I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
truthonthestreets.substack.com
I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
1–10 of 83 posts
Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
#2I wonder if it's also how the public attention meant that the news had to be bite sized and simplified. But in real life homelessness is immensely complex and varies per person.
Rather than that, just slap a one size fits all onto everyone. Because that's what governments are best at handling.
Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
#3This skirts pretty close to saying that homelessness is an issue of "personal responsibility" while claiming to be apolitical.
Homelessness is a complicated issue but the core of the solution is very simple: Provide housing. Whether that is a short term stay in a shelter or a lifelong stay in permanent housing is going to depend on the individual. But either way, you need a safe place to sleep and live before you can start seriously addressing other problems.
Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
#4As I've said before, there is a counter-intuitive meta-problem with homelessness.
Fixing homelessness doesn't require love, or honesty, or any other virtue. Like most problems, it requires money. But no matter how much money is allocated to fix the problem of homelessness, fixing it attracts more homeless. Their feet aren't nailed to the ground on the other side of the continent... if they hear of a magical place that solves homelessness, they go there. They hitchhike, they'll panhandle for cash for a bus ticket, if nothing else they'll hoof it.
So while your city is busy celebrating its miraculous solution to homelessness that took 500 people off the streets and put rooves over their heads, there's an army of homeless marching there, invisible to you. 8000 of them, and you budgeted for up to 550.
But it really never even gets this far. Your local politician is a bit more savvy than you give him credit for, and he recognizes this meta-problem, at least subconsciously. So when it comes time to solving the problem for those 500 homeless, he deflects and postpones. He changes the subject, he asks for more studies. In the end, he has the cops chase them out and then bulldozes the tent city. And this happens regardless of his politics, because the meta-problem doesn't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican. It doesn't even care what the real solution is either. Maybe the homeless do need tough love, maybe they just need a handout. But tough love costs money just like handouts need money, and you can't ever allocate enough. Red state, blue state, it's all the same.
They need to fix the meta-problem first.
Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
#5This skirts pretty close to saying that homelessness is an issue of "personal responsibility" while claiming to be apolitical. Homelessness is a complicated issue but the core of the solution is very simple: Provide housing. Whether that is a short term stay in a shelter or a lifelong stay in permanent housing is going to depend on the individual. But either way, you need a safe place to sleep and live before you can…
Author seems to suggest that housing first won't work. I might have missed it but I don't know why. What do they suggest instead?
Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
#6Funny, this guy protests that he wasn't asked to return after saying they needed specific metrics and measurable results, but doesn't provide any metrics or results for alternatives to Housing First-- which does actually have studies.
He also talks about how he has witnessed the rise of homelessness and scoffs at the notion that the economic system (capitalism) is squeezing people into losing their homes, but provides no alternative system-wide issue.
Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
#7Author positions himself as an authority on homelessness by proximity to the people experiencing the issue. But nowhere in this is there the voice of homeless people themselves, or even a recognition that they are an authority as well.
I was homeless on and off for many years. The cause of my homelessness was not having enough money to afford a home; not having enough money to afford the healthcare that would allow me to work consistently enough to afford a home. I find "capitalism" an effective, useful, and accurate enough shorthand for that cycle.
The author of this article apparently does not, but neither does he offer an alternate nomenclature that still aligns with the actual experiences of homeless people. He erases our authority and replaces it with his own, but his is insufficient to the task.
Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
#8This skirts pretty close to saying that homelessness is an issue of "personal responsibility" while claiming to be apolitical. Homelessness is a complicated issue but the core of the solution is very simple: Provide housing. Whether that is a short term stay in a shelter or a lifelong stay in permanent housing is going to depend on the individual. But either way, you need a safe place to sleep and live before you can…
That’s an oversimplification and relies on the word “homeless” as an explanation and solution.
If the condition was called, “street living”, perhaps you would consider solutions that don’t solely address the lack of permanent dwelling, and instead look at why some people choose to live on the street.
Of course there are people whose problem is fundamentally lack of a home, in which case providing a home is the solution.
Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
#9As I've said before, there is a counter-intuitive meta-problem with homelessness. Fixing homelessness doesn't require love, or honesty, or any other virtue. Like most problems, it requires money. But no matter how much money is allocated to fix the problem of homelessness, fixing it attracts more homeless. Their feet aren't nailed to the ground on the other side of the continent... if they hear of a magical place tha…
I don’t know that there is any evidence that ”the solution to homelessness is money” is true, other than that we intuitively feel it should be.
The homeless budget in SF has been growing much faster than the homeless population but the problem has been getting continuously worse.
https://files.sfchronicle.com/sfc-graphics-engineering/sros/...
Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
#10[deleted]