Do I understand that your solutions are either me housing people or using "other people's money" to solve homelessness?Quote:
Originally Posted by dmc
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Do I understand that your solutions are either me housing people or using "other people's money" to solve homelessness?Quote:
Originally Posted by dmc
I have taken a few people in for short times. All but one got on their feet, one didn't want to be helped, just wanted to be a leech.
I'm asking what are you doing about it.Quote:
Originally Posted by redfox
Briefly, as I am off to the doctor shortly:Quote:
Originally Posted by dmc
I worked in the shelter system for 16 years, as a domestic violence expert, helping women & children break the cycle of violence in their lives that left them homeless. I did this in MO & WA, in rural communities & in Seattle.
I was on the founding board of an affordable housing organization that has built scores of homes for marginalized people.
I've testified several times in both our State Lege and City Council about housing and the needs for affordability.
I was the development director of an urban housing org, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure housing for marginalized people.
I started a Community Kitchen which feeds between 60- 100 people, who also do all the cooking, in my neighborhood. The all volunteer org is eight months old, and going strong.
My DH & I have housed three people in the midst of divorce who were faced with losing their housing (at separate times), until they were able stabilize their lives. This included the two children of the father we housed.
I've been active since 1976, both in paid and volunteer roles, to support individuals to get stable, as well as to create systems that counteract the root causes of homelessness.
I earned my MA in community development, with an emphasis on housing and asset based approaches to community development. I'm highly knowledgeable about this topic.
redfox, I don't think you need to justify your position.
But this video does an unbelievable job at doing it for you! I just happened to watch it today, and if you guys have an hour to spare, please watch it: it's a documentary, I AM by Tom Shadyak, who directed a bunch of comedies like Liar, Liar and Ace Ventura, but who has gone through an amazing shift after a bike accident and long bout of post-concussion syndrome. Honestly, it is great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=Vdk6mGevOqI
Good for you, but why aren't you housing anyone now?
Two reasons:Quote:
Originally Posted by dmc
I am rebuilding my health after a cancer diagnosis & treatment last year. Second, we provide shelter to people we are aquainted with or are in our circle of friends. No one currently is in need that we're aware of. Gven my health recovery process, though, it's unlikely we'll be offering space till I am 100%.
i'm interested in your experiences housing folks. I'd love to hear your stories! I'm waiting to be seen in the ER right now, so I may be offline.
+1Quote:
I think it is vastly more complex than that - more so, I admit, than I understand. At this point, I think the damage to the planet caused by pollution and extractive industries cause the biggest impact on peoples whose lives do not involve such a large degree of consumption. As Alan pointed out, a family can grow up without much money and still have a much higher return of love and happiness than a vastly wealthy person, but when the landscape you depend on falls apart, or your community begins to suffer birth defects because your relative wealth makes it easier for your community to be a corporate chemical dumping ground, then your lives are negatively impacted by the wealthy of the world who give no thought to such things. I like to support working toward a lesser degree of consumption not because I think my extravagance takes food directly out of the mouths of the poor, but because I do not feel the planet can support the degree of consumption we have grown accustomed to. Do I think it is unfair that I can afford an iPod while a poor third world person might not? No, not really. I'm not going to be embarrassed by the accident of where I was born. But I'm going to think twice before I replace something that doesn't need to be replaced when I think of the people in poor countries exposed to toxic fumes as they try to burn the precious metals out of all the e-waste that is shipped to them.
I only took in a few that I knew somehow, and only to give them a place to stay while they got a job and back on their feet. I did take a kid in one time, he was hanging around the house a lot and I was having to run him off at night. He was 17 and my kids were 15 at the time. My boys then told me his parents had kicked him out. His parents lived about a block away, both Doctors, but they wanted nothing to do with him. He was smoking pot and he was fighting with his mom. I really didn't want him around my kids either. The police wouldn't do anything because he was close to being 18. I contacted a local church and they found a place for him to stay and a job. He took off about a hour after I dropped him off. My sons said he just started bouncing from one place to the next for a while. Don't know what happened to him.Quote:
Originally Posted by redfox
I don't come into contact with anyone in need, and don't go looking for them. The last time I saw a homeless guy was at Key West. He looked to me like he was where he chose to be. I don't worry about it much anymore.
What a solid you did for that teen. My parents took in a friend from high school under similar circumstances. It made a big difference in his life, but the influence didn't show up till some years later. He credited his time in our basement as critical to his getting on a road that was much more productive. I hope that was also true for the teen you housed.Quote:
Originally Posted by dmc
Regarding the homeless dude in Key West, I wonder how one would assess what choice meant for him?
He was there because every choice he had made prior put him there. I would think he made poor choices, but they were his. At least it was warm. He was an eyesore though, he was just sleeping on the ground at a park.Quote:
Originally Posted by redfox
You are aware of all of his prior choices? And, you actually consider the sight of another human being as "an eyesore"? I've never heard this!Quote:
Originally Posted by dmc
The one thing I bring with me from my Catholic upbringing is the line "there but for the grace of God go I". I am no longer religious in that sense but I have lived long enough to see that bad things can happen to anyone regardless of status, education and or career. It isn't always about bad choices. I believe that kindness and empathy is one of our greatest possessions but it is really hard for some people to grasp without judging:(
We had a homeless man in the village here last week. He was sleeping in lobbies of some of the small stores in town, after hours, because it was cold, icy, and snowing, and he apparently had no local knowledge. A complete stranger to all in the community. Looked a bit rougher than the local homeless-by-choice folks.
He turned out to be an unregistered sex offender, a child predator, who had made the *choice* to somehow get to the mainland ferry terminal from his release point, and the choice to spend $$$ to buy a ferry ticket for the 90 minute boat ride out here, then the *choice* to hitchhike or walk the 10 miles from the dock to the village, and then the *choice* to camp out in the middle of 5-6 schools and preschools.
I'm not sure why he made the *choice* to get all the way out here. I have some theories though.
Indeed. I too have had the blessings in life to have several major crises happen to me. House fire, divorce, drug addiction in my immediate family, cancer, huge financial struggles. All have given me the gift of understanding that bad things happen to good people, and that none of us has any clue what the road has been for anyone else.Quote:
Originally Posted by pinkytoe
Every time life presents its inevitable struggles, after a good cry & some time, I have come to feel grateful for the way my heart has broken open to all who have been and will be in similar circumstances. Rather than an eyesore, I view homeless people, in the words of Mother Theresa, as "Jesus in all His distressing disguises".
Though I'm not a Christian, I love this way of reframing those who cause us to want to turn away. Why do we do this? Why an eyesore? Perhaps because we're all so close to being abject in another's eyes, if not in actual reality. We all share the same life force and desires for love and happiness. Most especially the ill, hungry, exhausted, tattered man that we see by the roadside. There is a reason that every wisdom tradition venerates the least of us as being the Wise Crone or Man. I am sad for those who feel separated from life and cannot see our common humanity.
When my rightie cousin asked me why I was still a liberal after all these years, I replied "because I've seen what people go through." I didn't bother to ask him why he was still the way he was. I suppose I should have. I've made a lot of dumb decisions in my life; fortunately none of them led to homelessness.
I know that he chose to be spread out in the middle of a walkway were people had to walk around him. And he made the choice to be there. And yes he was an eyesore.Quote:
Originally Posted by redfox
Obviously he made some poor choices somewhere along the line. But he did manage to be in Key West and not New York so I will give him that. Maybe he was exactly where he wanted to be. But he looked like hell to me.
What is the eyesore part, dmc? What is it about him that makes you want to turn away?
Quote:
Originally Posted by redfox
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/eyesore
He was filthy, unkept, you could smell him as you had to walk around him. It was a lovely park. We were not there very long, hopefully someone came along and made him move.
Unless DMC is suggesting that one person can house all the thousands of homeless people, other people's money, or other people's houses, are going to have to get involved. One caring person can make a lot of difference, but one person can't house hundreds.
bae: That sounds like a lot of hassle/expense just to put himself in proximity of several schools. Aren't there lots of schools on the mainland, too? Was that your theory?
dmc: I can't imagine what type of personality would choose to be homeless. That sounds like a miserable existence.
Jane: I don't understand why your cousin would think you're likely to change your political/philosophical leanings "after all these years."
There's a lot about this thread I don't understand.
It was painful to see and smell him? Sad? Embarassing? Revolting? It made you angry? What was your experience of him?Quote:
Originally Posted by dmc
I don't know whats so hard to understand. He was in the way and he was revolting. Maybe he does provide a good example for some as to what bad choice's in life lead to.
I would argue that many (not all) have become wealthy on the backs of those who struggle to get by. If you employ 100 people and pay them less than a living wage while the company earns more than is required to keep the business healthy, then the zero-sum in this situation is reality that the profit means more to you than the well-being of your employees.Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
Here's a radical idea proposed by St. Augustine: "Determine what God has given you, take from that what you need. The remainder is needed by others." At this point, I think this should be a personal choice and not a political imperative. However, it's certainly not our current mindset or modus operandi either individually or collectively.
I actually don't believe in a zero-sum game when it comes to "wealth" but it depends on how you define wealth. With all the abundance available, and the way nature works, there is enough for everyone's need. But, to paraphrase the famous quote, those who have a "what's mine is mine" mentality tend to foster a separation-from-others mentality that leads someone being up and someone being down which leads to perceptions of fear and scarcity, which leads to there not being enough for everyone's greed.
I work across the street from the largest men's shelter for the homeless in this region. Buses from the county drop off homeless here weekly. During nice weather they render the nearby city park unusable by anyone other than their groups. I am talking about a hundred people out milling around at any one time.
Vagrants or the homeless, whatever you want to call them--are threatening in large groups. They shout obscenities, fall into random fights in front of you where you are physically in danger, strew their stuff all over the area, and urinate and defecate wherever. There are killings in this 1 block area about every 2 years.
I am stunned by the naivete in thinking that providing charming cottages will solve this. But hey, go for it. Let's just buy each homeless person a Tumbleweed house, problem solved.
I would like to know for each person who has answered on this thread: when is the last time you were surround by 10+ homeless men? Not just one lone guy, but 10+? I am, daily, in that situation.
You know that philosophy that says people who are liberal when they're young and idealistic turn conservative as they become wiser? We hadn't talked for years...Quote:
Originally Posted by onlinemoniker
IL, I'm curious--if you are against the shelter in your area, where should these people be housed?
As for me, I don't think buying each a Tumbleweed House is the answer, although there are real problems with the shelters that are available. If we think creatively we can figure out a way to provide safe shelter for people who don't have it. I'm not a city planner, or an architect, but I can certainly see the possibilities in individual pod housing that keeps the homeless safe, and keep neighbors feeling safe.
As I said to redfox when she responded to dmc's question, I don't have to give you a resume of my interactions with the homeless, and I do have one and I'll leave it at that.
Dismissing them and wishing them away is simply not going to solve anything.
There was some kind of pilot program here for awhile wherein they found apartments for the homeless. They followed one fellow who cleaned up his act quite a bit. I guess living on the street--unable to bathe or easily find a bathroom, being scorned--leads to depression and worsening substance abuse. Who knew? (Insert sarcastic tone.) Many of the homeless are mentally ill, but Reagan led the way in clearing out mental hospitals as a cost-cutting move. So this is what we get.
Frankly, the "I got mine" mentality sickens me. So many of those who hold that view have been lucky from the get-go -- born of the majority race/religion/ethnicity, not visibly handicapped, typically educated. As Molly Ivins used to say, "...born on third base and thought [they] had hit a triple." People who believe that others are where they are in life entirely out of their own choices, ought to get into the real world and meet some of these folks. None of us chose to be born the race we are, to be the gender we are, or in the country we were born to the parents we have. Maybe in some rose-colored world everyone is treated equally. But real life is quite different.Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine
And while it's admirable to think that problems of poverty and xenophobia can be handled in the private sector, again, real life is quite different. I believe we should help those who need help. That does not mean elevating them to the highest levels of society -- it means providing the shelter, food, and medical care necessary to help them become as much a part of society as possible. We, too, have housed people who were having trouble finding their footing. But there's a limit to how many people we could serve that way. My almost-80-year-old mother believes we should help, too, but she doesn't have a spare room or the wherewithal at 80 to take on the task.
Government has evolved (at least in representative governments) to be a (fairly) impartial proxy for policies that voters have decided should exist. We decided it might be bad to just let invaders roll across the borders. So we have armed forces and a border patrol that watches for people and goods we don't want in this country. We used to let food producers and drug companies regulate themselves until it was plainly obvious they could not/would not do it themselves, so most of us voted to regulate those companies for the sake of safety.
If the majority of a government's citizens have decided our long-term interests are served by providing a sustainable useful net of basic services, and, despite all exhortations from the right, the private sector cannot/does not do it, then how does it get done? The need does not go away. The public apparently has no interest in the public executions it would take to eliminate spending tax dollars on the homeless and the severely handicapped and the deeply mentally ill. Maybe we made a huge mistake in letting the Code of the West go away. If the issues cannot be addressed by individuals, what collective takes on those tasks?
I am deeply affected when I see people on the street begging or keeled over drunk. For whatever reason, when I see another struggling human, I visualize them as a child. It pains me that I live in a society that doesn't seem to care. Who knows what life scenario they have had to endure? Child abuse, alcoholic parents, mental illness... Sometimes I think if I were in that state I too would choose the streets. And the other alternative, institutions that housed the mentally ill no longer exist.
Glad I live in the county.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
When does the victim mentality end Steve?
I am sad that the OP's thoughtful comments devolved into an argument about who is responsible for homelessness.
The homeless have no status symbols and are clearly on the lowest rung of the social ladder, and look at the antipathy and revulsion they evoke - simply by existing.
This is judging by appearances again, just at a different level.
I feel I have more to say but I am lucky enough to have a job I have to go to.
What is the victim mentality?Quote:
Originally Posted by dmc
It is amazing, isn't it, how often a thread started in any forum winds up being a Public Policy debate.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gardenarian
It devolved partly because without our possessions, either mental or physical, we are seen as having no value.
Yes. All too true.Quote:
Originally Posted by pinkytoe
Look it up. Use whatever search engine you like.Quote:
Originally Posted by redfox
Some people are just liabilities.Quote:
Originally Posted by pinkytoe
Interesting that you used an accounting term.Quote:
Originally Posted by dmc