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I am the one who took issue with kicking out moms with babies and I would have been the one to contact the media. Not one person ever didn't leave, as the police would have been called. But I tell you, you have no idea how hard it is to put a mom and family out on the street with nowhere to go. I had to leave that job.
While I see your reasoning for keeping it at the state level, I also see room for potential abuse.
Keeping it at the Fed level like the programs of today proves that it doesn't work. Look at Clintons 5 year welfare cap. Now look at what is going to happen to those long term (5+ years) welfare moms that are about to be forcefully weaned from the system in DC.
Well intentioned programs have a way of getting abused by the very people they are supposed to be helping. Not by all mind you..nothing is 100%.
I'd rather sleep in my car. Do you really trust the government that they'll be letting people leave if they don't like it? If these places are out from populations how do the homeless become not homeless cut off from everything. Do you know how fast the survival mode hits when you walk into a room of fifty people sleeping on a concrete floor in little 1/4 inch mats and you are next? How short a time until you hit maintaince mode when the unbelievable is "normal" and the time before is, well, the time before?
And if you take these people there on busses with what they can carry (how else do they get there if they don't have cars) and they get "processed in" and someone is telling you what you can and cannot do all the time and there is some kind of barrier just what DO you call this place? Is this an image you really want in your head? Do we want government run "refugee" camps sitting there waiting for the next family who fell through the cracks?
And what if you decide you don't like this and would rather take your chances on the street? Do you get to leave on the next bus? And if the "instituionalized mode" hits so fast in a shelter in the middle of a city where tomorrow you don't have to come back and can leave anytime you want, just imagine the psychological effect of this psudo military detention camp.
A place in a park where people camp out and watch out with the city's blessing is a far far cry from that. But its visible. People hate seeing it. If instead you could have the bus waiting and get the reminders out of town so many would like the idea so much more. Until it got them.
Yes, we need a solution. This is not it. This is nightmares.
I'm envisioning it as an empty building, nothing more, nothing less. No "processing." Maybe an intake. Maybe cublicles for some privacy. Maybe even better.
I'd rather sleep in my car. Do you really trust the government that they'll be letting people leave if they don't like it? If these places are out from populations how do the homeless become not homeless cut off from everything. Do you know how fast the survival mode hits when you walk into a room of fifty people sleeping on a concrete floor in little 1/4 inch mats and you are next? How short a time until you hit maintaince mode when the unbelievable is "normal" and the time before is, well, the time before?
And if you take these people there on busses with what they can carry (how else do they get there if they don't have cars) and they get "processed in" and someone is telling you what you can and cannot do all the time and there is some kind of barrier just what DO you call this place? Is this an image you really want in your head? Do we want government run "refugee" camps sitting there waiting for the next family who fell through the cracks?
And what if you decide you don't like this and would rather take your chances on the street? Do you get to leave on the next bus? And if the "instituionalized mode" hits so fast in a shelter in the middle of a city where tomorrow you don't have to come back and can leave anytime you want, just imagine the psychological effect of this psudo military detention camp.
A place in a park where people camp out and watch out with the city's blessing is a far far cry from that. But its visible. People hate seeing it. If instead you could have the bus waiting and get the reminders out of town so many would like the idea so much more. Until it got them.
Yes, we need a solution. This is not it. This is nightmares.
Great Post
Out of site, Out of mind, is not a solution either, at least for these homeless people. It just buries the problem
Leave them in their hoovervilles...some form protective communities among themselves.
Instead donate items to them rather than "have the government do something".
People are going to need to learn to fend for themselves. Help them along but don't do it for them.
Social engineering is what gave us LT welfare moms with 5-6 kids that can't get make it on their own.
Well, I say let the Feds manage it, or you are going to get people going to states where the requirements are different and that might not work so well.
I understand that point of view, and am all for your program by county/state, but how do you reconcile the possibility of a majority of citizens from other states not desiring your program? Would you rather lose your program completely, or implement it in your own state (or let states who agree band together)?
It's the same solution as the one I gave for single payer: Let states who really want it provide it on their own, or join together with a uniform program and provide it instead of forcing it on everyone through the federal government. We don't all agree so let's not have a one size fits all. How would you feel if a federal government run by people you don't agree with, forced you to accept policies you don't want? Between Bush and Obama, almost everyone in America has known what it's like to be under federal government policies they strongly disagree with, so I'm amazed more people AREN'T advocating for less federal and more state-level programs on both the liberal and conservative sides.
Is that not a good compromise that makes us all happy?
Last edited by Freedom123; 01-14-2011 at 03:51 PM..
Clearly. They don't get your money now, as you've admitted in another post that you pay no taxes and no social security because you are self-employed and can figure out how to have a "zero" bottom line.
What will you do when very few people need to have water wells drilled anymore, or when almost no one can afford to hire you to drill wells?
Clearly. They don't get your money now, as you've admitted in another post that you pay no taxes and no social security because you are self-employed and can figure out how to have a "zero" bottom line.
What will you do when very few people need to have water wells drilled anymore, or when almost no one can afford to hire you to drill wells?
I'm sure that poster will figure something out, people like that always seem to be able to figure out how to maximize.
What I REALLY want is for Obama to stop allowing business to send jobs overseas! I want these businesses heavily penalized. I want our jobs back. However, since it would seem it's not going to go this way, it beats people living on the streets or killing themselves.
As to what they do all day? Look for jobs, do PT volunteer work, play cards, socialize, whatever. One of the biggest difficulties the unemployed have is the isolation that comes along with being unemployed.
I understand that is what you are saying and agree with that. But you suggested building "camps" and using the Fema camps way out of the way too. Before you think this is a wonderful idea, I ask. Have you ever been in a shelter?
It was up at 6am. Sometimes 5:45am if they decided. You didn't get to say no. Then you get your stuff picked up fast. Really fast since its in the way. I can roll up a blanket and pillows bundle in a couple of minutes. Then you go and get dressed. Fifty women and one large bathroom. If you play it right you don't have to wait outside when they pull out the tables when its cold. Then you get in the breakfast line. Dry doughnouts. kiddy cerial. Milk which may or may not be good. I usually just had a donught if it wasn't too dry and coffee. Then you have to leave. You can go whereever you want but if your not in the residental part you have to take all your stuff. I was lucky and had a car. If you don't you just hide it and hope it hasn't been stolen. I ate breaksast at a fast food place that let you sit around as long as you wanted. Went to the park, not the one everyone else did. Or the library. Dinner at Wendy's. The free food was often past the date it should have been thrown out but when donated that was usually why. Back in line by 5:00. 4:30 is better. Then stand with your stuff and hope you make it. If you do you get in the second line and still might not if they miss counted. Speed getting in line counts.
Then you get a mat and a space. You sit with your stuff and make up your bed. You don't wander. They tell you when your shower is up. Take shower and sit some more. You can talk if you want but you can't go across the room to talk. Lights out at 9:30, sometimes extended to ten. I would lay and read in front of them with a flashlight or sit in the bathroom and read to show them.
Yes, they are a Them.
Then you wake up and start all over again. If your in residental (VERY hard to do) you have to get a job. If you can't find one you have to get on county assistance which must be paid back if your homeless. Then they found various ways of kicking people out of that program and moving them back to the floor. You also have to put in a full day of chores at the shelter. People quit the program when they wanted the chores over work time.
I don't imagine this would be too different in one of these government run camps except it would be worse. You think a fifties/sixties person who has health problems is really going to benefit from this, or a child, or the immense psychological effect it has?
I still harbor immense satisfaction over how the b..ch who decided to kick me awake one day they decided to get us up early got drug tested and fired. I have a home now and its small but feels huge. But the FEAR of it dissapearing never goes away. This is what is happening to people who did make bad decisions and those who didn't. If you get chucked into an institutional situation and do a survival blink of adjustment you will always always remember. What must be remembered is suddenly being homeless is a paragram shift in life and you never forget. You feel like your options are evaporating and taking all of them away is just the worse you could do.
Sorry if this is emotional but I wonder how many who argue this have ever been sleeping on the floor of a shelter somewhere between grateful to get in and silently hissing at the power trips going on around you.
Exactly. Especially if you make it so that the chances of getting back out in the world are next to nil. There is a name for that. Even if you pay someone a few dollars a day since a bunch of people sitting around with nothing to do is NOT going to happen.
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