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I Used to Be Homeless

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Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#191

Post by conanbatt »

elliekelly wrote: post #31
nroets wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently toured for 5 months in the US on my bicycle. My average cost was $30 per day. That included sightseeing, an airline ticket every month and a bus ticket every month. I used Warm Showers and wild camping, so I rarely paid for housing. $7.25 per hour is enough to live on. You just need to work enough hours, do long commutes and be very, very disciplined in all your purchases.

Even if you live in a state with no income tax, work full-time at your minimum wage job, and live as you describe (which is homeless) your take home pay would only barely cover your $30/day budget. What happens when you get sick and have to miss a shift? Or need to see a doctor? What happens if your job is in New England where it's well below freezing at night for a significant portion of the year? It's disingenuous…

Why would it be better to be unemployed at 15U$S an hour that employed at 5U$S an hour?

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#192

Post by virmundi »

yesenadam wrote: post #183
virmundi wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP literally made the argument that, in the extreme, people must have to die if regulations are relaxed. OP did not assume good faith. OP pushed the argument to the extreme. I responded by pointing out that out. I appreciate civility, but won’t assume good faith when the other participant has shown bad faith.

"Ah..I wondered when that would show up." was just being condescending and snarky. "But they started it!" is not a defence.

Nope. I’ve just been here for a while. If you take the conversations on HN and put the them through a Bayesian Network, you can tell as soon as “deregulation” appears, the conversation will take a turn for “people will die” worse.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#193

Post by wjossey »

kazen44 wrote: post #142
munificent wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, institutionalization has many problems too, which is one of the things that led to a dramatic increase in homeless populations in the US[1] when many asylums were closed. But throwing mentally ill or addicted people on the street isn't a solution either. There needs to be some more complex system that avoids the ills of both of those. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

i don't know how this works in the US, but in the netherlands we have an extensive system of mental healthcare (financed through the public healthcare system). This system goes from crib to coffin as far as age brackets go, and is integrated with each other. This system seems to work quite well because it has a lot of different methods of dealing with issues people have. Some people live in semi-independant communal…

This is really great to learn about, thank you. It's nothing like that here, primarily because we have such a fragmented system. If one is poor, you will qualify for medicaid, which will vary wildly in terms of quality and access depending on the state in which you live. Even with medicaid, you'll have out of pocket expenses, because of the way our insurance system works in the US. If you are homeless or someone who is working poor, even the smallest co-pay is a barrier.

The semi-independent communal home concept is what I generally have in my head as being the right alternative to what we have now, and I'm glad to hear it already has some proof points. Look forward to reading more about it.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#194

Post by post_break »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #157
jl2718 wrote: post #129

I was homeless in Silicon Valley many years ago. There were a lot of ‘us’. We stayed hidden in the woods, bathed often, and dressed impeccably in public. Some had jobs. Some were grad students. Several couples. There were no drugs, alcohol, beggars, or thieves out there. $5/day was enough. It was hard physically, but very spiritual, financially free, and altogether one of the best times of my life. Today it’s too dan…

This is so on point. I can not stand how little the police does to address the entirely open air drug sales and use, indecent exposure, and plethora of public safety issues (shattered glass bottles, prostitution, trespassing, selling stolen goods like bicycles) because the perpetrators are homeless. I’m not saying punish homelessness, I’m saying enforce existing laws regardless of who the perps are.

Do you think it has to do with generating income? Like if someone is homeless the odds of getting them to pay a fine is next to nothing. But snag a guy walking out of a bar pissing on the wall you're going to get some money out of it.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#195

Post by wolfgang42 »

gpm wrote: post #132
nkurz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you distinguish between A) unnecessarily spending millions of dollars on a single homeless person and B) spending millions of dollars to reduce the otherwise large homeless population to only one? The best approach is probably not to cut spending to zero and then wait to see what happens. But perhaps it's reasonable to cut spending by 10-25% and then monitor the results?

By distinguishing between funding to homeless people, and funding to at risk but still homed people? Also by making sure we are counting people correctly (if 10 people are all temporarily homeless at some point during the use of the funding, and then homed, we had 10 homeless people not 0).

So as soon as someone moves from being classified as "homeless" to "homed", you have to shuffle around all the budgets for every service you're providing to them? This seems like a good way to increase bureaucratic overhead and ways for people to fall through the gaps, with the only advantage being neater numbers for bean-counting.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#196

Post by ben509 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #158
nyghtly wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say that they won't accept help, what do you mean? What did you try to offer that they didn't accept?

A friend of mine because of his job encounters the homeless on a regular basis. He is very plugged in to homeless resources and offers to get them a roof tonight . The #1 response to this offer is, "can I do anything I want there?" -- in other words, will I get kicked out for doing drugs? Once we stop judging addicts as being intrinsically bad people and see it as a mental health issue, we can solve a lot of this pro…

> Once we stop judging addicts as being intrinsically bad people and see it as a mental health issue, we can solve a lot of this problem.

I suspect what mental health issues mean to most people is you now have a vaguely scientific explanation of why someone is intrinsically bad.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#197

Post by mwfunk »

megaman8 wrote: post #63
codydh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of your "regulation free zone" will likely be measured in human lives. Does that seem like an acceptable risk?

That's just in the beginning. Not every regulation saves lives - some are just on the books to protect rent seeking entities and lobbyists, and some are just there because they've always been there.

This is true of course, but it's always a giant red flag for me whenever someone refers to the vague concept of "regulations" as being the problem, vs. complaining about specific regulations. Complaining about the very concept of regulations seems really naive, like precoscious high schooler who just had his mind blown by Atlas Shrugged naive.

The current POTUS made a campaign promise that he would only allow a regulation to be added if two more were eliminated. This is asinine. If there are unnecessary regulations, get rid of them. Get rid of them because they're unnecessary or counterproductive, not because they fall into a category of legislation referred to as "regulations". Losing a regulation isn't an inherently good thing any more than gaining one is an inherently bad thing. The only thing that matters is whether or not it's a net positive, and that's specific to each regulation. It's like saying, "there's too many laws! We need to get rid of some laws!", and proceeding to randomly choose laws to get rid of until numberOfLaws <= totallyArbitraryMaximumLawCountThatSomeoneMadeUp.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#198

Post by jmcqk6 »

megaman8 wrote: post #48

To live in, In SF. your choices are a 1.5 million dollar condo or a 50$ dollar tent. Seriously people, we need to allow for more choices than that. I'm sure builders and entrepreneurs would line up around the block to build solutions that are cheaper and more cost effective, but you first have to make it legal (get rid of the mountains of regulations and zoning headaches that make this problem so insurmountable), wit…

It is perfectly possible to have too many regulations, but that doesn't mean that the answer is no regulations. The simple fact is that we (human beings) have demonstrated quite well that when there are no rules, exploitative power structures form very quickly and do not self correct. Not to mention things like dealing with the problem of the commons.

Regulations can be useful, since none of us are saints, they are required.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#199

Post by yesenadam »

virmundi wrote: post #192
yesenadam wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ah..I wondered when that would show up." was just being condescending and snarky. "But they started it!" is not a defence.

Nope. I’ve just been here for a while. If you take the conversations on HN and put the them through a Bayesian Network, you can tell as soon as “deregulation” appears, the conversation will take a turn for “people will die” worse.

"Nope."? You're missing my point. I'm not saying you're not right about that, but that being so condescending and snarky is unacceptable on here, whether you're right or not, and however the person you're replying to spoke to you.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#200

Post by agumonkey »

jl2718 wrote: post #129

I was homeless in Silicon Valley many years ago. There were a lot of ‘us’. We stayed hidden in the woods, bathed often, and dressed impeccably in public. Some had jobs. Some were grad students. Several couples. There were no drugs, alcohol, beggars, or thieves out there. $5/day was enough. It was hard physically, but very spiritual, financially free, and altogether one of the best times of my life. Today it’s too dan…

Would it be ok if I ask you about this in details ?
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