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To chime in.
What solution do the homeless have?
Give me a 30-40 something homeless, let me feed him, clean him up, give him 48 hours of pep-talks, resume writing workshops, and a decent outfit- and short of a miracle, he's not going to be able to find himself in an employment system that will allow him to live in any level of comfort in the nearby area.
If I were in charge, I'd try to figure out a way to relocate and rehabilitate the homeless to areas of the country that could benefit from more labor or offer significantly cheaper housing. Short of taking that offer, i'd push further for incarceration or underground connections to thin the numbers.
Most healthy 30-40 year olds without serious mental illness or drug addiction are not homeless, or if they are they are most likely already working, so I'm not sure where you are going to find all these people who only need a bath and a pep talk. And in a place like San Francisco, once your rehabbed homeless person is working, where do they live? One of the big problems for the homeless who are employed is that way that shelters are run, they are only available for around 8-10 hours at night so there is no place for a homeless person to stay if they work nights, also the shelters require you to stand in line, sometimes for hours to get a bed, so if you get off work at 8 or 9PM there won't be any shelter beds available. (San Francisco has about 1200 shelter beds for almost 7,000 homeless)
And you can't relocate and rehabilitate people against their will, so that is just not going to happen, and you cannot threaten to put a person in jail if they refuse to jump on the bus for Barstow. If you doubt that I am correct about that feel free to google it.
Give me a 30-40 something homeless, let me feed him, clean him up, give him 48 hours of pep-talks, resume writing workshops, and a decent outfit- and short of a miracle, he's not going to be able to find himself in an employment system that will allow him to live in any level of comfort in the nearby area.
If I were in charge, I'd try to figure out a way to relocate and rehabilitate the homeless to areas of the country that could benefit from more labor or offer significantly cheaper housing. Short of taking that offer, i'd push further for incarceration or underground connections to thin the numbers.
Now what makes the current problem so serious is that fact that not all of the homeless are the standard druggie no interest in work types. Look around and even see for yourself, there are ex professionals joining the ranks now too as well. Some of these people actually contributed in some shape or form to SF life in their past.
Big problem is again , the city of SF with its sanctimonious social justice posturing , as long as it sounds good around the vegan dinner table or sushi with buddies on Fridays, is all just talk anyways. Take it with a pinch of salt , all the right on soundbites and politically correct comments more for inclusion purposes than actually meaning a word of it.
Take yours , about the 30-40 something homeless, why is it only he by the way , there are plenty of women homeless too. If there was enough of common sense and not just making the homeless chess pieces in a political game , similar to how African Americans are treated, then something might be done.
Amazing in one of the most liberal socially progressive cities in the USA, we have an ugly failure of public policy , the homeless, staring us right in the face. There is enough of resources in this rich city of ours. Impose a tax if they have to on businesses or individuals. This will force those who engage in such empty pc banter about standard topics such as homelessness to put their money where their mouth is. Talk is cheap and only compounding the confusion.
Nothing else will be done as we will all see. To have the homeless out there swimming in urine is good for our SJW's, they can point out the failures of the system , all the while thinking of their next organic bamboo tofu strainer and having some ethnic beats from NE Burmese Tribal villages on the iphone.
Bolded above. Are you advocating killing some of the homeless ????????? . Be careful with that kind of talk. For your own freedom could be compromised with such careless comments.
Talk is always so cheap in SF. Actions at times are seen as maybe a bit too aggressive. Ah yes the wonderful liberal mecca by the bay
Now what makes the current problem so serious is that fact that not all of the homeless are the standard druggie no interest in work types. Look around and even see for yourself, there are ex professionals joining the ranks now too as well. Some of these people actually contributed in some shape or form to SF life in their past. Big problem is again , the city of SF with its sanctimonious social justice posturing , as long as it sounds good around the vegan dinner table or sushi with buddies on Fridays, is all just talk anyways. Take it with a pinch of salt , all the right on soundbites and politically correct comments more for inclusion purposes than actually meaning a word of it. Take yours , about the 30-40 something homeless, why is it only he by the way , there are plenty of women homeless too. If there was enough of common sense and not just making the homeless chess pieces in a political game , similar to how African Americans are treated, then something might be done. Amazing in one of the most liberal socially progressive cities in the USA, we have an ugly failure of public policy , the homeless, staring us right in the face. There is enough of resources in this rich city of ours. Impose a tax if they have to on businesses or individuals. This will force those who engage in such empty pc banter about standard topics such as homelessness to put their money where their mouth is. Talk is cheap and only compounding the confusion.
Nothing else will be done as we will all see. To have the homeless out there swimming in urine is good for our SJW's, they can point out the failures of the system , all the while thinking of their next organic bamboo tofu strainer and having some ethnic beats from NE Burmese Tribal villages on the iphone. Bolded above. Are you advocating killing some of the homeless ????????? . Be careful with that kind of talk. For your own freedom could be compromised with such careless comments. Talk is always so cheap in SF. Actions at times are seen as maybe a bit too aggressive. Ah yes the wonderful liberal mecca by the bay
I'm sorry but I have no idea what that even means, and what does sushi have to do with homelessness
Homelessness was not a problem in either L.A. or S.F. during Kennedy's term.
That's completely false. Skid Row in Los Angeles has been in existence since before first depression (possibly dating back to post WW1 after many veterans came back from Europe depending on whose research you believe).
You really need to do research about a topic if you're going to engage in a discussion about it, especially when you make claims like "homelessness wasn't a problem in two of the largest metro areas in California in the early 1960s".
Give me a 30-40 something homeless, let me feed him, clean him up, give him 48 hours of pep-talks, resume writing workshops, and a decent outfit- and short of a miracle, he's not going to be able to find himself in an employment system that will allow him to live in any level of comfort in the nearby area.
If I were in charge, I'd try to figure out a way to relocate and rehabilitate the homeless to areas of the country that could benefit from more labor or offer significantly cheaper housing. Short of taking that offer, i'd push further for incarceration or underground connections to thin the numbers.
The first part of your solution is already being done in many major cities. San Francisco has a program where they actually setup accounts (forget the program name) where a homeless individual can get an office number, and is allowed to do contracting jobs in the city (landscaping, fence repair, etc). It makes the homeless person look more "legitimate" and they get a business card as well.
The second part of your program is where your aspirations would fail. Incarcerating the homeless would never fly in SF or Los Angeles. Politically it would be a landmine, and most of those vying for public office wouldn't touch that platform with a 100 foot pole.
That's completely false. Skid Row in Los Angeles has been in existence since before first depression (possibly dating back to post WW1 after many veterans came back from Europe depending on whose research you believe).
You really need to do research about a topic if you're going to engage in a discussion about it, especially when you make claims like "homelessness wasn't a problem in two of the largest metro areas in California in the early 1960s".
The existence of pretty nasty slums and ghettoes wasn't the same thing as a full blown homeless crisis. You're just engaging in revisionist history here. Different issue.
The big deal about homelessness in both of those cities during the 1960s was specifically in respect to the hippie counterculture, which had not yet started when Kennedy was president. The mental hospitals had not yet been shut down.
These "what do we do with homeless" threads always attract a lot of folks who seem to think that the homeless are fundamentally "other".
For perspective, it is helpful to remember that most of us, Americans, are a few months to a few years away from living on the street should we become unemployed for any reason. These homeless are none other spicies than ours. When I look at a smelly body sprawled on the sidewalk, I realize that under different circumstances that body could be mine.
Once that sinks in, it should be fairly clear that restricting what the homeless can do and where they can do it, is the completely wrong approach to the problem.
Basically, there are two directions in which the root of it can be addressed. Economically, we need a better set of labor protections, more job and business opportunities and a stronger safety net (aka "welfare"). Socially, our communal and family bonds are often weak, which leaves many individuals to fend for themselves and vulnurable in case of various types of misfortunes.
I feel that the latter is the true disease of our modern life, of which homelessness is the more extreme symptom. Fragmentation of society hurts us all on many levels...Seeing this bigger picture is helpful in making sense of social ills like homelessness.
The first part of your solution is already being done in many major cities. San Francisco has a program where they actually setup accounts (forget the program name) where a homeless individual can get an office number, and is allowed to do contracting jobs in the city (landscaping, fence repair, etc). It makes the homeless person look more "legitimate" and they get a business card as well.
The second part of your program is where your aspirations would fail. Incarcerating the homeless would never fly in SF or Los Angeles. Politically it would be a landmine, and most of those vying for public office wouldn't touch that platform with a 100 foot pole.
I think something other than incarcerating in prisons is the answer. Whether you call them "institutions" or some other, prettier name, there are ways to keep people from living on the streets. We can talk about how awful the old institution system was or we can make a better institution system or we can do nothing and give up on them, letting whoever or whatever comes along deal with them in their own way. It's not going to end well if we just keep pretending it's ok, and even humane, to allow people to **** on the sidewalk.
Relocation is a great first step for those who just flat out can't afford to live, "mandatory housing" in whatever way we want to do it can't be ignored though.
I think something other than incarcerating in prisons is the answer. Whether you call them "institutions" or some other, prettier name, there are ways to keep people from living on the streets. We can talk about how awful the old institution system was or we can make a better institution system or we can do nothing and give up on them, letting whoever or whatever comes along deal with them in their own way. It's not going to end well if we just keep pretending it's ok, and even humane, to allow people to **** on the sidewalk.
It's against the law to put homeless people in any institution against their will, no matter what you call it Homelessness is not a criminal offense, in the US you only put people in "institutions" who are acutely mentally ill and incapable of caring for themselves or who have been convicted of a crime.
It's against the law to put homeless people in any institution against their will, no matter what you call it Homelessness is not a criminal offense, in the US you only put people in "institutions" who are acutely mentally ill and incapable of caring for themselves or who have been convicted of a crime.
Before responses come in to: "who are acutely mentally ill and incapable of caring for themselves" - I would point out that the definition of "capable of caring for themselves" does not mean living according to popular culture and contemporary prescriptive lifestyles. Eating out of restaurant dumpsters and sleeping under blue tarps is, in fact, caring for oneself when other choices are limited-to-non-available at any particular moment of hunger and exhaustion. Most folks on these threads vilifying the homeless are convinced otherwise, I realize. But the cost to everyone's freedom that comes with such restrictive definitions as seem commonsensical to many are actually deeply and negatively profound to the very freedoms you all hold dear.
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