most shelters run by Cáritas (the equivalent of Catholic Charities) or the Red Cross. So-called “integration services” provided mainly by those two, the government and the all-trades Unions (which are very different from American ones, I think our model and the UK’s are similar); there’s many other associations which work mainly in collaboration with the ones above, for example the taken-out-of-my-left-elbow Association of Algerian Immigrants to Valladolid would work with other organizations providing interpreters and cultural mediation for Arabic-speaking migrants, specially from Northern Africa (not necessarily from Algeria).
being “without a house” and being “homeless” are two very different situations. A long-term homeless has nobody to rely on, no sofas to borrow; many are mentally ill or addicted. Of those who are mentally ill, a large amount would have lived in psychiatric hospitals before stays there became “voluntary unless court-ordered” (and court ordered only in lieu of prison, not for mental health problems).
there are many more resources for women with kids, or for children alone (we get way too many of those immigrating without papers), than for grown men alone.
I remember the discussion about the topic of that Cracked article a year or two ago. The authors of the study focussed on the “Six Million DOllar Man”. It’s the same all over North America, but they found one sterling example in NYC. When you add up ambulance calls, police work, but especially hospital stays and emergency care, this particular homeless guy over a few years had cost the system several million dollars. It was a revolving door - they’d patch him up, release him, he’d go get drunk/high, fall down or suffer exposure, bang his head or be puking his guts out within days, walk in front of a car, then back to the hospital for another round of MRI tests and expensive brain doctors.
The crux of the study, and the Cracked “mind-blow”, was that if providing a category 1-2 patient with a safe warm place to curl up and trip would save the system millions. Even if you spent $24,000 ($2,000 a month) to provide this guy his own apartment, even if you had to fumigate and rebuild it every few years, if the homeless person had a warm, safe, unmolested place to come back to with his bottle of cheap wine then the net benefit to the system is worth millions. Mosy of the medically expensive misadventures come from a person being out on the street.
However, most people balk at the idea of giving the worst dregs of the street a free apartment when there are line-ups of needy and more deserving people. They also cringe at the idea of giving someone a small room or apartment, letting them trash it, then just going back and fixing it up and keep letting them stay there. It goes against everything we’ve learned about behaviour, but then the Category 1-2 types do not really operate by rational logic, so trying to force them into it won’t work.
But to answer the OP, from what I have heard and read without first-hand information, young single healthy people are so far down the waiting list for public housing they may as well not be on it.
And to answer the 3-month discussion - OK, so what happens if the person/family needs a place and none is coming available? I gather from what you are saying, then no Motel 6 for them?
This is the problem - again, as soon as you start handing out cheap, quality housing that normally Category 3 people could not afford, the line-up will always exceed the supply. After all, how much do you have to be earning before “1/3 of income” is too much for a modest but well-maintained apartment? Heck, one of the students in my private school lived with his single mother in Ontario Housing. (Admittedly, tuition was quite low for the time…)
You really have no sympathy whatsoever towards people who “smoke in subway stations”? Really? That’s how you live your life?
Perhaps you should move to Singapore, where people are treated incredibly harshly for chewing gum in public, or for being caught on security cameras not flushing a public toilet. You’d fit right in.
Seriously, I just don’t get people like you. Surely you’re trolling. Poe’s Law and all, sometimes I can’t tell.
What I’d really like to know about the homeless is how they even survive in colder climates. I live in one of the coldest parts of Australia. Sometimes the temperatures in my city get down to below freezing. Sometimes even five degrees Celsius below. How does a homeless person in Moscow or New York, where temps often dip below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, actually live through the winter?
I don’t know about those cities, but Madison, Wisconsin takes them on a bus to a homeless shelter outside of town every evening when it’s cold weather.
They have a choice–freeze to death in town in the winter, or get on the bus and go to the shelter.
Generally they are at least sane enough to get on the bus. Cold weather has a way of forcing the issue.
Sometimes they don’t. When I lived in Chicago and took public transportation to work on two occasions I found frozen to death homeless people on my way to work. One was simply lying on a sidewalk as if he were sleeping there but he wasn’t. The other had attempted to shelter on the stairway entrance of a Loop subway station but between inadequate clothing and an extremely cold night did not survive.
In Chicago a lot of people hang out in the subway, or ride the trains or buses. They spend time in Union Station or the bus terminals or, before security went crazy, the airport terminals. Lower Wacker Drive used to have homeless colonies (it still might, for all I know), and they’d camp out in front of the ventilation ducts from the skyscrapers above - the building’s “exhaust” would be warmer than the outside temperature.
The last time I flew through LAX, in 2002, there were a lot of homeless young people sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor in the terminal. It seemed pretty clear that a lot of them just lived there all the time. They didn’t seem mentally ill or anything, they looked relatively well-kept and clean. I think they were just young and poor in LA, without anybody to let them crash on their couch, and without enough money for rent.
I didn’t ask, but I wonder if any of them worked at the terminal, or where actually they worked. I’m sure they worked somewhere…you can’t live in LA without a source of income.
When comparing apples to apples, a landlord renting to the poorest people is better off doing it through social housing than not.
If a tenant is being subsidized by the social housing authority, but breaches the subsidized housing contract (e.g. bad behaviour, property damage, etc.), then the subsidy is cut off, which makes it impossible for the tenant to come up with the rent for the landlord, which in turn makes it very easy for the landlord to get the tenant evicted by the Landlord and Tenant tribunal as compared to the more difficult approach of evicting based on disruption or damage. As the system stands now, a tenant’s appeal to the social housing tribunal will be heard within a week or two, whereas a hearing before a landlord and tenant tribunal will be heard withing a month or two. Tenants being evicted usually do not appeal on the grounds that they do not have enough money, but they often appeal on the grounds that it was someone else who held the wild parties or that it was someone else who ripped the place apart. By having the social housing tribunal hear the appeal forthwith (resulting in the subsidy being cut), it usually results in the tenant not bothering to fight the eviction that is then based on non-payment of rent. The bottom line is that when there is a serious problem, the landlord will be ableto get the trouble maker out more quickly if social housing is involved. Since the margin is very slim for the landlord, the difference of a month or two is very important.
The biggest benefit in social housing for the landlord is that the social housing authority pays for the cost of repair of physical damages to the property caused by the tenent (it is part of the clause in the contract that the landlord makes with the social housing authority). That’s a big incentive to landlords who are already in the bottom end market.
That being said, very few landlords want to rent to the bottom end of the market. Few of them start out wanting to be slum lords. Most of them end up ground down to that level, resulting in their not having the rental funds available to maintain the buildings and still make a decent profit. To address this, social housing authorities build up an inventory of their own properties, which cuts out the landlord’s profit, which in turn often makes the difference between properly maintained properties and poorly maintained properties. As with private sector rentals, the social housing authority must act quickly to remove the deadbeats and destroyers so as to be able to affort to maintain the inventory.
This leads to problems for the deadbeats and destroyers. Whether in private rentals, or social housing assisted private rentals, or social housing inventory rentals, if they are bad tenants, the get turfed. There are a lot of people who are not capable of living a normal existance without going off the rails and blowing their rent money, or trashing their home, or freaking out on their neighbours. Social housing does not work for these people.
The most recent problem arising in Ontario’s social housing system is that of seniors housing. (I am not refering to nursing homes; I’m talking about regular apartments for retirees.) A great many folks retire but can not afford to rent an apartment, so the are helped by social housing. It used to be that charitable organizations (usually cultural based) would build apartments for the seniors of their community. The Finnish community would build a retirement apartment building for Finnish retirees. The Italian community would build a retirement apartment building for the Itialian community, etc. This worked nicely, for retirees in would still be part of the community in which they had lived all their lives, surrounded by peole they already knew, rather than find themselves in an alien environment. Social housing, however, does not discriminate based on culture, so when a cultural community builds a retirement apartment building, there is no longer any assurance that it will be used by members of that community. That in turn has led to fewer apartment buildings for poor retirees being built. The government has set set the rules that have caused the decrese, but the government has not picked up the slack by building new buildings. Given the aging population, I expect that this will become a serious problem over the next few years.
The other growing problem for seniors in social housing is that it also does not discriminate based on age. Apartment buildings filled with seniors who are subsidized by social housing tend to be happly little communities. It may not look likemuch is going on, but there usually is a very active social network within these residences. Insert one or two nutters who are forty years younger and incapable of holding down a job due to drug problems or mental instability, and the the otherwise happly little community becomes unhappy due to the disruption that typically includes stench in the elevators, screamng in the hallways and in the apartmentunits, twenty-four hour drug dealing, associates more or less residing in the bad person’s apartment, and general intimidation. Quite simply, the bad people are now being mixed in with the regular retired folks. Just as the shortage of housing for seniors will become a serious problem over the next few years, I expect the disruption of the seniors’ lives in social housing communities by troublesome non-seniors will become a serious probem over the next few years. Also, the more the disruption of seniors is addressed, the more we will have to then deal with troublesome people having nowhere to go, for once they are kicked out of social housing, they have nowhere to go but the streets.
The process of evicting once the person has stopped paying rent can take months, especially if they know how to play the system. In this case she owes $8,000 about 5 months’ rent and it’s not over. She postponed the eviction process by paying back rent into the landlord’s account without telling him, then popping in with that information during the eviction hearing. Now the guy has to start the whole process all over again - get a judgement of late rent, an order to pay, no payment judgement, start eviction proceedings… Another victim says she owes them $12,000, certainly 6 months rent or more. If someone owns a duplex or fourplex, losing a significant part of your income, plus the hassle and stress of a legal fight is hardly worth it. It’s not a matter of “stop paying the rent and you’re out within a month”.
So it’s your basic Cracked article then? I love the site, but those guys are clearly making shit up to rile up their readers, who then post those links to Facebook or message boards and ask their friends, “Aren’t you outraged at this?”
As a librarian (thus, someone who deals with this kind of thing every day), I know that this article uses half-truths, exaggerations, and outright lies to make its point. Someone who doesn’t work with books all the time will look at and be outraged (just look at the Facebook Share button, 13,000 people were outraged enough to tell their friends). But that doesn’t make the article any less fictional.
Willis keeps blocking evictions by coming up with a fair bit of the rent at the last minute. Folks on social housing simply don’t have such resources available, otherwise they would not be on social housing in the first place.
Landlords can protect themselves from people like Willis by insisting on and checking references, by insisting on all rents being paid in advance by certified cheque or direct deposit, by keeping scrupulous maintenance records, by putting in an indemnification term in the contract with regard to legal costs incurred for evictions that are terminated upon payment of arrears, by beginning eviction proceedings immediately rather than letting arrears pile up, and by always asking for security for costs should the matter be further appealed beyond the landlord and tenant tribunal to a court of general jurisdiction.
Personally, I think one has to be nuts to be a low rent small holding landlord, for it puts too many of one’s eggs in one basket. Best leave that to mid-size and large corporations who can average the losses from deadbeats over the gains from the good tenants.
Willis keeps blocking evictions by coming up with a fair bit of the rent at the last minute. Folks on social housing simply don’t have such resources available, otherwise they would not be on social housing in the first place.
Landlords can protect themselves from people like Willis by insisting on and checking references, with insisting on all rents being paid in advance by certified cheque or direct deposit, by keeping scrupulous maintenance records, by putitng in an indemnification term in the contract with regard to legal costs incurred for evictions that are terminated upon payment of arrears, by beginning eviction proceedings immediately rather than letting arrears pile up, and by always asking for security for costs should the matter be further appealed beyond the landlord and tenant tribunal to a cour of general jurisdiction.
Personally, I think one has to be nuts to be a small holding landlord low rent, for it puts too many of one’s eggs in one basket. Best leave that to mid-size and large corporations who can average the losses from deadbeats over the gains from the good tenants.
In the last few years, the Landlord and Tenant Board has been holding telephone hearings, from which the deadbeats hang-up just as the hearing starts, and then claim telephone problems. I think the board has a lot of work to do in cleaning up it’s procedure to ensure that both parties are treated fairly, for often landlords are fucked when it comes to delays.
Homelessness is a problem in many U.S. cities. We could do more, but for numerous reasons, it’s a very difficult problem to solve. As has been pointed out, the need always seems to outgrow any available aid.
In all major cities that I’m aware of, emergency measures go into effect when weather conditions become life-threatening to the homeless. Armories, school gymnasiums, churches, etc., are turned into temporary shelters. There will be an attempt to round up everyone needing shelter, and transportation is provided.
For persons in families, the three most commonly cited causes of homelessness are lack of affordable housing, poverty, unemployment.
For singles, the three most commonly cited causes of homelessness are substance abuse, lack of affordable housing, mental illness.
Veterans are more likely than other populations to be homeless.
Racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African-Americans, are overrepresented.
People who are homeless frequently report health problems; 66% report either substance use and/or mental health problems.
No. For me to be classified as a homeless adult, I had to get a letter from my mother saying I couldn’t live with her; I didn’t know where she lived, so couldn’t get one. Because I’d already lived independently, paying my own rent till I couldn’t any more, I wasn’t eligible for help as a homeless child, and because I’d lived in 3 different boroughs in one year, none were responsible for me. 16 and 17 year olds often fall through the cracks this way.
There may have been more help available, but none I could find at the time, almost 20 years ago. I think it is easier these days to find out about help, but the govt definitely are not always the source for it, even for teenagers.
Funnily enough, it was liverpool st station, just around the corner from fenchurch st, where I slept a lot of nights. It had a carpeted ticket hall at the time and I just pretended I was waiting for the first train to stansted airport, because sometimes holidaymakers really would sleep at the station while waiting for that train.
When there’s a severe cold alert in Toronto, there will be emergency beds available and people driving around in vans encouraging the homeless to use those beds. Nevertheless, some people will still stay outside, perhaps making a little tent over a subway air vent out of cloth or cardboard to capture the escaping heat. Those few might get a donation of extra socks, extra sleeping bags, etc. to keep them warm.
People with kids, or women with kids? Long ago, when I was working in some social organism, we had a recently evicted single father of two. Even though we weren’t lacking infos about shelters and such, it proved to be impossible to find a structure that accepted them. They took in only men alone or only women with kids. And it was in summertime, so not an issue of crowding. Frustrating as hell, especially since they were really nice, all of them.
How true-it was actually better when large cities had “flophouses”-low rent places where a drunk/homeless homeless person can live for short money.
The USA basically created a big problem by "de-institutionalizing"millions of mentally ill, drug addicted people. These people cannot care for themselves, and create problems for cities and neighborhoods.
People with kids that they have sole custody for - if they have joint custody, it’s a bit trickier. It’s a statutory obligation, and we’re not talking shared rooms anyway.
Let’s remember that the U.S. also has public housing and housing assistance. This keeps many people from being homeless in the first place. A homeless shelter is for people who would choose between a shelter and sleeping on the street on a given night.