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The homeless on the west coast are LEGIT homeless like on the street. In NYC you can be considered "homeless" by your case worker if you are paying month to month rent renting a room which hundreds of thousands of people do here so they can be classified as homeless or, more importantly "housing insecure". It's a numbers games for the poverty industry that allows more money to be funneled into non-profits whose aim are to help fight homelessness, but in reality do nothing but enable it. We definitely enable homelessness in this city. Our shots of winning a housing lottery sky-rocket if we can be classified as homeless or housing insecure. Do you not think people are going to take advantage of that? ha. If I didn't have a dog that meant the world to me i'd be in on the scam as well.
I wonder what is percentage in SoCal then. They complain much more on their forum than we do on this forum.
Their is a thread about Socal Homeless going on right now. California has the biggest increase of homelessness in the US at the moment. Homelessness is not a problem for the cities, but it is a problem at the national level. Homelessness seems to be mostly around liberal elite cities with high rental prices, and where majority of the populace have a 4 years degree or more. Someone needs to tell homeless folks are anyone for that matter to stay clear of NYC, LA, SF, DC for the time being. Lets not forget that NYC has the hardest job market in the country. In order to get a job here quickly, one must attended a top college or have a masters degree. 4 year degree from occidental college, or even to a CUNY wont help for some entry level jobs.
yeah, seriously, by the true definition of "homeless", out west is way way more. Some days I don't even see a homeless person on my way to work.
P.S. I stay out of these crazy threads, but I'm bored. Ciao!
You must not be looking hard enough. I spot at least a few a day if not more (sometimes they will share a block), and when I don't, boy do I regret it. There was one on one of the crosstown buses I got on a few days ago. I go to walk towards what looked like a very clean, well-kept lady, and then I'm greeted by the smell of stench and cigarettes. Turns out there was a bum sitting nearby that stunk up the entire area, and I didn't notice him until I was about to get off of the bus. He got off with me and it was all I could do to hold my breath.
Something needs to be done on the national level to lower homelessness. Everything from housing, to education, possibly even implanting UBI income for some folks where the job market has changed due to technicalities and outsourcing, and last reforming the Criminal Justice System so that folks who have been locked up in prison for years can receive jobs, and possibly even changing healthcare for able body workers. You have plenty of the disabled on the street.
The homeless in California have tents, the homeless in NYC seem to live in sleeping bags for the most part. I work near a street that has become inundated with the Crusties last summer and they seem to have disappeared since the cold weather started. Where did they go? I'd guess half of them moved back home since it's too cold to sleep outside. The ones i'd see would never last a day in a shelter. NYC actually does a good job of taking care of it's homeless citizens despite what people might want to believe. If you are homeless and not on drugs and/or violent or severely mentally ill I bet you can work your way out of the system through our system. It's just easier to be homeless in warmer climates.
My birth mother died homeless on the streets in 2006. I thought it was 2009, but turns out she died three years earlier. We all thought she was just living on the streets. Or maybe no one wanted to tell me. There was nothing any social service could have done for her. She felt let down by her family and everyone in life and drugs and prostitution (i can't imagine she was doing that at that point, but who knows...) was easier and felt right. She couldn't find a permanent place to live because of her lifestyle. Should she have been locked up in a mental institution? It seems like people now are desiring that situation, where we lock people up in mental institutions instead of jails. Mental institutions were not better than our current prison system. Rape, assault, drugs coming in and out, social isolation, crappy meds, no meds, too much meds, etc. it's sad, there's very little we can do though and the population of dysfunctional people will just continue to balloon. Good luck locking them all up, until you find yourself as one of those people they are trying to lock up.
A small point, but the article says nearly 30% of homeless with families live in NYC which is slightly different from the topic title.
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