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This is Real, That's Not

streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com

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Re: This is Real, That's Not

#121

Post by turbinerneiter »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #119
ggm wrote: post #105

Under the medically justified urgency of covid, Victoria took a significant number of homeless rough sleeping people (as they are called here in australia) into some kind of housing. Queensland did the same using surplus student purpose built dense housing. I'm not going to pretend this "solved the problems" but I am told a number of the less intractable cases got put into a better situation,simply having secure shel…

We have it over and over and over again that housing first is the approach that works. Yet it is very hard for society to stomach the idea of giving someone a handout "no matter what they have done or will do". I don't know why but this seems to be the primary psychic barrier to doing this thing we know works and which can in some cases even be cheaper than services first aid.

You can't give free housing to the unfortunate and at the same time increase rent on the workers. Workers need to see homeless people every day so they can feel better off and scared to end up like them.

Everything else is bad for real estate investors.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#122

Post by reificator »

ggm wrote: post #105

Under the medically justified urgency of covid, Victoria took a significant number of homeless rough sleeping people (as they are called here in australia) into some kind of housing. Queensland did the same using surplus student purpose built dense housing. I'm not going to pretend this "solved the problems" but I am told a number of the less intractable cases got put into a better situation,simply having secure shel…

> That's the truly amazing thing: the net budget effect on federal and state funded interventions was probably better, and they STILL unwound the programmes.

> Collective failure of imagination.

> Homelessness exists because we let it.

You're listening to the words and not understanding the actual motivation. Budgets are a convenient objection but not actually important. Like you observe there are people who would gladly spend more money to make the problem worse.

What you unfortunately need to realize is that there are far too many people who need to know that there are others suffering "because they deserve it".

You will never understand the debate around homelessness[0] as long as you assume everyone agrees it should be solved or that people just haven't discovered the right way to allocate resources.

[0]: You can swap out homelessness with a few other political hotbutton issues as well. I'll leave those to your imagination.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#123

Post by tehjoker »

ggm wrote: post #105

Under the medically justified urgency of covid, Victoria took a significant number of homeless rough sleeping people (as they are called here in australia) into some kind of housing. Queensland did the same using surplus student purpose built dense housing. I'm not going to pretend this "solved the problems" but I am told a number of the less intractable cases got put into a better situation,simply having secure shel…

Homelessness exists because the landlords and business people prefer it. Homelessness is a demonstrated threat of what not paying the rent and having a job will do to you. If you remove that dire threat, the housing market and job market becomes far more competitive for the workers and the owner class is disadvantaged.

In the US, we have many more vacant houses than we have homeless people. The market system is incapable of solving this very simple problem.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#124

Post by msiemens »

timeeater wrote: post #95
vecinu wrote: post #78

I hope my comment doesn't sound tone-deaf or ignorant but this is something I have thought about for a while. As I was watching @lisper's movie "grace of god"[1] and heard the phrase "convince myself that it could never happen to me" (becoming homeless), I started thinking, is this a more American-centric problem? What I mean by that is, can the lack of a social safety net in the US cause a much higher rate of homele…

Here in Germany we have homeless people, and Romania wouldn't come to mind as a place where they don't. More likely I would expect people from Romania to be homeless in Germany. I think some homeless here are (possibly illegal) immigrants who don't have access to the same social security measures. But there are also homeless Germans, despite of safety nets existing in theory. I think it is often associated with menta…

I've talked to a couple of homeless people in a large city in Germany and the impression I seems to largely match your assertion. Most people I talked to who are homeless were from eastern Europe who tried to make a better living in Germany but failed. There were also some with drug or alcohol problems or had some sort of mental issues.

But there was also a man who was bullied out of the company where he had worked for 21 years. I guess he didn't see homelessness coming for him. Also there was an older woman who lived in her car because she was forced out of the apartment where she lived for her whole life and she refused to accept moving to a different apartment. She had a reputable job, it was after she retired that all these issues came up. So I guess that even here there is no absolute guarantee that one wouldn't end up homeless.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#125

Post by [deleted] »

mapgrep wrote: post #108
twblalock wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that whole "I'll get a loan to get a degree" is a tool for servitude. US really needs to get out of that. You might be surprised to learn that the average student loan balance on graduation in the US is about $30k. That is actually a bit less than the average price of a new car sold last year, which is about $37k. That is not a life-crushing amount of debt. It represents 4 years of college education for the pri…

You have argued that the average student loan debt is not “life crushing”. This is a bit absurd. No one would argue that buying a brand new car for $30k fresh out of school is wise financially for the typical college graduate. Whether it crushes your life or not, it is very ill advised. You have also not addressed the half of debtors who owe more than the average. If the average is so high just think of the figures i…

[deleted]

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#126

Post by pjsnow »

tomcam wrote: post #99
cleansingfire wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear "Money doesn't buy happiness" my internal response is always "but poverty can ensure misery"

Poverty does not in fact ensure misery. Victor Frankel wrote about surviving the most hideous depredations imaginable in World War II concentration camps. It was obvious from the first that a defeatist attitude killed you, and that determination to survive was essential. Knowing this helped me through many years of misery.

I recall a study that indicated the perceived disparity in wealth has a greater effect on how poverty is experienced than the absolute condition, therefore (the study argued) somebody living in poverty in a very wealthy society is likely to be more miserable than if they were living in a society where the majority were also in poverty. I'm not saying this applies to your example, I just thought it was an interesting factor to consider.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#127

Post by timeeater »

phaus wrote: post #97
timeeater wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it is not true in general that the reason accounts are being banned is incivility. Censorship of unwanted opinions is very much real on this site.

Its possible that it happens, but from my admittedly limited anecdotal experience from seeing a half dozen or so people claim that they were banned for no reason and then taking a look at their comment history, they were absolutely banned for a reason. Do you have an example of someone being banned simply because they shared an unpopular opinion? Also "not true in general" implies that you seem to think that its a wi…

[flagged]

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#128

Post by DubiousPusher »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #121
DubiousPusher wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have it over and over and over again that housing first is the approach that works. Yet it is very hard for society to stomach the idea of giving someone a handout "no matter what they have done or will do". I don't know why but this seems to be the primary psychic barrier to doing this thing we know works and which can in some cases even be cheaper than services first aid.

You can't give free housing to the unfortunate and at the same time increase rent on the workers. Workers need to see homeless people every day so they can feel better off and scared to end up like them. Everything else is bad for real estate investors.

The motivations of moneyed interests are obvious. But the contempt the working and middle classes have for the poor is something I'll never understand.

I've often been obliged to pay for something I've seen others acquire freely and I say good for them. I wouldn't exchange places with them for a moment. It seems the pettiest of all things to begrudge someone whose life is a disater, even in the rare cases when it is of their own making.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#129

Post by timeeater »

kstenerud wrote: post #115
timeeater wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Germany we have homeless people, and Romania wouldn't come to mind as a place where they don't. More likely I would expect people from Romania to be homeless in Germany. I think some homeless here are (possibly illegal) immigrants who don't have access to the same social security measures. But there are also homeless Germans, despite of safety nets existing in theory. I think it is often associated with menta…

I've lived and worked in many different countries (including America and Germany), and there seem to be two main causes of homelessness: economic hardship and mental illness. In Germany, I've only seen homelessness due to mental illness, because the bureaucracy in the social programs causes too much friction for them to use it with decent success. There are organizations that help people navigate the mazes and paperw…

I think in places in San Francisco, it might not just be "inequality", but also homeless people flocking to places with spare money and mild climate. Why else would you choose to be homeless in one of the most expensive places on earth?

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#130

Post by laurent92 »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #94
eat_veggies wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly right. The existence of homelessness is a policy decision, not a law of nature. We have enough space to house everyone, and we have enough money to run social programs to help people with addictions or mental illnesses. But our cult of individualism says that your successes belong to your boss, and your failures are your own damn fault. So you can die in the gutter and you'll deserve it.

I understand now that ‘social safety net’ means welfare programs. When I came to this country many years ago, I had a completely diff understanding of what ’social safety net’ meant... to me..how I understood it by my lived experience..it was the social/security net family/friends hold so that if you were unfortunate enough to fall, someone will catch you. Maybe it’s different in India now. But my generation remember…

First and second industrial revolutions made people rush to the cities and created a world where people are « factory workers », with fewer bounds to their origin land and to their family. In parallel, traditional values were criticized by modernity to the point of dismantling them.

What we have now in the Western world is not families, it is millions of single independent autonomous actors. They have close friends, but loose families. They have teenage crisis where they try to gain independence from their family. They have work relationships. When they fall, they can’t come back home, they have no place called home. They may say « I’m from Minnesota » but their grandfather was from Belgium. Even in France or Germany, people are unrooted, and a good 15% of them are total migrants, as in, people who fled/left their home country, often in a state of war. Some would raise the flag of a Muslim country and fly there every year. And yet, they are more French than foreign.

This may be a difference with India. We’ve thrown tradition to the bin while inventing modernity, but what we’ve really done is cut through all the ties between people, made them move cities and countries, made them leave their home land with carrots that had grown from the ground for centuries into worker factories where all they owned was a bed (on rental) and a place in the factory, we told them family was a contractual relationship, and shred their sense of belonging to a place. « So why would you help your next of kin? He doesn’t come from here. »

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