That’s the dignity part. It’s not easy to maintain your dignity when every few years you have to move to a crappier place, or further out of town, farther away from the place you want to call home.
But, I understand the difficulty in how to support someone when the cost to support them increases significantly.
UBI should be scaled to inflation somewhat so that you don’t get priced out of the country over time but I see no reason that we should support someone living in San Francisco when they can move to fresno just fine. If San Fransisco gets so expensive that the poor cannot afford to live there that is San Francisco’s problem (or not) not a national problem. A nation wide program shouldn’t be build around how to we allow someone making less than $15k/year to live in Monterey, if the poor can’t afford it we should help them move somewhere they can afford.
The availability of long-term psychiatric care can vary a lot from one state to another in the US. I am not familiar with the bulk of the country, but Missouri licenses residential care facilities for the mentally ill. The same state agency that licenses nursing homes for the elderly also oversees RCFs for the able-bodied mentally ill. These are generally multi-bedroom houses in ordinary residential neighborhoods, with an owner-operator possessing a nursing home administrator’s license, and at least one staff member on-hand who possesses some sort of nursing certification and is responsible for distributing medications. The residents generally eat family-style in the dining room. I don’t think the residents are required to assist with cooking and cleaning, but may volunteer to do so. AFAIK, any town in Missouri that is big enough to have an outpatient mental health center also has one or more RCFs. The RCFs are paid through Missouri Medicaid and the residents’ disability benefits. Meanwhile, nextdoor in Illinois, there is nothing comparable.
A dormitory sounds like a good idea. One was just built in my neighborhood for fresh graduate employees of a local large company. The bed rooms are really small – just a bedroom and desk and closet, but all have one wall of natural light. Bathrooms are communal and the kitchen is always open - help yourself style for the basics, but set mealtimes for prepared courses. It seems like a very secure and safe environment.
Paying all or most of your benefit income to a private landlord makes less sense.
Give them all guns.
Everyone should have access to nutritious food, clean water, sanitary facilities, HVAC, vaccinations, safe exercise space, libraries with internet, baths, access to polling places. The world has enough wealth for everyone to have these for a thousand lifetimes.
Once we have those things then I’d jump straight to healthcare, but one thing at a time.
People have mentioned specific things like education, phones, internet, and transportation. But I’d lump them under a single principle: people should be entitled to have access to opportunities.
People need more than just enough to survive. Nobody should be locked into a situation. Everyone should have a chance to improve their situation and make their life better.
Ideally, I’d see everyone with a small apartment and access to a small garden space (allotment-style). Set up right, a 10x10 ft space is plenty for a person’s private space, if there are communal bathrooms and kitchens. Double that if those are private, too. If an individual doesn’t want to/can’t use their allotment, they should be free to rent it to someone else at a set rate.
I’m not in favour of dorms over private rooms. People need privacy.
Everyone should have access to communication and information, and a smartphone is ideal for that. Data should be freely available, anyway - free global wifi is the ideal.
Public transportation should also, ideally, be free, anyway. But if not, that should also be accounted for. Possibly X free trips a month or something similar.
OK - who is going to do the cleaning in those dorms you propose? Someone has to scrub the toilet, clean up the communal areas, etc. If you have a communal kitchen then you will need to hire people to do that work.
People who have studio apartments do their own cleaning and fend for themselves in regards to food. Which, if their only problem is simply lack of money or work by which to get money, they can handle on their own.
Let me also say, as someone who has lived in a dorm and relied on a cafeteria, if your schedule for work or school is not compatible with when meals are served you’re sort of screwed (I had a work around with a small cube refrigerator and a hotplate, but it was far from ideal) and the sort of people who have this sort of housing are not probably not going to be able to eat out constantly. Also, anyone who has any sort of dietary restrictions/requirements is going to find relying on a cafeteria to be somewhere between frustrating and outright dangerous. Both of those situations makes a studio apartment both more attractive and more practical than a dorm.
And really, there’s nothing barring such a dorm from being privately owned and run - nor should you assume that a studio apartment is privately owned as there has been plenty of government housing of even larger units built over the years up through the present time.
**Bottom line, either way there’s a landlord. **
I don’t have an inherent issue with “dorms” (although I would insist on a minimal amount of space per person) and in fact such places used to be much more common. They were called “SRO” or single room occupancy. Some even still exist. There were, and still are, issues with those facilities but the same is true of any housing method you care to name. The lack of SRO’s (most were eliminated during the “urban renewal” of the 1960’s and 70’s) has been contributing to homelessness for decades.
If you ever saw The Blues Brothers some of it was filmed in an actual SRO… which was demolished later. There also used to be options like boarding houses (the original The Day the Earth Stood Still has Klaatu staying in one while living on Earth). Many of these have been eliminated by well-intentioned changes in housing regulations that had the effect of eliminating housing options for the poor and single. Which is ironic because so many of what’s been proposed here used to exist.
As I said in my post - my assumption was that these places would be occupied by able-bodied, mentally well human beings. People who have addiction issues, mental health problems or physical disabilities have different requirements, as do the mentally competent but frail elderly (who, arguably, have a certain level of disability).
Along with what **Broomstick **said, anytime there is an attitude that “something isn’t my direct personal responsibilty,” it will go un-cleaned and un-maintained. I mean, there are homeless people in San Francisco who like to defecate in metro subway escalators, so much so that their poop clogged up the escalators.
I was wondering about the initial suggestion of 350 sq ft. I think my double dorm room couldn’t have been much bigger than 12’x12’. A single, with a single bed and dresser could be even smaller. Safety, healthy, and security are the main concerns. What Isamu describes sounds very doable.
Yeah, someone will have to clean the common areas - and monitor cleanliness of the living areas. Could either assign tasks to residents (as is common in many halfway houses and such), or hire staff. In any event, staffing such facilities would be a major expense.
Subsidized SROs might really be a good option.
My observation (dealing with unfortunate people as part of my job) is that it can be quite difficult separating such factors as physical or mental health problems, from such things as personality and demeanor - and plain old ignorance. To take it to one extreme, someone might argue that anyone who chooses to live life on the street, manifests some sort of mental impairment. Some people are homeless and alone because their personality/choices (mental impairment?) have caused them to alienate their entire support network of friends and family. Some people grow up with no effective role models to teach them self-care and respectful interaction. And, once someone has been down and out for a long enough time, I believe that factor alone is likely to cause certain physical and mental effects.
One thing many people may not like, is that any such type of communal living will require that residents comply with SOME sort of behavior standards. Maybe quiet hours, not dirtying public spaces, maintaining minimal personal and private space hygiene, eating what is provided at the cafeteria, no drinking/drugs, no pets… Personally, I’m not bothered by the idea that someone who is largely/wholly subsidized would have to give up some degree of their personal freedom, but I can imagine other folk might be.
Having been there three times I can tell you that the government does not encourage people to get to work and help themselves. The first time I was told by the state employment agency to “go on welfare” every time I went, even though I was able bodied and perfectly capable of working.
The second time I told them that, despite my disabled hand, I was capable or and wanted to work. They told me to get on welfare and permanent disability citing my hand and “mental problems.” I took a temporary, part-time holiday job and turned it into permanent employment.
The third time I was homeless and in a shelter. I was told I “had to meet with social services” before they would help me. I found a place and paid for it on my own.
Anyone who thinks the government wants to help people find work and a living lifestyle is deluded.
Thought I’d address some of the categories other than “able-bodied, mentally well”.
Let’s look at the frail elderly: people whose main problem (aside from poverty) is that they have aged in a manner leaving them weak prone to injury, and possibly with treatable but chronic health problems. They’re going to overlap to some degree with the disabled.
Let consider some of the requirements for such people. They should probably avoid stairs, so grade-level entryways to ground level units OR very reliable elevators in multi-level buildings. Some low-level accessibility features would probably also be good, like grab-bars in the bathrooms. Since they’re weak purchasing groceries and getting them home might be an issue so either home delivery services or assistance with shopping. They might need assistance with laundry. They might need assistance with food preparation. They might not be able to drive, so some form of transportation. They need the ability to call for help, and might need someone to check up on them.
The good news is that we already have this, BUT it’s fragmented and often difficult to impossible for the poor and frail to access.
Grade level housing: my old apartment - the one my spouse and I spent most of our marriage in - was modified by the landlord for an elderly couple. The entry was grade level (which became a godsend as in his final months my spouse first needed a cane, then a walker, then a sort of walker/chair combo as his condition deteriorated). The hallways were wider enough for wheelchairs (which we screwed up by lining them with bookcases, but if we hadn’t, they were wide enough). My current landlord (now a corporation rather than a private individual) has a couple dozen units at grade level that would either be suitable now or perhaps modified without a huge expense. So we already have these.
Grocery services already exist - I work in a store that has delivery services. The downside for the poor is that there is a price to it. However, my employer already donates food to local pantries, maybe something could be structured to donate or subsidize such services for the elderly/disabled. It would probably be of limited frequency - maybe once a week - but would certainly help these folks. We also see people shopping with paid assistants who help with the physical labor of shopping (some of them are also helping people with mental deficits as well). Again, for the very poor this assistance may be of limited frequency. Maybe they only need shopping assistance in summer but in winter with snow and cold and ice delivery service makes more sense.
We already have meals on wheels for the elderly (and disabled).
My local laundromat has a pick-up service. Seeing as the owner has recently purchased and liveried a vehicle for that purpose I assume there’s at least enough demand to break even on that part of the enterprise. The poor elderly might need a subsidy or allowance of some sort for this.
We already have “panic button” services for seniors and the disabled.
Transportation is another problem. Cabs have been around for generations, but of course they cost money, which is an issue for the poor elderly. There’s Uber and Lyft these days (which require smartphones and may have psychological barriers, as well as issues with whether or not the driver who shows up has an accessible vehicle). When my spouse was terminally ill we found out the county provided transportation to medical appointments for the poor ill/disabled (as it happened, we didn’t need that service but it was nice to know about it). Local religious organizations often have transportation/drivers for the needy.
But like I said this is all fragmented. We need to think outside the box. Would it make sense for the poorest to be given a monthly stipend in an Uber or Lyft account allowing so many miles per week or month? A monthly stipend in shopping or laundry services? Say… a grocery delivery every 10 days, and a laundry pickup every two weeks?
Some of these folks might also need some help with housekeeping, or benefit from someone checking in on them periodically (weekly, or even daily) which doesn’t have to be onerous - it could be a brief visit, or a phone call.
And why would we do all this? Because it’s cheaper to keep people in their own homes rather than putting them into institutions. Actually, from my viewpoint, it leads to happier and sometime healthier elderly, and if they do have a crisis it’s more likely to be noticed quickly and help brought swiftly. But if that doesn’t matter to you, the fact it is cheaper to keep people in their homes in the community should have some impact.
So… in many cases the “rock bottom” housing for the able-bodied poor might work for these people, in some cases there might need to be limited remodeling. What the poor and frail/minimally disabled elderly need is not so much a different form of housing is an array of services added onto that housing which would enable them to continue to live in minimal housing and avoid more expensive accommodations. By keeping these folks as healthy as possible as long as possible it’s better for them and better for society (for many reasons, but if all you care about is money it is cheaper).
I would be more interested in hearing what the minimum ‘lifestyle’ people would accept for themselves instead of what ‘lifestyle’ their willing to impose on others.
CMC fnord!
Clean food and water, shelter (i.e. house or apartment) with basic amenities (which, IMHO, does including cooking facilities and a bathroom, yes), basic healthcare, access to schools for their kids.
My first apartment was a studio. The main room was, I think, 10x10 There was a large walk-in closet and a bathroom, maybe another 50 square feet at most. So… 150 square feet. The main things were that it was a safe place to sleep, a secure place for my stuff (in other words, there was a good lock on the door), I could receive mail/packages and use it as a legal address, it was sufficiently heated in the winter (important in Chicago), there were adequate hygiene faculties, and it had some food storage/cooking facilities. Laundry on the first floor of the building. It was basically just one step up from an SRO. And it was great for where I was at the time: poor college student. It was far from glamorous and it certainly wasn’t everything I wanted but it was definitely everything I needed.
Or you could have everyone in studio apartments where THEY will do the maintenance work for themselves, and if they decide not to do it only they have to live with the resulting mess, not everyone else in the building.
We’re not talking about a halfway house, we’re talking about places where people might live for years or decades.
For that matter, if you want to use communal facilities hire residents to do the cleaning. Why not? Pay one of the residents, or several of the residents, to do the cleaning. Money is a motivator. Make use of the folks actually do has some sort of will to work, even if only a few hours a week. There is a certain type of poor person who while ill-suited to hold down a full time job in a high tech society can nonetheless engage in some cleaning and scrubbing part-time. Why not hire them to do it?
Agreed. As an option, not as a one-size-fits-all solution.
You are also prone to observational bias. You see the most dysfunctional as part of your job, which can (and probably does) slant your opinion of those on the bottom.
I have a sister who, due to a family catastrophe, wound up homeless for several months - but you would never see her. She never went to a shelter. She couch-surfed for those months and relied on friends for transportation, food, and shelter. She never slept on the streets. Why? Because she wasn’t dysfunctional. She had friends locally, and a family at a distance willing to provide other forms of help (my father and my other sister collectively bought her a car at one point, which helped her considerably). She was willing and able to do things like cook and clean for the people housing her for a few days or weeks. But it sure would have been easier for her to get fully independent AND permanently housed again if there had more options for things like studio apartments and SRO’s. Which point I think some people are missing here - not everyone at “rock bottom” has always been there, or will stay there. Yes, we’re talking about long-term housing for the chronically desperately poor but these systems will also help people who are only passing through that level of poverty, and such housing (and ancillary services) will help them get back on their feet quicker. My sister didn’t need a halfway house, she didn’t need counseling, she needed a job and an inexpensive place to live.
We, as a society, don’t tend to see the functional poor, whether temporary or long term. We don’t see them because they don’t attract attention. The homeless person who is functional and can keep themselves clean and groomed isn’t visibly homeless and thus invisible. But they exist. Hell, some of them even work - over the past 10 years I’ve had several coworkers who were homeless. Some lived in shelters. Some slept in their cars. Some occasionally slept in the basement of the building where we worked. These make-shift arrangements are often actually hazardous (like the basement of a shoe repair shop never intended for residence, or sleeping in a car - last spring when the piles of snow in the my current employer’s parking lot melted one of them revealed a car with a deceased occupant, nor was it the only parking lot in the area to reveal such a thing in the spring - sometimes people sleeping in cars asphyxiate, or die of the cold and they aren’t always immediately missed.)
Why don’t these people go to shelters? Well, at least two of the guys I worked with who DID live in shelters had some pretty onerous rules to follow. They had to be at the shelter at a designated time and if they weren’t they weren’t let in. Then they were essentially locked in for the night and couldn’t leave until after a certain time in the morning. This makes holding down a job more difficult because a lot of employers don’t want to work around the shelter’s schedule, they might want people who can work third shift (which means these folks need a place to sleep during the day, not the night) or variable shifts. It’s an example of how something intended to help the poor actually harms them, by reducing their employment opportunities.
A lot of homeless women don’t want to go to shelters because they don’t feel safe. It’s not because they’re mentally ill, it’s because they don’t want to be robbed, beaten, or raped. They aren’t safe, even for the men - those male homeless coworkers I mentioned? One was beaten and robbed while staying overnight in a shelter. Yes, some people sleeping on the street or in cars are doing so due to mental illness. Others are doing so because they don’t feel safe in the available shelters, or perhaps feel less safe sleeping in the shelters because yeah, sleeping on the street isn’t really safe, either. The question is which is less dangerous.
Which is NOT to say all homeless shelters are quasi-jails or dens of muggers but it’s a real phenomena. It’s safer for a poor, single person to have a room, even a very small room, with a lock only they can open. And why shouldn’t the poor have that level of safety?
I’m bothered by it because it infantilizes adults and leads to institutionalization. And while some people do actually need that doing that to people who don’t need it is unjust and can even be cruel.
I’ve been poor twice in my life. At those times I didn’t need counseling, or someone to tell me how to live my life, or assign me chores, or tell me to shower and wash my clothes. I needed a job. Yes, it was really that simple. I needed steady, full time work. Once I got it I clawed my way back up to middle class (though at present I’m still on just the lower rung of middle class, but things are looking up).
But my current job would be IMPOSSIBLE with the limitations you outline, or that many shelters have. I have to leave for work (depending on assigned shift) between 3 am and 7 am - I’m sorry, but there’s no way I’d be able to do that without disturbing others in a communal living situation because I unavoidably make a certain amount of noise and need a certain amount of light in order to get up, get cleaned up (that hygiene thing), get dressed, and get out the door. And, oh yeah, I like to have something for breakfast before leaving for work. As it is, some of the folks in my building complain about those of us who have to leave for work before dawn because starting our cars makes noise. Sorry, not my intention to disturb you but having a ground level unit next to the building parking you’re going to have some noise with people coming and going.
Eating at cafeterias would be difficult, if not downright dangerous for me - unless you don’t mind paying for my hospital visit with someone careless in the kitchen results in a trigger of my food allergies. So much simpler and safer for me to do my own cooking. Or are only people with no health issues allowed to be poor, or deserving of being able to eat safely?
I could see a “no pets” rule. “No smoking” in communal areas. I don’t like the notion that adults without addiction problems are NEVER permitted to use legal intoxicants in the privacy of their home (even if that home is subsidized), that comes under the assumption that if you’re poor you MUST have an addiction or mental health issue, which comes back around to the poor are fucked up, or lazy, or somehow else essentially defective.
It says a lot of about our society that when I was most recently poor and my need was simply A JOB there was a lot of stuff out there for me if I was addicted or alcoholic or needed a GED (nope, I have a four year degree) but nothing for helping me get A JOB in the current job market - until about four years into the Great Recession my state woke up to the fact that there were a lot of folks like me and actually instituted a program for us. I was in the initial group. It was so effective that NONE of us actually finished the program because we all found jobs before it was over. We finally got what we needed instead of trying to cram into programs that might have fit other people just fine but weren’t what we needed.
The biggest problem I saw for my homeless coworkers was that there was a lack of affordable housing for people making minimum wage (ours is $7.25 an hour) even full time, much less if all the work they could find was part time. Which is also a real problem for people in this country - people who are poor not because they are lazy or dysfunctional but because there is a lack of full time jobs (never mind jobs that pay a “living wage”) down at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. If we don’t have full time jobs that provide a minimal standard of living even for those who want them (and that is the case these days for some people, a group that is likely to grow in the future) then we need to find a way to get them a decent standard of living. And I don’t think warehousing people who want to work and can work but can’t find work in halfway houses and taking away the options/choices/freedoms given to wealthier adults is the way to do that. It’s punishing people solely for being poor. Why do wealthy people deserve to drink alcohol and the poor don’t? Why do wealthy people deserve their own bathrooms and the poor don’t? Why are wealthy people allowed to have jobs at odd schedules but the poor can’t because it violates the rules of the place they live?
Yes, the drug addicted, the alcoholic, and the mentally ill arguably need more supervision and help/rules but those conditions are limited to or caused by or always result in poverty. There are plenty of wealthy drug addicts, alcoholic, and crazy people yet (unless they are convicted of a crime) they don’t get the sort of treatment you propose for people solely because they are poor. Poor people who are not addicts, alcoholics, or mentally ill should not be treated as if they are addicts, alcoholics, or mentally ill any more than you should give anti-seizure medication to someone who doesn’t have seizures. It’s inappropriate, can generate problems that weren’t there before, and adds needless costs.
I posted in my poorly received “Post your ideas for GD threads” thread:
“Housing first” homeless strategy – is it working?
Most of the data I see are from a ~decade ago. But I saw this article the other day:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/i...o-homelessness
It seems relevant to this thread. Although this thread is more about “what should” rather than about which solutions work better to achieve whatever the aim is. That said, I know it’s a strategy some places have tried / are trying. But I’m curious how well that’s working out if anyone knows.
I think that’s a very bad idea (though separate “pets” and “no pets” housing makes sense, to deal with allergies and phobias.) People who may have nothing else left in the world but their commensal animals shouldn’t be deprived of them, let alone be forced to abandon them to possibly very unpleasant fates; and non-human animals may be very helpful to the mental health of humans.
It’s finally getting through to emergency services that if it’s necessary to evacuate an area in an emergency, provision needs to be made for the non-humans if they expect the humans to be willing to go. And it’s finally getting through to nursing homes and so on that for most people health is improved by being able to have contact with cats and dogs. This acknowledgment needs to be extended to both emergency and long-term housing for people without money.
Honestly, I don’t see that as the critical issue. If people think they should be entitled to free dental care, for example, how are they supposed to get it? How can they refuse to accept not having dental care? The people who are receiving assistance have essentially no say in what is offered.
It’s the people who are giving the assistance that control what is offered. So getting their opinions on what is adequate actually has meaning. If you want poor people to have free dental care, it’s the non-poor people you need to talk to and convince.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to learn more about a program that works well if you could share more about this one.