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I remember when I was in high school (god, would have been twenty years ago now I guess) a good friend of my older brother decided after high school to spend a year squatting in Berkeley as a gutter punk. He made it only a few months. One of his "housemates" freaked out one morning when on drugs and killed his girlfriend, then roped everyone in the squat into helping him bury the body. He called his dad to pick him up the next day.
I do think within this subsection climate does play a big role. I know in the modern "crusty" movement of punkish hobos they tend to migrate to the South over time. Historically New Orleans had a sizable young white squatter community as well.
That said, I think these groups are a minority, even though they are very visible. National statistics on homelessness are spotty, but it really isn't any more common in California than it is in say New York. The vast majority of homeless people are not the chronically homeless sleeping on the streets after all. They're homeless for a short stint, spend time in shelters, sleep in their car, or couch surf among friends and family.
Well when you think about, I guess the homeless serve as the drones of the West. Like the backdrop scenery for the whole "Wild Wild West" image. Contrast that with all the polo shirt-wearing preppy wannabes, bald-headed businessmen, and pant-sagging thugs of NYC and DC. Every city has it's specific class of drones and commoners to play up the image of the city. The scariest homeless people I've ever seen were in Seattle. Something about those grey skies just gave them an exaggerated zombie-like appeal and made my (unwanted) interactions with them horrifying. And yet, they just seemed to blend in so well - too well - with that dreary Seattle "former backwater logging town" image.
Last edited by skidamarink; 01-14-2016 at 10:32 PM..
I live out west, and the homeless you are describing also drive me nuts. I agree with your assessment that a large number appear to be able-bodied young folk who choose the nomadic lifestyle.
What I have noticed just within northern California, is that there will be many more homeless in a town that supports them, than towns with a population that does not. So, basically, if you build it - they will come.
For instance, the weather is virtually the same in Eureka as in Crescent City. Eureka has a huge homeless problem. Recently there was a planned police raid to remove 100 homeless from a camp in the downtown area of Eureka, and the homeless advocates blocked it. They wouldn't stay if they weren't receiving enough resources to stay. Obviously, the population of Eureka is willing to support hundreds of homeless people. And they have their nomadic grapevines - they know where to go where people will support them. And just to put this in perspective, Eureka's population is only around 26,000.
I hardly ever see any homeless in CC. I asked some locals at a cafe when I first moved here why that is. They said people in CC aren't free with handouts. So, they keep moving on to Eureka.
There are some resources in CC, but they will go where it's easier to get more.
One example in CC: There was a woman aggressively asking for money in front of the post office, where everyone had to walk by her. She had brought a chair and just sat there loudly asking everyone who walked by her for money. I called the CC police and complained about her, and they got her to move along within minutes.
I don't think there's even an official no panhandling ordinance here, but there aren't any loud voices here telling the police to allow panhandling, either. Sometimes living in a redneck-ish town pays off :-)
NoMoreSnowForMe, I agree. The kneejerk liberal handouts are a form of PC enablement. I am not convinced that most people in these towns actually support the enablement so much as fear to speak out against it. We have bum camp problems where I live now. In my old stomping grounds, the bums would not be tolerated. They would be told in no uncertain terms to leave.
I lived in Redding for a year and there is a large homeless population there, too. For a while there were posters around town that said "Please Don't Feed the Problem" that explained that if you want to help the homeless, it's better to give the money to the local charities that help them, like the mission, than to give the homeless people cash. I'm assuming the campaign was related to drug use among the homeless there.
Seattle gets a lot of it's homeless in part due to the fact that nearby (wealthy) suburb of Bellevue made it illegal to be homeless. So the police literally pick up the vagrants and drive them to Seattle.
Western cities have basically been evolving to possess two main demographic groups: the very rich, usually retirees and older couples. And then the poor, 20-something white American transplants who hoped to escape the rat race from back East, only to find themselves serving coffee to these rich folks. Or simply living on the public assistance services funded by the rich folks.
The weather in western cities makes it easier to be a vagrant. Also, the liberal politics of these cities provide for more generous public assistance services to homeless and/or low income people, even though in practice they don't really help.
Many western cities, including Boulder, have been losing their middle class populations and now consist of mostly very, very rich populaces who fund this "underclass" of vagrants, runaways, prostitutes, and deadbeats as well as a selection of poor immigrant families.
In addition to all of that, a lot of western cities are glamorized by youth around the country as being these free-spirited, wildchild wonderlands without a rat race (not true). The allure dies off pretty quickly once you realize that you can't afford to live there and there are no good jobs with upward mobility for young professionals who aren't highly specialized (i.e. IT).
This is why I don't want pot legalized in my state. Almost every pot smoker I know or have met is a lazy loser. Let Colorado, Seattle, and Portland have them.
My city has started to experience the effects of glamourized hipster revitalization. Same thing is happening here - A larger divide between the classes. Many are leaving for the exurbs.
I left CO for several other reasons, but I was happy to leave the rec-pot-decriminalization behind...only to live in WA a very short time before it, too, decriminalized rec pot.
Walking around town, I can often smell which properties are growing pot, practically on the streets, ALWAYS hidden by a messy scraggle of shrubs that the growers think keep their "secret." It does not have to be smoked to put out that skunky stink. And when store employees or contractors are working stoned, it makes me cross that business off the list. They might think their impairment does not affect their abilities, but to someone who is NOT stoned, it's obvious. They can do whatever they want in their own homes; it is the fact that they are driving and working stoned that causes problems. Yes, this relates to stoners with jobs and, probably, homes, but the attitude that being stoned is OK any time is the connection to the OP's subject.
While I don't find that every person I've known who smokes pot is a lazy loser, there sure is a high correlation...
I posted this in another thread, there are homeless people here in Boston. But Portland downtown by the river before I went out to dinner and after I went out to dinner, Holy ****. It was like the Walking Dead after dinner.
And to be clear I loved visiting Portland and Seattle, just did the regular tourist things, but there were a lot of homeless.
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