Fate On Downtown Homeless Shelter Will Be Decided Today

[STLCityMike]

Originally Posted by Dawn10am

I've always heard that Springfield, Columbia, Jeff City, etc. have a habit of loading up their homeless and dumping them in downtown STL.

I have heard this of other places, but haven't heard it about STL. I saw a lot of homeless when visting Hawaii. Rumore there was cities in the mainland fly the homeless out there. I wonder if this is just an old wives tale about homeless in general. I wonder if anyone ever got proof of such shenanigans.

[Caesarstl]

^In the St. Louis region it's def. true, there are pics of even cops (latest one I saw was U City) dumping homeless downtown. Rice also broadcasts across four states calling people to his downtown shelter even though he is ten times over his legal capacity there...

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by FrankMiller

Why don't we build a bunch of new shelters everywhere instead of stacking poor people like cordwood anywhere at all?

Originally Posted by CommonFire

Agreed St. Charles, and St. Louis county should own up and take some responsibility with homelessness.

I trust you've both sent very generous donations to the counties to achieve this. Also, perhaps a lot of the homeless should take some responsibility for themselves.

[Caesarstl]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

I trust you've both sent very generous donations to the counties to achieve this. Also, perhaps a lot of the homeless should take some responsibility for themselves.

You don't understand this at all... Some of these places fought building retirement homes, you could have a 100% funded shelter and it's not going to happen...

[aliasfinn]

Originally Posted by Caesarstl

^In the St. Louis region it's def. true, there are pics of even cops (latest one I saw was U City) dumping homeless downtown. Rice also broadcasts across four states calling people to his downtown shelter even though he is ten times over his legal capacity there...

Do you ever watch that other channel he has about how to live off the grid?
There's a lot of interesting and useful information on there. The first time I watched it showed him out in the woods standing next to a machine that looked like a still. I thought he was teaching folks how to make moonshine but it was some kind of gasoline additive making device.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Caesarstl

You don't understand this at all... Some of these places fought building retirement homes, you could have a 100% funded shelter and it's not going to happen...

Actually, I do understand but I also know there's a huge difference between retirement homes and homeless shelters. There's a huge difference between low-income seniors, if that's who you're referring to, and the chronically homeless.

[mjtinmemphis]

Chronic homeless is something that has to be dealt with.

I believe there are enough resources at this point and time for no Veteran who has ever served our country to be homeless.

I feel sorry for those who are disabled and find themselves living on the street. I don't know the percentage but they are out there and they need to be taken care of. Shelters are not designed nor do they have the resources to help the disabled. Many times the people in this category are taken advantage of by other homeless and some institutions who don't have their best interests.

I don't feel sorry for the chronic homeless who are just lazy and don't want the responsibility that life brings. There is a whole subculture of those who have given up on taking responsibility for many reasons. They live off of soup kitchens and go from shelter to shelter always searching for the next program. Some may even try a different city to ride their resources for a while. In either case they need to be dropped by the system.

[MUTGR]

Originally Posted by Dawn10am

I've always heard that Springfield, Columbia, Jeff City, etc. have a habit of loading up their homeless and dumping them in downtown STL.

Is that accurate? That's a little hard to believe. I know when I was at Mizzou many years ago they had a large homeless population attributed largely to the deposit on cans.

[mjtinmemphis]

Originally Posted by MUTGR

Is that accurate? That's a little hard to believe. I know when I was at Mizzou many years ago they had a large homeless population attributed largely to the deposit on cans.

I've always heard that too. I know it is popular for suburban areas like Fenton Bellville and quite a few other suburbs and exurban. If it is true about Springfield, that is dirty.

[OzarkChickenLover]

I know this is an old topic but I wanted to address it anyhow since I've been ill and just came back online after some time to recover.

As a volunteer at a food pantry in Warren County, I can assure you that if we had a shelter out here it would almost always be full. Due to job cutbacks and the inability to earn a living wage in this area many residents can't pay rent and end up hotel-surfing at a few places here and in St. Charles County. Many of those hotels have roaches and bedbugs but because they don't cause "an immediate health risk" they don't have to take care of them. Part of this is because we don't have the funds to make sure that such things are taken care of, and the other part is that if the owners have to keep the hotels clean and bug-free the rates would go up so high that the people staying there couldn't afford to pay the already high fees. Without that option, a good portion of the people using these as a substitute for shelters wouldn't have a place to sleep. They get caught in a cycle where they pay so much to the hotel that they can't save up enough for a deposit and first month's rent; also, because they're staying at a hotel, they don't have a rental history so they're a poor rental risk. There is a whole population out here that can't find living situations they can afford. The funding for NECAC and Section 8 is stretched so thin that the money isn't available for new clients.

Unless you are stuck in this cycle or work with the population that does it's hard to understand and easy to judge. It's easy to say, "take responsibility for yourselves" when you don't see the struggle they face. I know one family that got a place after a year in a hotel and then when the new apartment management raised the rent by $200 a month they ended up right back where they had been. The hotel costs them $1000 a month but they can pay a week or even a couple of days at a time, and you can't do that with an apartment. The downside is they can't save up enough to pay that precious deposit and first month's rent - for a two bedroom apartment, about $1600 to $1800 - and with the unemployment and poor wages here because of the lack of good-paying jobs, the housing assistance just isn't available.....so they are locked into this mess again. They did find a place until the landlord found out where they were staying, and he decided that they were a poor risk so turned them down.

Poverty is more than not having the wisdom to use your money wisely. It's a lifestyle and a mindset that is very hard to overcome and break out of. We can sit and preach all we want but until we're willing to donate, volunteer, and press for legislation preventing discrimination based on homeless status, this problem isn't going anywhere. It's far better to use what funds are available to build decent, clean, low-cost housing and police it to keep it crime-free than it is to spend time finding ways to blame the poor for being poor. Until the minimum wage is a living wage we will fight this problem, and until we realize that 90% of the wealth in this country is controlled by 1% of the population and decide to do something about it, we will have problems like homelessness and joblessness. Yes, some of it is preventable, but not all of it. We need change and we need to try and understand instead of criticizing. Welfare isn't what it used to be. People can't just sit on welfare any more. The limit for financial assistance is 5 years in a lifetime and the payments are below the poverty level -- not even enough to pay monthly bills. Gone are the days of welfare mothers having baby after baby just to get more money, though even when payments were higher there weren't that many of them. Now you have to be past poor to even qualify for less than $200 a month for a family of 4.

Homelessness is about more than money and mindset. It's a societal problem. Shelters are needed and will be needed unless and until we find a way to solve the housing problem. Don't put all the blame on the homeless. There is a bigger problem at hand here. Shifting the blame won't change anything. We need to look at it realistically and think up a way to deal with it in a constructive manner.