This thread hits home with me–I’m also a Portland resident and last year I worked right in the middle of NW Portland, which is homeless bum central. The building I worked in is an old wooden historic building that has a bit of yard around the side and back and it’s located right next to a mental health clinic. The homeless we had to deal with were about evenly distributed between old alkie/druggie bums and the fashionably homeless youth. I had to clean up human shit from the back stairs, my boss constantly had to hire people to come in and clear out the garbage left in back–sheets of cardboard, stinky blankets, empty beer bottles, food refuse, etc. Used needles were a commonplace item back there and a couple of times the fuckers had lit campfires right next to a 100+ year old wooden building that could’ve gone up like tinder. There was one guy who’d pass out on our front steps constantly and I had to walk past him to get in the building–he’d freak out if I woke him up and he pulled a box knife on me several times. One crazy lady scared the crap outta me when I came around the corner and surprised her–she started screaming and accusing me of poisoning her with my mind. Ooohhh-KAY then.
At any rate, it was at best gross and annoying, and at worse fucking scary as hell. I started bringing my dog to work with me because the fucking bums were scared of him. The cops can’t do shit about it, although they did talk to box knife guy a couple times, not that it did any good. So yeah, on the one hand I have a lot of sympathy for a lot of the homeless people (though absolutely NONE for the fashionably homeless youth, many of whom have better camping gear than I do) but on the other hand I have to say the situation is way out of control and something needs to be done about it. We had Dignity Village for a while, a tent city for the homeless but it got shut down due to liability issues–which I can totally understand.
Part of the problem is that a lot of the old SRO hotels have been either demolished or renovated into high dollar real estate–downtown Portland is not a cheap place to live and who wants to make a buck eighty five a month renting rooms to bums when you could sell the land for megabucks to a condo developer? There are no cheap places close to downtown where a bum warehouse could be set up and even if there were the city doesn’t have the money for it. It’s a problem, for sure, and there’s very little in the way of easy answers.
Disclaimer: I’m 3/4 the way through a bottle of vodka
I did not start the rant (OP), I only concurred. I never mentioned jailing the homeless.
You mention you don’t have a solution yet you asked me to provide one. I do not understand your attitude of “I-can’t-think-of-a-solution” so let’s let them fuck it up those of us who are pulling their weight. Like I said - Been there, done that. And you know what? I never shat in public (much less on someone’s stoop) and I never panhandled in front of someone’s store (I never panhandled at all). I understand the rights of the homeless, do you understand the rights of the rest of society?
Agreed. But it’s still just a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. The issue isn’t going to go away. He’ll be back soon to take another dump on your doorstep.
That’s true. But tell me…where do depressed, alcoholic, mentally ill, just-don’t-give-a-fuck people GO if they don’t go to the library? There aren’t that many places for people to idle. It’s warm and safe at the library. Of course they’re going to gravitate there. What’s the alternative?
I didn’t mean to imply you said you wanted to jail them. Nor did I say anything about letting them fuck it up for the rest of us. Nor did I pass responsibiity to anyone to figure it out because I can’t. What I’m saying is that we need to decide if we dislike the problems that come with homelessness enough to pay a LOT more in taxes to put a real dent in the problem. You’ll need more cops to arrest them, more money to jail them, more money to treat, medicate, house, convict, train, etc. All I hear is people bitching about how they don’t want to pick up the slack for those who are a burden on society. There’s no alternative for a civilized society. We either pay enough money to fix it or we put up with the problem.
Holding down a no-brain job in an office, warehouse, or what have you is not all that hard, nor does it require you to be ‘selfish’, ‘greedy’, or wildly ‘successful’.
In all those supposed caring and non-capitalist societies out there where jobs hold a ‘deeper’ meaning rather than cater to the selfish and greedy, and employers are caring of their employees regardless of whether they make a profit, and the government has oodles of money to care for the less fortunate of society, I guess they don’t have homeless? Here’s the solution: Ship the homeless to wherever these fantasy lands exist, or better yet, send everyone else (as I’d want to live is such a fantasy world myself) and leave the empty houses here for the homeless.
This kind of goes hand in hand with the “stupid people” thread. These jobs don’t exist in the numbers they used to. And it doesn’t fix the broken people who cannot understand or appreciate the value of work, either on a personal or national level.
It’s not like if you lose your job you’re out on the streets giving blowjobs in portapotties tomorrow. Because it’s possible to, you know, save money. It’s possible to recieve–get this–unemployment insurance. It’s possible to get food stamps, rent assistance, disability, energy assistance, free food, medical assistance, job training. There are shelters and soup kitchens and missions. There are churches and government programs everywhere.
There are literally dozens of programs that will keep you from living in a portapotty.
It’s not like that piss-stained homeless guy begging for change on the street corner had a job last month until some greedy capitalist fired him, and now he’s permanently screwed. People who lose their jobs can get another job. The reason that guy is begging for change is because he’s screwed up in some way, probably multiple ways. Giving him a job isn’t going to work, because this guy is fucked up and he wouldn’t be able to handle a job, even the simplest one. Even the simplest job requires you to show up on time every day, not stink, not scream randomly, and at least go through the motions.
There are plenty of people who are unable to do even this. They aren’t homeless because of capitalist greed, they’re homeless because they’ve got so many problems they can’t keep even a minimum wage job. Threatening these people with jail unless they clean up their act isn’t going to work, it just means these guys are going to be in jail instead of on the streets. It would be cheaper by far to open a fleabag style hotel and give homeless guys free rooms than to jail them. It’s not like all they need is a good kick in the ass and then they’ll straighten up, for crying out loud. You don’t think living on the streets doesn’t provide multiple kicks in the ass every day?
A question; a few years abck, the SF City Council discussed having a voucher system for the bums. basically, people would be forbidden to give cash to bums-it leads to alcohol consumption and gfights. instead, the city would sell vouchers, which the homeless could use to buy food only (no alcohol).
Was this ever eneacted and did it work?
It was run by the Downtown Emergency Services Centre. They did the first year findings with the University of Washington, the results are on the website here:
Some shelters, like the one I was in, are staffed all day and don’t close their doors to those who have an assigned bed but rather encourage them to be elsewhere until dinnertime. Those with no assigned bed slept in cots and did have to be elsewhere during the day.
We had three square meals a day–although lunch was invariably a bologna sandwich–mandatory mental health meetings every Monday morning, and AA meetings every Wednesday night for those who needed them.
I agree with what you’ve posted, but fail to see how it addresses the problems of those who are currently homeless. Many homeless are mostly divested of their former possessions—no work clothes, no furniture, no supply cabinet full of soaps, toilet cleaners, brushes, etc. How much do you think it costs to get the bare necessities that are required just to maintain one’s appearance in order to keep a job?
And most apartment complexes that I have dealt with require proof of continuous employment, good credit, references, a healthy deposit, one month’s rent upfront, utility deposits, etc. I’m not talking about upscale apartments either. Now if one does have good credit, many of the deposits are reduced or totally waived. But that hardly helps a homeless person.
Interesting. So in your libertarian utopia, a private individual is forbidden from requesting assistance from another private individual. The coercive power of the state is used to forbid a purely private transaction between two individuals.
There’s a stench here, but it isn’t the homeless guy with the styrofoam cup from whom it is coming.
Because the folks that operate the shelters need to at least make an attempt to make the shelter a safe place for people to sleep, and allowing in drunk and crazy people would make the shelters incredibly unsafe, so unsafe that the non-drunk non-crazy homeless wouldn’t go there. There is a lot of legal laibility there too…I just sat on a jury in a lawsuit against a homeless shelter…the guy had been attacked after being refused admittance to the shelter for refusing a breathalyser test.
We did not find the shelter liable but I can promise you that if the guy had been admitted to the shelter there would’ve been liability.
It’s a tough issue because you can’t help people that don’t want help. I’m not saying that this is the case with every homeless person but I have seen enough homeless reject attempts to give help from trained outreach cops to know a lot of these people are hopeless.
And I am tired of the myth that the homeless are harmless. I had a homeless man attempt to attack me once when I was getting in my car…I managed to get the door closed with him outside, then he jumped on the hood and started screaming at me through the windshield…and once I was walking on the street with my best friend when a homeless guy shoved her into traffic…she was basically unhurt thankfully.
