“Hey, we really don’t want you out here on the street, so we’re gonna have to do something about it.”
“You’re gonna give us homes?”
“lol no”
"if we can't have homes and we can't be in public where are we supposed to go?"
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"
The military wouldn't be suicide but it would be asking to get raped and become a nonbinary furry weeb with daddy issues and a lot of time and money but no way to use it. which might be worse
You either give them homes or you line them up and shoot them. Those are the only two options.
Though if bullets are too expensive you can just gas them and then cremate them, which might be a more efficient Final Solution to The Homeless Question.
American eugenics sought to solve poverty by forcibly sterilizing the poor. The only reason it fell out of favor was the great depression when suddenly people who were once employed decided that maybe this wasn't fair now that they were about to be sterilized.
Which ties back in nicely to WW2, I unfortunately have to give some of the lawyers at the nunumberg trials praise for arguing "How can America sit in judgement of Nazi concentration camps when eugenics has been established legal by the Supreme Court?"
Anyways, economic eugenics is coming back in fashion thanks to NIMBYs that just can't stand to see the results of treating the basics to life as commodities.
Absolutely correct, if they can't just pull themselves up from their own bootstraps they clearly are not worthy to be alive. Just get a job and quit drugs, that's the capitalistic dream.
Instead of gas chambers and transporting them we could just use trucks and put a hose from the exhaust to the back of the truck, way older method for less densely populated areas.
Oh and for the big cities we could establish self cleaning suicide booths.
The military industrial response to Vietnam protests and the utter unpopularity of an evil war that continues for decades and still has scars on America let alone SE Asia for me is the defining turn post WWII. Ike himself, as a general, directly stated the greatest threat to American democracy was the military industrial complex. The threats have multiplied since then.
The Atomic Cafe is a great documentary made solely with archival footage including the Ike quote above. It's chilling hearing that said 60+ years ago by a general and sitting president.
Just look up Eisenhower's speech when he left office where he warns of the Military Industrial Complex. He knew what was coming.
Were we ever free though?
The freedom promised by the constitution rang hollow on every enslaved person, every native, and every woman and every other marginalized group when it was written, and it still rings rather hollow now.
Were we ever free though?
All men were created equal, right? Except women, PoC, queer folk, non christians, catholics (sometimes), the Irish, the bottom 99% and so on.
The freedom promised by the constitution rang hollow on every enslaved person, and every woman.
I think freedom is qualified differently here. You're free to own property. Then we "democratically" decide who and what can be owned as property based on our interpretation of the Jedi ancient texts.
/s
I hear a lot of Americans use that word. Online but also in real life. But what does freedom in the sense of a "free" country even mean?
It sounds like a propaganda term that does not have a clear definition.
Once asked some stranger at a burger place in San Francisco if it would be likely if the police would stop me walking around with a cup of coke (to check if I have alcohol in there). I really did not want a confrontation with the police. They said better not risk it. Talked to them a bit. Very friendly people but they also said that a lot of problems in the US are because they have too much "freedom" but asked what that even means they couldn't answer me.
At the same time the only reason I even talked to them was because I did not have the freedom to walk around with an open alcohol container... Which I would be free to do in many places in Europe.
I think this word is just a way to evoke emotions and knee-jerk reactions and should probably be avoided...
Gonna risk going a bit against the grain here…
I have a lot of empathy for their situation.
I don’t know what the solution is but it isn’t the status quo. A lot of the west coast cities are having a disproportionate problem with homeless. It’s not clear if people are bussing their homeless or the housing prices or what.
The amount of trash generated by these homeless camps is nuts and ruins virtually every public space. In Portland, it is common to find hypodermic needles littered in the parks. You’ll walk past people on the sidewalk passed out with a needle in their arm or actively doing drugs. Human excrement on the sidewalk. I wish I had some solution but the current situation sucks for everyone.
A lot of the west coast cities are having a disproportionate problem with homeless.
Prices go up, rents go up, wages stay flat.
Oops! Where did all the homeless people come from?!
The amount of trash generated by these homeless camps is nuts and ruins virtually every public space.
We live in a society of disposable things, but we don't provide homeless people with trash service.
You don't see the trash you generate, because the city carts it away. Homeless people are forced to live in their own squalor because the city doesn't cart it away.
I understand why trash, drugs, and homelessness occur. What I don’t understand is how to fix it.
The cities do clean trash up at, I should probably find a source for this, a significant cost. (From what I understand, this is due to the hazardous nature of the materials being cleaned up) Because these encampments can pop up anywhere, it’s not always practical to provide trash receptacles/dumpsters before it becomes a big problem. Having folks clear out during daytime hours at least helps that situation, but it’s far from ideal. It appears that Victoria BC is/was doing this and the atmosphere seemed a lot better overall when compared to Portland. Green spaces were usable, no major trash piles (that I saw) and homeless folks weren’t hassled when trying to sleep. I should note that I’m far from educated on Victorias homeless woes so there’s probably nuance here.
It’s not entirely clear how much power cities have to stop the housing crisis on their own, but I get the impression that the high cost of rent is mostly out of their control. Additionally, a lot of cities often do not have the resources to provide these services at the level they’re needed. It seems like there should be some level of expectation for every city/county/state whatever to provide services for a percentage of their population and organization to route folks from high saturated services to lower saturated services… and then sweep folks who refuse services… but the devil is in the details I’m sure.
Because these encampments can pop up anywhere, it’s not always practical to provide trash receptacles/dumpsters before it becomes a big problem.
Precisely because they're impermanent. It's a problem that results from cities pushing people out rather than bringing them in.
There's a bus stop on my block that will, from time to time, just drop off someone in medical scrubs. Basically no cloths, no place to go, no cell phone, no nothing. Just someone a hospital ejected into the wild, because he was poor and they didn't know what to do with him.
So my neighbors and I have to figure out how to support Random Person who just crops up on our street, how to keep them safe from police, and how to get this person back on their feet.
We've done it four times. Two of them were just traveling cross country and had medical emergencies. One ran off. One was looking for family in the city but had never been here before and just kinda got arrested for vagrancy and then dumped at a hospital after leaving lockup.
This is just how our city handles indigent people. They snatch you up, fling you through a bureaucracy you don't understand, and if they don't know where to put you, they put you on a bus to anywhere but here.
And we wonder why we get encampments popping up randomly
I'm with you that that is inappropriate in public, and west coast cities are being hit super hard. The dirt little secret is that many interior cities do also run their homeless out.
But the research shows the fastest, most sure fire way to reduce the problem is to just give folks a permanent address that is safe.
Every effort should be made to give these folks a home, even if that home is some sort of rapid mass manufacture box with a door that locks.
I do acknowledge that the states on the west coast shouldn't be the only ones that need to follow that approach, and there clearly isn't a solution for that. I.e. a state should be rapidly obligated to house IT'S homeless, not ALL OF AMERICA'S homeless... But that is a very complicated layer
It seems like any state by state solution will fall prey to states that want to displace their homeless population instead of providing attainable housing. If we lived in a reasonable society the Federal government would intervene, but no dice.
Agree.
I strongly believe the federal government needs to step in, with some sort of "new deal" conservation/work corp.
As the unhoused are able, they can work for the work corp. The work corp will obviously be shit pay, but you should get basic federal healthcare, and basic housing provided. If you are unable to work, that's not a blocker to receiving this basic housing.
Anyway, we could be doing this right now, across the country, providing a safety net for so many people who are near-homeless, while also improving our country through the other projects the work corp could take on. Republicans should be happy as folks are incentivised to try to work, as their basic needs are met and they can operate from stability.
I'm just spitballing here.
A lot of the homeless are elderly or ill or handicapped. Many are homeless because they cannot work.
I’m with you on this. It seems like it’d have to be a coalition of states or the federal government tackling it. That seems impossible at the moment though.
I fully support whatever level of housing we can provide for folks that have the bare necessities… water, sewer, trash, and safety. Also agree that there would need to be some cap on services…. As a city could go bankrupt if the regions folks had flocked to them.
Portland had a few self regulated slightly better than tent cities that, as far as I could tell, had a pretty reasonable compromise. Not ideal… but they provided stability for folks and, if someone caused trouble or brought drugs in, they got kicked out. Better, at least, than the current situation of chaos, drugs, and trash everywhere.
a state should be rapidly obligated to house IT’S homeless, not ALL OF AMERICA’S homeless
This is unconstitutional under the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment.
So all a homeless person would have to do is travel to any state; claim residence, which wouldn't be hard since they don't exactly have a home; and then petition the state for housing. I didn't have a primary address and did this a few months ago, and was able to get SNAP and Medicaid through the state.
You clearly understand the situation I'm describing. This is a high level situation.
Responding with the pedantry of existing law is in bad faith, as the nature of my comment clearly speaks of future hypotheticals.
The operative word is "should". any critically capable reader (uh oh!) should be able to detect I'm discussing the practical, hypothetical challenges any given state would face, of they found the sufficient funds and motivation to pursue this topic far beyond their neighbors: they would see an influx of folks looking for these serbices, thus overwhelming their isolated effort.
The complication would be coordinating efforts across the country to provide services as I described, at such a pace and parity that regions, and then states would not become overly burdened by migrating homeless.
Trying to sell this idea to people—this idea that the Constitution will get changed to support this fantasy of yours—as anything other than mad ravings is what's bad faith in this conversation. Confront the reality of the situation if you are truly interested in making change happen.
Men will not look at things as they really are but as they wish them to be and they are ruined.
— Niccolo Machiavelli
Miss.
What I'm selling is the need for many states, or the federal government to act in coordination, such that one state isn't the only place homeless folks can go for these services
A studio apartment can be over $3,000 in the Bay Area. Meanwhile, there are like five homeless people on every block of the city I lived in with five-digit population. The city would need to find some way to seize land, without calling for a vote, in order to have enough housing for everyone since rent control has been voted against for over a decade.
The main issue is that people would vote to drive the homeless into the sea before they would vote to house them.
Cool. I know some land they can seize.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/california-forever-billionaire-backed-city-silicon-valley
It's far more complicated than that for many of the homeless. A really high proportion have chronic mental health problems like schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder. These people cannot maintain even a basic apartment. Fires are common. As are faeces smeared on the walls, major structural damage, dead animals, bullet holes and use of firearms inside the premises. Throwing a mentally unwell person into a home to fend for themselves doesn't work. The mental health treatment has to come first. It can take months, if not years, to help them out of their hole.
Another significant portion of the homeless have chronic addiction. In addiction treatment, we say that "a locking door is a death sentence" because the LAST thing you want is to give a junky unsupervised privacy to shoot up as often as they like. Apartments often turn into local hubs for dealing and sex work. This attracts all kinds of unsavory characters and crime - especially violent crime. You don't want to know what a junky would be willing to do to get a fix. A major part of this problem is called "destigmatization." This is a great documentary on how it has so thoroughly failed in Vancouver, specifically.
Both groups require intensive support before being given housing. Not after and not at the same time.
The mental health treatment has to come first.
No. Housing comes first. You cannot treat mental health or addiction while the patient is experiencing the inhumane conditions of homelessness.
the LAST thing you want is to give a junky unsupervised privacy to shoot up as often as they like. Apartments often turn into local hubs for dealing and sex work. This attracts all kinds of unsavory characters and crime
So you think the streets are better? Believe it or not, all this still happens on the street, except now there is no guarantee of food, shelter, safety, or property. I'm sure the constant threat of starvation, death by exposure, getting robbed, or being sexually assaulted is really beneficial to mental health. Do you really think being on the street stops addicts from using as much as they want? No privacy on the street? These people are already invisible. And no, if you don't have a door that locks, you don't become immune to overdosing.
Shameful.
The problem is there are a lot of NIMBYs that would rather them trash their cities than hang out in their neighborhoods lowering their property value. They want the government to fix the problem, but don’t want their taxes raised to accommodate it.
The people who protect the homeless are every bit as responsible for the problem as anyone they accuse.
Sorry that we don't like seeing people die because they're mentally ill and can't operate in society like the rest of us. We need an actual social safety net funded by all the wealth that society has created rather than letting robber barons take it all.
When you learn how things actually work, I’ll Have this discussion with you. But I can see that it will be a complete waste of time to continue.
Lol, you have nothing to say when you're confronted with the fact that you're OK with people dying because we choose to call them a problem. Examine yourself, fellow human.
When you learn how things actually work, I’ll Have this discussion with you. But I can see that it will be a complete waste of time to continue.
When you learn how things actually work
You'd never know any of us have worked with homeless neighbors before, known homeless family or friends, or dealt with it ourselves.
We just don't know how things actually work, gosh darn it.
I was with you until that second paragraph. Are you saying people shouldn't protect the homeless??
The homeless should be helped out of homelessness. Not protected to the point that they enable it.
By proving them with the ability to get their OWN homes. Help those willing to help themselves and you’ll actually help them.
What happens when they’re too mentally ill or overwhelmed with addiction to be helped? These folks used to be institutionalized against their will but we as a society decided decades ago that this was a violation of their rights. So we kicked them out of hospitals (where they had access to shelter, hygiene, food, medication, education, and recreation) and onto the streets (where they have none of those things).
Housing first advocates like to believe that giving all these deeply troubled folks a rent-free apartment will magically solve all their problems. It doesn’t. All of the filth and despair of their situation simply gets moved off the streets and into the apartment. And then all of the problem of dealing with the unhygienic situation gets foisted upon the landlord and all of other tenants who live in the building. Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself.
You’re using small portion of them to represent the whole. This is a nuanced issue that won’t resolve with a single fix- but just… giving them houses is t the way it gets fixed either.
Bill Hicks, who wasn't funny, said it best. The Land of the Free... if you've got the money.
Def not. Seattle had a really huge explosion from the pandemic. There was the huge encampent in international district near chinatown and seattle's skid row towards 3rd st
The city hasn't really addressed the problem and are usually just sweeping it under the rug by shuffling the people around
Encampments do not represent the entire homeless community. Those most visible encampments, littered with garbage and needles, are largely addicts or sometimes people with mental health issues.
Shuffling people around combats the street barricades and open air Fenty and gives respite to the communities that were hosting the camps.
Yes, you're right about this being only the visible part of the homeless population. It's tough to really track down on the not so visible side of homelessness. There probably are many people living in cars, crashing at friend's houses, etc.
I wont deny that living or being next to these camps is terrible. I took the bus along that route and I would never get off there because you never know what could happen there. But while shuffling people around does have benefits, it doesn't solve the problem of homelessness (no matter what the city says). Lots of this stem from the overall lack of safety nets, housing, education, etc. A tremendous task, but I'd love to see progress being made.
We have a lot of programs though. Maybe they aren't doing a good job marketing themselves. Were you aware of these? Or do you consider them insufficient or under funded?
Housing and Essential Needs (HEN): A program that provides rental assistance and essential needs like food and transportation to low-income individuals who are unable to work due to a disability.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): Offers cash assistance to families with dependent children to help cover basic needs, including housing.
Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) Program: Provides funding to local governments and nonprofit organizations to develop and operate housing and supportive services for homeless individuals and families.
Rapid Rehousing Programs: These programs offer short-term rental assistance and case management to help individuals and families quickly transition out of homelessness and into permanent housing.
Emergency Shelter Grants: Funding provided to local governments and nonprofit organizations to operate emergency shelters and provide essential services to homeless individuals.
Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program: A federal program administered locally that provides rental assistance vouchers to low-income individuals and families, including those experiencing homelessness.
Lots of places swung hard the other way after the pandemic. That said there's literally no easy this is constitutional and it's already been ruled on. Some civil rights place will take it on for an easy slam dunk.
I don't think the Constitution permits sleeping in any public space, but the ACLU is challenging on Eighth Amendment grounds in Grants Pass v. Johnson. So we'll know soon enough if it's Constitutional.
It doesn't specifically ensure a right to sleep no but to enjoy public places is legal, I can camp on public grounds so long as it's not gated or otherwise excluded or currently utilized. They can say don't sleep on public benches because it prevents enjoyment from others and isn't what they're there for but if you pitch a tent in the woods that's legal no matter what local governments say.
I don't think there's anything in the Constitution about enjoying public spaces either. If you're allowed to camp on state land in your state it's because your state law permits it.
If I have the right to protest on public spaces because I have a measurable property right to it then I have the same right of enjoyment for any other protected right included simply existing and the necessities thereof.
Someone already tried that in 1984. When homeless activists camped out on Lafayette Square in front of the White House, the Supreme Court ruled in Clark v. Community for Creative Nonviolence that the act of sleeping itself was “facilitative,” rather than “expressive,” meaning that campgrounds aren’t protected forms of speech at all.
No it was tried as a 1st amendment issue. It needs to be tried as a 4th amendment issue which it actually it.
Ie. Camping isn't protected under the first amendment act as it isn't expressive initself which that ruling if you read it makes clear. Essentially by itself it isn't but it could theoretically be made expressive but that hasn't be tried.
Every time when I think I have bad government I remind myself that it is at least not us gov. Hell iirc whole city of Chicago regressed massively under some mayor right? I remember once it being like a go to destination for ppl. It’s possible that we offloaded some white trash there and it contributed I guess.
Lemme tell you it got a lot safer here after all the freaks went to chase the american dream.
I'm sure they're terribly appreciative of you referring to them as "unhoused" so you can feel just a tiny bit morally superior to those that just call them homeless 😂
I think bums deserve respect and kindness from all of us. A lot of the time bums suffer from mental health issues caused by shame and trauma and that needs to be addressed with care and humility. These are human beings and how we treat our most vulnerable is a greater reflection of how we treat each other as a society. We need to help bums not only out of kindness but out of respect for society and ourselves as a whole.
Precisely. I've been homeless myself and someone thinking I would be offended by being called homeless is fucking laughable
Least of my fucking worries you daft cunt
Edit, just realised myself, and all the upvoters, got wooooshed by suckmywang here with his overuse of "bum"
Bravo 👏😂
Yes but remember, as far as the US govt is concerned, caring for the unhoused (and any other of the many impoverished and underserved of society for that matter) begins and ends with surface-level, performative respect. The kind where you make a banner and raise awareness, ya feel me? They would appreciate it if we didn't ask for more than that. That costs money.
surface-level, performative respect. The kind where you make a banner and raise awareness
Like changing the word to uNHoUsEd to make yourself feel better without affecting their lives in any way whatsoever? 😂
Fuck off, help them in a better way
Yep when I was homeless my problems were
1 shelter
2 food
56,845 what label some daft little cunt thinks I'll be offended by
I mean, the term before homeless was literally street people. Terms change as they start to sound callous.
And that rotation is pointless in they eyes of most. The important thing is that if being houseless is a crime then society owes these people a fucking house. You can't criminalise extistence.
The only “crime” happening here is from the people who made this law., they should be put in jail. I cannot see how it’s not a crime against humanity - literally criminalising existence/bad luck
How on earth is unhoused any less callous than homeless?
One of these sounds WAY more like unhinged 😂
The morality of this country is such that we correct those who do not use the proper term for the human beings we just threw the fuck out of the state
I actually think "unhoused" is stupid too, but imma just go along with the game and laugh when "unhoused" becomes a pejorative in the near future. Unless you like downvotes (in which case sorry to interrupt your fun) i suggest you do the same, because there are people who do care deeply, and if they're already unhoused why kick em when they're down?
Hell at least It's the same amount of syllables. (Unlike when "handicapped" became differently-abled, 3-5! Grrrrrrr). Anyway i bet we'll only have to wait like a decade tops.
When I was homeless I definitely had less home. Arguably, I was occasionally "housed". I will always prefer "homeless" because to me it's the "home" part that mattered, not the "house".
Probably unpopular opinion: The only people who care if you say "unhoused" vs "homeless" are those who are either not themselves "unhoused" or "homeless" or are "unhoused" by some degree of choice and have the luxury of being less "unhoused" in the future.
