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I watched an interesting show that matches this topic of homelessness and society's responsibilities. It was called Seattle is Dying and was filmed about a year ago. I saw it on youtube a few days ago. It basically says by being compassionate and letting homelessness to fester on our streets, we are actually being very cruel to the person because we aren't treating them. I would encourage everyone to watch it.
Now that you mentioned it, homeless people are so common that they are frequently ignored by law enforcement and random passerby (I've traveled for work and observed this especially in large cities.) The whole reason the problem of homeless people is hard to fix is some of them are uncontrollable & others are happy (in their own way) with their lifestyle.
More specifically on the topic of the impact of families rejecting people at risk for homelessness...To a degree law enforcement dumps off transient people on their next of kin. I had a family member who would get picked up constantly for being drunk in public (among other issues) and eventually he would be released from jail....That particular county jail was already housing hundreds of men who either were not wanted at home or could not function in society at large.
Naturally my relative would come back to the family house until we had to call the cops again to remove him for (insert XYZ nuisance activity). Due to legal technicalities the only person who could bar him from returning was too enfeebled to make a responsible decision about legally barring him from the family property. In cases like this addicts and mentally unstable people prey on their nearest relatives to enable their lifestyles. It's sad but legally society at large cannot stop these situations until someone gets incarcerated for a long period, or someone dies and a responsible person can make decisive decisions.
Court orders can hold a custodial to 24 years. I feel sorry for any single person who has to fund that long.
As a foster kid, at 18 it was out their door.
Clearly they were in it for the money.
I had a relative who was schizophrenic. He, also, was an alcoholic.
In the past, such people most likely would have being institutionalized for the rest of their lives. When deinstitutionalization started being championed by both sides of the aisle, then became law, mental institutions closed all over the country. While, it was true that there were people in these places who didn't belong there, that didn't call for throwing out the baby with the bath water. Many of those people did belong in such places.
That old saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" applies here. It was naively thought that if people were released and given instructions to go to X clinic X times a month to get their medication, all would be well. However, many of these people were let out and they had no place to go. Schizophrenics will take their meds for a while then decide they are fine and no longer need meds. Thus the illness rears its ugly head and they get hospitalized for a couple of days to get stabilized. They are released and the cycle starts once again. Some do have families who are doing their best to keep them on an even keel but they can't be there 24/7. Schizophrenics are a good example of people who need to be institutionalized for their entire lives.
My schizophrenic relative was a perfect example of the above. In his case, he would go off his meds and during that time frame would do something like swallow a lot of pills or cut his wrists. In each case, he would call an immediate family member and tell them what he did. Of course, they would arrange to get him to the hospital. Then the cycle would start yet again.
He moved to an apartment in a high rise building. When he moved in, he told his immediate family that as soon as he figures out how to get the screen out of the window, he was going to jump out of it. They dismissed it as just talk but...it turned out not to be "just talk".
I truly believe that if he had been institutionalized, he would still be alive.
All this isn't meant to say that all schizophrenics are the same way. There are a small number of them who do keep taking their meds but they are the exception, not the rule.
I've heard of at least one mental institution that was shuttered in the 80s and still stands empty. Many of the patients who were released had no place to go and ended up living on the grounds of the place. That strikes me as very sad.
I have a friend with a similar situation. Her son was a good kid, mostly, until his father, who was divorced from mom, was imprisoned for assault, strong arm robbery, and drug use. Once the father was sent up, the son started acting out, and using drugs. Mom was having a hard time controlling him, and she put him out of the house after he violently assaulted his sister.
On the street he really got into drug use, and would get arrested for various things, but they always gave him probation and send him home to his mom, and the cycle would start over. Finally he started having psychotic breaks and his mom had to call the cops several times. They diagnosed him as schizophrenic and put him on meds, but he wouldn't take them consistently.
Eventually when he was over 18, and committed yet another crime, he was jailed and the jail wasn't giving him his meds. His mom begged them to give him the meds, but they wouldn't. He was often suicidal, incoherent, raving, he even exposed his genitals to his mother when she visited. Finally he committed another violent crime in jail, and his mom went to the newspapers, and did a TV interview to try to get him help. His case was picked up, pro bono, by a civil rights attorney that saw the TV interview. That got him his meds in jail, and once he was taking them regularly he was eventually released to a voluntary lockdown facility, where he lives to this day, 15 years later. I guess you could call it a success story, he's not in prison, or on the streets, but it's such a waste of human potential. If there had been appropriate early intervention, he might have been rehabilitated before reaching the full-on schizophrenic point of no return. There was no way his mom could have afforded drug rehab when he first got into the drugs as a teen, but I believe that the drugs brought on the schizophrenia.
I watched an interesting show that matches this topic of homelessness and society's responsibilities. It was called Seattle is Dying and was filmed about a year ago. I saw it on youtube a few days ago. It basically says by being compassionate and letting homelessness to fester on our streets, we are actually being very cruel to the person because we aren't treating them. I would encourage everyone to watch it.
Anyone who thinks just letting homeless people hang out without also thinking we need to do something to help them has to be delusional. It's the foolish kind of "compassionate" that thinks "live and let live" is enough. The same sort of person who probably thinks as long as someone is alive, life is good.
The compassion comes in when you don't just let people be told "move along" even though they have nowhere to go, but then you try to make it better-- some people forget the second part.
The problem is that often the people who want to try to help are fought at every turn by other people who don't want to, and figure nobody should get "handouts" and homeless people should "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and think "nobody gave me anything for free."
(But, see my reply below-- at the end of the day, if a person doesn't want treatment or help, or if they seem to be beyond reach, the question becomes what can you do then.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by SkyLark2019
Now that you mentioned it, homeless people are so common that they are frequently ignored by law enforcement and random passerby (I've traveled for work and observed this especially in large cities.) The whole reason the problem of homeless people is hard to fix is some of them are uncontrollable & others are happy (in their own way) with their lifestyle.
More specifically on the topic of the impact of families rejecting people at risk for homelessness...To a degree law enforcement dumps off transient people on their next of kin. I had a family member who would get picked up constantly for being drunk in public (among other issues) and eventually he would be released from jail....That particular county jail was already housing hundreds of men who either were not wanted at home or could not function in society at large.
Naturally my relative would come back to the family house until we had to call the cops again to remove him for (insert XYZ nuisance activity). Due to legal technicalities the only person who could bar him from returning was too enfeebled to make a responsible decision about legally barring him from the family property. In cases like this addicts and mentally unstable people prey on their nearest relatives to enable their lifestyles. It's sad but legally society at large cannot stop these situations until someone gets incarcerated for a long period, or someone dies and a responsible person can make decisive decisions.
Sure, and it's a big problem to fix. When someone has mental illness or addiction, when someone has spent their whole life being treated as the fringe or dirt of society and has the long-ingrained attitudes to match, when someone simply isn't used to living a "normal" life and doing so feels odd and foreign and perhaps scary, whatever, it's a long and harrowing and difficult and probably expensive process to try to help. A lot of people want to think they're going to pick up someone homeless, take them off the street, plop them in a house, and all will be well. It's not that easy. They want to think homeless people are like them, just happen to not have a place to live at the moment, and it's not that easy. So, when the going gets rough, it's easier to give up. In some cases, it may well be the only option; in others, the person may just need more work but it's more than anyone can manage. Who knows.
Sure, and it's a big problem to fix. When someone has mental illness or addiction, when someone has spent their whole life being treated as the fringe or dirt of society and has the long-ingrained attitudes to match, when someone simply isn't used to living a "normal" life and doing so feels odd and foreign and perhaps scary, whatever, it's a long and harrowing and difficult and probably expensive process to try to help. A lot of people want to think they're going to pick up someone homeless, take them off the street, plop them in a house, and all will be well. It's not that easy. They want to think homeless people are like them, just happen to not have a place to live at the moment, and it's not that easy. So, when the going gets rough, it's easier to give up. In some cases, it may well be the only option; in others, the person may just need more work but it's more than anyone can manage. Who knows.
My personal view are because I ended up losing a childhood friend to the streets. "Jane" was burdened with learning disabilities, had a horrific home life as a kid, and didn't understand the basic rules of living in the States (work or be homeless, welfare is not an entitlement, etc.) I hate putting it this way but she was fated for a lifetime of suffering and pain.
Bizarrely enough we stopped being friends over religious views- what kept her going was the idea that somewhere, somehow "God" would help her out eventually. I ended up excelling in my life by rejecting that idea entirely.
Tragically the poor and out of luck in society will always exist. In my lifetime I've only seen social aid programs "fix" homeless people when that homeless person accepted that there was literally no other way for them to keep existing. & Yes it's true this is the closest we will get to fixing the problem, being there with a helping hand for the ones who really do want to re-introduce themselves to society.
I was never homeless because I went into the navy at 17.
But the fact is, I had no other place to go. My father and step mother had no interest in keeping in touch.
Those were tough, tough, years. I stayed aboard ships and so forth for 9 years until I gained enough confidence to get out and pursue a career in sales. I am retired now.
I never saw my family again.
There were probably others in my situation, but they never identified themselves to me. For that matter, back in those years I never talked about it.
I was never homeless because I went into the navy at 17.
But the fact is, I had no other place to go. My father and step mother had no interest in keeping in touch.
Those were tough, tough, years. I stayed aboard ships and so forth for 9 years until I gained enough confidence to get out and pursue a career in sales. I am retired now.
I never saw my family again.
There were probably others in my situation, but they never identified themselves to me. For that matter, back in those years I never talked about it.
I totally hear you. Most of my drinking buddies in the Navy had deliberate chose the Navy because they knew they'd literally be many thousands of miles from relatives they were either sick of, or did not intent on keeping in touch with..............
In American culture we're too quick to assume that teen agers have done something to bring misfortune upon themselves. Ask any recruiter, family conflict is a common reason for a lot of young people enlisting in a hurry.
My abusive parent knew how to play the system so her tactic was to claim her kids were "uncontrollable" when in reality she lacked the spine to make better decisions for herself and her family. I left when I turned 18.
Related to this, these days voluntarily homeless people are called crust punks or "freegans." There's a subculture of this lifestyle because a lot of law enforcement are trained to view transients as potential troublemakers or addicts. Myself and a lot of my friends easily got "back on track" when we were ready to...
True, some of them are homeless because they're mentally ill, AND do drugs and alcohol. And some of them are homeless because they refuse to work, AND do drugs and alcohol. But you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who is homeless, who is willing to work, not mentally ill, and doesn't do drugs and alcohol.
Bingo.
Addicts know exactly how to manipulate caring people and they game the stupid system.
Talk to them and they immediately start with the bipolar adhd excuse model, they know how to play that tune. They won't go to free treatment such as AA or NA because they know nobody is buying it.
They remain sick until they choose to surrender.
Anyone who thinks just letting homeless people hang out without also thinking we need to do something to help them has to be delusional. It's the foolish kind of "compassionate" that thinks "live and let live" is enough. The same sort of person who probably thinks as long as someone is alive, life is good.
The compassion comes in when you don't just let people be told "move along" even though they have nowhere to go, but then you try to make it better-- some people forget the second part.
The problem is that often the people who want to try to help are fought at every turn by other people who don't want to, and figure nobody should get "handouts" and homeless people should "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and think "nobody gave me anything for free."
(But, see my reply below-- at the end of the day, if a person doesn't want treatment or help, or if they seem to be beyond reach, the question becomes what can you do then.)
Thus, tens of thousands of mental patients were released into community-based houses or subsidized apartments or back to their families. Many if not most of them did not rehabilitate, did not adjust and become "normalized". Instead, they became homeless, and substance abuse and prostitution were common.
It was all something of a reaction to the grim incarceration of the 1950s and earlier, the type of places that inspired One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Not to mention, closing these facilities saved the states lots of money.
With few advocates for the mentally ill, and many advocates for budget cuts, the necessary mental care facilities have all but disappeared.
With all the this-lives-matter, that-lives-matter activism going on, perhaps someone will wake up and realize that the mentally ill and other down-and-out lives also matter, and people will vote to fund decent care facilities.
It's also worth pointing out, most mass shooters gave strong indications of mental illness prior to their murderous acts. The families frequently were interviewed as saying "We always knew something like this was going to happen, but no one would listen to us!"
If we could identify troubled youth while still in high school or soon thereafter, and get them the treatment they desperately need, we could greatly lower the homeless and prison populations as well as cut down on street crime. Just my opinions!
Thus, tens of thousands of mental patients were released into community-based houses or subsidized apartments or back to their families. Many if not most of them did not rehabilitate, did not adjust and become "normalized". Instead, they became homeless, and substance abuse and prostitution were common.
It was all something of a reaction to the grim incarceration of the 1950s and earlier, the type of places that inspired One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Not to mention, closing these facilities saved the states lots of money.
With few advocates for the mentally ill, and many advocates for budget cuts, the necessary mental care facilities have all but disappeared.
With all the this-lives-matter, that-lives-matter activism going on, perhaps someone will wake up and realize that the mentally ill and other down-and-out lives also matter, and people will vote to fund decent care facilities.
It's also worth pointing out, most mass shooters gave strong indications of mental illness prior to their murderous acts. The families frequently were interviewed as saying "We always knew something like this was going to happen, but no one would listen to us!"
If we could identify troubled youth while still in high school or soon thereafter, and get them the treatment they desperately need, we could greatly lower the homeless and prison populations as well as cut down on street crime. Just my opinions!
I so agree with everything in your post. The issues of mental health are just swept under the rug, or people try to "normalize" what are serious mental health issues that should be addressed in a residential lockdown situation. Families are crying out for help, but the system is not there for them. The families need support and institutional care is sometimes needed, at least temporarily, but is just NOT AVAILABLE. The country is turning their back on the families, and the folks that are ill are paying the price. For those that are violent, the public at large pays the price as they become victims of serial killers and mass shooters. Families often say, after the fact, that they tried to warn authorities but no one would listen, or there was no way to get the help they needed.
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