And 50 years ago many of these people would have been rounded up, at gunpoint if necessary, and forced into residential mental health facilities. Certainly having people living in the woods in tents is less than ideal, but many of them have options such as halfway houses or shelters and don’t use them because they consider the rules for admission onerous. What do you plan to so with them?
The thread isn’t about homelessness in general, but tent cities.
I don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to claim that Europe doesn’t have homeless people. You and others are arguing against a claim that nobody made.
[QUOTE=SciFiSam]
I don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to claim that Europe doesn’t have homeless people. You and others are arguing against a claim that nobody made.
[/QUOTE]
While no one has made this claim directly, I’d say it stems from this bit in the OP:
This seems to indicate that Europe doesn’t have this problem, and that the problem is so alien to Europeans that they can’t even see why we are considered civilized.
-XT
It’s about how bad the homeless problem is in the United States that we actually have tent cities. About how much worse the problem is in the United States compared to Europe that it makes the OP unable to recognize us as civilized. No, this thread isn’t about homelessness in general but you are mistaken if you think it’s about tent cities. This thread is about how much the United States sucks compared to Europe.
Your pomposity astounds me. Have you ever been anywhere in Europe outside your own house? Homelessness and inequality exists everywhere in Europe to a greater or lesser degree. It’s astounding that there are families that have to live like that in the US, but it’s also astounding that there are families across the developed world that also live like that. Visible homelessness seems to me more typical of the warmer parts of Europe but it’s present across any major city you can think of in the EU. Several homeless men froze to death last December in Dublin, and we have been spared the brunt of the coldest weather that most of Europe has faced.
5,000 people living in tents. well that sucks. it’s probably because we’re in a major [del]depression[/del] recession. Maybe you can explain the 14,000 people who DIED of heat exhaustion in France back in 2003. Or the current riots in Greece and the loss of 1 in 5 public sector jobs.
You might want to turn your head 180 degrees and look at the financial problems on your side of the fence because it’s about to get ugly.
And since there are almost 5,000 “rough sleepers” (read: homeless) in the city of London alone, it makes one wonder how 5,000 spread across a continent even would compare.
This is a bit higher than the figures you found.
Speaking as someone who has spent a lot of time in London, it’s difficult to convey the number of homeless you can encounter in any given day, especially at night. At times it’s very easy to be walking down a street that looks straight out of a Dorothea Lange photograph - minus the dust clouds. And these aren’t polite Mary Poppinsish elegant rogues in top hats, these are largely incredibly filthy, drunk, high, and/or insane people who will come right up to you and block your way until you give them money, stalk you through the Tube, follow you into shops, and come up to your table while you’re eating and stick their hands towards your food - until you (well, actually, until your girlfriend) yells at them to “sod off!”
I think the “wet house” idea may have some merit.
That is often because such shelters are not safe places - men can be mugged and have their few possessions and little bit of money stolen. Women can face that AND rape as well. Shelters also have rules that can be a bit draconian. One of my co-workers (actually, several, but I’m using just this one particular guy) sleeps in a shelter where everyone is required to get the heck out of the place by 6:30 am. That’s regardless of weather, no exceptions even for illness.
So, yeah, a lot of homeless people choose to live in their cars (if they still have them), in tents, crash sequentially on friends’ couches…
The OP should come back and clarify what they meant, definitely. And I don’t like his phrasing either.
But it doesn’t actually say that we don’t have homelessness. I do find the idea of people living in tent cities - especially families living there - to be a bit third world. Like I said, there may be practical reasons why Europe doesn’t have them despite having similar problems with joblessness etc, but I can’t imagine a family being left so homeless they have to live in a tent.
Though perhaps there are some in Greece or will be soon.
You don’t have to read it that way unless you want to, though. I get defensive too sometimes, but posting up stats of general homelessness all across the different countries in Europe is being defensive rather than actually talking about families living in tents in a first-world nation.
And the OP didn’t have to write it that way if he didn’t want to. You seem to have a great deal of difficulty comprehending the OP. The OP makes it a point to show how uncivilized the United States is and his amazement that we do not “revolt against the obscenity of poverty and inequality in society.” Comparing our rate of homelessness to the rates in western Europe isn’t defensive behavior on my part it’s a demonstration that the OP was full of bologna. In fact, it seems more like a rant than a debate.
You seem to have completely ignored Una Persson’s post showing as many people living on the streets in just one city in Europe. What is it about owning a tent that bothers you exactly?
A lot of people in Greece will soon wish they had tents. The same will go for the rest of Europe in due course.
Patience, grasshopper.
Geduld, Heuschrecke.
Pazienza, cavalletta.
Patience, sauterelle.
La paciencia, pequeño saltamontes.
Paciência, gafanhoto.
Kärsivällisyyttä, heinäsirkka
υπομονή, ακρίδα.
I don’t have ‘a great deal of difficult comprehending the OP.’ Like I already said, I don’t like his phrasing either. I agree that it can seem more like a rant than a debate - and so can your posts. But since it was posted in GD you are allowed, even expected, to actually respond to the topic rather than just rant.
Polish immigrant alcoholics sleeping rough in London is horrible for them, and I’m glad, from the article you linked to, that they’re being helped, but it’s not quite the same as whole families living in tent cities.
If it’s a rant, it should be in the pit. I don’t know about that myself; I’ll report it for a possible forum change. Maybe then people can feel free to shout nasty words and an actual debate can develop alongside.
It actually cross-posted while I was typing a response to this thread and off doing something else. But I have actually been homeless in London, so I don’t really need education on that.
I also know that some of the people Una’s talking about aren’t necessarily rough sleepers, while, of course, some of the people she (and others) wouldn’t have noticed are rough sleepers.
The number of rough sleepers in London can’t be extrapolated across Europe. It’s a big, densely-populated city with a huge immigrant population, a lot of them very recent immigrants. You’re not going to find a comparable (per head of population) number of homeless people in Petitville, the Loire Valley. It’s not the sort of statistic that people on the SDMB would usually stick up for as being applicable across an entire continent.
Owning a tent is not the big deal, obviously, but living in it is. Especially families - when I asked if states have provisions for homeless families, it was a genuine question, not a snark. I really don’t think that post seemed hostile or anti-US in any way.
As I said before, however, I suspect that we might already have such tented communities here already - at least for people not covered by homelessness acts (families, disabled people, elderly people) - if the areas around cities (in areas where the weather makes it feasible) weren’t already over-occupied; the larger empty areas near US cities make it more possible there. So I don’t think Europe can stand in judgment over the US on this, but I also don’t think it’s right to brush it off and say ‘oh, you have homeless people too.’
I also am surprised that states don’t have provisions for homeless families. Or maybe they do - I asked, and all I got was hostile responses.
[QUOTE=SciFiSam]
I also am surprised that states don’t have provisions for homeless families. Or maybe they do - I asked, and all I got was hostile responses.
[/QUOTE]
As with many things, it depends on the state one lives in. There are also some federal programs for low cost housing that some can take advantage of…my family has taken advantage of some of that in the long ago and far away.
I think the hostility exhibited by some in this thread still stems from that initial comment by the OP and the general air of superiority that some Europeans feel over Americans in all things like this. It’s similar to the get your backs up feeling some Europeans have felt about Americans who attempt to exhibit the same air of superiority. No one likes to have folks try and act all superior to them and their ways, even if in some cases they are superior. It’s even more galling coming from folks who live in glass houses…and I mean that in either directional viewpoint (i.e. as Americans feeling superior to Europeans or vice versa).
-XT
I provided the OP with a legitimate response.
That is true. Fortunately, I produced some numbers the European Federation of National Organizations Working with the Homeless were kind enough to provide in 2003. We don’t have to extrapolate the numbers of rough sleepers in London to know that homelessness is a big problem in western Europe.
Agreed, asking a legitimate question is great and you haven’t been the one who came off as if they had an axe to grind against the U.S. The provision for the homeless varies not only from state to state but also from municipality to municipality. San Francisco may provide services for homeless people in a far different manner from Sacramento or Los Angeles even if they’re all in the same state.
Nobody brushed it off.
There are all kinds of overlapping public and private help for the poor. By the time you hit the curb you’re down to overnight housing for adults. Children will always be cared for but the parent would have to relinquish them.
There is a type of housing subsidy called “Section 8” which helps those on low-incomes with their rent. In my area, the waiting list to obtain a section 8 voucher is ten years long. That’s the waiting list. It is also closed - meaning if you aren’t on the waiting list already you can’t get on it.
There are shelters that take entire families, but not many, and there are more families than shelters for them. Some women’s shelters will take the children as well as the women… but they might not allow adult men.
The provisions for ANY type of homeless in the US are limited, and overflowing.