How bad is homelessness where you live?

In My Humble Opinion
81

A big driver of homelessness is that we’ve criminalized drug addiction and have gotten rid of every alternative form of housing for the mentally ill. Jails and prisons are the de facto dumping ground for addicts and the mentally ill, but are ill equipped to actually help those people as they’re geared towards actual criminals. Someone who commits crimes as a result of addiction or mental illness is not and should not be lumped into the same category as those who choose to commit crimes for their own reasons.

If we were working to help drug addicts to get away from needing and seeking drugs to deal with their psychic maladies and working as well to help the mentally ill to get properly medicated and to get therapy to beef up their coping mechanisms and then if we supported them in an ongoing way to KEEP them stable, I wager the number of homeless persons would drop dramatically.

82

So people taking drugs is bad, but people taking “medication” is good? From what I saw, some homeless people are not doing drugs, and some are hooked on prescription medication.

83

Yes, people addicted to meth and self medicating with heroin and fentanyl while dropping dirty needles all over the city is bad. And yes, someone who needs anti-psychotics or anti-depressants in order to function and not kill themselves or others is good. Way to be about as simplistic as it’s possible to be there, kudos.

84

It’s terrible how much homelessness there is in Montreal. (I say that homelessness is a problem, and not the homeless people themselves.)

And no, the homeless people here aren’t monsters or terrible people. Some of them actually had good jobs and homes before getting a lot of bad luck. And even those who never had good jobs, or have trouble getting a job at all - does that really make them less human? A lot of privileged people think that “everyone” can just “get a job,” and if you can’t, you’re lazy and not trying hard enough. Really, that’s not always the case. (And in Montreal, we have the additional barrier that a lot of jobs require more skill in French than some homeless people have.)

Even for poor or homeless people on welfare, guess what? In spite of what many people think, welfare actually isn’t a lot of money. And even if a homeless person is on welfare and gets some money on the side, whether from panhandling, odd jobs, etc., that’s still not going to make someone rich. Or diminish their problems that much. And it’s not even like all of that money gets wasted on booze and drugs.

There’s a phenomenon that happens in Montreal, that I don’t know to what extent happens elsewhere - a big number of our homeless people are Indigenous. They can have trouble finding jobs, and a lot of people are prejudiced against them, and Canadian settlers haven’t exactly treated the Indigenous people that well throughout history, to put it mildly. And a lot of the Indigenous homeless people in Montreal are Inuit who come from the Arctic, where conditions can get so bad - food shortages, overcrowded housing, problems with climate change, rampant physical and mental health issues, lack of help for problems - that sometimes moving south and living homeless on the streets of Montreal can seem almost like a step up to them.

And yes, we have shelters. They’re pretty overcrowded, and most of them don’t allow pets. For these and other reasons, there are people who prefer sleeping outside, which is an especially bad problem in the frigid Canadian winter. Sometimes homeless people actually do freeze to death here. It’s horrible.

I can’t always do much, but I do try to help homeless people when I can. I belong to a group who gives food to homeless people. I donate to shelters. And I know that although I’ve been fortunate to have food and shelter, if I didn’t have much of a support network, I could be in just as bad of a situation.

Even for those homeless people who can get on a waiting list for some sort of subsidized housing, the waiting lists are very long. In addition to that, there are better-off people who don’t want that kind of housing or “that kind of person” living near them.

Homelessness is a complex problem that can’t be easily solved. And the negative attitudes that way too many people have towards the homeless (including some of the people in this thread) is really not helping, and makes things so much worse.

85

Is it really very surprising that people who are not very bright, suffer from mental illness or have their brains addled by some addiction can develop a culture of dependency?

There will always be people who make a mess of their lives and shamelessly expect others to bail them out.

I am not sure there is any cure for stupidity.:frowning:

86

Mental illness isn’t the same as being stupid or not very bright.

87

Another really good point, and I for one am ever so grateful for more Pearls of Wisdom from the Smartest, Hippest!!!

I remember well how grateful and relieved my friend was when she found out that the 2 gentlemen who burglarized her home while she was out, (she was running errands for a friend who couldn’t drive that evening because he was too sick from his chemo treatment he had the day before) absolutely trashing it, urinating and defecating on the living room carpet and destroying the master bathroom to the tune of over $6.000, as well as stealing another couple thousand dollars worth of her stuff, including some irreplaceable family heirlooms with zero monetary value, were NOT actually criminals like she initially assumed, but instead just simple, hapless drug addicts, poor, longsuffering victims of an insideous, undiscriminating disease, helpless yet noble in spirit Saints of Circumstance who needed compassion, understanding and symapthy, not a few decades of incarceration , and/or perhaps someone beating them to a bloody pulp with a Louisville Slugger until they were shitting their own broken teeth for a week.

88

Agreed. There’s a big difference between heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, etc. and olanzapine, haloperidol, venlafaxine, ziprasidone, etc.

89

The majority of homeless are not sleeping on the streets, but are ‘squatting’ unused building, living in sub standard hostels, sleeping on night shelters, or sleeping on floors or couches of friends. They may be families. The reasons they find themselves in this precarious situation may be a personal crisis or misfortune. It may be no fault of their own. These people are best helped by charities and social workers who work in the area of homelessness and can help people get back on their feet. Some may have jobs and be highly embarrassed by their predicament, which is not uncommon where there is a housing shortage. Housing is best addressed by changes to public policy that encourage new home building.

However, it is common to see people who appear to be sleeping on streets in urban centres. They are there because that is where they most easily earn money by begging and they can get free food and drink and are near the dealers who sell the drugs and stores selling cheap alcohol. They may be suffering from addictive illnesses, mental illnesses or are simply prone to criminal delinquency and prefer to associate with others of the same disposition and be close to suitable targets for their mischief. Many do not actually sleep on the streets at all. They simply use the bedding and blankets as a ruse to persuade passersby that they deserve a charitable donation. Having a cute dog helps. They are confidence tricksters who are soliciting money to pay for a bad habit. Claiming to be homelessness is more likely to result in donations than asking for help to pay a dealer for some heroin.

90

I’m currently fostering a cat for a FOAF who is in this situation. In short, she and her boyfriend broke up, and she didn’t have the money to pay the deposit on a new apartment and no place from where she could borrow it. She’s living with my friend but the cat can’t be there due to allergies, so he’s staying with me for the time being. She’s employed, although in a per diem job, and I did refer her to my apartment complex’s rental office because it is pet friendly.

91

nearwildheaven, that’s a wonderful thing you are doing for the cat, and for the friend too.

92

Where I work, there are quite a few panhandlers. The city and aid agencies don’t coordinate at all, so there’s a lot of conflict between homeless, residents, and businesses.

In the suburbs where I live, there’s no homelessness that I can see, but I’m surprised by the number of discarded syringes I see in public parks. I’d always seen that as a coastal/western thing, but I guess now we have it in Atlanta.

93

My cat isn’t liking this very much, but my foster seems to be enjoying it here. Unfortunately, he has done something no cat I’ve ever had has done: I can’t put meat scraps into the garbage, because he will knock the can over, drag them out, and eat them. So, for now, I put a bag in the freezer and that’s where they’ll go until the trash can is otherwise full.

94

I live in Northern Norway. Apparently homelessness is down, but as I remember our definition of homelessness is someone who do not pay for their own dwelling, nor is a part of someone elses household. I.e. someone whose housing bills is paid for by the social service. Not just someone sleeping rough. Half the year, the climate wouldn’t be tolerating that. Not without some good gear.

Legal residents can have social security help them with a place to live, they have the right to the basic necessities of life. And here, that definitely includes shelter. Growing up, I never saw anyone sleeping rough here.

That being said, the last decade or so, we’ve gotten a lot of eastern European beggars coming round to beg in the summer. And sleep rough. Rumanians mostly. Except for the large numbers, they are well behaved, but the camps they make are pretty unhygienic and lacking in toilet facilities.

For some reason they do not seem to have a problem affording the fare up here, and the ones who come carpooling tend to have pretty good cars.

95

SE Michigan here. I’ve never noticed homeless people here. They’re either non-existent, or invisible, or living in their vans down by the river.

It’s not that homeless people are invisible to me per se. I’ve seen lots of them in San Diego, for example.

I think I saw mentioned on another thread that there’s a homeless camp near Ann Arbor, but I’d have no idea where to look. I live rather pretty close to Ann Arbor, so I’ll keep an eye out.

96

Sacramento Ca

Lots of homeless. North A and North B streets are always lined with tents of the homeless and displaced. it’s not as bad as Los Angeles, but only because we are about 1/8 of the size.

97

I live near Los Angeles in one of the areas between it and San Diego, one of the more middle class areas. I’ve noticed a massive amount of homeless pop-up in the last 5 years but I can’t really tell if it’s actual homeless coming from the nearby big cities or just a giant influx of methheads coming from the less populated areas out East of here. They’ve become incredibly aggressive in trying to get money and I’ve seen a lot of local grocery stores and even fast food places hire security guards to throw them out because it was actually getting really bad. Pan-handlers would literally stand by the cashiers at McDonalds and immediately ask for your change the moment the cashier gave it to you. They started setting up “Second-Windows” at drive-thrus where on on side was the fast food place giving you your food and literally on your passenger side window was a pan-handler standing right there looking at you and motioning for you to roll down your window so he could ask for money. I’ve had pan-handlers follow me into public buildings after asking for change and I didn’t give them any. I’ve had multiple pan-handlers upon receiving a buck or two in change loudly exclaim “That’s it?!” to my face. I use to be nice and actually treat them as human beings but the past 5 years have slowly worn me down immensely on them so I ignore them and go out of my way to not be near them. Apparently nobody around here can just take change and move on.