Is there really a problem with homelessness in the US?

Great Debates
21

Who was lecturing you, Mr. Defensive?

We do have a low savings rate, and it probably is due to lack of financial planning. And? That doesn’t mean shit doesn’t happen and even the most frugal can’t get their asses kicked by it.

The poor will always be with us, though. Even if we all took Financial Planning 101, there will still be people who can’t make enough money to pay rent, because life’s potholes can’t always be planned for. And there will always be children who are unfortunate to have been born to poor parents? Do you tsk tsk at them too?

22

Santa Monica is probably worse yet.

23

I think one reason why homelssness is a problem in the USA, is the staggeringly high cost of housing in American cities-often in areas where there are large numbers of abandoned buildings! take SF-south of market Ave., you will see buildings just deteriorating-while the average rent in SF probably is > $2000/month!
The failure of city governments to provide low cost housing is one of the big issues-annd also the fact that mentally ill people cannot be confined 9against their will) in mental hospitals. i’d say a good 505 of the homeless 9in the USA) are mentally ill.

24

Yes, we have a big homelessness problem in the UK and it’s for a variety of reasons. In the area where I live (central England), we had a very large (and growing) population of immigrants. Some people are here legally, some not. Some have jobs, some don’t. A lot have come over from the old Eastern Bloc countries in search of work and higher wages than they get at home.

I have a friend who works for the local council in a dept set up to deal with the problem of homeless asylum seekers/refugees and he has for a long time been saying that this problem is getting worse year by year.

Not only do we have an increasing number of people coming in, we have fewer homes available for them - the council has to sell off a proportion of its own domestic properties in order to finance other things, and that means that people here legally and in need of social housing are going to be out of luck because there simply isn’t anywhere for them to go. There’s been a tremendous boom in the buy-to-let market but that doesn’t also help the homeless as we are a University city and therefore have an increasing student population to house. Although the university has expanded it’s student accommodation, it’s also actively recruiting and expanding so there will always be a demand for housing. The house next to us is rented out, the landlord has his property on the approved list with the uni so he is vritually guaranteed tenants every year.

So having housed our students and our refugees/asylum seekers, there’s very little left for the ‘homeless’ and the council has no money left for shelters. Those who slip through the net due to mental illness etc are left to fend for themselves, and the rest who lost their homes due to personal circumstances are left to find somewhere else to live as best they can.

There’s no easy solution to the problem, but at least you know it’s pretty much the same wherever you go in this country.

25

That was me.

I was young and stubborn. Refused to ask my family or friends for any help. Didn’t drink or do drugs. Kept myself clean and after a few weeks had enough money for a weekly hotel room. Eventually got my act together.

Man, was I stupid and embarrassing.

26

What it means, statistically, is that a lack of planning adds to the number of homeless. You can always come up with a senario that exceeds basic planning guides. It’s not rocket science to plan financially for the future. The summer after I got out of high school I sat down and calculated what I would need for insurance, car payments and college. I also did a preliminary calculation on what it would take to raise a family (which was the farthest thing from my mind at the time).

When I was a boy you weren’t allowed to neglect children financially. They were taken away by child services until you got your act together.

When I got laid off I was financially prepaired for it. I saw the writing on the wall and changed my financial situation accordingly. That meant giving up the things that I like (such as cable) and putting the money toward house payments. The people around me who planned their fiancial future did the same thing. If that meant taking on a 2nd job then that’s what they did.

I look around today and I see people buying luxury items beyond their means. They drive nice cars, play the lottery, smoke cigaretts, own cell phones, eat out a lot, go to bars on the weekend, and use high-speed cable. Let’s tally that up:

$300 car payment
$80 lottery
$230 cigarets (2 packs a day)
$50 cell phone
$200 entertainment
$40 high speed cable

That’s $900 month on crap or $10,800 year. Did I exaggerate anything? My parents didn’t spend money frivolously like it’s done today and I’m thankful that they taught me to use the math I learned in 3rd grade.

I’m not going to argue that there are no circumstances where life exceeds one’s ability to deal with it. But there is a clear lack of planning in Middle America and no planning at all with the poor. When you look at what my parents had in the way of possessions compared to the working poor of today you understand that poverty is a state of mind.

My parents couldn’t afford a house so my Dad built one. He wasn’t a carpenter or a plumber. He went to the library and learned how. If the car broke down, he wasn’t a mechanic, he got a book and learned how to fix it. I’ve tried to do the same thing. I started out buying a used mobile home instead of renting (it was cheaper). I sold it and used the money as the down payment for a house. I built my own garage. I remodeled/repaired my house. I’ve built sports cars. I helped restore an airplane and bought into it on a partnership basis.

I couldn’t begin to afford to buy any of the stuff above so I leveraged it with my labor. But before I spent one dime on luxury items I made sure I was fully insured and I was able to cover any short-term financial hardship. THATS financial planning and it’s all done with basic math. Planning is what you do before you do it.

You’re arguing that crap happens. I’m arguing that most of the crap can be dealt with ahead of time with planning.

27

No, I’m not arguing that crap happens. That would be a facile argument (kinda like yours). I’m saying that homeless people have had crap happen to them, that most of them aren’t mentally ill drunkards who simply love the outdoors, and many working poor are living precariously on the edge of homelessness.

From http://coe.west.asu.edu/homeless/myths.htm:

The solution to homeless isn’t just beating people over the head about personal responsibility. We all make mistakes and bad decisions, not just poor people. The solution is to make it harder for people living on the edge to fall off the deep end. Ensuring affordable housing and liveable wages are a good start. Supporting quality rent assistance programs is another good idea.

28

Uh huh. You can buy a used mobile home for less than the price of a new car and wages are based on the supply and demand of skill. The solution is for people to take responsibility for their actions. I’ve given a simple example of the crap people spend their money on instead of saving for the future. It has nothing to do with housing costs or wages and everything to do with common sense and basic financial skills.

You suggest that we subsidize housing costs and inflate wages to help out. I’ve heard that before. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

29

Well, that’s the system the United States of America has for compensating its military personnel.

30

Not anyone I’m associated with.

31

Really, now?

“From each according to his ability”: that would be his paygrad and the responsibilities associated with it.

“To each according to his needs”: that would be the housing allowance based on having dependent family members.

32

paygrad, obviously, should be paygrade.

33

You want to rethink your line of thinking starting with the employer/employee relationship?

34

Huh?

35

I will take things in a slightly different direction. Bear in mind that I am fully treated and stable now but three years ago my bipolar disorder and alcoholism came to a head and I could have theoretically become homeless myself (I did for a few days) but this isn’t really about that. Mostly during that period but some since, I got to meet and really talk to dozens of people that were homeless or formerly homeless that had similar problems.

I was being treated for bipolar disorder which is probably the most treatable major mental disorder and has a great prognosis as long as you stay on your meds. A few of them were bipolar but many of them had things like schizophrenia that can be treated in many cases but it often isn’t 100% successful even if they stay on their meds. In the inpatient ward, I just wanted my problem fixed and that was a reasonable expectation. Many of them just cycled in and out over many years because their problems could never truly be fixed by today’s psychiatry and their made following medical instructions and post-care difficult or impossible if the treatment worked at all. Many of them will never be treated well enough to live a normal life and if they lose family and friends, there may be no where else to go.

Let’s move over to rehab. I had a couple of rehabs and it is an interesting world in there if you just listen and learn from the other patients. Many people that don’t have much direct exposure to substance abuse problems think that rehab is a place where you go once and then you come out all better. The reality is way different than that. The average number of rehabs to clean is somewhere between 5 and 7. That is a lot of time and a lot of money. What you see in a typical rehab is really scary. There is a whole subculture of people that use it as a break or a place for a week’s worth of meals and showers. It isn’t uncommon at all for some of them to have 50 rehab stays (7 - 10 days a piece) and some have over 100 rehabs. There is a lot of overlap in this population with the people that drift in and out of the mental wards over long periods of time.

Where I am actually going with this is I don’t know what you could do with these people to stop them from drifting in and out of homelessness. There is a good chance that they will never get better in two or more debilitating ways and they won’t ever be able to function in the normal world and their families probably won’t take them back. They probably aren’t violent criminals and they may not meet the definition of being a threat to themselves or others so most people wouldn’t want to warehouse them or pay for the enormous expense of keeping them in the hospital forever.

There are a lot of homeless people like that and there is no good solution that I can see.

36

Magiver, you obviously have at least a third grade education. Why aren’t you currently working. According to your own posts, you should be able to find work.

And I’m not sure where you are going with the personal responsibility thing. Sure, people should plan for the future. The fact is, some haven’t, and despite your idealized world view, some have but have failed. Are you suggesting that because it’s not impossible to plan for the future that there is no homelessness problem? Or are you suggesting that homeless people eat hindsight and live in houses made of regret?

37

This kind of Red-scare talk is a little exaggerated, don’t you think? There’s quite a broad middle ground between limited social safety-net measures on the one hand, and full-scale communism on the other.

(By the way, did you happen to collect any of that there commie-style unemployment compensation after your layoff?)

Well, I think we can all agree that that’s true. Some people certainly are homeless who wouldn’t be if they’d spent their money more wisely and planned more carefully.

However, you haven’t provided any evidence about how much of the homelessness problem, quantitatively, is due simply to easily avoidable wasteful spending and poor planning.

Nor do you seem to be providing any useful suggestions about how to eradicate wasteful spending and poor planning, which are pretty common human failings. If a significant percentage of US homelessness really is caused merely by easily avoidable wasteful spending and poor planning, then we need to come up with better strategies for dealing with it than issuing generalized scoldings on a message board.

38

I have been reading on the internets about this. 40% of the homeless are children. They are not adept in financial planning. Numbers are difficult to achieve due to no simple way of counting them. The future with variable rate mortgages and the failure of the auto companies bodes poorly for the midwest. These are people who educated themselves or were working at jobs which were easy to move overseas. Working at minimum wage will not pay a mortgage and feed a family.
One third of homeless are mental cases, drug addicts or hopeless alcoholics. The rest are people who fell on hard times. With 47 million people without health coverage ,they are vulnerable to destruction with illness.
Many have assumed huge mortgages with the idea a big payoff in the future as the house appreciates. This is ending in many locales. They are vulnerable to losing everything.

39

I’m on your side and I generally agree with you, but I have one problem with your post.

Read the 2nd sentence quoted. Then read the first.

Que?

40

In 1984 I was 25 years old and had held a total of perhaps 225-250 jobs, not counting babysitting, lawnmowing and other pre-adult employment opportunities. The longest one lasted a full year, many of them tied for shortest at less than a day. I had a High School diploma, was far from stupid, tried my best to be cooperative, showed up on time, didn’t goof off, …damned if I could figure out why I could not secure even semi-stable gainful employment. Still don’t know for sure. Jobs included cashier, stocking shelves, sweeping parking lots, tarring roofs, auto mechanic, nurse’s aide, cutting down scrub trees w/chainsaw, janitor, dishwasher, fast food steamline person, hardbander’s assistant (oil town trade), roughneck (oil town trade), surveyor’s assistant, aide to developmentally disabled adults, moving van co. warehouse guy (loading, unloading), random do-whatever “crew”, construction (unskilled), housepainter, envelope stuffer…

I was not a fucking lazy ass or incompetent or no-show employee.

I was homeless in 1984.

In 1988 I had a BA, graduating with a decent 3.93 ave and some lower-echelon honors, got a summer job washing dishes between graduation and the start of grad school, lost it in two weeks (accused of “attitude”), got other crappy jobs of low duration, went to Washington DC to do volunteer work with Mitch Snyder’s org and in a week and a half the org decided they had no use for me and I ended up in the shelter myself, then thumbed back to NY for grad school.

In 1993 I had two masters’ degrees and sent out 12-25 resumés every week, went to interviews, got nothing, and was working for minimum + commission doing telephone research polls (commercial crap; just barely one step above telemarketing) and considered myself to be doing considerably better than my lifetime track record by staying employed there for 5 months… then I got called in for a second interview, got a job offer, and lo and behold worked for 4 years as a professional, a social worker, making more than 2.5 times my previous fulltime-equivalent salary plus benefits and on top of that was made to feel respected and appreciated as an employee for the first time in my life (except babysitting and lawnmowing).

Then in 1997 the agency got defunded; I knew 5 months’ in advance and started with the resumés (this time with professional experience & credentials) and kept doing so through the entire 5 months plus the 6 months of unemployment benefits, went to 15-20 interviews, and then ended up going back to the telephone research polling place for shitty pay. I just barely got that job, I owe my re-employment there to having saved a copy of my resignation letter (they claimed I just stopped showing up). Did the horrid phone calls and continued to send resumes for 5-6 months before a temp-to-perm agency unrelated to my education picked me up.

I haven’t fallen into the abyss in a long time, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than you think. You can be totally willing to work, qualified, skilled, and busting your butt to apply for everything you can think of and still not get hired. Then you get hired and do well and move from job to job of your own volition and it’s hard to imagine not being employed unless you choose not to be (at least with your skills and credentials). Then you find out otherwise one day.