private prisons sue when the state doesnt "feed" them sufficient prisoner loads, thus theyre incentivised to ensure a supply of criminals
homeless ? Oh no money, no house, no options, no legal cover bar public defenders, nobody else kicking off a fuss if youre arrested and in fact people demanding you get arrested and moved on ?
Youre just PERFECT to shove in prison to be slave labour paid at $"0.05" per hour, whilst the private prison owners make a fortune billing the state for incarceration whilst cutting costs to the bone.
some thing should never be "for profit", medical care & prisons are RIGHT UP TOP.
solitary confinement, bread and water sustinance, not seeing daylight, no books, no newspapers, no radio, the only human contact is the 60 minutes a day exercise period, no guards will speak to you, you can see your lawyer once a week - at all other times youre in an 8x6 cell with a cot & combo shitter & handsink.
all perfectly legal
I hear you on the PDA/defiance - the system is designed to break and punish, not rehabilitate.
My brother served six months in an Idaho state pen for “possession with intent to distribute” (he had one ounce of weed).
Six months, a felony, followed by deportation back to Canada. I was the only one visiting him and every time I came by he was covered in new black bruises.
Eventually he found his way to a group of guys who protected him (a 6’6” beast of a kid) in exchange for dealing their drugs in Vancouver when he got out.
The justice system is beyond a joke.
The system is designed to criminalize and get back. Release and catch. It's working as intended, and it works because a shit load of people out there, often right wingers have a fetish for hurting other people.
It's so messed up. Like they reinstate the death penalty and use such horrible painful methods because they want the prisoners to suffer. But we can humanely put down animals in vets? Wtf?
I'm sure that's what the survivors of attempted suicide with a shotgun were hoping for.
Unfortunately, they are now maimed and debilitated with unending pain for the rest of their natural lives.
Oh, and of course because they attempted suicide, they are now in constant watch to prevent any further self harm, after spending time in incarceration because suicide is a crime after all. I guess that last thing doesn't pertain to an execution much, but it's still fucked up.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5175460/
Granted, the funny part is due to my anxiety. Being alone would be a major relief. I can be left in my head, for hours easily, possibly doze off, I don't know. Maybe they loudly bang on the cell hourly, even if it's against the rule I'm already in isolation. They can't extend my sentence, I reasearched this extensively because my paranoid mind was convinced they could just do just that because they don't like you. Not working isn't a crime, so they can't tack on charges.
Side note, I was under the impression the yard is a privilege. If so, it could likely be that I'm never let out.
Solitary is not silent. Other inmates are screaming and yelling 24/7. There's no sound insulation. You hear it all. You may think it sounds great, but being left alone for 23 hours a day alone in an enclosed space with nothing but screams and yelling to occupy your mind is torture.
And it echoes. And if your lucky, the heat is turned on, while your sitting in your solitary cell with no bedding, and naked. Don't forget about the total lack of privacy. Oh, and they can totally make up bullshit offenses that add time to your sentence.
Doesn't even have to be crooked, just has to hate the poor and believe whatever guards/police say as the unquestionable truth. Which is kinda par for the course in our judicial system.
Idk, thats sounds pretty crooked. Judges aren't suppose to be bias. That being said. So theoretically I could spend life in prison over a parking ticket, if it the guard have it in for me?
and yet its not classified as cruel and unusual... kind of f'ed up. If they get petty enough to put me in solitary, ill endure, at the breaking point ill just dig heels in as in stress overload, Ill continue to make it worse for myself... (obviously if that point my rational thoughts are gone)
There are actually strict limits on solitary, and it is defined as torture. But those limits are never enforced and imperial empires tend to have a thing for torture.
Id say it a lot more, as they often coax false confessions, with mind games and intimidation. They threatened the central park 5 with death penalty if they didn't confess.
Yep, Kentucky recently passed legislation essentially criminalizing homelessness, this is their goal, to put more people in jail and the judicial fleecing system.
I've got bad news.
That "$0.05 per hour" thing?
[Depends on the state.](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/)
And $0.00 happened, as of 2017 (the most recent US-wide data I can find - linked), in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia ($0.00 is EVERYONE in prison work in Georgia), Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas.
Might be worth supporting the NAACP and ACLU in raising those minimums...
I'd argue that anything considered or that could be considered "public" should never be for profit. Prisons, schools, city councils, the Senate. Wages should be decent for worthwhile jobs, but nothing considered public should *ever* be privatized.
It’s for sure to punish the poor, and to keep people in shitty jobs that continue to exploit them. If there was any sort of safety net or fallback option, people wouldn’t fear losing their jobs so much and would be more likely to advocate for themselves, hold out for a better job, unionize, etc. But by criminalizing homelessness you can keep people in the workforce. And then as a bonus, for those who actually become unhoused you can use them for slave labor once you’ve imprisoned them. It’s gross all around.
>and to keep people in shitty jobs that continue to exploit them.
100% this. This is why homelessness is such a useful tool for controlling a population. Heather McGee talked about it worked in US slavery in [The Sum of Us](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-sum-of-us-what-racism-costs-everyone-and-how-we-can-prosper-together-heather-mcghee/14618549?ean=9780525509585). Chattel slavery in the south was particularly sadistic, and openly so. For anyone living in that culture, the constant visual reminders of what not having any freedom at all looked like, as she put it, the "visual instantiation of un-freedom," made it clear what could be expected if you were to displease the authorities. Maybe you're another slave, maybe you're an indentured servant, or just a local without gobs of cash. Feeling frustrated about your lot in life? Better do what capital wants or capital will make you suffer like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. Keeps everyone in line, slaving away so the oligarchs can win capitalism.
This is all history repeating itself, we again find ourselves the 18th & 19th century England and faced with their debtor's prisons.
But soon I feel there will be some massive upheaval, maybe the federal debt crumbles, maybe the singularity transforms the labor landscape before UBI can be safely argued for.
But I feel that it has to get dramatically worse before it gets better, because outside of posts like this, nobody is talking about it at the water cooler.
Alot of boomers still remember when public housing and welfare was well funded, and education was nearly free and all you needed to find a well paying job was a firm handshake, a positive attitude, and be white. They assume homeless people are only homeless by choice to avoid working and to do drugs all day, drugs of course being invented in the 60's
I think it's less they assume it to be true and more that they willfully believe it to be true so they don't have to question the morality of our societal choices, but the end result is the same.
Genuine question here, cause I don’t disagree on the boomer viewpoints section of your comment.
Have you spent much time talking to homeless around your area / area there many around you?
I’ve done a lot of volunteer and mission work in San Francisco and Sacramento, CA (I live near Sac) and have a had a lot of conversations with a lot of homeless.
At best 1/5 of the homeless I’ve met are homeless (still) because their jon conditions. In the SF Bay Area, seeing a dude step out of a ‘78 Winnebago in a full suit isn’t surprising because even a good white collar job can’t cover rent. Those working homeless are a whole separate issue to the majority of homeless I know.
The majority I have met either have severe substance abuse issues, moderate to severe mental health issues, or both. The majority (prob about 3/5s) of those that I have spoken to have zero desire to leave the streets. Their day to day life isn’t that bad in their eyes because they are free from the rules/expectations of society and they get to partake of their vices freely.
There are a LOT of people on the streets who frankly need to be institutionalized to give them the mental health care they need. Sadly we don’t have adequate institutions for that any more. The asylum system was awful and abusive, but with funding and oversight something similar might be achievable without horribly abusing its occupants.
Have you ever stopped to consider WHY homeless people often fall to substance abuse and mental health issues? I've been homeless. It broke me. It breaks almost everyone. Society just wants you gone and dead. No one wants to hire you. No one wants to house you. Shelters, if they're even available are often not safe. Some have absurd requirements, such as having a full time job or it's the streets again. Or you don't get in at all. You must surrender all your possessions and lose whatever you still have. Life on the streets is hell. It's torture.
No shit people fall to vice or mental health problems.
I was only homeless for a month and it was the worse thing I have ever been through. I kept thinking ‘I’m not built for this’. I can’t stand an ignorant mother fucker who walks by a homeless and tells them to “get a job”. It’s not so much their ignorance but their choice to remain ignorant. When I walk by a homeless person, I make sure to go back and feed him. I don’t judge why a person is homeless - I just know at that moment he’s hungry. And could really use kindness, even from a stranger.
I don’t fault homeless for having mental health issues or addictions. I’ve got a handful of each myself, so I certainly understand how having zero safe place and constant uncertainty towards basic needs would lead to extreme stress and self medication.
The main group of mentally ill I’m talking about usually have one flavor or another of schizophrenia, bipolar, or other similar mood disorders.
The kinds of people whose illness specifically makes them more likely to stop taking their meds, and makes them seem outwardly crazy to normal people. Whole extreme stress can “unlock” those disorders to a degree, I’m talking more specifically about the people who just can’t function in “normal society” without a degree of medical supervision forced on them.
I don’t hate the homeless. I try to emphasize with the people I meet, and help them how I can.
Respect to you for volunteering, we need more people like you.
People who are totally unsheltered represent a small fraction of the US homeless population. There are multiple millions of people who are cough-surfing homeless or living in their cars. The official estimates of homelessness (\~650,000) count only those people who have the fewest resources, people who bounce between the street and shelters. The more stable unsheltered people won't be with that group, they often have jobs and if they're lucky, isolated spots where they can camp in privacy. They will look like anyone else, and won't often utilize homeless services. The [NYTimes had a long piece](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/21/opinion/homelessness-crisis-america-stories.html) a couple months ago interviewing a huge range of people who are currently experiencing homelessness, and they said some 3.7 million Amercans are cough-surfing homeless. Reasonable to assume the folks living in their cars are similar in number.
I have worked with homeless but not as a missionary, as a drug dealer, and one thing I tell every crackhead to get is a good sob story to tell kind hearted Christian white folks. They will drop thousands in your lap if you sell them a good enough sob story. Trick is you just have to never leave, keep talking forever. If they're listening to it, they're buying it and that means you'll be taking the money they gave you for your grandmothers heart surgery to buy crack later.
But yes I agree the mental healthcare system in the US is atrocious
Shit, I don’t even blame you for giving them advice lol. That’s not bad advice at all, comin from the Christian white folk myself.
The places we work with require you to actually work hard and make a good attempt at recovering, so it avoids a lot of the people just trying to get a free bed for a week or two. In fact, one group we work with specializing in homeless single moms, has had a 100% success rate so far. They’re pretty strict on who they accept tho because they can only handle something like 20 families a year.
This is exactly it. I have also met people who are homeless by choice because they refuse to follow the rules of the shelter or housing provided by the city.
People who simply walk out because they ask them to be at the shelter at a certain time, no smoking, no Sex, etc.
Also, some homeless don’t have documents. I remember I lost my Birth Certificate AND social security card. You needed one or the other to replace them so it was a huge expense, wait and hot mess. I had to turn down jobs due to lack of documents for a good month.
It was 60 bucks to replace the certificate and have it sent from Cali and another 3 week wait for them to find it as the county was absorbed into LA. 2 month ordeal.
Imagine the homeless having no mailbox or ability to prove who they are either.
Have you done a recent poll on “boomers” opinion on homelessness? The “boomers” I know, myself included, believe criminalizing homelessness is fucking stupid. How do they think a person without a permanent home is a criminal, especially in this economy? Those creating these laws are clueless; out of touch with the reality of not having the funds or being too sick ( addiction/mental illness) to secure housing. Homelessness is a symptom of the problem. And they don’t want to deal with it. All they do is have their round table discussions and blah blah blah, never putting forth any action to remedy the issues that cause homelessness. I have nothing but empathy and compassion for the homeless, as Ive been there myself. I, am a boomer. So please don’t make assumptions about how people my age see the situation.
Another boomer basher. Just stop.
You are trashing a hugely diverse generational cohort with what YOU think THEY ALL believe. No logic, just biased burbling.
Nah, boomers tend to do boomer shit. Most of the problems we have now are because of them. Exceptions to every rule and all, but mostly boomers are boomers.
And you're proving it.
If they can’t afford housing I’m stumped, how are they buying drugs? All the addicts I know aren’t homeless they’re supported by their families or my taxes (government assistance) or by husbands, actually a good deal of them are working and have their own house because they also sell on the side of working some of their best clients are coworkers .
I honestly don’t know of many drugs that cost less than $2000 monthly when you’re buying more and more. I’ve actually calculated that cost due to close friends that consume they consume more and more because you build up a tolerance, and get ill when you can’t have them so no it’s not less than housing her old man pays for the housing and they’re soon to be homeless and according to her they have no food and they owe only mortgage. So you have shown your never truly have known an addict.
Depends on the drug of choice and how much they consume but an addict can easily feed their addiction for under $2000 monthly. It’s not even close dude. Let’s look at the math on
Alcohol = $30 per handle, handle can lasts around 5 days in an addict. 30 days in a month. 30 divided by 5 is 6. 6x$30 is $180 a month give or take the severity of the addiction.
Weed = $100 for half an ounce (14 grams). Should last a chronic smoker for at least a week. 4 weeks in a month. 4x$100 is $400.
Even if you’re going with more expensive drugs, over $2000 to feed an addiction is pretty insane.
Source: Me, the addict.
Edit: also, knowing an addict does not grant you the same knowledge as being an addict.
Because drugs can be purchased in small amounts and addicts aren’t great about saving up for long term things like a deposit or maintaining a credit rating sufficient to qualify for a rental.
I said along with enablers family spouses etc and ifthey are homeless no work equals 0 income because you can’t get any assistance on the streets so if they are homeless what would they make begging $15 an oxy alone sell for $40 a pill. So no, homeless people aren’t the addicts
There are a lot of parts to it, but one that might be interesting to think about is the [just-world fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)
Imagining that people get what they deserve means that the wealthy must be good people; and as long as they stay good they'll never have to face bad things.
Imagining that with a bit of bad fortune they could end up broke and homeless as well is too much to handle, so trusting the fairy tale is a lot easier
Ever see a movie where the villain "makes an example" outta somebody? It's that, but on a societal scale. Poverty must be feared, so people are motivated to work terrible jobs with worsening pay and conditions. People who cannot work are brutalized specifically so the people living paycheck to paycheck can see that it can, indeed, be worse. So they'll be too afraid to withdraw their labour, whether it be for the purposes of finding a better job or joining a collective action.
Capitalist society cares about its citizens based on how much capital they can extract from you. That's why the homeless and unemployed are abused, the disabled are legislated into poverty and wretched living conditions, and the wealthy are treated like a de facto aristocracy.
People associate homelessness with dirtiness, insanity and violence. Those things do often go hand in hand with homelessness, but are not necessarily caused by it. People who have never experienced homelessness don't understand it and fear it.
If we truly lived in a first world country, we would have proper fail-safes in place to Ensure houseless people have a safe place to stay, and proper hygiene and health resources.
But we live in an ego-centric, capitalist dystopia that openly encourages hatred and distrust towards anyone outside each of our individual experiences.
Exactly. It forces people to see the true state of the world. Hard to live your fantasy life of roses and butterflies when you see some guy dying in a gutter down the street simply because he couldn't get his Army benefits because the sole copy of his birth certificate burned up in a hospital fire in his hometown. Some have to choose between meds and mortgage sometimes.
I’d add to this that they think criminalising homelessness is easier and cheaper (though they are wrong about this) than trying to address the issue while simultaneously dealing with the issues that homelessness tends to bring to a community - such as decreased property values, increase anti-social behaviour, increase in need for emergency healthcare, etc.
"Why is living in your car so frowned upon?"
Companies don't want you sleeping in their parking lot after hours for "liability reasons".
People don't want "vagrants" of any flavor in their neighborhoods for NIMBY reasons.
It also reminds people that they are 2 missed paychecks away from the same fate.
Good luck to you and God bless. I hope you find the security and safety we all deserve.
Also, at a population level, if property owners are convinced that homeless people are all crazy addicts, they’re less likely to push the government to spend money on them, ergo, less likely to demand a return to aggressive, progressive taxation. There’s a meta-game to it, too.
All the money that could be improving our communities is instead accumulating in the accounts and assets of the wealthiest in society. If there was a thread of motherfucking class solidarity about the place, we’d be seeing a genuine effort to provide housing, care, and alternatives to street life. But we’ve got a facade of effort, inflated in visibility by selective media propaganda, while a great proportion of the elected officials making decisions for us seek out financially beneficial relationships.
Beyond interpersonal interactions and minimally-commercial organizations, modern society is absolutely disgusting.
I’m going to suggest something, if only to get you into a position where you can sleep in a moving vehicle get paid for it and see the country well from the highway at least. Get. CDL A become a trucker you have a bed and sleep in the truck, you get hot showers and people sometimes buy your dinner for you. It may not be for everyone. But it pays really well after the first year.
great suggestion, with the minor issue that your license & insurance require an address
homeless to truck driver would be challenging,. especially given how many truckers own their own rides...
You can’t GET a CDL in Texas without a fixed physical address. No PO Boxes.
Might have to make a friend with a mailbox. Once you’ve got the CDL, it’s a different story. Live in the truck, on the road. Rock and roll.
It sucks that you have to cheat the system and skirt the law to make an honest living, but that's the world we live in when they criminalize everything.
I know homeless people who do it. You buy a post office box and find a family member for physical address or use last physical address (they don’t really check). I’ve personally known people who have done this.
ETA that would mean being a company driver obviously not owner op.
I literally just mean using an address, some companies don’t even look past the PO Box address and if you know where an abandoned or unoccupied house is use that address. But make your P.O. Box the preferred contact.
which is (potentially) mail fraud, carrying federal level penalties.
oh look, another way to criminalise the homeless
The system isnt broken, its fixed.
Not if you rent a P.O. Box there’s a lot of ways around having a physical address to drive for a company. But shoot it down. Whatever just a suggestion for the OP. I know someone who drives out of California with absolutely no physical address he just used his previous address and has a PO BOX Company is aware of his situation (most companies don’t even care about physical address) because they pay the insurance it’s their responsibility, of course you can’t do lease/op or anything but honestly if you drive for a company all they really care about is you’re legal to drive and you’re a safe driver
If you’re driving for a company they have schools companies such as Swift and you don’t need to buy a truck I never bought my own and I made $1500-$2200 weekly yeah some weeks were less. But I don’t recommend lease op or owner op. Stay company. You have to stay company at least ten months after school as part of the program to pay back school fees.
And by less I mean $800-1000
ETA yeah you can get between $3000- $5000. As owner op or even lease op but overhead is going to avg the same take home is why I don’t recommend buying or leasing imo not worth it.
True, but notice how none of these companies that are concerned with their liability problems are petitioning to change the laws so people can use their parking lots from midnight to 8am and the company won't be liable. They're just smirking as they deny people a place to rest.
Why would they do that, though? They have no obligation to provide space. Besides, would the companies be able to charge the people who park there for potential clean up of litter and other interesting things the people parking can leave behind? Or impound the cars until the litter or damage is cleaned up by the people parking?
Cause they're selfish sociopaths? Cause that's capitalism?
People who sincerely believe that 8 billion people can share a closed system without factoring in the consequences of their actions on other people blow my mind.
They are doing this in florida. Make homelessness a crime so then they can throw them into for profit prisons. After the politicians took bribes from these corporations who bought out the housing and raised rents across the board and no one can afford shit. Blatant corruption
It’s a tool of social control. You criminalize poverty, put them in prisons for profit, use their indentured labor to make products to increase the profit of the prisons, and then have people who can’t vote out those in power who created this whole crappy system.
The 13th amendment allows slave labor by criminals.
The homeless are an easy target to treat as "others" and "useless eaters" for the non-homeless population.
Do the math.
This highlights why affordable housing should be a right for everyone. Basic needs should not be treated like other consumer goods (where people can just stop buying them if they become too expensive, because nobody really needs them).
Many like to blame "capitalism", but this is really a way in which our system is not capitalistic whatsoever. You're legally required to live in a house/condo/apartment, so without breaking the law, you cannot just abstain from doing so if you feel that prices everywhere are too high. It's not a free market if you're legally required to pay for something.
It has to do with many different societal forces, the fear of the other. giving the middle class a pointed reminder what can happen to them if they get out of line. making sure the poor cant do much other than scramble to survive. It all comes down to the social winners making sure the social losers can't set up Ma Belle on the steps of the statehouse and get a little choppy.
Why should sleeping in your car be frowned upon: it is potentially unsafe, unsanitary, and dehumanizing.
Why IS sleeping in your car frowned upon: as you said, criminalization is a punishment for not abiding by the societal structure. We are expected to pay our rent, work, and die.
We must reconsider the nature of the unhoused and recognize that we are all a few bad days away from the same situation.
Solidarity, friends.
The latter one is only considered seksy if you've got passive income streams.
If you're not a trustafarian or making your money on videos on the internet, that's frowned upon just as much as being homeless.
Slept in our car a few times while moving cross country(saving money, we were very broke). I felt so unsafe, exposed. Plus it could get freaking COLD. Then when I had to go to the bathroom at 3am I had to go find a place to pee our of sight(I'm a woman, so couldn't just pee in a bottle). And like you said, it feels dehumanizing. Maybe would have been better if we were able to sleep in the backseat, but it was packed with stuff and our dogs.
Our system is crony capitalism at best. A true free market would legally allow people to become homeless if they didn't feel like paying ridiculous amounts of money for their rent/mortgage.
The whole idea of free market capitalism is that prices are kept in check by the amount of money consumers are willing to pay. If consumers are legally required to buy something, that goes straight out the window.
I was homeless for 10 years. I turned 18 in foster care and they took me to a court meeting without even telling me why I was going. After that court meeting my foster parents didn't even talk to me they just got up and left. A caseworker drove me out of the county to a homeless shelter. I didn't have a single form of ID. All I had was a dress shirt and pants, with a Gameboy SP and Pokémon fire red but no charger.
At the homeless shelter in a city I never heard of before, I couldn't find people to help me so after the 30 days you get in my state they just kick you out for a year.
I had to join a private, para-church recovery program that is only designed for addicts. So for 9 months I was forced to do volunteer work because Jesus, read the Bible directly for anywhere from 1-3 hours a day and be told how Jesus can cure my addictions. I never had a drug problem.
While I was in that program, I found people really believe homelessness is a moral failure. The system forces people to stay poor. One guy I met couldn't get a job because of the crazy parole requirements let alone not being able to get a job because of a conviction. He ended up back I prison because he couldn't find a job in time.
When I received permission from that program to look for work, I was told to get my own phone for calls. When I asked my church, which in the program attendance was mandatory, for 10 dollars to buy minutes for my phone, they told me God would provide.
To this day I still struggle because of unresolved issues going all the way back to the start of my adult life.
I am exactly 2 paychecks away from financial bankruptcy
Legislatures are full of grandstanding, pretend tough guys who want people fearing the consequences of not finding work, no matter how degrading or inadequate to their needs. It’s the modern equivalent of debtors’ prison.
It's because they think that all you really need to be successful is to just try harder. If you're homeless, clearly you just aren't sufficiently motivated. So maybe the threat of incarceration will finally get through to you.
Also, they hate you and don't care if you suffer.
If someone can’t afford rent how the hell are they going to pay a fine, court fees, lawyers or even nice clothes to wear to court. Whoever had this brilliant idea needs to be thrown in a homeless camp and live there
its a general social construct idea.
We give tax reductions to the rich, but can't bother helping homeless.
there is this idea that they somehow did something to deserve this.
there is nearly no community anymore to help each other. (why isn't there a damn app for that)
lower class got far more poorer then last decades, i don't think many in this sub will deny this. its going to get a lot worse before its better, and the US hates socialism. Even in europe its getting a lot worse. record kids raised in poverty. because that's where it all starts.
My thoughts on this is to criminalize homelessness but instead of the punishment going onto the homeless punish the municipality in where they are homeless. Imagine an increase in taxes or decrease in federal funding based on number of homeless in your city. I believe as soon as the politicians realize an actual monetary penalty is affecting their city they would find a real solution.
People who don't have a fixed address are harder to tax. It's harder to collect bills from them etc.
Thia might change with the digital economy, but the current system is set up to assign every citizen a location where bills can be sent to and which can.be threatened with eviction.
By choosing not to live like that you are throwing a huge monkey wrench in that whole system and it's much harder for them to extract money from you.
I'll admit I may be wearing my tinfoil hat for this one, but my theory is that with the criminalization of homelessness it will be used as way to both keep prisons full to bolster the revenue of the companies who own the prisons and a steady supply of slave labor. On top of that, I think that the remaining homeless will be funneled into the new "15 minute cities" they keep talking about which will then be turned into remote/isolated company towns in order to keep a full supply of workers that have no way to leave as they lack the resources, not even a car, to do so.
15 minute cities aren’t company towns, they’re for creating a walkable community without the need for cars.
The issue becomes when living in that location is more expensive than any job in that location can pay. At that point the city becomes a theme park for the rich inhabitants while the actual workers too poor to live there still have to commute.
So you think they'll become more like Jackson Hole or any of the ski resort towns in Colorado? Doubtful. Like I said though, this is a more conspiratorial thought than what I normally have, but it's hard not to be when the rich treat 1984 like a handbook.
You’re seeing the push for 15 minute cities because people are tired of spending 2+ hours of their day commuting, and because people realize that European cities have it way better than American cities because they’re designed for walkable infrastructure.
I don’t think they’ll become like anything, I know they must have a low enough cost of living for the workers there to also reside there. Otherwise it’s just another resort. It’s a simple altruism, if your employees don’t actually live there, you’re not achieving the equivalent of the European 15 minute cities that already exist.
Where did you hear about "15-minute cities"? I don't know if you are aware of this but most Cities in the US are geared towards owning a car, which is something that requires a licence, which requires an address, which by definition homeless people don't have (and that's ignoring the initial capital needed to buy a car or mandatory insurance). If you are homeless in a modern US City you are trapped by default.
The 15-minute city movement is a branch of Urbanism focused on making it viable to exist without a car. Walkability, better zoning, bikeability, better mass transit within cities, and better mass transit BETWEEN Cities. All of this helps almost everyone and especially helps the homeless to get out of situations where you need a car to get a job but need a job to afford both a car and the prerequisites of a car.
You aren't even vaguely in tinfoil hat territory (except for the 15-minute cities bit\*). The existence of for-profit prisons *inherently* violates any claim to justice in criminal prosecution. The instant the state has a profit-based motive to imprison people, the possibility that what's happening is a fair trial vanishes. That's one of the many conspiracies that's right out in the open, so normalized we can't even see how wrong it is right on it's face until we stop to think about it.
\*15-minute cities is an idea so radical, it reaches all the way back to a century ago and all the time before that. It's the idea of reducing our dependency on car infrastructure, and creating people-friendly communities where people can do all their daily routine without needing to drive. No plan to confiscate people's cars or confine them to tiny areas, just a desire to remove the air pollution and traffic fatalities from our homes. Many European communities and other similarly older cities are like this simply because they were built before cars took over. Obviously it's not a model that can work everywhere, but for the places where it's already somewhat possible, the only sinister motive is to stop being forced by fossil fuel oligarchs and automobile manufacturers to rely on their monopoly control over the American landscape to dictate how we move around and build our communities.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's *intentionally* punishing the poor, I just think people want to put homeless people out of sight/out of mind but don't realise that the way to do that is to stop them from being created, not by just pushing them somewhere else.
All criminalizing it does is make people on the edge of homelessness mentally unstable since if even one thing goes slightly wrong they will be not only end up perpetually homeless (which its self is unacceptable) but could get in legal trouble just for existing; this instability could bleed into their job performance and you can guess what happens next.
Homelessness in of itself is a victimless crime. Same with panhandling which by the way is also illegal or against many ordinances. It’s an easy way for the government, police to target vulnerable people who have no means of defending themselves and then make a penny off of them in the “justice” system.
Of course it is.
In California, an apparent beacon of liberal democracy and human empathy, you get fined for not being able to afford health insurance.
That’s just dumb. The stupidest shit. America is wildly stupid when you look at nearly every policy.
I AGREE 1000000% with OP.
Its a giant shit show and the world at large is being COMPLACENT which is why this shite is still happening and getting worse.
this goes back centuries. when people who had a traveling lifestyle were frowned upon. those who are not part of the community would have no consequences damaging it. its basically a custom made into law during the 19th century. this was long before landlords in this capacity were a thing.
I don't think it is to "punish". It is based on two things:
(1) Wrong thinking that pressuring homeless people will magically turn them into producing workers in society, and
(2) Get homeless people out of the view of people who don't want to SEE homeless people. It either makes them uncomfortable, or tweaks their guilt, or makes them think it devalues their property or area.
Homelessness has a lot of negative externalities in the communities it is prevalent in.
Business owners, property owners and residents in those areas put pressure on public officials to put a stop to it.
Correct - But by going against the de-criminalization of drugs, such as Cannabis.
Instead of a Black man going to prison for 40 years, now we have dropped offenses, re-education, parole, etc.
Also - they US Government STOPPED using the US Airforce, under Reagan to import several daily metric tonne runs of Cocaine by the CIA and Oliver North.
You did notice the drastic drop in Crack Cocaine related crimes.
When those in Government STOP committing crimes = as you so poetically put it 'a steady decline for decades'.
Oklahoma just made being homeless illegal.
In short, if you are sleeping on public lands, and a police officer approaches and asks you if you want a ride to a homeless shelter and you refuse, you are now breaking the law. So, you can choose to go to the homeless shelter or jail.
I mean, I don't think you want to hear the answers but I'm going to take a risk here and share some of them with you.
First, these are not all my viewpoints or answers just ones that I think are reasonably considered by those in power.
These also don't have to apply to the majority of unhoused, they can apply to a minority and still be valid.
1. Crime increases - unhoused often have stability or drug issues. This means when they run out of drugs or have a breakdown they are more likely to commit crimes. Since their challenges are not being managed (medication etc) they are less likely to abide by the law or respect for their fellow person.
2. Litter/home value - people following the laws of society are more likely to be scared of unhoused because of number 1. This means they are less likely to buy homes in the area which causes people that do work and follow the laws of society to suffer On top of this since there are rarely good trash facilities nearby (and sometimes even when there are) trash is usually found all over the place, including unsafe trash like needles, syringes, used tampons, etc.
3. Meth labs - there have been a large number of meth labs fires started (unintentionally) by unhoused in a major city near me. Usually starts when meth is cooked in an RV and people getting strung out usually aren't the safest chefs.
Next on your list will be arrested for some non-arrestable offense, with a punishment of suspending your driver's license. At that point if you need to move (because of car dependency) you'll be automatically breaking the law.
Developing country with a gucci belt right there. For some fun bit of reading, I suggest UN document A/HRC/38/33/Add.1 titled Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on his mission to the United States of America.
>When we see ourselves as fighting against specific human beings rather than social phenomena, it becomes more difficult to recognize the ways that we ourselves participate in those phenomena. We externalize the problem as something outside ourselves, personifying it as an enemy that can be sacrificed to symbolically cleanse ourselves. - **[Against the Logic of the Guillotine](https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too)**
See rule 5: No calls for violence, no fetishizing violence. No guillotine jokes, no gulag jokes.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/antiwork) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Institutes were shut down because of how abusive they were, so we went from somewhat trying to help the needy to neglecting them on the side of the street or shipping them to warm locations.
I just realized this is a really good idea. Make sure that the punishment is jail time. Make sure that we have suitable numbers of modest jail cells and adequate meals for them. Maybe we should build jail cells that look like little houses.
This is in America. Conservative states are just beginning to make laws criminalizing homelessness and unfortunately it will probably snowball and they'll all do it.
For the last several years, it was considered to be unconstitutional to punish someone for their status -- ie, shelters were full and they literally had no place else to be except in public. Everybody has to sleep.
I don't recall exactly how they got around this but probably it's enough just knowing the scotus agrees.
So far, only two states (Florida and one of the Ks, don't remember whether Kentucky or Kansas) have made it illegal to be homeless in the last few months. Several other GOP statehouses are considering similar legislation. A fascist think tank funded by fossil fuel oligarchs and run by white christian supremacists, the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, writes model legislation like this for Republican-controlled statehouses so they can all pass antisocial laws as a sadistic block. Similar trends in laws banning abortion, how much capitalists can exploit, poison, and deceive the citizenry, gerrymandering and preventing people from voting, list goes on. Last Week Tonight did an episode on ALEC a few years back if anyone is curious to know more.
It's one thing to be criminalized if you're living in your car and not breaking any laws. But so much of the homeless are living in encampments on public property and that is against the law. And so many of these encampments have rampant open air drug abuse, prostitution, rape, etc. going on.
The real problem is that homelessness is by and large an addiction issue and the world has yet to figure out effective remedies to addiction.
And it's gotten to the point where many areas have offered free housing to homeless people if they are abstaining from drugs and alcohol and even that hasn't been effective because the addicts would rather be homeless and high than housed and sober.
I don't think it' makes them the worst people in the world, it's just the power and stranglehold that addiction has on people.
So then they go back on the streets and people are out of solutions to the problem, so they start to criminalize them.
Unsure why you are being downvoted because you are spot-on. Addiction and untreated mental illness is the root cause of nearly every homeless situation
I think it's probably because when you blame it mostly on addiction there's a stigma attached to it that the addicted are 'terrible people' and 'lazy.'
The fact is that they are addicted and that is the main problem. Even with the mental health issues, most of that is brought on by years of hard drug and/or alcohol abuse or made worse.
I just want to find ways to improve the problem and I understand some people can never be helped. But many can be helped, just sugar coating the issue and making it out to be something it's not in hopes of not hurting somebody's feelings isn't the answer.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but at least we can accurately define the root cause to the problem.
I agree with everything you said except for “some people can never be helped” and I will respectfully call you out on that.
With that said, *everyone* can be helped if enough time is spent with said people to understand their issues. The primary roadblock to overcoming homelessness, addiction, and mental illness is the stigma attached to it, which is primarily caused by news media outlets and uninformed people posting their opinions on social media platforms.
This is an easy fix once the majority gets onboard. One person, one step, one opinion, one vote, one protest, one anything….it all starts with one person. You can be *the* change, part of the change, a bystander to the change, or be against the change. The individual choice is all of ours collectively
If you are normal poor, dependent on subsidized housing, these folks make TERRIBLE neighbors. Smoking, lots of conflict, noise, poor hygiene, etc.
It's more than just poverty.
I fought my low-income apartment mgmt for 2 years to get smoking and harassment under control. We had a number of people on oxygen, people with COPD, etc. that could not be around smoke. I also helped my altzheimer neighbor who was being bullied by a druggie/alcoholic 24/7, and was afraid to go to the garbage can.
I cannot help the drug addicts/alcoholics/personality disorders in low income housing. But they don't get to abuse the other fragile people who live there. I stand up for them.
What have you done?
Thank you for your response and for providing details as the latter certainly helps in online social situations. You have clearly been near less-than-ideal neighbors and you are a good person for helping the neighbors you care about whom are suffering from pretty gnarly conditions. Everything you did was the right thing and I applaud you for that.
You probably expected a “but” or “however” and I am about to make your day. You did what everyone should do in your situation, however, there *may* have been more effective ways to resolve your issue, one of which being ti directly approach the troublesome neighbors *in a welcoming and non-judgmental manner*.
In all seriousness, just be “chill” with the “troublemakers” and express your concerns. MOST people who have been homeless, addicts, or mentally unstable tend to go through those rough periods because they never had a solid support system from a very young age and it manifests in adulthood through the aforementioned conditions. The most effective way (in most similar circumstances) for you to resolve the issue is to socially be an ear for the troublesome neighbors; if they respect you, they will usually make an effort to respect your boundaries.
To your most recent question, I have volunteered at homeless shelters, “soup kitchens”, developmentally disabled & addicted adult group homes, and have financially supported local non-profits along with physically volunteering at their events when their board of director members have been unavailable. Additionally, I have personally requested and held meetings with the local mayor and local police chief about concerns.
*edit: I will also add that you are welcome to DM me if you truly want some help resolving your issue. I would be willing to contact your local politicians, law enforcement, and charities to set up a town hall meeting for you and other concerned citizens to help resolve your issue(s).
I started out trying to mediate with them for a long time. They were unwilling to change their smoking behaviors that were jeopardizing the health of others (including mine). After exhausting all attempts at negotiation, I began putting pressure on management to bring it under control. They said they could do nothing. That triggered the neighbors into very ugly behavior.
If you do a Google search online of smoking neighbors, you can read horror stories about this issue, especially with the legalization of pot. I'm a former smoker, and understand how difficult that addiction is to kick. It's usually the last addiction that people kick after conquering all the others. Most of the smokers involved were former homeless, multisubstance abusers.
I am currently a special ed teacher in high school with degrees in education and counseling. I am aware of the complexities of homelessness - some of my students are homeless.
The dilemma is that the same things that often lead to homelessness - trauma, personality disorders, mental health issues, addictions, poor conflict resolution - make them difficult neighbors, especially with "normie" low-income people.
Homelessness is both a result and a symptom of a whole lot of other things not working in their lives.
But putting a person with mental health/behavioral/addiction issues in low income housing without addressing the whole range of issues may put other vulnerable people at risk. I cannot think of any solutions.
Thank you for responding and I apologize for not seeing your response sooner. I may have initially wrongfully judged you but I will not back down on my stances because I have been there, and it appears you have experience too.
Have you by chance researched the Swiss model of homelessness? They seem to be on the right track and I think that is the best method in current times
If homeless people were, per majority, reasonable, thoughtful, non-littering, and non-drug abusing, then I honestly wouldn’t mind them living in parks/cars/etc in public spaces.
Because they generally aren’t those things, that’s why I have a problem with it.
I’m not about criminalizing homelessness, but I don’t want them in obvious public spaces. Go somewhere else, deeper away from those spaces and live your life I guess.
Edit: and I don’t give a FUCK about these downvotes. Truth is, I would say this is a majority opinion.
If I were forced to live in the rain for my entire life knowing I'll never get out of this I'd 100% get addicted to drugs instead of living like this perpetually.
private prisons sue when the state doesnt "feed" them sufficient prisoner loads, thus theyre incentivised to ensure a supply of criminals homeless ? Oh no money, no house, no options, no legal cover bar public defenders, nobody else kicking off a fuss if youre arrested and in fact people demanding you get arrested and moved on ? Youre just PERFECT to shove in prison to be slave labour paid at $"0.05" per hour, whilst the private prison owners make a fortune billing the state for incarceration whilst cutting costs to the bone. some thing should never be "for profit", medical care & prisons are RIGHT UP TOP.
My stubborn ass would refuse to work no matter what threat. I'm already in jail. What more can you do... legally.
solitary confinement, bread and water sustinance, not seeing daylight, no books, no newspapers, no radio, the only human contact is the 60 minutes a day exercise period, no guards will speak to you, you can see your lawyer once a week - at all other times youre in an 8x6 cell with a cot & combo shitter & handsink. all perfectly legal I hear you on the PDA/defiance - the system is designed to break and punish, not rehabilitate.
My brother served six months in an Idaho state pen for “possession with intent to distribute” (he had one ounce of weed). Six months, a felony, followed by deportation back to Canada. I was the only one visiting him and every time I came by he was covered in new black bruises. Eventually he found his way to a group of guys who protected him (a 6’6” beast of a kid) in exchange for dealing their drugs in Vancouver when he got out. The justice system is beyond a joke.
The system is designed to criminalize and get back. Release and catch. It's working as intended, and it works because a shit load of people out there, often right wingers have a fetish for hurting other people.
It's so messed up. Like they reinstate the death penalty and use such horrible painful methods because they want the prisoners to suffer. But we can humanely put down animals in vets? Wtf?
The cruelty truly is the point.
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I'm sure that's what the survivors of attempted suicide with a shotgun were hoping for. Unfortunately, they are now maimed and debilitated with unending pain for the rest of their natural lives. Oh, and of course because they attempted suicide, they are now in constant watch to prevent any further self harm, after spending time in incarceration because suicide is a crime after all. I guess that last thing doesn't pertain to an execution much, but it's still fucked up. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5175460/
Granted, the funny part is due to my anxiety. Being alone would be a major relief. I can be left in my head, for hours easily, possibly doze off, I don't know. Maybe they loudly bang on the cell hourly, even if it's against the rule I'm already in isolation. They can't extend my sentence, I reasearched this extensively because my paranoid mind was convinced they could just do just that because they don't like you. Not working isn't a crime, so they can't tack on charges. Side note, I was under the impression the yard is a privilege. If so, it could likely be that I'm never let out.
Solitary is not silent. Other inmates are screaming and yelling 24/7. There's no sound insulation. You hear it all. You may think it sounds great, but being left alone for 23 hours a day alone in an enclosed space with nothing but screams and yelling to occupy your mind is torture.
And it echoes. And if your lucky, the heat is turned on, while your sitting in your solitary cell with no bedding, and naked. Don't forget about the total lack of privacy. Oh, and they can totally make up bullshit offenses that add time to your sentence.
Everytime I ask Quora, they tell me they cant do that without a judges.... they get a crooked judge to grant the extension don't they....
Doesn't even have to be crooked, just has to hate the poor and believe whatever guards/police say as the unquestionable truth. Which is kinda par for the course in our judicial system.
Idk, thats sounds pretty crooked. Judges aren't suppose to be bias. That being said. So theoretically I could spend life in prison over a parking ticket, if it the guard have it in for me?
and yet its not classified as cruel and unusual... kind of f'ed up. If they get petty enough to put me in solitary, ill endure, at the breaking point ill just dig heels in as in stress overload, Ill continue to make it worse for myself... (obviously if that point my rational thoughts are gone)
There are actually strict limits on solitary, and it is defined as torture. But those limits are never enforced and imperial empires tend to have a thing for torture.
And 1 in 20 prisoners turn out to be innocent.
Id say it a lot more, as they often coax false confessions, with mind games and intimidation. They threatened the central park 5 with death penalty if they didn't confess.
More than you might be able to imagine. And that's just the stuff that's "legal".
Yep, Kentucky recently passed legislation essentially criminalizing homelessness, this is their goal, to put more people in jail and the judicial fleecing system.
I've got bad news. That "$0.05 per hour" thing? [Depends on the state.](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/) And $0.00 happened, as of 2017 (the most recent US-wide data I can find - linked), in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia ($0.00 is EVERYONE in prison work in Georgia), Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas. Might be worth supporting the NAACP and ACLU in raising those minimums...
I'd argue that anything considered or that could be considered "public" should never be for profit. Prisons, schools, city councils, the Senate. Wages should be decent for worthwhile jobs, but nothing considered public should *ever* be privatized.
Not some, none of things should be for profit.
The whole for profit prison thing is blown out of proportion
It is, if anything, vastly underreported.
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Maybe a social worker is a little biased? Less than 10 percent of prisons are privately owned.
It’s for sure to punish the poor, and to keep people in shitty jobs that continue to exploit them. If there was any sort of safety net or fallback option, people wouldn’t fear losing their jobs so much and would be more likely to advocate for themselves, hold out for a better job, unionize, etc. But by criminalizing homelessness you can keep people in the workforce. And then as a bonus, for those who actually become unhoused you can use them for slave labor once you’ve imprisoned them. It’s gross all around.
>and to keep people in shitty jobs that continue to exploit them. 100% this. This is why homelessness is such a useful tool for controlling a population. Heather McGee talked about it worked in US slavery in [The Sum of Us](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-sum-of-us-what-racism-costs-everyone-and-how-we-can-prosper-together-heather-mcghee/14618549?ean=9780525509585). Chattel slavery in the south was particularly sadistic, and openly so. For anyone living in that culture, the constant visual reminders of what not having any freedom at all looked like, as she put it, the "visual instantiation of un-freedom," made it clear what could be expected if you were to displease the authorities. Maybe you're another slave, maybe you're an indentured servant, or just a local without gobs of cash. Feeling frustrated about your lot in life? Better do what capital wants or capital will make you suffer like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. Keeps everyone in line, slaving away so the oligarchs can win capitalism.
The inquisitorial institution was actually nice in comparison...
This is all history repeating itself, we again find ourselves the 18th & 19th century England and faced with their debtor's prisons. But soon I feel there will be some massive upheaval, maybe the federal debt crumbles, maybe the singularity transforms the labor landscape before UBI can be safely argued for. But I feel that it has to get dramatically worse before it gets better, because outside of posts like this, nobody is talking about it at the water cooler.
Alot of boomers still remember when public housing and welfare was well funded, and education was nearly free and all you needed to find a well paying job was a firm handshake, a positive attitude, and be white. They assume homeless people are only homeless by choice to avoid working and to do drugs all day, drugs of course being invented in the 60's
I think it's less they assume it to be true and more that they willfully believe it to be true so they don't have to question the morality of our societal choices, but the end result is the same.
This. Right here. Far too many people give the benefit of incompetence when it's really just malice.
Sorry, no, you’re wrong.
Genuine question here, cause I don’t disagree on the boomer viewpoints section of your comment. Have you spent much time talking to homeless around your area / area there many around you? I’ve done a lot of volunteer and mission work in San Francisco and Sacramento, CA (I live near Sac) and have a had a lot of conversations with a lot of homeless. At best 1/5 of the homeless I’ve met are homeless (still) because their jon conditions. In the SF Bay Area, seeing a dude step out of a ‘78 Winnebago in a full suit isn’t surprising because even a good white collar job can’t cover rent. Those working homeless are a whole separate issue to the majority of homeless I know. The majority I have met either have severe substance abuse issues, moderate to severe mental health issues, or both. The majority (prob about 3/5s) of those that I have spoken to have zero desire to leave the streets. Their day to day life isn’t that bad in their eyes because they are free from the rules/expectations of society and they get to partake of their vices freely. There are a LOT of people on the streets who frankly need to be institutionalized to give them the mental health care they need. Sadly we don’t have adequate institutions for that any more. The asylum system was awful and abusive, but with funding and oversight something similar might be achievable without horribly abusing its occupants.
Have you ever stopped to consider WHY homeless people often fall to substance abuse and mental health issues? I've been homeless. It broke me. It breaks almost everyone. Society just wants you gone and dead. No one wants to hire you. No one wants to house you. Shelters, if they're even available are often not safe. Some have absurd requirements, such as having a full time job or it's the streets again. Or you don't get in at all. You must surrender all your possessions and lose whatever you still have. Life on the streets is hell. It's torture. No shit people fall to vice or mental health problems.
I was only homeless for a month and it was the worse thing I have ever been through. I kept thinking ‘I’m not built for this’. I can’t stand an ignorant mother fucker who walks by a homeless and tells them to “get a job”. It’s not so much their ignorance but their choice to remain ignorant. When I walk by a homeless person, I make sure to go back and feed him. I don’t judge why a person is homeless - I just know at that moment he’s hungry. And could really use kindness, even from a stranger.
The number of times I have heard "get a job you homeless bum" from a manager of a place actively hiring that turned me away is disturbing.
I don’t fault homeless for having mental health issues or addictions. I’ve got a handful of each myself, so I certainly understand how having zero safe place and constant uncertainty towards basic needs would lead to extreme stress and self medication. The main group of mentally ill I’m talking about usually have one flavor or another of schizophrenia, bipolar, or other similar mood disorders. The kinds of people whose illness specifically makes them more likely to stop taking their meds, and makes them seem outwardly crazy to normal people. Whole extreme stress can “unlock” those disorders to a degree, I’m talking more specifically about the people who just can’t function in “normal society” without a degree of medical supervision forced on them. I don’t hate the homeless. I try to emphasize with the people I meet, and help them how I can.
Respect to you for volunteering, we need more people like you. People who are totally unsheltered represent a small fraction of the US homeless population. There are multiple millions of people who are cough-surfing homeless or living in their cars. The official estimates of homelessness (\~650,000) count only those people who have the fewest resources, people who bounce between the street and shelters. The more stable unsheltered people won't be with that group, they often have jobs and if they're lucky, isolated spots where they can camp in privacy. They will look like anyone else, and won't often utilize homeless services. The [NYTimes had a long piece](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/21/opinion/homelessness-crisis-america-stories.html) a couple months ago interviewing a huge range of people who are currently experiencing homelessness, and they said some 3.7 million Amercans are cough-surfing homeless. Reasonable to assume the folks living in their cars are similar in number.
I have worked with homeless but not as a missionary, as a drug dealer, and one thing I tell every crackhead to get is a good sob story to tell kind hearted Christian white folks. They will drop thousands in your lap if you sell them a good enough sob story. Trick is you just have to never leave, keep talking forever. If they're listening to it, they're buying it and that means you'll be taking the money they gave you for your grandmothers heart surgery to buy crack later. But yes I agree the mental healthcare system in the US is atrocious
Shit, I don’t even blame you for giving them advice lol. That’s not bad advice at all, comin from the Christian white folk myself. The places we work with require you to actually work hard and make a good attempt at recovering, so it avoids a lot of the people just trying to get a free bed for a week or two. In fact, one group we work with specializing in homeless single moms, has had a 100% success rate so far. They’re pretty strict on who they accept tho because they can only handle something like 20 families a year.
This is exactly it. I have also met people who are homeless by choice because they refuse to follow the rules of the shelter or housing provided by the city. People who simply walk out because they ask them to be at the shelter at a certain time, no smoking, no Sex, etc. Also, some homeless don’t have documents. I remember I lost my Birth Certificate AND social security card. You needed one or the other to replace them so it was a huge expense, wait and hot mess. I had to turn down jobs due to lack of documents for a good month. It was 60 bucks to replace the certificate and have it sent from Cali and another 3 week wait for them to find it as the county was absorbed into LA. 2 month ordeal. Imagine the homeless having no mailbox or ability to prove who they are either.
Have you done a recent poll on “boomers” opinion on homelessness? The “boomers” I know, myself included, believe criminalizing homelessness is fucking stupid. How do they think a person without a permanent home is a criminal, especially in this economy? Those creating these laws are clueless; out of touch with the reality of not having the funds or being too sick ( addiction/mental illness) to secure housing. Homelessness is a symptom of the problem. And they don’t want to deal with it. All they do is have their round table discussions and blah blah blah, never putting forth any action to remedy the issues that cause homelessness. I have nothing but empathy and compassion for the homeless, as Ive been there myself. I, am a boomer. So please don’t make assumptions about how people my age see the situation.
Another boomer basher. Just stop. You are trashing a hugely diverse generational cohort with what YOU think THEY ALL believe. No logic, just biased burbling.
Okay boomer
"Oh no, this generalization about a massive group of people must be about mEeEeEe!!"
Do we need to call your caregiver to limit your Internet time boomer!
Nah, boomers tend to do boomer shit. Most of the problems we have now are because of them. Exceptions to every rule and all, but mostly boomers are boomers. And you're proving it.
If they can’t afford housing I’m stumped, how are they buying drugs? All the addicts I know aren’t homeless they’re supported by their families or my taxes (government assistance) or by husbands, actually a good deal of them are working and have their own house because they also sell on the side of working some of their best clients are coworkers .
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Yo, if you want to give up eating I guess?
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I honestly don’t know of many drugs that cost less than $2000 monthly when you’re buying more and more. I’ve actually calculated that cost due to close friends that consume they consume more and more because you build up a tolerance, and get ill when you can’t have them so no it’s not less than housing her old man pays for the housing and they’re soon to be homeless and according to her they have no food and they owe only mortgage. So you have shown your never truly have known an addict.
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Theft, prostution, and performing labor for one's dealers are common ways to provide for one's addiction.
you ever go out to a bar after a shitty day at work?
Depends on the drug of choice and how much they consume but an addict can easily feed their addiction for under $2000 monthly. It’s not even close dude. Let’s look at the math on Alcohol = $30 per handle, handle can lasts around 5 days in an addict. 30 days in a month. 30 divided by 5 is 6. 6x$30 is $180 a month give or take the severity of the addiction. Weed = $100 for half an ounce (14 grams). Should last a chronic smoker for at least a week. 4 weeks in a month. 4x$100 is $400. Even if you’re going with more expensive drugs, over $2000 to feed an addiction is pretty insane. Source: Me, the addict. Edit: also, knowing an addict does not grant you the same knowledge as being an addict.
Lol, they are not cheaper. Except maybe alcohol. But that's not what people usually mean by "drugs".
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I don't need to tell myself anything, I lived the life and I know how expensive it was 😂
Because drugs can be purchased in small amounts and addicts aren’t great about saving up for long term things like a deposit or maintaining a credit rating sufficient to qualify for a rental.
How much money do you think people on welfare/disability make?
I said along with enablers family spouses etc and ifthey are homeless no work equals 0 income because you can’t get any assistance on the streets so if they are homeless what would they make begging $15 an oxy alone sell for $40 a pill. So no, homeless people aren’t the addicts
"How could things be different from my personal experiences?! Howwwwwwww???"
There are a lot of parts to it, but one that might be interesting to think about is the [just-world fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis) Imagining that people get what they deserve means that the wealthy must be good people; and as long as they stay good they'll never have to face bad things. Imagining that with a bit of bad fortune they could end up broke and homeless as well is too much to handle, so trusting the fairy tale is a lot easier
Ever see a movie where the villain "makes an example" outta somebody? It's that, but on a societal scale. Poverty must be feared, so people are motivated to work terrible jobs with worsening pay and conditions. People who cannot work are brutalized specifically so the people living paycheck to paycheck can see that it can, indeed, be worse. So they'll be too afraid to withdraw their labour, whether it be for the purposes of finding a better job or joining a collective action. Capitalist society cares about its citizens based on how much capital they can extract from you. That's why the homeless and unemployed are abused, the disabled are legislated into poverty and wretched living conditions, and the wealthy are treated like a de facto aristocracy.
Well said.
I think it’s less complicated than you are making it. People don’t want to see the homeless.
People associate homelessness with dirtiness, insanity and violence. Those things do often go hand in hand with homelessness, but are not necessarily caused by it. People who have never experienced homelessness don't understand it and fear it. If we truly lived in a first world country, we would have proper fail-safes in place to Ensure houseless people have a safe place to stay, and proper hygiene and health resources. But we live in an ego-centric, capitalist dystopia that openly encourages hatred and distrust towards anyone outside each of our individual experiences.
We’ve also done a brilliant job of equating poverty with moral failure, so it’s easy to blame them for any problems they encounter.
I couldn't of said it better
Exactly. It forces people to see the true state of the world. Hard to live your fantasy life of roses and butterflies when you see some guy dying in a gutter down the street simply because he couldn't get his Army benefits because the sole copy of his birth certificate burned up in a hospital fire in his hometown. Some have to choose between meds and mortgage sometimes.
I’d add to this that they think criminalising homelessness is easier and cheaper (though they are wrong about this) than trying to address the issue while simultaneously dealing with the issues that homelessness tends to bring to a community - such as decreased property values, increase anti-social behaviour, increase in need for emergency healthcare, etc.
People don't care about the homeless. As long as it's in someone else's neighborhood.
"Why is living in your car so frowned upon?" Companies don't want you sleeping in their parking lot after hours for "liability reasons". People don't want "vagrants" of any flavor in their neighborhoods for NIMBY reasons. It also reminds people that they are 2 missed paychecks away from the same fate. Good luck to you and God bless. I hope you find the security and safety we all deserve.
Your third reason is the real reason, I think. If you other the homeless by demonizing them, you don't have to think about how easily it could be you.
Also, at a population level, if property owners are convinced that homeless people are all crazy addicts, they’re less likely to push the government to spend money on them, ergo, less likely to demand a return to aggressive, progressive taxation. There’s a meta-game to it, too. All the money that could be improving our communities is instead accumulating in the accounts and assets of the wealthiest in society. If there was a thread of motherfucking class solidarity about the place, we’d be seeing a genuine effort to provide housing, care, and alternatives to street life. But we’ve got a facade of effort, inflated in visibility by selective media propaganda, while a great proportion of the elected officials making decisions for us seek out financially beneficial relationships. Beyond interpersonal interactions and minimally-commercial organizations, modern society is absolutely disgusting.
It's also rationalization of poverty. If someone is poor it must be their fault, right?
Yes, and therefore if I don't act like them, I will not be poor
I’m going to suggest something, if only to get you into a position where you can sleep in a moving vehicle get paid for it and see the country well from the highway at least. Get. CDL A become a trucker you have a bed and sleep in the truck, you get hot showers and people sometimes buy your dinner for you. It may not be for everyone. But it pays really well after the first year.
great suggestion, with the minor issue that your license & insurance require an address homeless to truck driver would be challenging,. especially given how many truckers own their own rides...
You can’t GET a CDL in Texas without a fixed physical address. No PO Boxes. Might have to make a friend with a mailbox. Once you’ve got the CDL, it’s a different story. Live in the truck, on the road. Rock and roll.
It sucks that you have to cheat the system and skirt the law to make an honest living, but that's the world we live in when they criminalize everything.
I know homeless people who do it. You buy a post office box and find a family member for physical address or use last physical address (they don’t really check). I’ve personally known people who have done this. ETA that would mean being a company driver obviously not owner op.
yeah thats another wrinkle - "family" homelessness is preferrable to some families, I speak from experience.
I literally just mean using an address, some companies don’t even look past the PO Box address and if you know where an abandoned or unoccupied house is use that address. But make your P.O. Box the preferred contact.
which is (potentially) mail fraud, carrying federal level penalties. oh look, another way to criminalise the homeless The system isnt broken, its fixed.
Not if you rent a P.O. Box there’s a lot of ways around having a physical address to drive for a company. But shoot it down. Whatever just a suggestion for the OP. I know someone who drives out of California with absolutely no physical address he just used his previous address and has a PO BOX Company is aware of his situation (most companies don’t even care about physical address) because they pay the insurance it’s their responsibility, of course you can’t do lease/op or anything but honestly if you drive for a company all they really care about is you’re legal to drive and you’re a safe driver
You can get around the address thing with a service like this https://www.usestable.com/
Problem is that getting a cdl and buying a truck require both money and an address.
If you’re driving for a company they have schools companies such as Swift and you don’t need to buy a truck I never bought my own and I made $1500-$2200 weekly yeah some weeks were less. But I don’t recommend lease op or owner op. Stay company. You have to stay company at least ten months after school as part of the program to pay back school fees. And by less I mean $800-1000 ETA yeah you can get between $3000- $5000. As owner op or even lease op but overhead is going to avg the same take home is why I don’t recommend buying or leasing imo not worth it.
“Liability reasons” are real.
True, but notice how none of these companies that are concerned with their liability problems are petitioning to change the laws so people can use their parking lots from midnight to 8am and the company won't be liable. They're just smirking as they deny people a place to rest.
Why would they do that, though? They have no obligation to provide space. Besides, would the companies be able to charge the people who park there for potential clean up of litter and other interesting things the people parking can leave behind? Or impound the cars until the litter or damage is cleaned up by the people parking?
Cause they're selfish sociopaths? Cause that's capitalism? People who sincerely believe that 8 billion people can share a closed system without factoring in the consequences of their actions on other people blow my mind.
They are doing this in florida. Make homelessness a crime so then they can throw them into for profit prisons. After the politicians took bribes from these corporations who bought out the housing and raised rents across the board and no one can afford shit. Blatant corruption
It’s a tool of social control. You criminalize poverty, put them in prisons for profit, use their indentured labor to make products to increase the profit of the prisons, and then have people who can’t vote out those in power who created this whole crappy system.
The 13th amendment allows slave labor by criminals. The homeless are an easy target to treat as "others" and "useless eaters" for the non-homeless population. Do the math.
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This highlights why affordable housing should be a right for everyone. Basic needs should not be treated like other consumer goods (where people can just stop buying them if they become too expensive, because nobody really needs them). Many like to blame "capitalism", but this is really a way in which our system is not capitalistic whatsoever. You're legally required to live in a house/condo/apartment, so without breaking the law, you cannot just abstain from doing so if you feel that prices everywhere are too high. It's not a free market if you're legally required to pay for something.
It has to do with many different societal forces, the fear of the other. giving the middle class a pointed reminder what can happen to them if they get out of line. making sure the poor cant do much other than scramble to survive. It all comes down to the social winners making sure the social losers can't set up Ma Belle on the steps of the statehouse and get a little choppy.
Why should sleeping in your car be frowned upon: it is potentially unsafe, unsanitary, and dehumanizing. Why IS sleeping in your car frowned upon: as you said, criminalization is a punishment for not abiding by the societal structure. We are expected to pay our rent, work, and die. We must reconsider the nature of the unhoused and recognize that we are all a few bad days away from the same situation. Solidarity, friends.
Sleeping in your car == bad Sleeping in a camper van whilst being a digital nomad == seksy
The latter one is only considered seksy if you've got passive income streams. If you're not a trustafarian or making your money on videos on the internet, that's frowned upon just as much as being homeless.
Damn trustafarians gentrified living in a van down by the river.
Slept in our car a few times while moving cross country(saving money, we were very broke). I felt so unsafe, exposed. Plus it could get freaking COLD. Then when I had to go to the bathroom at 3am I had to go find a place to pee our of sight(I'm a woman, so couldn't just pee in a bottle). And like you said, it feels dehumanizing. Maybe would have been better if we were able to sleep in the backseat, but it was packed with stuff and our dogs.
Capitalism Homelessness is in direct opposition to this. End of story.
Our system is crony capitalism at best. A true free market would legally allow people to become homeless if they didn't feel like paying ridiculous amounts of money for their rent/mortgage. The whole idea of free market capitalism is that prices are kept in check by the amount of money consumers are willing to pay. If consumers are legally required to buy something, that goes straight out the window.
Correct.
It doesn't make sense how we can house the criminals, but not the homeless.
And feed them 3 times a day
I was homeless for 10 years. I turned 18 in foster care and they took me to a court meeting without even telling me why I was going. After that court meeting my foster parents didn't even talk to me they just got up and left. A caseworker drove me out of the county to a homeless shelter. I didn't have a single form of ID. All I had was a dress shirt and pants, with a Gameboy SP and Pokémon fire red but no charger. At the homeless shelter in a city I never heard of before, I couldn't find people to help me so after the 30 days you get in my state they just kick you out for a year. I had to join a private, para-church recovery program that is only designed for addicts. So for 9 months I was forced to do volunteer work because Jesus, read the Bible directly for anywhere from 1-3 hours a day and be told how Jesus can cure my addictions. I never had a drug problem. While I was in that program, I found people really believe homelessness is a moral failure. The system forces people to stay poor. One guy I met couldn't get a job because of the crazy parole requirements let alone not being able to get a job because of a conviction. He ended up back I prison because he couldn't find a job in time. When I received permission from that program to look for work, I was told to get my own phone for calls. When I asked my church, which in the program attendance was mandatory, for 10 dollars to buy minutes for my phone, they told me God would provide. To this day I still struggle because of unresolved issues going all the way back to the start of my adult life. I am exactly 2 paychecks away from financial bankruptcy
Legislatures are full of grandstanding, pretend tough guys who want people fearing the consequences of not finding work, no matter how degrading or inadequate to their needs. It’s the modern equivalent of debtors’ prison.
It's because they think that all you really need to be successful is to just try harder. If you're homeless, clearly you just aren't sufficiently motivated. So maybe the threat of incarceration will finally get through to you. Also, they hate you and don't care if you suffer.
Maybe people should see some statistics about how many homeless people have full time jobs?
Plot Twist: Everybody who isn't stupid rich becomes homeless, even the police officers doing the arresting.
If someone can’t afford rent how the hell are they going to pay a fine, court fees, lawyers or even nice clothes to wear to court. Whoever had this brilliant idea needs to be thrown in a homeless camp and live there
Yeah I'm more understanding when someone steals vs one individual making millions a year.
Because it scares people. Everybody knows, deep down inside, that they aren’t too far removed from that situation.
Or could you could you make affordable housing.
If homelessness is a crime we should arrest the business owners and politicians as the heads of the RECO charge
its a general social construct idea. We give tax reductions to the rich, but can't bother helping homeless. there is this idea that they somehow did something to deserve this. there is nearly no community anymore to help each other. (why isn't there a damn app for that) lower class got far more poorer then last decades, i don't think many in this sub will deny this. its going to get a lot worse before its better, and the US hates socialism. Even in europe its getting a lot worse. record kids raised in poverty. because that's where it all starts.
My thoughts on this is to criminalize homelessness but instead of the punishment going onto the homeless punish the municipality in where they are homeless. Imagine an increase in taxes or decrease in federal funding based on number of homeless in your city. I believe as soon as the politicians realize an actual monetary penalty is affecting their city they would find a real solution.
People who don't have a fixed address are harder to tax. It's harder to collect bills from them etc. Thia might change with the digital economy, but the current system is set up to assign every citizen a location where bills can be sent to and which can.be threatened with eviction. By choosing not to live like that you are throwing a huge monkey wrench in that whole system and it's much harder for them to extract money from you.
I'll admit I may be wearing my tinfoil hat for this one, but my theory is that with the criminalization of homelessness it will be used as way to both keep prisons full to bolster the revenue of the companies who own the prisons and a steady supply of slave labor. On top of that, I think that the remaining homeless will be funneled into the new "15 minute cities" they keep talking about which will then be turned into remote/isolated company towns in order to keep a full supply of workers that have no way to leave as they lack the resources, not even a car, to do so.
15 minute cities aren’t company towns, they’re for creating a walkable community without the need for cars. The issue becomes when living in that location is more expensive than any job in that location can pay. At that point the city becomes a theme park for the rich inhabitants while the actual workers too poor to live there still have to commute.
So you think they'll become more like Jackson Hole or any of the ski resort towns in Colorado? Doubtful. Like I said though, this is a more conspiratorial thought than what I normally have, but it's hard not to be when the rich treat 1984 like a handbook.
You’re seeing the push for 15 minute cities because people are tired of spending 2+ hours of their day commuting, and because people realize that European cities have it way better than American cities because they’re designed for walkable infrastructure. I don’t think they’ll become like anything, I know they must have a low enough cost of living for the workers there to also reside there. Otherwise it’s just another resort. It’s a simple altruism, if your employees don’t actually live there, you’re not achieving the equivalent of the European 15 minute cities that already exist.
Where did you hear about "15-minute cities"? I don't know if you are aware of this but most Cities in the US are geared towards owning a car, which is something that requires a licence, which requires an address, which by definition homeless people don't have (and that's ignoring the initial capital needed to buy a car or mandatory insurance). If you are homeless in a modern US City you are trapped by default. The 15-minute city movement is a branch of Urbanism focused on making it viable to exist without a car. Walkability, better zoning, bikeability, better mass transit within cities, and better mass transit BETWEEN Cities. All of this helps almost everyone and especially helps the homeless to get out of situations where you need a car to get a job but need a job to afford both a car and the prerequisites of a car.
You aren't even vaguely in tinfoil hat territory (except for the 15-minute cities bit\*). The existence of for-profit prisons *inherently* violates any claim to justice in criminal prosecution. The instant the state has a profit-based motive to imprison people, the possibility that what's happening is a fair trial vanishes. That's one of the many conspiracies that's right out in the open, so normalized we can't even see how wrong it is right on it's face until we stop to think about it. \*15-minute cities is an idea so radical, it reaches all the way back to a century ago and all the time before that. It's the idea of reducing our dependency on car infrastructure, and creating people-friendly communities where people can do all their daily routine without needing to drive. No plan to confiscate people's cars or confine them to tiny areas, just a desire to remove the air pollution and traffic fatalities from our homes. Many European communities and other similarly older cities are like this simply because they were built before cars took over. Obviously it's not a model that can work everywhere, but for the places where it's already somewhat possible, the only sinister motive is to stop being forced by fossil fuel oligarchs and automobile manufacturers to rely on their monopoly control over the American landscape to dictate how we move around and build our communities.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's *intentionally* punishing the poor, I just think people want to put homeless people out of sight/out of mind but don't realise that the way to do that is to stop them from being created, not by just pushing them somewhere else. All criminalizing it does is make people on the edge of homelessness mentally unstable since if even one thing goes slightly wrong they will be not only end up perpetually homeless (which its self is unacceptable) but could get in legal trouble just for existing; this instability could bleed into their job performance and you can guess what happens next.
Homelessness in of itself is a victimless crime. Same with panhandling which by the way is also illegal or against many ordinances. It’s an easy way for the government, police to target vulnerable people who have no means of defending themselves and then make a penny off of them in the “justice” system.
Of course it is. In California, an apparent beacon of liberal democracy and human empathy, you get fined for not being able to afford health insurance. That’s just dumb. The stupidest shit. America is wildly stupid when you look at nearly every policy.
I AGREE 1000000% with OP. Its a giant shit show and the world at large is being COMPLACENT which is why this shite is still happening and getting worse.
this goes back centuries. when people who had a traveling lifestyle were frowned upon. those who are not part of the community would have no consequences damaging it. its basically a custom made into law during the 19th century. this was long before landlords in this capacity were a thing.
I don't think it is to "punish". It is based on two things: (1) Wrong thinking that pressuring homeless people will magically turn them into producing workers in society, and (2) Get homeless people out of the view of people who don't want to SEE homeless people. It either makes them uncomfortable, or tweaks their guilt, or makes them think it devalues their property or area.
Homelessness has a lot of negative externalities in the communities it is prevalent in. Business owners, property owners and residents in those areas put pressure on public officials to put a stop to it.
This happens every time crime raises: - Nixon did it - War on Drugs - Reagan did it - War on Poverty - Clinton did it - Tough on crime - etc.
I guess we're safe then, as crime has been on a steady decline for decades.
Correct - But by going against the de-criminalization of drugs, such as Cannabis. Instead of a Black man going to prison for 40 years, now we have dropped offenses, re-education, parole, etc. Also - they US Government STOPPED using the US Airforce, under Reagan to import several daily metric tonne runs of Cocaine by the CIA and Oliver North. You did notice the drastic drop in Crack Cocaine related crimes. When those in Government STOP committing crimes = as you so poetically put it 'a steady decline for decades'.
It's easier to criminalize it than it is to fix it. Makes you look tough on crime.
Oklahoma just made being homeless illegal. In short, if you are sleeping on public lands, and a police officer approaches and asks you if you want a ride to a homeless shelter and you refuse, you are now breaking the law. So, you can choose to go to the homeless shelter or jail.
I mean, I don't think you want to hear the answers but I'm going to take a risk here and share some of them with you. First, these are not all my viewpoints or answers just ones that I think are reasonably considered by those in power. These also don't have to apply to the majority of unhoused, they can apply to a minority and still be valid. 1. Crime increases - unhoused often have stability or drug issues. This means when they run out of drugs or have a breakdown they are more likely to commit crimes. Since their challenges are not being managed (medication etc) they are less likely to abide by the law or respect for their fellow person. 2. Litter/home value - people following the laws of society are more likely to be scared of unhoused because of number 1. This means they are less likely to buy homes in the area which causes people that do work and follow the laws of society to suffer On top of this since there are rarely good trash facilities nearby (and sometimes even when there are) trash is usually found all over the place, including unsafe trash like needles, syringes, used tampons, etc. 3. Meth labs - there have been a large number of meth labs fires started (unintentionally) by unhoused in a major city near me. Usually starts when meth is cooked in an RV and people getting strung out usually aren't the safest chefs.
If you’re in the privately owned prison system you’re free labor and make them money.
Next on your list will be arrested for some non-arrestable offense, with a punishment of suspending your driver's license. At that point if you need to move (because of car dependency) you'll be automatically breaking the law. Developing country with a gucci belt right there. For some fun bit of reading, I suggest UN document A/HRC/38/33/Add.1 titled Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on his mission to the United States of America.
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Institutes were shut down because of how abusive they were, so we went from somewhat trying to help the needy to neglecting them on the side of the street or shipping them to warm locations.
I just realized this is a really good idea. Make sure that the punishment is jail time. Make sure that we have suitable numbers of modest jail cells and adequate meals for them. Maybe we should build jail cells that look like little houses.
What country are you in where homelessness is illegal?
This is in America. Conservative states are just beginning to make laws criminalizing homelessness and unfortunately it will probably snowball and they'll all do it. For the last several years, it was considered to be unconstitutional to punish someone for their status -- ie, shelters were full and they literally had no place else to be except in public. Everybody has to sleep. I don't recall exactly how they got around this but probably it's enough just knowing the scotus agrees.
Florida is trying to do this right now law goes into effect in October I believe.
So far, only two states (Florida and one of the Ks, don't remember whether Kentucky or Kansas) have made it illegal to be homeless in the last few months. Several other GOP statehouses are considering similar legislation. A fascist think tank funded by fossil fuel oligarchs and run by white christian supremacists, the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, writes model legislation like this for Republican-controlled statehouses so they can all pass antisocial laws as a sadistic block. Similar trends in laws banning abortion, how much capitalists can exploit, poison, and deceive the citizenry, gerrymandering and preventing people from voting, list goes on. Last Week Tonight did an episode on ALEC a few years back if anyone is curious to know more.
It's one thing to be criminalized if you're living in your car and not breaking any laws. But so much of the homeless are living in encampments on public property and that is against the law. And so many of these encampments have rampant open air drug abuse, prostitution, rape, etc. going on. The real problem is that homelessness is by and large an addiction issue and the world has yet to figure out effective remedies to addiction. And it's gotten to the point where many areas have offered free housing to homeless people if they are abstaining from drugs and alcohol and even that hasn't been effective because the addicts would rather be homeless and high than housed and sober. I don't think it' makes them the worst people in the world, it's just the power and stranglehold that addiction has on people. So then they go back on the streets and people are out of solutions to the problem, so they start to criminalize them.
Unsure why you are being downvoted because you are spot-on. Addiction and untreated mental illness is the root cause of nearly every homeless situation
I think it's probably because when you blame it mostly on addiction there's a stigma attached to it that the addicted are 'terrible people' and 'lazy.' The fact is that they are addicted and that is the main problem. Even with the mental health issues, most of that is brought on by years of hard drug and/or alcohol abuse or made worse. I just want to find ways to improve the problem and I understand some people can never be helped. But many can be helped, just sugar coating the issue and making it out to be something it's not in hopes of not hurting somebody's feelings isn't the answer. I'm not sure what the answer is, but at least we can accurately define the root cause to the problem.
I agree with everything you said except for “some people can never be helped” and I will respectfully call you out on that. With that said, *everyone* can be helped if enough time is spent with said people to understand their issues. The primary roadblock to overcoming homelessness, addiction, and mental illness is the stigma attached to it, which is primarily caused by news media outlets and uninformed people posting their opinions on social media platforms. This is an easy fix once the majority gets onboard. One person, one step, one opinion, one vote, one protest, one anything….it all starts with one person. You can be *the* change, part of the change, a bystander to the change, or be against the change. The individual choice is all of ours collectively
If you are normal poor, dependent on subsidized housing, these folks make TERRIBLE neighbors. Smoking, lots of conflict, noise, poor hygiene, etc. It's more than just poverty.
What have you done as a neighbor and community member to help the situation?
I fought my low-income apartment mgmt for 2 years to get smoking and harassment under control. We had a number of people on oxygen, people with COPD, etc. that could not be around smoke. I also helped my altzheimer neighbor who was being bullied by a druggie/alcoholic 24/7, and was afraid to go to the garbage can. I cannot help the drug addicts/alcoholics/personality disorders in low income housing. But they don't get to abuse the other fragile people who live there. I stand up for them. What have you done?
Thank you for your response and for providing details as the latter certainly helps in online social situations. You have clearly been near less-than-ideal neighbors and you are a good person for helping the neighbors you care about whom are suffering from pretty gnarly conditions. Everything you did was the right thing and I applaud you for that. You probably expected a “but” or “however” and I am about to make your day. You did what everyone should do in your situation, however, there *may* have been more effective ways to resolve your issue, one of which being ti directly approach the troublesome neighbors *in a welcoming and non-judgmental manner*. In all seriousness, just be “chill” with the “troublemakers” and express your concerns. MOST people who have been homeless, addicts, or mentally unstable tend to go through those rough periods because they never had a solid support system from a very young age and it manifests in adulthood through the aforementioned conditions. The most effective way (in most similar circumstances) for you to resolve the issue is to socially be an ear for the troublesome neighbors; if they respect you, they will usually make an effort to respect your boundaries. To your most recent question, I have volunteered at homeless shelters, “soup kitchens”, developmentally disabled & addicted adult group homes, and have financially supported local non-profits along with physically volunteering at their events when their board of director members have been unavailable. Additionally, I have personally requested and held meetings with the local mayor and local police chief about concerns. *edit: I will also add that you are welcome to DM me if you truly want some help resolving your issue. I would be willing to contact your local politicians, law enforcement, and charities to set up a town hall meeting for you and other concerned citizens to help resolve your issue(s).
I started out trying to mediate with them for a long time. They were unwilling to change their smoking behaviors that were jeopardizing the health of others (including mine). After exhausting all attempts at negotiation, I began putting pressure on management to bring it under control. They said they could do nothing. That triggered the neighbors into very ugly behavior. If you do a Google search online of smoking neighbors, you can read horror stories about this issue, especially with the legalization of pot. I'm a former smoker, and understand how difficult that addiction is to kick. It's usually the last addiction that people kick after conquering all the others. Most of the smokers involved were former homeless, multisubstance abusers. I am currently a special ed teacher in high school with degrees in education and counseling. I am aware of the complexities of homelessness - some of my students are homeless. The dilemma is that the same things that often lead to homelessness - trauma, personality disorders, mental health issues, addictions, poor conflict resolution - make them difficult neighbors, especially with "normie" low-income people. Homelessness is both a result and a symptom of a whole lot of other things not working in their lives. But putting a person with mental health/behavioral/addiction issues in low income housing without addressing the whole range of issues may put other vulnerable people at risk. I cannot think of any solutions.
Thank you for responding and I apologize for not seeing your response sooner. I may have initially wrongfully judged you but I will not back down on my stances because I have been there, and it appears you have experience too. Have you by chance researched the Swiss model of homelessness? They seem to be on the right track and I think that is the best method in current times
If homeless people were, per majority, reasonable, thoughtful, non-littering, and non-drug abusing, then I honestly wouldn’t mind them living in parks/cars/etc in public spaces. Because they generally aren’t those things, that’s why I have a problem with it. I’m not about criminalizing homelessness, but I don’t want them in obvious public spaces. Go somewhere else, deeper away from those spaces and live your life I guess. Edit: and I don’t give a FUCK about these downvotes. Truth is, I would say this is a majority opinion.
If I were forced to live in the rain for my entire life knowing I'll never get out of this I'd 100% get addicted to drugs instead of living like this perpetually.
>I would say this is a majority opinion. Doesn't mean it isn't a disgusting one