So how is that not sexist? Where are the feminists on that issue?
Where are the agitators who demanded the release of people from institutions because such people have a right to be free to roam the world and not be locked up. Why haven't the agitators created nice homey places for the homeless? Many of the homeless were much better off in an institution.
If anyone doesn't know how the homeless situation came to be, study up on it. Most were provided places to stay, food to eat, medicine to take, but a group of agitators decided these people needed to be free to roam around and not be locked up. The protestors demanded the doors be open for these people to leave the institutions. They made no provisions for how they would survive.
Yes. With the knowledge available in the 1960's, de institutionalization did seem like a good idea. Shock treatment, lobotomy,insulin shock, hot and cold hydrotherapy.
Thousands were subjected to painful and dubious treatments,
Were there abuses in large state hospitals? Yes. There were. However, the majority of residents were not abused, and were sheltered from ill-equipt families and an ignorant and frightened society.
I understand the motive behind de-institutionalization. However, it has not worked as well as was expected.
So, we don't give up. We take what is good from both models and add recently gleaned knowledge.
We also stop spreading falsehoods. MOST HOMELESS INDIVIDUALS DO NOT DESIRE TO BE HOMELESS!
Most of them have emotional problems.They are veterans who suffer from PTSD. We need a safety net for these brave men and women.
They are former state hospital patients who were released.
They are children, who because of our antiquated desire to reunite "families" - lingered in foster care past their 10th birthday. Many of these children suffer from the sequelae of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect. By the time they are offered for adoption, they are ten or older. They are hardened and mistrustful of others. They are rendered un adoptable.
Several good ideas have been mentioned.
We need a fair and equitable tax structure that insures that the ultra rich pay their fail share.
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