Groups of Homeless People
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Groups of Homeless People
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Re: Groups of Homeless People
#2I was pretty with it until 4 and 5. The premise that certain groups of people without housing "can't survive without the kind of assistance that money can't buy" is condescending and elitist at best.
Re: Groups of Homeless People
#3I was pretty with it until 4 and 5. The premise that certain groups of people without housing "can't survive without the kind of assistance that money can't buy" is condescending and elitist at best.
Have you met someone with severe mental retardation? My neighbor required round the clock support, often by multiple people. You could've given that girl 5 million dollars, and she would have no idea how to use it to get support. There is nothing condescending about his statement.
Re: Groups of Homeless People
#4I was pretty with it until 4 and 5. The premise that certain groups of people without housing "can't survive without the kind of assistance that money can't buy" is condescending and elitist at best.
There’s a guy on my psych floor right now that, at his best, is too psychotic and paranoid to hold a job for more than a few days. At his worst - where he usually is, because his paranoia includes medications, and he believes he’s completely healthy - he’s only loosely tethered to reality. It’s a good day if he’s clothed even vaguely appropriate to the season, and manages to eat actual food. It’s not uncommon for him to eat soap because an archangel tells him this will increase his potency with women. This isn’t funny, nor exaggeration: this is how an actual real person is living and suffering.
He’s not exceptional. Psychotic disorders do that.
That you think that /describing their existence/ is “condescending and elitist” speaks mostly to the ridiculously privileged bubble you live in.
Re: Groups of Homeless People
#5I was pretty with it until 4 and 5. The premise that certain groups of people without housing "can't survive without the kind of assistance that money can't buy" is condescending and elitist at best.
It's a common misconception that humans without homes would be / are totally fine. Normal people who live in houses every day have no idea what living on the street does to someone psychologically. It's the jungle compared to our cushy lifestyles.
Sure, you can "survive", technically speaking. But living for days, weeks, years as an animal, fighting sometimes to the death for scraps, and god knows what else, it's definitely the comforts of friendship and human civility (that "money can't buy") that you're in the most need of.
Re: Groups of Homeless People
#6I was pretty with it until 4 and 5. The premise that certain groups of people without housing "can't survive without the kind of assistance that money can't buy" is condescending and elitist at best.
No, there are a huge number of people that are on the edge w.r.t. mental health. Not quite capable of handling activities of daily living and/or their own finances. Or not 100% of the time, and that fraction of the time that they can't, their money evaporates, and/or relationships evaporate.
The crisis in mental health care in the US is shameful. It is true that in the bad-old-days people were over institutionalized. So the pendulum has swung, and now unless a person is very clearly dangerous to themselves or others, it is nearly impossible to get a person resistant to treatment the help that they really need.
We talk about people "falling through the cracks", but the "crack" is a mile wide. It is pretty hard to convince me that a cardboard box under a freeway overpass is better housing than the mental institutions of old. That said, I don't think many of the mentally ill need to be forced into an institution under the old model, but we really do need a mechanism to deal with ill people resistant to treatment.
[edit: spelling]
Re: Groups of Homeless People
#7I was pretty with it until 4 and 5. The premise that certain groups of people without housing "can't survive without the kind of assistance that money can't buy" is condescending and elitist at best.
Have you met someone with severe mental retardation? My neighbor required round the clock support, often by multiple people. You could've given that girl 5 million dollars, and she would have no idea how to use it to get support. There is nothing condescending about his statement.
Many years ago, I visited a group home for people with various psychiatric issues. My girlfriend was the "den mother", and I'd spend nights with her occasionally. So I got to know some of the residents.
Anyway, these people would have been on the street, if the state hadn't provided a place for them. I particularly remember a schizophrenic guy. In the right circumstances, on safe topics, he seemed pretty sharp. But then, he was well medicated.
Re: Groups of Homeless People
#8I was pretty with it until 4 and 5. The premise that certain groups of people without housing "can't survive without the kind of assistance that money can't buy" is condescending and elitist at best.
Have you met someone with severe mental retardation? My neighbor required round the clock support, often by multiple people. You could've given that girl 5 million dollars, and she would have no idea how to use it to get support. There is nothing condescending about his statement.
*her statement
Re: Groups of Homeless People
#9I was pretty with it until 4 and 5. The premise that certain groups of people without housing "can't survive without the kind of assistance that money can't buy" is condescending and elitist at best.
I've had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I spent nearly six years homeless.
It seems accurate to me, at least for America today. It's quite a tall order to ask society as a whole to change, though that would make life more manageable for some people currently unable to make their lives work.
Re: Groups of Homeless People
#10I've known a bunch of people in Number 1-4, more number fours than anything else. A whole bunch of the number fours are not seriously mentally ill - or even mentally ill at all - they're just really shitty at making choices for themselves.