When will somone decide to imprison you “for your own good” even when you haven’t committed a crime? Are you sure you want to start down that road? Don’t you have the right to refuse treatment if you are sick? Are we letting the government decide those things now? If so, how authoritarian do you want our government to become?
Theoretically mine, since I’ve been there and last time I was there I had a psych dx history that said I was a paranoid schizphrenic.
What sort of civil liberties would we be violating if we disemboweled anyone trying to force us into incarcerated settings without due process or any allegation that we’ve done anything wrong, and then stuck such folks’ silly red-dripping corpse up on the nearest lamppost for the rats to gnaw upon?
If there’s one thing I have zero tolerance for it’s people who assert their right to use force on other people “for their own good”.
That shantytown is there because the government failed its people through scandal and corruption of the public housing program (cited above). While I’m glad it’s there to serve as both an alternative to shelters and as a protest message, I’m angry that people have to resort to living outdoors simply because promises weren’t kept.
There’s a guy who runs a non-profit called Homeless Voice that provides housing and serves as an advocacy group for the homeless here in South Florida. Floridians are quite familiar with the people wearing the red t-shirts, soliciting for donations in the middle of the street. I happened to read through one of the newspapers the organization produces, and the main guy, Sean Cononie, said something to the effect that many of the people he helps simply cannot take care of themselves. They are mentally ill or mentally/physical disabled, drug-addicted, and just can’t get the hang of living in society, as an independent person. The organization runs group homes where these people can live permanently, provided they follow the rules. Those that are able have to work by soliciting donations on the streets.
When I read his statement, my first reaction was that the guy was being extremely patronizing. My mother, who advocates for the homeless professionally, brought me up to believe that the homeless are just like you and me. And I still believe most of them are. And I don’t think acute homelessness (less than three weeks) is a minor problem that should be ignored. But I also think Sean Cononie is right. The poorest segment of our population is at the bottom for specific reasons–and most of them are clinical. I think long-term and life-long care for these people is the only way to get them off the streets.
::waves once again at Zoe, who always has nice things to say::
That’s what I was asking - is it your contention that, at any given time, one third of the long term, chronically homeless are children? I would expect that dependent children are over-represented in the groups mentioned earlier, that regain housing within a few weeks. If you are talking about runaways, then possibly not, but I rather doubt that mothers with children are a third of those on the street for months at a time.
Possibly some proportion of children are homeless because mommy has a crack habit and no marketable skills beyond fellatio, but then I would expect the same problems addressing the homelessness of those as for adults. If we could cure mommy’s crack habit or mental illness to the point that she could care for herself, then presumably she could take the next step and care for her children as well. But if we can’t cure either…
Relatively little. My church volunteers with the local food shelf and feeding center, and the church I grew up with is now smack dab in the center of the ghetto, and does mostly outreach to the neighborhood. And there were always bums around my last job site, which was the involuntary inpatient chem-dep treatment center for our county. I often went to work as they were dragging in some coked up teenager in handcuffs. They moved the facility to a different site - our printer room was the four-point restraint room for detox.
The rest of my assumptions are based on statistics. I remember Mitch Snyder of late memory claiming that there were three million homeless in America in the 80s - a Harvard study found about 250,000 - fairly substantial, but not even the correct order of magnitude for Snyder’s figures, which he later admitted pulling out of his ass.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, I’ll give you this: people are usually pretty good about ensuring that a child who has no place to say, is given one.
But yes, there are a LOT of homeless children. First, there are runaways and street kids, who had good reasons to leave their home, and who make do with what they can get on the street. And I won’t ruin your evening by telling you how many of them make do.
Second, there are families in temporary housing, sometimes long term. Not a lot, but any is too many. And when I say “families” I’m talking caregiver adult (parent, grandparent) and dependent children – not necessarily a whitebread nuclear family of 2 parents, 3.2 children and 1.5 dogs.
But finally and most important to me, there are children who are in institutions, foster care, etc., who have no home. They may have three square meals, a roof over their head, and a modicum of clothing. But they don’t have the rest of what a child needs to grow up: a loving home.
And I have only one point to make about the alleged percentage of homeless children: anything above 0,000000% is too much.
Without minimizing the difficulties of people in temporary housing, isn’t this an example of moving the goal posts? ISTM that, if I say “homeless” and mean someone living on the street, and you say “homeless” to mean anyone who doesn’t own their own home or is leasing month-to-month, then we are not talking about the same set of problems.
Very much an example of the same - “homeless” does not mean “anyone whose parents don’t love them” without removing most of the meaning from the term.
If we can’t even decide to keep winos off the street, I highly doubt that we can solve the problems of every neglectful parent.
Sounds nice, means (essentially) nothing. No social problem like homelessness can be solved 100%, unless you are willing to accept the much worse consequences of drastic solutions.
“Do it for the children” is a cheap political line designed to stop people from asking hard questions about cost-benefit ratios, no matter who it comes from.
Regards,
Shodan