The homeless choose to be homeless, right?

Great Debates
41

I was just using San Antonio as an example since that is where I am originally from. Places like DC are so expensive overall that most people are forced to live with roommates of some kind or another (be they spouse or not). It is something to be careful about as is anything but not really that bad overall.

As for the cell phone, most if not all come automatically with voicemail. One could always leave it in your post office box if the shelter doesn’t allow them and go to the post office to check voicemail and carry the phone with oneself the rest of the day.

“It’s almost impossible to get a bank account with bad credit.”

This is something that I take issue with. Banks hold money for you, they don’t care about your credit unless you are trying to get a loan from them. Savings accounts are available to anyone of any credit capacity as are checking accounts. It may not be the wisest thing to get a checking account at times when one is down on one’s luck but it is still doable as long as they have the required cash to start it up.

I had heard of programs like “Dress for Success” before but couldn’t recall the name specifically. I believe there are also similar programs for men as well.

Getting off the streets isn’t going to be handed to a person so it isn’t that easy. But, it only takes determination and energy.

HUGS!
Sqrl

42

**

Point taken.

**

Some have voice mail, some don’t. Mine doesn’t.

I’ve been turned down for both. Most banks use a service that does an instant credit check for closed accounts. It doesn’t matter why the account was closed; if the bank closed it, it’s on there. I’ve been turned down for savings accounts on this basis. It’s wrong, it sucks, but it happens. Fortunately, I’ve got old savings accounts that never went inactive, so I don’t have that problem.

Robin

43

Thanks to the excellent recommendation of someone on this board, I just finished a book called “Nickel & Dimed.” The author spent three months working in typical low-wage jobs. She worked hard (40 hours a week minimum–she found she had to have a second job) and still housing was by far her biggest challenge. bagkitty is right–the supply of low-income housing is at an all-time low. Affordable apartments are very hard to find, and even when available it can be hard to scrape up deposit money. I don’t know social service agencies that are prepared to help all low-income people with that. Thus, even hard-working people who don’t want to be homeless can find themselves without a place to live. This author never slept in the street, but at one job over half her coworkers were living in their cars.

As for other kinds of help, I will also refer to an episode in this book. Almost out of food before a long weekend, she decided to call the local foodbank. The first man she called berated her for moving to the area without enough money. When she finally got him to stop chewing her out, he referred her to somewhere else. She ended up calling seven places before she found one that served her particular area, her situation, and was open at a time when she wasn’t at work. Seven phone calls, six frustrating referrals, 40 minutes of calling and drive time. And in the end, some of the food she got wasn’t useful because it was perishable, and she had no frdige in the cheap residential hotel room she’d managed to find. Imagine if you didn’t have a phone, a car, or the gumption that comes from being a successful person–you might have given up after the fourth call, or the fifth.

I’m not saying it’s like that everywhere, but I think it’s important to realize that things that seem to theoretically make sense (Lots of jobs! Lots of service agencies! Anyone who wants to be helped and to be financially secure can be) might in practice be a lot harder to realize.

Read that homeless thread, and read this book.

44

The credit check to start up a savings account is completely new to me. I will have to talk to a coworker of mine who was a banker for about 15 years when he gets back in tomorrow. In the meanwhile anyone else know about this?

Cranky, I know that the whole situation with being homeless is significantly harder than I portray, but it still comes down to the desire of the person to get off the streets. The book you mention, I am sure, doesn’t end with the author after all her hard work ending back up on the streets. One needs to search for the things that one can use to get off the streets. It can be a daunting task, but the services are available and ready to be used. When I was doing volunteer work (the Sam shelter in San Antonio, for those interested) I would sometimes talk to one of the counselors and he typically said that the the majority of the homeless population that we served didn’t want to get off the streets. He would advertise his services during the meal procession, before, and after. Even going so far as wandering into the streets to offer to do outreach. Of those, very few ever came to him and sought out job training, job placement or anything of that nature. But those who did, were the ones whom he said made his job worthwhile.

HUGS!
Sqrl

PS. The Molepeople was a good book chronicalling some brief stories and people who live in the New York City subway system. It was really completely fascinating.

45

When I moved out of my family home, my first stop was a furnished apartment that I shared w/2 other girls. So, I didn’t have any furniture, but I did have a stereo and iron. Maureen had the vacuum cleaner. Lois had the kitchen stuff. After 9 months of saving etc, I moved into an unfurnished apt. w/ Annie, (she had the vacuum cleaner waste baskets etc, I had by that time, some dishes, managed to bum a bed & dresser off my folks). Did that for 2 years before I’d finally gotten enough furniture & stuff to set up my own place.

So, it’s not just the $350 for apt. etc.
other issues re: homelessness.

  1. Lack of facility to store anything - most facilities do not allow you to leave anything there, so you’re carrying around your wordly goods. You just cashed your check and need to take a shower? hmmm. Some will allow you to keep a small bag of stuff there, but certainly not a lot.

  2. Credit worthiness is also necessary for cell phones in many cases, and certainly for obtaining a lease.

  3. At one of the local shelters, showers are given at night. So you’re off looking for a job w/o a shower. (they’re concerned about getting their sheets /pillows etc. dirty).

Meals at shelters are at set times. Your interview goes longer, you miss dinner.

I remember my sister ‘dissing’ my friend Maureen’s clothes “all she ever wears is blue jeans and flannel shirts”. I explained that she was a ‘bug’ major at school, they did extensive field work, those were the clothes she had to wear for class/work, and she didn’t have anything else. “why doesn’t she just buy something else?”

Re: the ‘dress for success’ stuff. I used to run a correction center. the clothes that were ‘donated’ for our facility were :

  1. things that didn’t sell at the garage sale, often 'cause they were stained or torn.

  2. Size 2 :rolleyes:

  3. What the society ladies would have worn to the country club Christmas party in 1968 (ie champagne colored satin dress with sequins in a paisley design, and clear plastic stack heel sandals)

46

SC: *Getting off the streets isn’t going to be handed to a person so it isn’t that easy. But, it only takes determination and energy. *

Not really. What getting off the streets takes, in the final analysis, is enough money to afford shelter. Sometimes determination and energy are enough to get you that much money. Sometimes they can’t. As Cranky pointed out, there are quite a few determined and energetic low-wage full-time workers who are living in their cars, for example. All the Horatio-Alger/pep-talk good advice in the world is not going to be sufficient to solve the basic problem of too much housing priced out of the reach of low-income workers.

*If some people think clearly they could easily enough get a prepaid cell phone to use as their home phone number, a post office box to use as an address, and then go to a thrift store or a resale store and pick up a reasonably priced set of “interview clothes.” I have seen decent suits at places like that for less than 20 dollars to about 60 dollars. *

Let’s see, that adds up to, say, 40 dollars for a suit, probably another 30 dollars for shoes and linen, 20 to 30 dollars for a post-office box rental for a minimum of six months, and what, 60 to 70 dollars for the cell phone? Disregard any costs for a haircut or other personal hygiene/grooming expenses or producing a resume. That’s at least $150 up front just to start your job search so that maybe you’ll be able to persuade someone to hire you.

There are also many no to low skill jobs available. They often don’t pay great but it is at least a first step to moving on.

Unfortunately, that’s often not true. Plenty of low-skilled “dead-end” jobs don’t lead to any career advancement at all. All they provide is a lot of hard work and a paycheck that still isn’t enough to afford shelter.

I can’t imagine not thinking of ways to get off the street every minute of every day if I were on it.

Someone like you would have a lot more realistic options for getting off the street than a lot of homeless people do. Also, you’d probably find yourself spending most minutes of most days dealing with more immediate problems: how to get enough money to get something to eat, how to avoid the meaner street people or neighborhood kids who might beat you up and rob you, how to stay warm and dry and out of trouble. I imagine it’s easier to treat the homeless experience as a sort of Outward Bound survival-challenge adventure when you’re not actually being faced with the immediate problems and dangers it poses.

The book you mention, I am sure, doesn’t end with the author after all her hard work ending back up on the streets.

Maybe it wasn’t made sufficiently clear, but the author of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich, is a well-established academic who did three months of minimum-wage work as a research project. Of course she’s not in any realistic danger of actually ending up on the streets.

47

While we’re discussing it, that book was thought-provoking on other fronts, too. If you’re chronically poor, it’s possible, even likely, you’re entering the job market without a great education. You might have serious health problems that have been unaddressed for years thanks to being underinsured. You might find it hard to eat well. You might have serious daycare issues. And less tangibly, you may have faced years of not feeling good enough, of having society think you’re worthless because of the things you don’t have or the cheap quality of the things you do have.

And I don’t buy all the talk about “just needing gumption” to be able to work one’s way out of poverty or homelessness. Yes, that’s possible for some people, and their stories make great reading. They’re role models. But just read some of the other threads on this board. Some of us with priveleged backgrounds and good educations describe problems like not being able to get over a love affair or forgive family members or forget a past trauma. If people with a lot of advantages can’t “snap out of” a way of thinking or an emotion, how can you ask someone who’s had a hard life to just suck it up and plaster a smile on their face and go out and solve all their problems with a little assertive career planning and consumption of social services? I don’t understand why we expect so much from the poor, and we blame them for their troubles when in the next breath I see us being a lot more realistic and forgiving with each other. I’m not saying the poor (and homeless) shouldn’t try–but I’m saying that it’s gotta be tough, and there are indiginities they will suffer all along the way. It’s got to be slow going. It’s not a mystery, to me anyway, why their problems don’t promptly go away as soon as they want to be elsewhere in life.

48

“Let’s see, that adds up to, say, 40 dollars for a suit, probably another 30 dollars for shoes and linen, 20 to 30 dollars for a post-office box rental for a minimum of six months, and what, 60 to 70 dollars for the cell phone? Disregard any costs for a haircut or other personal hygiene/grooming expenses or producing a resume. That’s at least $150 up front just to start your job search so that maybe you’ll be able to persuade someone to hire you.”

Assuming you can beg a minimum of 20 dollars a day, that wouldn’t take too long. You can also be a day worker and get paid better by knowing where to go. In the DC area, you can be a day worker by lounging around the area near WETA (the PBS station) in Arlington. Typical pay is about $30/per half day on up. Judging by the appearance of many of the day workers, hygeine, posh clothes, English speaking not required. The only thing is having a desire to work. Some days you may not work but others you will greatly make up for it. I know I will go there for help the next time I move any furniture. Hell, they could be back in an hour or two and do it again. I have also seen women and men doing day work. As for working wageslave/deadend jobs, hell, you have to start building yourself up somewhere. They may not be good jobs, may not offer any promotional opportunities, but eventually you will have a background of working and be able to get a place to live (hell, even with a roomate, or a grouphome, or whatever, but at least it isn’t the street) and can then start looking for a place on your own or a better job with whatever you are currently doing to fall back on.

“Also, you’d probably find yourself spending most minutes of most days dealing with more immediate problems: how to get enough money to get something to eat, how to avoid the meaner street people or neighborhood kids who might beat you up and rob you, how to stay warm and dry and out of trouble.”

The Washington City Paper had an article in it a few months ago which I quoted at the time it came out during a similar thread. Anyway, it had several college students getting really dirty and filthy and going out for the weekend and experiencing homeless life. All of the students (I believe there were around 10) said that by the end of the weekend they had more pocket money than they had ever had before and ate better than they typically did at the dorms. I don’t know if that says anything good about the quality of dorm life or not. Anyway, they hung around the Mall (the place that has Washington’s Penis, Lincoln’s Memorial, and all that crap in DC) and were told by various homeless people to throw out what they were currently eating as the other travelling soup kitchens that kept showing up had better food. I know San Antonio was that way too from personal experience. You have to be really out of it to starve being homeless in a big city. I don’t speak for rural homeless as I don’t have that experience. Dead end jobs typically don’t have much of an interview process or requirements beforehand and will often hire people on the spot. I am sure many people here have gotten jobs in college or before that were that way. I know I have, even when dressed in grungy clothes.
“Unfortunately, that’s often not true. Plenty of low-skilled “dead-end” jobs don’t lead to any career advancement at all. All they provide is a lot of hard work and a paycheck that still isn’t enough to afford shelter.”

Again that is what roommates are for. Every city of at least moderate size (100k People +) has a roommate locator service. This is even more true with cities that house any type of colleges or universities in the area. Who cares if someone is sharing a place? Hell, I don’t know many people who move to a city right out of college who can afford a place on their own making the typical wage of a college graduate. It just means they have to find a cheaper place or have more roommates.

“Re: the ‘dress for success’ stuff. I used to run a correction center. the clothes that were ‘donated’ for our facility were…”

That is not true with resale shops. I have bought suits there in the past. Some may have had loose buttons or things like that but I always had a large selection to choose from and am not a “normal size.” In fact, I noticed that they had a large selection to choose from in the childrens sizes and even into the extremely large sizes (5 and 6X). If you are bigger than that you won’t be lucky.

Also, someone mentioned one needs credit worthiness to get a cell phone. Well that is true in the case of people who get billable cell phones. However, now there are cell phones that you put cash down up front to buy the cell phone with prepaid minutes of usage on them. They aren’t that cheap but don’t require a billing address. If you run out of minutes you can go to Radio Shack or the other places that sell them and have more time put on them paid for in cash. No credit check required and instant activation of the phone once getting it. There are many more options with cell phones than there were just a few years ago. In fact, I have a lawyer friend who only uses those types of cell phones exclusively and doesn’t have a regular phone at home. He used to pay in cash at the Nokia store but now just pays for more time on the cell phone through a credit card.

“Cranky pointed out, there are quite a few determined and energetic low-wage full-time workers who are living in their cars…”

Pride can keep people from attempting to get a roommate or multiple roommates. Some people have weird notions of what is acceptable. Who was it that said her husband wouldn’t accept public assistance or buy things with it when she ended up getting it to survive? I don’t remember if that was in this thread or another. I have a set of friends that work at the YMCA in Harrisburg, PA and there are a set of “homeless people” who live there. For $50 a week they get a private room with a sink and a shared bathroom. They have to be in their rooms by a certain time each night and can’t go wandering in an out. The rooms are private and have their own locks and the people have their own keys. They mentioned that near the end of the week several of them go out on various street corners with cardboard signs to pay their rent for the coming week as well as spending money. I know these types of places fill up relatively quickly but they are still another option. Since they are able to do it in Harrisburg (where the population is relatively small) and didn’t starve to death, one would assume that in larger towns with better facilities that it would be at least a little easier. Two dopers I know who currently live in NYC lived in a group home for a while in Brooklyn I believe until they got back on their feet and moved back into Manhattan.

“And I don’t buy all the talk about “just needing gumption” to be able to work one’s way out of poverty or homelessness.”

Really? I wouldn’t buy it. Every person here who has been homeless has snapped out of it on their own or with a little help. Even those who have been “called mentally ill.” I won’t use the specific doper, but if he/she decides to come out into the public here that is fine. He/she at the time didn’t have a choice to become “homed” again but was forcibly taken off the streets and medicated, eventually getting a job which he/she has been at for many years, and into a home of his/her own.

One should take advantages of the programs available, they are advertised, and often extremely underutilized (from firsthand experience). It may not be the glamourous life imagined but it is something.

HUGS!
Sqrl

PS. My coworker said that banks are not allowed to perform credit checks when one applies for a savings account. He said, that it is just a repository for money that they use for the banks own investments (and then he started talking in bank terms I didn’t understand about virtual cash and floats and things like that and how banks use any money they have to make more money in some weird banking way. He mentioned some Federal regulation where this was against the law. He did say that some banks require a minimum balance to maintain an account that can fluctuate from as little as nothing to around $1000). In all fairness, he did say he hasn’t been a banker for 10 years and hasn’t kept up with all the federal regulations, so he may be mistaken about the credit check thing, but he did say that he doubted that specific regulation had changed as a bank getting money from people is at the core of its business.

49

Again, Sqrl, you still seem to be considering the options of homelessness as they would exist for a smart, determined, resourceful individual in good health and capable of hard work, with enough education and skills to enable him or her to make career progress. I don’t disagree with you that such a person would probably be well able to work their way out of homelessness. I do disagree with the idea that this is a very realistic scenario for the average homeless person. A few specific points:

  • The fact that some active, articulate, healthy young college students playing at being homeless for a weekend on the Washington Mall managed to make good money and stay out of trouble is no reason to conclude that the homeless life is that easy for the people who are actually living it full-time.

  • A lousy job that’s not enough to pay for shelter doesn’t necessarily lead to a better one. You seem to be suggesting that just getting “a background of working” is enough to start you on the upward road. For lots of people, that just isn’t true; they are stuck in low-paying unskilled jobs and can’t move up unless they acquire additional skills or education that the demands of their jobs and their lives of poverty just don’t give them time for. Sure, they could probably move from one unskilled job to a different one, but since the pay wouldn’t be significantly better, it wouldn’t significantly help.

  • Many roommate locator services require fees, which is an additional financial burden on a poor person. Most of them also recommend that their clients run credit checks and criminal background checks on potential roommates. This is a good idea, but obviously, it reduces the chance of a homeless person’s being considered a desirable roommate. (Homeless and poor people are also a lot less likely to be able to pay for running such checks on the people who would be willing to room with them, meaning that they have a greater risk of winding up with untrustworthy or dangerous roommates.)

Every person here who has been homeless has snapped out of it on their own or with a little help.

This proves nothing at all about the actual success rate of such “snapping out of it”, as you put it. What percentage of homeless people do you imagine actually end up with enough money and leisure to hang out on Internet boards?

Again, you seem to be trying to argue a different point from the one most of the other posters here are making. You seem to think that for a given problem of homelessness, as long as you can indicate a way in which some homeless people might actually be able to solve it or have solved it, it no longer really counts as a barrier to overcoming homelessness. In other words, your standard for what you’d expect the average homeless person to be able to do is what you would do in their place. Therefore, if they don’t pursue the solutions you suggest with the same determination and success that you would expect for yourself, it’s their own fault. I just don’t think that’s very realistic.

50

I gotta go with Kimstu and Cranky.

The deal with the credit checks is that there’s a particular kind of credit check associated with a bank account. This tells the bank if there’ve been any accounts closed by the bank within the past seven years. If there are, they won’t let you open an account. Some banks will allow you to open one with restrictions (i.e. savings only, minimum balance, direct deposit required, and no ATM/debit card are some of the restrictions I’ve heard of.) Not all banks require a credit check, however, so you may have to look around a lot to find one that won’t.

One of the key problems that some of these people have (especially the once who bounce in and out of shelters) is their social skills are minimal. They assume a defensive (even hostile) posture and attitude; their language is often vulgar even in situations that don’t call for that kind of language; in short, they really don’t know how to act in polite society. It doesn’t matter how good you are at a job, if you can’t show appropriate, acceptable behavior while doing it, it tends to limit your employment opportunities.

Robin

51

“The deal with the credit checks is that there’s a particular kind of credit check associated with a bank account. This tells the bank if there’ve been any accounts closed by the bank within the past seven years. If there are, they won’t let you open an account. Some banks will allow you to open one with restrictions (i.e. savings only, minimum balance, direct deposit required, and no ATM/debit card are some of the restrictions I’ve heard of.) Not all banks require a credit check, however, so you may have to look around a lot to find one that won’t.”

So here the bank account thing is an option.

“One of the key problems that some of these people have (especially the once who bounce in and out of shelters) is their social skills are minimal. They assume a defensive (even hostile) posture and attitude; their language is often vulgar even in situations that don’t call for that kind of language; in short, they really don’t know how to act in polite society. It doesn’t matter how good you are at a job, if you can’t show appropriate, acceptable behavior while doing it, it tends to limit your employment opportunities.”

Behavior is all 100% choice. They may not WANT to change their behaviour but then again, that is a choice.

“Again, Sqrl, you still seem to be considering the options of homelessness as they would exist for a smart, determined, resourceful individual in good health and capable of hard work, with enough education and skills to enable him or her to make career progress. I don’t disagree with you that such a person would probably be well able to work their way out of homelessness. I do disagree with the idea that this is a very realistic scenario for the average homeless person.”

So in essence you are saying that the vast majority of homeless people are stupid, lazy, have no concept of life around them, diseased or generally unhealthy, and too physically disabled, and uneducated to possibly do anything to work their way out of homelessness. I prefer to be an optimist and think that no matter how bad it gets here is still room for improvement.

“- The fact that some active, articulate, healthy young college students playing at being homeless for a weekend on the Washington Mall managed to make good money and stay out of trouble is no reason to conclude that the homeless life is that easy for the people who are actually living it full-time.”

From what I have seen with other professional beggars, their experience wasn’t too different, though it was a bit safer. I never actually said homelessness was easy or fun, I think the point I was making here was that money is actually easier to come buy than others may argue. In fact typically the worse someone appears to have it off the more money or help they get with handouts. If this were not the case one wouldn’t see so many scam artists playing it up.

“- A lousy job that’s not enough to pay for shelter doesn’t necessarily lead to a better one. You seem to be suggesting that just getting “a background of working” is enough to start you on the upward road. For lots of people, that just isn’t true; they are stuck in low-paying unskilled jobs and can’t move up unless they acquire additional skills or education that the demands of their jobs and their lives of poverty just don’t give them time for. Sure, they could probably move from one unskilled job to a different one, but since the pay wouldn’t be significantly better, it wouldn’t significantly help.”

The key here is that one can get a place to live if one has a work history easier than one can get without having one as it shows a steady income even if it isn’t well paying. They may never have time nor money to improve their situation and may have to live with roommates for the rest of their life. So what, having a job is a type of security that can lead to a place to live.

“- Many roommate locator services require fees, which is an additional financial burden on a poor person.”

Many but not all. Most shelters provide this type of service for free to those who request it.

“Most of them also recommend that their clients run credit checks and criminal background checks on potential roommates.”

True, but again, if one goes through the shelter, they can be placed in an affordable, situation with people of similar backgrounds.

“This is a good idea, but obviously, it reduces the chance of a homeless person’s being considered a desirable roommate. (Homeless and poor people are also a lot less likely to be able to pay for running such checks on the people who would be willing to room with them, meaning that they have a greater risk of winding up with untrustworthy or dangerous roommates.)”

You can also find roommates for the cost of a newspaper. It may take a while to get one to accept a “homeless” person but again that is the gumption thing going back.

"Every person here who has been homeless has snapped out of it on their own or with a little help.

This proves nothing at all about the actual success rate of such “snapping out of it”, as you put it. What percentage of homeless people do you imagine actually end up with enough money and leisure to hang out on Internet boards?"

I wasn’t referring to statistics here. I was trying to show how specific people who desire to change their standard of living are able to do it with their resources.

“Again, you seem to be trying to argue a different point from the one most of the other posters here are making.”

Well, my point was basically homeless are homeless for long stretches of time by their choice because they are ignorant of ways to change their situation or unwilling to perform the hard work that is required to no longer be homeless. Judging by some of the other responses I have seen, it would seem that homeless people are homeless due to a completely calvinistic manner. Situations made them homeless and now they are destined to be that way forever. I don’t live in a world that black and white.

“You seem to think that for a given problem of homelessness, as long as you can indicate a way in which some homeless people might actually be able to solve it or have solved it, it no longer really counts as a barrier to overcoming homelessness.”

I was just giving some examples. The counselors available at shelters offer even more viable and easier options that they can do without having to rely completely on their own. Ignorance of a program is no excuse just as ignorance of a law does not make breaking it alright.

“In other words, your standard for what you’d expect the average homeless person to be able to do is what you would do in their place.”

Actually, I would expect the average homeless person who seriously wants to get back off the street would first go to a counselor at a shelter and follow their advice. They have more resources and options available that I could ever suggest and even if they aren’t necessarily the most encouraging people out there, that is what they are there for.

“Therefore, if they don’t pursue the solutions you suggest with the same determination and success that you would expect for yourself, it’s their own fault. I just don’t think that’s very realistic.”

If they don’t pursue any solution or variety of solutions than I would say that is their choice. If they don’t succeed in the first or tenth and give up trying then yes, I would say that they CHOOSE to be homeless. Actually the better way to phrase it would be that they choose not to pursue getting off the streets.

HUGS!
Sqrl

52

You weren’t living in the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, were you?

**

I could solve this problem - locker, friends, trunk of car, etc. - and so could lots of other people on this board. But, of course, if you’re already homeless, your problem-solving skills may not be at their absolute peak of finely-honed sharpness.

**

Odd. Didn’t you have Gifts in Kind Intl there? This organization offers very low-priced or free gifts-in-kind of all kinds of products to NPOs - usually it’s direct from the manufacturer to the NPO, sometimes it’s donated from other sources. The agency where I last worked, we used this mostly for computer stuff - software and machines and the like - but at our branch office they got clothes and makeup and personal hygiene stuff for their jobs program/substance abuse/homeless/etc. clients. The clothes were mostly the kinds of things you’d see in a discount clothing store - normal stuff with flaws too minor to see on first glance but too major to be sold at full price in a regular department store. In other words, although some of it was just horrible, some of it was nice, and it came in all sizes; we even managed to find some plus-sized stuff when we needed to, though that was harder to do.

Ditto for the toys we got for the kids of our parenting class/jobs/etc. clients - nice, new, safe toys still in their packages. Some were cheapo, knock-off-brand items, but most were the sorts of things you’d see given or gotten at any middle-class kid’s birthday party. (Some of the toys came from Gifts in Kind, some came from the local police, some came from other sources.)

In fact, one of our big problems was keeping staff members from taking home toys and clothes for themselves and their families. We had to have rigorous counting and lock-up procedures to ensure that only the clients got the stuff. In a social-service NPO, the staff are typically way underpaid (only slightly above minimum wage, oftentimes, even for jobs that require some college or a degree), and the items were often better than anything many of the staff members could afford.

53

Not really. I don’t think you truly understand what mental illness is like.

54

“Not really. I don’t think you truly understand what mental illness is like.”

Wrong. I understand mental illness very intimately. The only time this type of thing is an issue is when they can’t take care of themselves on the street. If this is what you are saying, to me anyway, you inadvertantly group most to all of the homeless people on the street into the group of low to no functioning individuals who are completely incapable of taking care of themselves and would do much better institutionalized. This is also an unpopular choice as forced institutionalizations are very unpopular. Was it AHunter3 and even as recent as MsRobyn who talked about being labeled “crazy” in a recent thread?

Since, they are able to take care of themselves on the street then they could take care of themselves in a home of some kind. One of my three best friends in San Antonio is severely schizophrenic (actually he is paranoid schizophrenic with a god complex and multiple personality disorder as he has one completely formed secondary personality that takes over when he is in “danger”). His secondary personality was called Cain (from Cain and Abel) and from the times he talked about Cain, I got that he was the ruler of the dimension Androgenia just off the dimension of Limbo. There were lots of other things and he is really very low functioning as far as mental illness goes (he can’t hold a job of any kind as little things will set him off even when medicated, he doesn’t always have the best hygeine, and he is a very intense person that often makes people feel uncomfortable around him). Anyway, he lives alone in a studio apartment which he pays for himself, doesn’t work, makes money by doing odd jobs around town, and SSI only pays for his medications. Even when he isn’t on his medications (I have seen him several different times then) he is still able to maintain the odd jobs, interpersonal relationships, and all sorts of other things. This is because he has the desire to stay in a house.

I can actually go through a very large list of family members, personal friends, and people whom I have worked with and studied (when I was still a therapy major in college…2 years down the drain) but that isn’t really the point. I see that you are saying that the homeless on the street are the lowest functioning people who somehow ended up there and are unable to repair that situation. Those are the people who I would believe are in the minority of the homeless people. They may be fairly visible as far as that goes but still in the minority. For the most part, if one is able to take care of oneself by simply being able to feed oneself and get out of the bad weather (even if it as much as being under a bridge) then they are functioning basically as well as my friend in the above story and have no excuse to be on the street.

Oh well. I see that I am not getting any support here and I don’t have enough energy to keep this thread going. I think I have made my point of view very clear. Gave options, reasons behind my varying points, and basically been the only opposing view. I am tired of arguing and doubt I will respond again.

HUGS!
Sqrl

55

I don’t think we read these posts the same way. I did not think that any of us were painting all homeless people as helpless, low-functioning, worthless beings. I just don’t see that, at all, in any of these posts. If it weren’t for that “hugs” signoff, I’d feel like you were deliberating provoking us by making us sound bigoted and unreasonable. I’m really glad no one has responded that way, though. There’s plenty of room for disagreement without sweeping accusations or generalizations.

I think that what people are saying is that there are, indeed, some homeless people who are homeless by choice. There are some homeless people who choose to beg for money as a means of income. There are some homeless people who will stop at nothing to change their situation. There are some homeless people who are mentally ill, so much so that they can’t help themselves at all. And there are some homeless people who are the working poor, trying to get by but finding it challenging to find housing and (for various reasons, not all of them their own fault) to avail themselves of all the social services that are out there for people like them.

Homelessness is not a simple problem, and you can’t point to one group and apply their problems and/or abilities to all. Not all homeless beg, or drink–some do. Not all homeless people have jobs–some do. Not all homeless people are mentally ill–some are. Etc etc etc. What I see happening in this discussion is that some people see two homeless populations: the drunken lazy bums who don’t care, and the enterprising ones who turn their lives around. Anyone who doesn’t get themselves out of homelessness must therefore fall in the former category. What other people (myself included) are doing are bringing up the other facets of this population without alleging that they represent all homeless people, of course, a point which we seem to not be making well. My point is, the fact that these other people exist even though they do not represent all homeless people, and don’t fit the personal anecdotes others can provide are an argument that you cannot in good faith make sweeping statements about the homeless being lazy, or fully responsible for their ongoing homelessness.

It’s not pessimistic or cynical to acknowledge these people–it’s merely realistic. It in no way detracts from my own desire to help people or to see as many people as possible move up the socioeconomic ladder.

56

Yesterday, I put down the deposit on a cute efficiency apartment in Midtown Houston. I move in on the first of August.

Robin

57

Congratulations, Robyn.

After reading this thread and (more importantly) the earlier one on who has been homeless, I’ve been occasionally packing a lunch. I take it with me when I go out to buy my lunch at noon, and then I give it to one of the homeless men around here. I wish I’d started doing this years ago.