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No one in my family will end up homeless unless I am.
I live in Houston and I see plenty of white and black homeless people. Hispanic homeless are much rarer and I have seen a single homeless Asian in my nearly 40 years here.
You don't know the circumstances by which most of them became homeless. It could be alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness.
You don't know how many come and go from their relatives' homes.
You don't know how many are homeless by choice.
You don't know how many do not have families.
You don't know how many have so damaged their families that they are no longer welcome.
Many homeless people are veterans, or combat servicemen who received bogus bad papers.
Many of them don't have families, many of them came from dysfunctional families. Many of them are victims of domestic violence, many of them lost hope.
We are all equal. If you want to give them some free food, beer, over the counter drugs, money (I am sure it won't bankrupt you), you are doing the good deed. Please think about how lucky you are that you have families who care about you. Not everybody is as lucky as you are.
You don't know the circumstances by which most of them became homeless. It could be alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness.
You don't know how many come and go from their relatives' homes.
You don't know how many are homeless by choice.
You don't know how many do not have families.
You don't know how many have so damaged their families that they are no longer welcome.
Don't judge without knowing why.
It just seems to me strange that from my personal experience the homeless seem to be overwhelmingly black and white here in Houston. It would seem that the homeless population should more closely correlate to the population at large unless family structure is in play.
My critique is not so much of the homeless as their families.
Nationally Hispanics on average outlive whites by four years. It is theorized that is partly due to family support. It certainly is not due to access to healthcare.
[/b] Oh what BS. Are you talking about your own experience.
BS? Not sure why you would say that. There have been a number of studies showing that as many as 1/3 of foster kids become homeless, what family are they supposed to have contact with, the one that was so bad that they had to be placed with strangers?
No one in my family will end up homeless unless I am.
I live in Houston and I see plenty of white and black homeless people. Hispanic homeless are much rarer and I have seen a single homeless Asian in my nearly 40 years here.
The "nuclear family" became the prevailing sociological and moral theme for the construct of the family in the United States during the 1950's. The nuclear family is distinguished from the "extended family," where this latter construct was the prevailing theme throughout most of American history up into about the 1940's or 1950's.
The nuclear family came under attack during the 1960's and 1970's by feminist males and women. They proposed single parent homes and abortion.
The conservatives are really big on championing the nuclear family. For me the nuclear family is okay but the extended family is even better. But both modern Western liberals and conservatives disdain the extended family. Italy is possibly the only "wealthy" Western nation that still values the extended family as a good. Throughout most of the rest of the world (outside the West) the extended family is still part of the normal and accepted social fabric of their respective societies.
But in the West (with the exception of Italy maybe) the extended family is seen as "country" and not sophisticated, cool, or pridefully independent.
The nuclear family and single parent social constructs in away promote homelessness.
The Latinos and Asians in the USA often have extended family norms. Black-Americans do too. But Black-Americans have adopted more of the white American's attitudes towards it and so look down their noses upon it more than the Latinos and Asians.
On a side note, when you see these Latino extended families packed into one house, you can see how those households reduce the cost of living per working age individual. This also allows persons to put more of their income away into savings. And savings or disposable income also provides money for investment.
Conservatives want private charities (usually not well funded) to provide for the homeless and liberals want the state to provide for the homeless. Both are united in their contempt for the extended family though.
There are some American families that are large and strong and could operate like a landed dynasty or a mafia. But those are the exception and not the norm. In many families each sibling and relative is your rival and enemy and your family and religion is your political party.
The conservatives are really big on championing the nuclear family. For me the nuclear family is okay but the extended family is even better. But both modern Western liberals and conservatives disdain the extended family. Italy is possibly the only "wealthy" Western nation that still values the extended family as a good. Throughout most of the rest of the world (outside the West) the extended family is still part of the normal and accepted social fabric of their respective societies.
But in the West (with the exception of Italy maybe) the extended family is seen as "country" and not sophisticated, cool, or pridefully independent.
The nuclear family and single parent social constructs in away promote homelessness.
The Latinos and Asians in the USA often have extended family norms. Black-Americans do too. But Black-Americans have adopted more of the white American's attitudes towards it and so look down their noses upon it more than the Latinos and Asians.
On a side note, when you see these Latino extended families packed into one house, you can see how those households reduce the cost of living per working age individual. This also allows persons to put more of their income away into savings. And savings or disposable income also provides money for investment.
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Of course having a good close relationship with family is normally positive. But packing them together into a house, no. Most families are dysfunctional, you don't know what kind of dynamics are going on in those multigenerational homes. I think strong communities are great and some families can do well living closeby but it isn't fair to try to put people in a possible bad situation because it seems socially appropriate.
I did the take in homeless family thing. A drug user that lost everything and promised that she would do better. First things like jewelry and the silver went missing. Then the car was "borrowed" and wrecked. Then I caught her smoking crack in the house one night in the room next to my sons room. This was all in the span of a month while I was trying to find her a rehab facility. I finally got her a bed in an inpatient facility and she checked herself out the next day.
No way I was allowing that back in to my home, and legally I couldn't make her stay in rehab.
Of course having a good close relationship with family is normally positive. But packing them together into a house, no.
Well, I'm not prepared to say what is or isn't for others good in terms of shared housing. There is a limit to everything for health and safety reasons of course.
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Most families are dysfunctional, you don't know what kind of dynamics are going on in those multigenerational homes.
There are varying degrees of "dysfunction" to all families I think. If dysfunction at all goes hand-in-hand with sin. And I subscribe to the view that all humans walking the earth are sinners.
There are extended families that have a lot of dysfunction. Lots. But there are nuclear families like that. There are single parent homes like that too. There are also non-blood relation families composed of street kids that are dysfunctional.
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I think strong communities are great and some families can do well living closeby but it isn't fair to try to put people in a possible bad situation because it seems socially appropriate.
I wasn't suggesting people be forced together into extended families. The OP made an observation about Latinos and Asians and I was providing a possible answer as to why he or she sees so few Latinos and Asians homeless.
It's similar to the so-called Asian "Tiger Moms." It's not a cultural custom in the United States except among a good number of Jewish-Americans and some of the patrician class of Southern Black-Americans. If you come up around blue collar Polish-Americans, German-Americans, and most the Black-Americans in the Midwest then it is nearly non-existent.
By "similar" I don't mean it is totally analogous but rather that both are cultural norms so-to-speak.
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