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Many homeless choose that lifestyle. They want to live life on their own terms, period. Don't want to be told what to do, or when to do it. That nixes work and career. Nobody can really force another person to work or want to live like a normal person. If I were king, I would round up the homeless and place them in a gated community for homeless. Here's your house or apartment. If you choose to still loiter in public places then, I would arrest and put them in jail. There have to be limits to their flouting of laws and societal norms.
Let's see...America already has the largest prison population per capita in the world. Let's add to that? Let's pay to build more prisons? More prison personnel?
I don't know the answer, but I don't think that's it.
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
13,065 posts, read 7,500,158 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Listener2307
Japan has a homeless rate of nearly zero. Might be something to learn.
In Japan, begging is illegal. You will be arrested. My country would start there.
And what does Japan do with the arrested?
JMO, shape up or ship out. Our resources are limited, not infinite. If they refuse to take medications, keep off drugs and other, keep proper civilized norms, there will be consequences that we will impose. We will give you the ultimate of choice and free determination. Your mind and body, Your choice. We will no longer, enable your behavior.
Japan has fairly accessible public housing and there isn’t much of a stigma against it. When I lived there, some teachers lived in public housing because that’s what they could afford. FWIW, contract teachers (who have not yet been certified) often live in this housing because their pay is too low for them to be able to afford anything else.
I think one main difference in places like Japan is that they live in much smaller apartments. You may have just a room to yourself, but it is a fully equipped efficiency apartment. You’ll have a small fridge/burner and can get a microwave and an otherwise convertible setup.
One of the main issues here is that most places do not allow for micro apartments. They may require the size of apartments to be at least 400sqft. That isn’t the case everywhere, but allowing micro apartments that are 200-300 feet (often in a loft setup) would make housing much more affordable.
Neighborhoods also need to do more locally. My town has mixed income housing (including affordable weekly rentals right in the downtown area), but all the new housing is very high end apartments or condos.
Arresting people for being homeless doesn’t help anything. A lot of homeless people really have nowhere to go.
So very, very many of the beggars are not homeless. They beg during the day and go home at night, but they are counted as homeless. If one town takes action they will find a town that does not.
Truly homeless people who have no place to go should be pitied and served. Small homes or apartments are a good idea as is education or medication.
I post this as a kind of thought experiment in order to avoid going down the political party rabbit holes.
If you had suddenly become in charge of this fictional U.S. with its very real homeless problem, what steps would you take to solve it? You have unilateral control, but similar budget constraints.
Finland solved their homeless problem, and the developing country we retired in, has no visible homeless.
What can be done in this most powerful, richest country in the world?
I don't know if this would completely fix the problem, but I would zone an area with a "anything goes" type language. Don't care if it's an eye sore. If someone wants to put up a shelter made out of corrugated metal and 2x4s, so be it. If they want to sleep in a tent, so be it. No building codes will be enforced, in this area.
Also, if a homeowner wants to turn their garage into a room to rent out, fine. If someone wants to rent out a bedroom, fine. BUT all these people will have to sign a waiver excusing the city from enforcing building codes.
I also would make it allowable for people to dumpster dive, if they wanted to, and I would make it allowable for restaurants to give away the food they don't sell at the end of the day. Again...with the knowledge that health codes are being suspended in this situation.
I like capitalism largely because I've found ways to be personally successful at it. I enjoy having a good job, having choice about what kind of job I do, having the freedom to choose what I spend my money on. I've found opportunities for personal happiness, participating in a capitalist society.
But for those who don't, like for instance my youngest son, it is brutal. It's living in a world where no one cares about you at all (well, except for me, his Mom, who has been struggling to keep helping him with his rent.) He has mental health problems that even with meds, have made it incredibly hard to be a proper, productive, capitalism-machine-feeding worker-citizen.
And sometimes I think, with all of the possibilities for automation of the jobs that no one really wants to do, that bring no real sense of purpose in life, could there come a time where a person's existence is not validated by "hard work"...a job just there so you can say you have one and are therefore a "worthy" person? I cannot think of a single model of governance or societal organization of a large population that does not inherently depend on the many laboring to support the extreme wealth of the few. Has there ever been one? I think that we've come closer to it in America than in other places, during times when our middle class was strong...yet even in those times, there were many who were excluded from the best outcomes, feeling safe and secure in life with all of one's most important survival needs met and not threatened.
Rethinking our entire society is not a very attainable goal, I think, in my lifetime.
But what I do believe to be more realistic is addressing the problem of the "working poor" as well as some of the more common reasons why some individuals are not ABLE to functionally participate (such as mental health.) A tremendous majority of those in America who can be realistically considered impoverished, DO HAVE JOBS. They work at least full time.
The obvious thing that many have pushed is raising the minimum wage, and the argument against it always seems to be, "well we can't control the businesses though and the cost of everything will go up, because of course they must all have profits that constantly grow." The only answer I've come up with for that is regulation on businesses' ability to raise prices or some regulation on what they do with their money. It has always struck me as odd that an average Joe American who will never be rich, will often have a lot more concern about a rich person's ability to stay rich and get richer, than he does his own ability to prosper, or that of other average Americans. It's like the saying I once saw that says that no one in America thinks of themselves as poor, we're all "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
But the current problem of housing is a big one, and regulating that industry would go a long way towards fixing things.
I've maintained for a long while now (before it became obvious and was on the news, because the job I work gives me insight to what my clients are doing, and they are the guilty parties here)...that it is Big Money, big investment firms, buying up residential housing like crazy ever since the 2008 crash, and renting it out or using it as inventory to game property markets, that is the issue. This is not your Mom & Pop landlord situation. This is a company that owns hundreds of thousands of residential units in multiple regions of North America and they are behind the "housing shortages" that we saw and the skyrocketing rents.
Another problem are the down payment requirements on buying a home. I believe that if a person has had steady employment, excellent credit, and a long, perfect history of paying rent on time, they should not be required to come up with a big chunk of cash to drop on a house in order to become a homeowner.
Because the situation as it stands is that these big companies keep the rents so high that no one can afford to save up a down payment if they can even afford to keep a roof over their head, and this forces them to continue renting whether they like it or not. And, as I mentioned, this market manipulation inflates property taxes, too.
While the goals of the Clinton Foundation are more globally oriented, Bill and Melinda Gates have taken to heart the adage that "charity begins at home." Over the past two decades, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through their Sound Families initiative, has spent millions in providing housing and other services for homeless families in Gates' home state of Washington. You can read about it at these links:
Referring to the original question posed by the OP, I think that Sonic_Spork here presented some very valid points on how to address the problem of homelessness, and also presented a viable plan for doing so. Hopefully, Sonic_Spork's post above is not too long a read for some people. I think it's a worthwhile read.
If I were King (or Queen), I would immediately bring Sonic_Spork onto my Royal Council and charge her with the duty of addressing our kingdom's homelessness problems. Because I think that a wise King (or Queen) ought to employ intelligent people to see that royal proclamations are carried out competently.
@Sonic_Spork: Would you join my Royal Council? I promise there would be an eventual knighthood in it for you. We won't talk about the consequences should you happen to fail your King/Queen.
I AM the Queen. I agree with putting Sonic_Spork in charge of the logistics.
In addition to helping the mentally who can be treated, we also have to accept that there is a segment of society that cannot be successfully treated or made to change in some way that fits what we think they should be. Those people still need to be housed and fed and made to be safe. The Realm will be a crappy place if we do not take care of those who cannot take care of themselves because we as a society will have failed.
This is such a multi-pronged problem in the US. I wonder if it will ever be solved.
When the commitment laws changed, lots of folks were released from institutions only to live on the streets. They did not go to family, or didn't want to, or their families didn't want them.....they didn't work.....or didn't want to.....they were addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, etc, etc, etc. Many did not want the structure of actually having a permanent place to live that was theirs or a job.
If I were queen, as others have said, I'd first put laws (back) into place that prohibited living on the street and panhandling....laws that were enforced. If you're arrested for these violations, the penalty is get a job. Any job. And prove that you are working. I think this only works if other states adopt similar laws and penalties. (good luck with that).
Along with that, somehow, we refurbish - when possible - old buildings....creating apartments with personnel and services to assist the folks who reside there. Like instead of an office with social workers or an adult education facility, these services are housed in the residential building. If the former homeless are not able to keep a full time job, then 'work' of some kind at the residential building could be offered or alternatively, the state could 'hire' these people for lower level, low-skilled work. (they do this in sweden, in exchange for welfare money, although I don't believe they call it that).
As a last resort, those who refuse to get themselves off the street must be reassessed by mental health professionals and possibly committed to a state facility for being unable to care for themselves, which living on the street proves.
I AM the Queen. I agree with putting Sonic_Spork in charge of the logistics.
You can be Mighty Queen and I shall be Mighty Maus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801
In addition to helping the mentally who can be treated, we also have to accept that there is a segment of society that cannot be successfully treated or made to change in some way that fits what we think they should be. Those people still need to be housed and fed and made to be safe. The Realm will be a crappy place if we do not take care of those who cannot take care of themselves because we as a society will have failed.
I'm old enough to remember the three, huge State facilities on Long Island that once housed and fed thousands of patients: Central Islip Psychiatric Center, King's Park Psychiatric Center, and Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center. While they did keep the mentally ill off the streets, two of these centers had been built in the 19th century and one only a couple of decades into the 20th century. Decades after the building of these institutions, the mentally ill population wasn't getting smaller, but these state-run centers were nevertheless down-sizing their patient populations. The closing of these state-run centers was inevitable, especially with the growing movement towards deinstitionalization, with patients receiving treatment at community mental health centers instead of being warehoused in these massive and antiquated state psychiatric institutions.
President Jimmy Carter saw a need for making a priority of our nation's mental health issues, and so he initiated the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 to provide federal grants to help support the newly emerging community mental health centers throughout the country. But then President Ronald Reagan came into office and promptly repealed the MHSA. So the grants to support community mental health centers were taken away and the mentally ill were simply released into the communities and expected to fend for themselves. Charitable organizations were not enough to deal with the problems.
We need once again to make a priority of our nation's mental health issues. We are certainly seeing a lot of people out there who are in need of help of one kind or another.
Perhaps it is time to revisit the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, make whatever revisions to it are pertinent now, forty years later, and actually do something on the national level to address our nation's previously unaddressed mental health problems.
I post this as a kind of thought experiment in order to avoid going down the political party rabbit holes.
If you had suddenly become in charge of this fictional U.S. with its very real homeless problem, what steps would you take to solve it? You have unilateral control, but similar budget constraints.
Finland solved their homeless problem, and the developing country we retired in, has no visible homeless.
What can be done in this most powerful, richest country in the world?
Prohibit the creation of investment instruments that profit from charging maximum rent while providing minimum services, and the price fixing that goes along with that. IOW, no more REITs! That goes for any type of domicile: apartment buildings, SFH's, mobile home parks, and storage unit complexes.
His/Her/Their Majesty/ies haven't decided yet what to do about the existing REITs.
Overlooked here, amongst the homeless, are those released from prison, who are, in many cases, unemployable. Like sex offenders who have served their time. And everyday there's a certain number released from our prisons.
It's been said: A good number of Americans are just 2 paychecks away from being homeless. Working in a LTC/REhab facility I met up with co-workers who were just 1 paycheck away from being homeless.
It costs a taxpayer, on a national average, $42.5k a year to have one homeless person our streets, comparable to prison costs of $40-50k a year. A homeless person falls and breaks a leg, off to the Emergency Room he goes, and there's hospitalization and rehab. Yup! All comes out of the wallets of taxpayers!
Many homeless people don't realize they're eligible for Medicaid. At the LTC/Rehab facility I worked at, we would get, on occasion, homeless people referred to us from Hospitals. A number of them were unaware they were eligible for Medicaid. By state law, we couldn't release any of them unless they had a secure environment to go to. Our Social Services person arranged all that. And free schooling and monthly food stamps.
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We won't talk about the consequences should you happen to fail your King/Queen. 
