Adopt-a-Homeless Person in Miami

[Kinola]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/miami-wants-allow-homeless-pitch-095507084.html
 

Came across this on Oohay. Since the article doesn’t allow comments, I brought it over here. 
 

Homelessness is no way for anyone to live, but…would you consider this method as a way to fight it? Do you see more cons or more pros? 

[Rippounet]

Another instance of asking the average citizen (likely middle-class) to compensate for the mechanical inequalities of our hyper-capitalist societies.

Meanwhile, the headlines in the past 24h were about how the Biden administration is giving up on taxing billionaires.

I'm sure Bezos, Musk, Gates & co, have some very nice front yards to welcome homeless people - some of which may be working for Amazon anyway...

[argonak]

On 10/30/2021 at 7:02 AM, Rippounet said:

Another instance of asking the average citizen (likely middle-class) to compensate for the mechanical inequalities of our hyper-capitalist societies.

Meanwhile, the headlines in the past 24h were about how the Biden administration is giving up on taxing billionaires.

I'm sure Bezos, Musk, Gates & co, have some very nice front yards to welcome homeless people - some of which may be working for Amazon anyway...

I mean, the Biden administration pretty much has to give up on anything the two fake democrats don't like at this point.  Honestly I'm surprised they're still talking about any of these bills.  Biden should just join with americans and complain about how fricking useless congress is.  I'm sure he does in private.

[argonak]

On 10/30/2021 at 6:58 AM, Kinola said:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/miami-wants-allow-homeless-pitch-095507084.html
 

Came across this on Oohay. Since the article doesn’t allow comments, I brought it over here. 
 

Homelessness is no way for anyone to live, but…would you consider this method as a way to fight it? Do you see more cons or more pros? 

If I knew the person, or it was family, of course.  But otherwise no, I'm not going to let some drug addict with mental issues ruin my yard instead of the local park.  This is not a problem for private individual to solve.  A huge proportion of homeless need to be institutionalized, because they're homeless due to inherent mental issues such as addiction or instability.   For the rest, they just need help getting back on their feet.

 

[Conflicting Thought]

1 hour ago, argonak said:

If I knew the person, or it was family, of course.  But otherwise no, I'm not going to let some drug addict with mental issues ruin my yard instead of the local park.  This is not a problem for private individual to solve.  A huge proportion of homeless need to be institutionalized, because they're homeless due to inherent mental issues such as addiction or instability.   For the rest, they just need help getting back on their feet.

 

Jesus. This is horrible.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, argonak said:

If I knew the person, or it was family, of course.  But otherwise no, I'm not going to let some drug addict with mental issues ruin my yard instead of the local park.  This is not a problem for private individual to solve.  A huge proportion of homeless need to be institutionalized, because they're homeless due to inherent mental issues such as addiction or instability.   For the rest, they just need help getting back on their feet.

 

This is a pretty gross characterization of the unhoused.  People are homeless for all sorts of reasons, and while agree 100% that this isn't a personal responsibility issue.  

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, argonak said:

If I knew the person, or it was family, of course.  But otherwise no, I'm not going to let some drug addict with mental issues ruin my yard instead of the local park.  This is not a problem for private individual to solve.  A huge proportion of homeless need to be institutionalized, because they're homeless due to inherent mental issues such as addiction or instability.   For the rest, they just need help getting back on their feet.

 

WTF is this shit? You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. JFC.

[Spockydog]

@argonak Read this and educate your ignorant-ass ass.

Adam's story. Working full time and still homeless.

Quote

 

“I was working as a chef in Swansea last year, but I got offered a better job in Devon through an agency. It was full-time, and salary based, which is not normal these days, so I went down for a three-day trial that went really well. It was a lovely place and they also had accommodation for the staff, so when the agency rang me up to say they wanted to offer me the position I said yes. I was living in shared private accommodation at the time, so I left my room and moved down there.

I worked for two months, but after Christmas they turned around and said they only needed me for seasonal work from then on. I’d signed a full-time contract, but they said that only applied if there was enough work. They did say I could come back when it picked up again, but I knew I’d just be in the same position when that ended. I was angry at the time, but it was just a lack of communication at the end of the day. I had to leave the staff accommodation, so that’s when I decided to come back to Swansea in January. I didn’t have enough money for a deposit on my own place, and I had no one to ask for help, but I managed to get my old job back, and I thought if I worked full-time for long enough I could save it myself.

I don’t have any family anymore. My dad left when I was four and my mum died of cancer when I was seventeen. I have one brother, but we don’t get along, and I don’t speak with him. The year after my mum died, my nan passed away as well, so then it’s just been me. After mum died I was taken into care until I was eighteen, and then I went to catering college for two years. I’ve been working as a chef and living in shared houses ever since.

I stayed on a friend’s sofa at first, but you quickly end up feeling like a burden to people. I didn’t want to overstay my welcome, and I still had that bit of pride that I could do things on my own, so I moved into a B&B, just so I had a roof over my head. The B&B was ok, but I was soon working fifty or sixty hours a week just to pay for the room, and for basics like travel and food. However hard I tried it was completely impossible to save enough money. I started to worry I’d be stuck in that B&B forever, so I went to the housing officer and told them my situation, but they just said that because I was in full-time work they couldn’t help me. I explained that I just needed help with the deposit, but they said there was nothing they could do for someone in my situation, even if I had to sleep on the streets to save the money myself, so that’s what I had to do."

 

 

[Spockydog]

And while you're at it:

Britain’s shame: the people who are homeless, even though they’re in work

Quote

 

Around one in three of the people bedding down here are in work. The night I went, the charity’s co-founder, Sheila Scott, looked down the list of guests and identified their employers. It was a roll call of Britain’s consumer economy: Starbucks, Eat, Pret. A woman who travelled three hours to work at a Co-op grocery. Pubs, McDonald’s, a courier for Deliveroo.

The former Tory minister George Young described the homeless as “what you step over when you come out of the opera”. No, Sir George: today’s homeless deliver your takeaways and pull pints at the local. Then they kip on park benches. Martin, who works for Islington council taking disabled children to school, told me how he’d spent a month sleeping either in Hampstead Heath or by the canal near London Zoo. “I was exhausted all the time,” he said. Some mornings, he’d knock for the children still clutching the bag that held all his belongings.

 

 

[Heartofice]

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/statistics/mental-health-statistics-homelessness
 

Id say the percentage of people on the streets with mental problems and substance abuse is very high ( the above suggests 80% suffer mental health issues), and the two things are connected. While Argonak’s language isn’t going to win him any friends, most people are simply not equipped to deal with those problems and it’s really not up to individuals to step in.

This is one of those things where the state has to step in and do more to assist those in need, with proper provision for mental health assistance, more and better places for homeless to stay and ways to help the homeless become more self sufficient.

[argonak]

On 11/2/2021 at 9:02 AM, Spockydog said:

WTF is this shit? You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. JFC.

Yeah?  Tell that to the lady that screams at my kids at the local park.   Or the addicts that left thousands of needles, human waste, and tons of stolen items when they were finally evicted from the park in the city I live next to.   And when they were interviewed, and offered halfway housing and support, THEY SAID NO.  Instead they'd rather continue to ruin our cities and spend their days on drugs and pan handling on street corners.  This is a huge problem in the Puget Sound.  And frankly its going to cause huge harm to the homeless who just want help getting back on their feet, because the ones people actually see are the people setting fires and stealing catalytic converters.  Dumping trash next to highways.  Throwing bricks at cars.   Stealing kids bikes.   

So when something finally gets done and all these soft solutions fail, its going to be the conservatives with their utter hearts of stone that actually get elected to "fix it," in their own unique and vile ways.

 

edit.  i was having a bad day and was in a bad mood.  I kinda went off the handle and I'm sorry about that.

[aceluby]

59 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/statistics/mental-health-statistics-homelessness

 

Id say the percentage of people on the streets with mental problems and substance abuse is very high ( the above suggests 80% suffer mental health issues), and the two things are connected. While Argonak’s language isn’t going to win him any friends, most people are simply not equipped to deal with those problems and it’s really not up to individuals to step in.

This is one of those things where the state has to step in and do more to assist those in need, with proper provision for mental health assistance, more and better places for homeless to stay and ways to help the homeless become more self sufficient.

From that very article it states that in the EU ~13% state that mental health is the reason they are homeless, and even that is because they are self-diagnosing because they can't get adequate care.

There's also the fact that these people are fucking homeless which might impact ones mental stability when you're working 60 hours a week and can't even afford a car to sleep in.  Don't know about you, but that would make me pretty fucking depressed.

John Oliver just did a good segment on homelessness and one of the very first things he brings up is how utterly and fucking stupid this line of thinking is.  It's a way for people to justify homelessness as a personal problem because of a character flaw, and not the systemic issue it is.
 

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, aceluby said:

 

John Oliver just did a good segment on homelessness and one of the very first things he brings up is how utterly and fucking stupid this line of thinking is.  It's a way for people to justify homelessness as a personal problem because of a character flaw, and not the systemic issue it is.
 

Have to disagree, it’s not about highlighting character flaws and passing blame, it’s about highlighting a problem and finding an appropriate solution. Blaming systemic issues ( like what? House prices? Try fixing that because nobody has) isn’t going to help people who will struggle to support themselves without adequate help. 
 

[aceluby]

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

Have to disagree, it’s not about highlighting character flaws and passing blame, it’s about highlighting a problem and finding an appropriate solution. Blaming systemic issues ( like what? House prices? Try fixing that because nobody has) isn’t going to help people who will struggle to support themselves without adequate help. 

 

The biggest issue affecting homeless is, you guessed it.... homes.  It's not addiction or mental health issues.  It's affordable housing.  And whenever it's brought up, liberals and conservatives band together to NIMBY any thought of dealing with the issue with price controlled, low cost, affordable housing.  Even in areas where homelessness runs rampant, any idea of dealing with it by building means tested, low cost rentals is shot down.

If you want to deal with homelessness you need homes to put these people in.  It's that simple.
 

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, aceluby said:

It's affordable housing.  And whenever it's brought up, liberals and conservatives band together to NIMBY any thought of dealing with the issue with price controlled, low cost, affordable housing.

Not for nothing, but Biden's reconciliation framework does include $150 billion for housing.  Granted, that's cut in half from the about $300 billion proposed in the original $3.5 trillion bill - and I'm too lazy to look up what exactly was kept in there - but still.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

29 minutes ago, DMC said:

Not for nothing, but Biden's reconciliation framework does include $150 billion for housing.  Granted, that's cut in half from the about $300 billion proposed in the original $3.5 trillion bill - and I'm too lazy to look up what exactly was kept in there - but still.

That's a nice sum of money, but do we have a good idea of what the real world impact would be? For example, is there a risk that a lot of the money gets slow walked or flat out doesn't go out like we've seen with the rental assistance funds?

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

That's a nice sum of money, but do we have a good idea of what the real world impact would be? For example, is there a risk that a lot of the money gets slow walked or flat out doesn't go out like we've seen with the rental assistance funds?

Again, I don't know what was kept in Biden's framework.  Under the original proposal, there was about $90 billion for rental assistance but also similar-to-more funding for public housing and Medicaid's program (HCBS).

[BigFatCoward]

It takes a truly perverse person to think 'of course they are homeless, they are junkies' instead of 'of course they are junkies, they are homeless'.

How would you not turn to chemicals to numb the pain, FFS. 

[Kinola]

Unfortunately, I think deinstitutionalization in the '80s caused the homelessness crisis to worsen, so while argonak's comment is harsh, he's not entirely wrong.

Deinstitutionalization and the homeless mentally ill

Quote

Although homelessness among the chronically mentally ill is closely linked with deinstitutionalization, it is not the result of deinstitutionalization per se but of the way deinstitutionalization has been carried out. The lack of planning for structured living arrangements and for adequate treatment and rehabilitative services in the community has led to many unforeseen consequences such as homelessness, the tendency for many chronic patients to become drifters, and the shunting of many of the mentally ill into the criminal justice system.

 

 

[argonak]

On 11/2/2021 at 7:49 PM, Kinola said:

Unfortunately, I think deinstitutionalization in the '80s caused the homelessness crisis to worsen, so while argonak's comment is harsh, he's not entirely wrong.

Deinstitutionalization and the homeless mentally ill

 

 

Yeah, I was having a bad day and I was overly harsh, and I apologize for that.