Why are people still homeless?

Great Debates
1

This question applies primarily to residents of the US. Living in a city with a large homeless population, I’ve often wondered: when people say that as part of their political agenda they’d like to feed the homeless, do they generally mean that the efforts that are currently being made to feed and shelter the homeless are just not enough, or that an entirely different course of action is appropriate?

Are the beds in the homeless shelters filling up that fast, or are there people out on the streets who would just rather not partake of them for some reason? The same with the soup kitchens: are they honestly running clean out of soup, or is the average homeless person asking me to subsidize his Wendy’s jones when he comes a-solicitin’?

What sparked this curiosity was the observation that many of the homeless that look like they’ve been out on the streets the longest aren’t necessarily the ones that are doing all the begging. It seems that 7 or 8 out of ten people that approach me on the streets for money look like they haven’t been out there that long (ie. clothes dirty but not excessively worn, modest growth of facial hair, etc.). Just wondering if the majority of the solicitors on the streets aren’t “newbies” who just haven’t learned the ropes yet or what. But more importantly, how much lacking are the facilities for feeding and sheltering the homeless in America?

SAustinTx

2

C: None of the above, for politicians at least. When a politician says he wants to feed the homeless, he means “please vote for me.”

Why are there still homeless people? Because we as a society simply do not consider housing them to be a high priority.

3

Here’s are the real questions:

How much should a society spend on people who do not contribute to it?

How do you distinguish between someone who is unable to work (metal disability or physical handicap), has a diminished ability to work through a combination of bad choices and circumstance (drug or alchol abuse), and someone who simply does not feel like working?

4

From what I have read, the biggest cause by far is mental illness as well as drug and alcohol abuse. Look up books and articles by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., a psychiatrist who has written a great deal about this subject.

5

I’m sorry, but which is it: mental illness or drug and alcohol abuse? One is voluntary, the other involuntary, so this would seem to be a key point in agreeing with or refuting the prior post which asked why should we feed those who make no societal contributions?

6

Horseshit anyhow. The biggest cause of homelessness is the decline in cheap short-term rental housing, such as what they used to call “SROs”. Being in some sense mentally incapacitated makes it harder to get back out of being homeless, but it’s pretty damn difficult for anyone if you don’t have a real income when available rental space requires monthly rent plus a month’s deposit and possibly references and proof of income and whatnot. Reciprocally, it’s difficult to obtain employment without a regular home.

7

That’s exactly the quandary that keeps me from contributing very often (along with the fact that I rarely have any spare bones to dish out). While many (most?) homeless appear to have some sort of mental handicap, a lot of it seems to be of a minor sort: sheer misanthropy and antagonism that no doubt results from their predicament. My point is: how many mentally handicapped people on the streets suffer from a physiological impairment to the brain and how many have just become “out of touch” through their dissipated lifestyle? The origin of their dysfunction would seem to be a crucial issue, from a moral POV, whether any given homeless person deserves help. Depending on your political bent, of course…

However, I see that I’m helping to foster the derailment of my original question, which was, “why aren’t the current efforts enough”? Or rather, how much more is needed and are the homeless currently out on the streets fully taking advantage of the resources available now? I once saw a woman begging change on the city bus, and when she explained to one of the passengers she needed something to eat, and the passenger gave her the exact location of a nearby free soup kitchen, she thanked him wryly and kept on soliciting change. That led me to wondering if more people like this exist, that would rather leech off good samaritans than take advantage of existing efforts to help them out.

I don’t doubt that many homeless people refuse to take advantage of shelters because of the “no alcohol” policy, but if this is the reason a large percentage of them are sleeping in door jambs then are there any real further efforts that can made to assist them, or are they just, for lack of a better term, f**ked?

SAustinTx

8

an awful lot of assumptions here, the most troubling of which was ‘how much should society spend on people who don’t contribute’.

In one of the local homeless shelters, there’s an entire 1/3 of it specifically devoted to homeless vets. (and before anyone talks about those pan handlers laying false claims, these are folks who’ve been able to prove who they are etc.).

I’d also like to see some particular back up to the claim that substance abuse (a recognized clinical condition) is something that one chooses. (I do recognize that substance abusers at some level make a choice to try a substance, once the addiction is clinically there, the element of personal choice isn’t quite as apparent).

THe ‘homeless’ population encompasses a number of different ‘types’. There are, of course, those who are substance abusers, others have serious mental illnesses but do not fit the criteria for hospitalization, some have been recently released from prison/jail (w/o a placement), others may have had their housing destroyed by fire or other means. Some have been kicked out by their families (wives, husbands, parents etc.).

For some, homelessness is a temporary condition, until they can save up enough $$ to put a deposit on a new place etc.

For others, the jobs that they have (and many of them do) do not pay sufficiently for them to live off the wages and save enough for deposits etc.

For many folks living near the poverty level, they are one catastrophy away from homelessness (car needing major repairs, accident or illness that takes them off work for more than a week,company going out of business or reducing hours, major event in close family requiring them to be off work for a time etc.).

another poster touched on another important issue. 15 years ago in my town (Lansing MI) there were several short term housing options available (rooms that you could rent by the month or by the week, where you could store your stuff safely while you went to work or sought work etc.). One by one, they dropped off. Currently, if some one is released from prison w/o a home placement (a not infrequent occurance), they’re given a parole loan (which they must pay back) that will pay for about 3 nights lodging at a local hotel. That’s from the prison. THe jail - they don’t bother asking. You’re released at your time and they don’t know/care if there’s even a way for you to get to town.

Yes, there are some folks who are chronically homeless. Generally with those, there’s some other serious issues (the substance abuse, mental illness etc.).

9

When I was homeless, the main thrust of programs for the homeless tended to have the following shortcomings:

• Least Common Denominator: Despite the fact that among us were people ranging from highly intelligent, mentally coherent people with advanced degrees who had lost job and home down to mentally impaired drug addicted people who had never worked or been exposed up close to a culture in which people were ever employed, the programs were almost always designed on a one-size-fits-all basis, and the one size was the bottom end. Rehab was where you learned how to operate a mop or do your own laundry. Programs of this nature do not get many people off the streets. Which ties in with…

• Comfortable Employment Environment: No, not for us, for the employees who manage aggregate social work programs for the homeless. Given the realistic assumption that the programs were not going to get many of us out of their system and out onto our feet, the purpose of the places tended to evolve into “Warehouse the homeless in a fashion that allows for a convenient workplace environment with predictable and easily-routinized management responsibilities, so as to be effectively staffed and run by entry-level social services personnel at the 21K/yr salary level”. And that leads to…

• Deterioration of Civil Rights and Ordinary Human Freedoms: Given those priorities and imperatives, along with a lot of pressure from surrounding communities to keep us from in any way disturbing the “legitimate” residents of the area, what kinds of rules and regulations, not to mention informal everyday treatment, tends to evolve in such settings? Not the kind you’d expect in a college dorm. Not the kind you’d expect, even, in a boarding school for minor children, although we were all adult citizens. Instead, more infantilization and less tolerance than the boarding school kids normally get, and pretty close to the level of arbitrary control and restrictiveness one finds in institutions such as prisons or mental hospitals.

Yet for some reason people are surprised that so many of us would prefer to live on the streets?@!?

I was fortunate in having the educational background, native intelligence, and social skills that would enable me to get into college and get the heck out of there, and because I knew that and therefore knew that what I was putting up with was temporary, I stuck it out and coped with their bullshit, and having a permanent address and a monthly welfare check (which requires you to have a permanent address) enabled me to get into college which would have been awfully damn difficult if I’d been sleeping in alleyways. If I had not thought that staying there was ultimately going to get me out of the situation, though, I would have chosen the alleyway, hands down.

10

AHunter3. Thanks for providing first-hand evidence and insight.

SAustinTx If no-one else said it, I think that the panhandlers you encounter and look so much better are just that–panhandlers. Not, in general, the true homeless.

11

Well, as an Austinite myself I can see why someone from south Austin would be asking this question. Sorry I don’t have anything to contribute, but welcome to the SDMB.

Bill Norton
Austin, TX

12

What do you mean by not contributing? How would you define who is and is not willing to work, what reasoning behind their decisions would acceptable/unacceptable to you? What about people who could be seen to be making a negative contribution to society? Should they be penalised, too? Or should a civilised society attempt to provide basic human rights and support to everyone, purely on a basis of existence? What is it about you that makes you willing to work? Are you somehow inherently better than those who are not, or have you been provided with life lessons that have given you a work ethic or drive to succeed, which others may not have had access to?

Again, look to why you yourself do not have a drug or alcohol dependancy. Is it because you were born a better person than those who become addicts, or is it because you are lucky enough to have had a life which has led you to where you are now? Drug dependancy is not voluntary; nobody decides to become an addict. Mental health issues go hand-in-hand with dependancy problems, even at a grassroots level where somebody who has suffered a lack of appropriate support systems won’t have the strength or security in order to turn down a quick-fix temporary solution to their problems as they see them.

Homeless people have been failed at some point in their lives. Maybe by themselves in such a destructive manner they’ve been unable to recover from it. Maybe by a partner, their parents, their country (many residents of shelters in this country are refugees). Perhaps by the ‘system’; an adult brought up in care, left to fend for themselves at 16, straight into gaol for petty offences, their term lengthened by an inability to cope inside - how would you suggest that a person institutionalised to this degree should manage to deal with the realities of living alone, should the governing body decide to house them on release, when they will have received no training at any point in their life on how to care for themselves?

Funding is a huge issue - there are charities who give out grants to various projects (detox, mental health for the homeless clinics, soup kitchens, drop-in centres, shelters etc) but government funding is hugely important to homeless support projects, in this country at least. Politicians walk a fine line - the public want the homeless off the streets so they won’t have to be faced with the problem on a day-to-day basis, but the public are generally unwilling to pay much for this to happen, ‘why should I work, and pay for people who don’t want to?’. Even if a bed is found for a rough sleeper, if the funding is not in place to provide them with mental health care/addiction therapy/lifeskills tutoring etc, the bed will function as nothing more than a quick fix itself. Upkeep is important - without funding, we can’t provide surroundings which will encourage a resident to begin to take pride in themselves and their surroundings.

The mechanics in order to provide most homeless people with a bed for a night, a shower and a meal, are in place, at least in this country. But for a longterm solution, projects need far more resources in order to be able to provide every homeless man and woman with their best opportunity for keeping off the streets permanently. Trouble is, politicians can’t risk being seen to be taking the wages off the majority in order to give the minority an ‘easy ride’. Bit of a vicious circle, really.

13

The demographics for short term poverty based homlessness and long term homelessness are two somewhat different populations.

Long term, chronically homeless people are mostly hardcore substance abuse/drug addicts and/or people with mental problems, with a large majority of those two categories overlapping. Shelters, homeless programs and the best intentions are not going to get these people off the street, They choose to live there mainly because they can do as they please lifestyle-wise and are not subject to the institutional strictures of shelters or various assistance programs. Short of institutionalization there is not much that can be done for this population in real terms other than keep them alive with food handouts and shelter them in extremely inclement weather.

Short term homeless programs for very poor people or people suffering from treatable mental or drug problems need additional resources, and the most chronic one is affordable housing as other posters have pointed out. Having said this there are limits to what can be accomplished, and the amount of scarce resources that can be allocated for saving a population, that from a real world economic (certainly not moral) perspective, is probably going to be more of a social drain than a resource in the short run and is going to need continuous attention.

What are the limits of compassion? These are the decisions that define us as a society.

14

I mean not making anything. Not providing a service or product. If you are jobless, that is what you are doing. And if you are jobless long enough, you will become homeless.

If you decided not to work, you need to figure out 1) how you will eat and 2) where you will live. I couldn’t care less why a person chooses not to work if they have a means to support themself.

Fine, Just tell me who should pay to feed and house the homeless and how much they should spend.

My desire to not be a starving homeless person drives me to work. That’s it and that’s all. Do you think I enjoy having to drag myself back and forth to some office each day, having to spend months out of town, travel daily to clients that could be up to 3 hours away or working weekends or late nights at the whim of some manager or partner who has chosen that the job is more important than having normal relationships? Absolutely not.

So while I’m busting my ass each day, how much of my income should go to someone who has done nothing all day but panhandle on a subway train?

15

I made a decision a while back that should I ever be facing impending homelessness I would immediately get a couple hundred together and start selling drugs. I think the support system is just not there. In New York City you have organizations like “City Harvest” who go around to restaurants who are throwing away the surplus food for the night and bringing it to the homeless, and you know what? THERE ARE RESTAURANTS THAT WON’T GIVE IT TO THEM. Can you imagine that? There are restaurants that would rather throw their food away than feed a hungry person. It makes me sick. Someone should compile a database of these places and put it on the web so that they are easy to boycott.

Luckily however I have not had to become homeless due to a family that will support me. I am lucky that I can live in my city because I have family here I can stay with, rather than having to fly back to New Mexico to stay with my parents or remain homeless in New York.

I don’t inquire what the issue with someone is when I give them money. I am either going to give it to them or I’m not. When I have the money I usually do give it. If they want to spend it on booze that’s their prerogative, I gave them the OPTION of eating, and that’s enough for me. The weight of their problems is not on my shoulders.

Erek

16

From what I understand, there would be liability issues for restaurants giving away food.

17

Deciding not to work is one thing. Not being employable, or not earning enough to keep a roof over your head is quite another. There is a class of people in this country known as the “working homeless.” Especially in high rent, high occupancy cities, it can be very hard to find a place to live on minimum wage. And once you don’t have a place to live, providing the address of the last place you lived for a reference can be tough (landlords don’t like gaps).

Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed explores trying to get by on minimum wage (or near minimum wage) jobs. I’ll be the first to admit, she makes a lot of mistakes in her great social experiment, but its eye opening (and not everyone makes perfect decisions).

And msmith, I think you are being a little disingenious. If all that got you out of bed every morning was the though of feeding yourself and keeping a roof over your head, you would quit your job and find another - maybe being the greeter at Wal-Mart - which would be less demanding of your time and energy. Since you are apparently not the greeter at Wal-Mart, I assume your standards are a little higher than any roof over your head and ramen for dinner six nights a week (on the seventh, you get the off brand mac n’ cheese - yum).

(Of course, the greeter at Wal-Mart has that getting by on a small paycheck problem - but you could moonlight as a panhandler).

18

I truly feel for the involuntarily homeless, and also thank AHunter3 for his first-hand insights.

Question for AHunter3… what percentage of homeless people you encountered chose to be that way?

There must be a proportion of people on the streets that have a fear of responsiblity, or shirk responsibility (i.e. looking after other people or property) to the point that they would rather just be a free spirit.

This is in no way intended to offend the truly disadvantaged.

19

BamBam, I have never met anyone who chose to be homeless. Ever.

Have I ever met any homeless people whose attitudes or behaviors could arguably be said to be the equivalent of having chosen to be homeless?

I occasionally met people who had no concept, let alone personal familiarity with, the processes by which one makes oneself presentable as a job applicant, or by which one retains a job once hired, e.g., they might not show up or they might show up in no condition to work. I met a couple whose talents seemed to lie in intimidating people, stealing other people’s property very quickly, and fencing it, or profiting from selling drugs to other homeless people–I’d say they would have preferred to have a home to return to after a day’s criminal/coercive activities, but their taste and talent for lucrative ventures could arguably work against that.

I have met many homeless people who choose not to participate in programs for the homeless or live in homeless shelters. I don’t regard homeless shelters as homes–see my previous post for more details. It may be accurate to say that people choose to be homeless rather than live in a shelter for homeless people, but the residents of homeless shelters are still homeless.

20

Thanks AHunter3, much appreciated.
All the best with your future.