And how do we address the causes of homelessness when we can’t find them and they can’t find their way around town to the multitude of places one goes for assistance?
An Austin organization called Mobile Loaves and Fishes has founded Community First! Village, where formerly homeless live in tiny houses on a campus with medical facilities, a community garden, and opportunities for work and training. It’s on a bus route but self-contained and far enough removed to resist the temptation to roam. It’s a very small experiment (they plan on housing 200 residents within the current campus) but one to watch.
:rolleyes:
Homeless became epidemic when cheap housing disappeared. Before that, schizophrenics and other such people who lost their rooms or apartments due to not paying the rent while incarcerated in the local psychiatric bin could get themselves indoors fairly easily — it might not have been overly pleasant digs but there were cheap places you could rent for a single night.
Gentrification created homelessness, not directly but indirectly.
People with a psychiatric diagnosis generally are not homeless directly because of their mental condition. They become homeless because they have an episode, the episode results in the loss of their current housing situation, and then it’s difficult and expensive to get a new place.
If every psychiatric facility was obliged to set up people with a rented room prepaid through the end of the month as a component of their discharge, that would help a great deal.
Most of us aren’t crack addicts or fundamentally incapable of attending to paying our rent, believe it or not.
There is a minister in Detroit doing something similar. She has found funding to buy empty residential lots and get zoning variances to build small (efficiency apartment sized) homes. Local architects are contributing innovative designs, the residents help build their own homes. A modest rent is charged - but after 8(?) years, they get clear title to the property.
Another interesting program has been done in Salt Lake City. They crunched the numbers and found that it was cheaper to house the homeless first. Then once they have a fixed address, they follow up with mental health, drug and vocational programs.
I contend that the only real obstacle to ending homelessness is a lack of political will, not a lack of ability or resources.
Let’s do some simple arithmetic. How many homeless are there at any given time?
Let’s say it takes $10,000 a year to house someone. Multiply the number of homeless people by $10,000, we arrive at a figure of approximately 5.5 billion per year. The overall federal budget is $4.1 trillion. For less than 0.2 percent of our federal budget, we could house every single person who is homeless right now.
I doubt very many homeless people vote, or donate to political campaigns. Even if they did, they are only a tiny fraction of the population at any given time. That’s why our political system is failing to properly address this issue.
In addition to the lack of will, there are those that use the homeless as political pawns. How many times have we seen memes like “We shouldn’t admit ONE refugee as long as there is ONE homeless veteran”? If you end homelessness, you end that and similar arguments.
I know of a woman that walks around town wearing little more than a dirty blanket all year rain/sleet/shine. This disturbed me a little, and I knew she was a (in)famous fixture around town, so I asked around. She’s mentally ill, has an apartment her mom pays for, and has gone into her mom’s work and cursed her out for trying to get her to stay in there, which she doesn’t want to do. Anecdotal? Sure. Unique? I highly doubt it. Most cities have homeless shelters, and if a person is sleeping under a cardboard box, it’s most likely because that’s their preference (over a homeless shelter). Certainly they know they exist.
I think it would not be too difficult to herd up most of the homeless people and either put them in mental institutions or group homes, etc. My guess is all those beautiful, homeless-free countries being referred to, do that. Thing is you’re doing that by force and essentially imprisoning them.
One problem with providing housing for homeless is that there also needs to be supervision for the facility or else it will become a center for drugs and prostitution.
The category of homeless that this would help are the families which are very poor. Often they work, but don’t make enough to pay rent regularly. They move between rentals, friends, car, motels, etc. depending on a variety of factors. They may also have drug or other problems. Providing housing stability for these families would likely greatly help them move out of homelessness. Not only because they have a home, but because that stability will allow the kids to stay in school, the parents to find a more stable job, save money from rent and being able to stock a pantry and fridge, and all the other benefits of being able to live in one place.
But it wouldn’t work so well for the homeless who are living under a bridge because of mental illness or some drug addictions. They likely wouldn’t be stable enough to be successful in a home, and they would bring problems to the community that would drive other people out. For these kinds of people, it might be better to have services that provide food and clothing consistently so that their basic needs are met regardless of where they are living.
Do we have numbers on what percentage of people are “voluntarily” homeless?
I can understand the urge to get out of the house, and not be cooped up inside all day. But who the hell prefers a cardboard box to a bed, and an alleyway to a toilet? They can’t be in their right mind. You can call me an authoritarian, but I think institutionalizing these people for their own good is a legitimate exercise of state power.
I’ve been in a homeless shelter. A cardboard box has a lot to recommend it over a homeless shelter, and preferring it doesnt mean your head isn’t working properly. It’s not an illogical choice.
I think it would also not be all that damn difficult to herd up most of the bigoted hateful opinionated people who advocate things like that and put such folks in a locked environment. Wanna hold a referendum on which approach will beautify America the most?
People, you really don’t want it to be particularly easy to lock people up. You want there to be due process and there should be a high bar to overcome before it is established that yes, this specific person should indeed be locked up.
And don’t kid yourself that you’re doing it “for their own good” if your reason for doing it is that you don’t like to encounter homeless people. And if you’re advocating it out of a genuinely charitable concern for the welfare of homeless people, you really need a more informed perspective on what it is that you’d be imposing on them.
I agree with that. I’ve also been to mental institutions. The idea that because you are mentally ill, that you’d just love to hang out with other mentally ill people and not be able to leave your wing, ever, is idiotic. My guess is lot of these people just want to be left alone.
If I were Emperor of America, here are my imperial decrees:
Feel free to wander the streets all day, but don’t urinate or defecate in public, sleep on public property (unless you have a camping permit), be publicly intoxicated, loiter in one particular location, or aggressively panhandle (holding up signs is ok, just don’t be too pushy). If you fail to comply with these simple requirements, you will go either to jail or a mental facility. Occasional violations of the above rules can be overlooked, so long as they aren’t repeated too many times (a dozen strikes and you’re out).
Whatever the number is, I’d be shocked if it weren’t a small minority of the homeless. It seems to me that people are just using it as a flimsy excuse to not address the issue.
AHunter3, I’m confused as to your position, here. First you rail against the notion that it’s not as simple as just giving people homes, and then you say that it’s not illogical to prefer a cardboard box to a shelter. It sounds to me like those two positions are opposed.
jasg, tiny houses like the ones you describe aren’t the solution to any problem. They’re a needless extravagance and conspicuously wasteful. If you want a living space the size of an efficiency apartment, then make it an efficiency apartment (or condo or whatever; the ownership structure is irrelevant), and avoid all of the waste of making each unit its own building.
Would you prefer to live in an apartment or house, where you can be indoors at night and lock the door behind you and feel safe, and decorate and arrange it to your liking and make it a home, or would you prefer to live outdoors and get rained on and be vulnerable sleeping in public where anything could happen to you? I assume you’d strongly prefer to have a home. Who the hell wouldn’t, right?
Suppose that’s not available (sorry) but hey, I can offer you a shelter. Let me tell you about the shelter: you should take your shoes off each night and put the bed rails into them before you get into bed, so as to keep people from stealing the shoes off your feet while you sleep. You won’t be issued a sheet any more (sorry) but you should sleep in your clothes anyway so no one will steal them. The shelter line forms around 6:30 PM and you don’t want to be way back in the line, in case it fills up for the night. Come there and stand with the others. Other homeless people may approach you, harass you, shake you down for money, molest you (sorry again) (we haven’t allocated the resources to prevent that). Shelter officials will eventually open the door and yell at you all, making threats, and let you in. Learn the rules. Don’t talk back. Get in the food line. Eat. You’ll be directed to your cot. You and a couple hundred other people will be in the same room in a grid array of cots, don’t lose track of which one is yours. People may approach you while you are in your bed. Generally if they are violent or disruptively noisy a security guard will intervene. If you yourself appear to be the violent or noisy one, the security guard may bash your head with the baton or put you in a choke hold (we have at least allocated the resources to hire [del]hooligans and thugs[/del] security guards for your protection but they aren’t really trained…). You have no rights here. You do as you’re told. You can be put out for any infraction including failing to bribe the security guard. The bathrooms have no stall doors. You have no locker to keep personal items in. In the morning you will be fed and kicked out and you cannot leave anything behind.
It’s a bit different from having a home, if you see what I mean.
The one I’ve described (and linked to a photo of) is the Fort Washington Men’s Shelter in Manhattan, if you’re curious. I still have my ID card from 1984. The conditions I described were the conditions I myself experienced there.
Many people find it safer to sleep on subway gratings under a piece of cardboard. Many people find it less dehumanizing and more dignifying to sleep on subway gratings under a piece of cardboard. I did not, but I can authenticate the impressions of those who do.
I worked with the homless for a while. You have three categories (maybe four):
Those recently out on the streets, they were living paycheck to paycheck then lost their job. Often living in a car, maybe couch surfing. They want to be helped, and can be helped. We need to help them.
Those who are seriously insnance or drug addicted. Some of these, you put inot a nice home, they will shit in the corner and piss their bed. They will be careless with smoking and dangerous. We need some mental health programs and some drug programs. Ending the pointless “war on drugs” will help. One thing that would help is putting some of them back in asylums, but if they are not a danger, is that ethical?
Those who like the freedom and lifestyle. We can give them options.
4.(?) Runaway kids. Certainly they can and should be helped.
NOTHING will completely solve the homeless problem, there will always be a hard core that can’t be reached. Estimates vary- 10%? 30%? Still getting 70% off the streets is a big win.
But yes, housing can get 2/3rd of them off the streets.
Medical care,too, like a cheap walk in facility. Homeless in County ER’s cost us many times what that would cost.