Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

mcsweeneys.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 452 posts

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#241

Post by anal_reactor »

beAbU wrote: post #94

Giving housing to the homeless means we change the homeless into neighbours. And who the hell wants a poor person as a neighbour.

Honestly, my European perspective is that a homeless person is someone who burnt through their entire support network - family, friends, state help. If they're mentally fit, then their choices landed them on the street, not my problem, be a fucking adult. If they're not mentally fit, then they should be sent to a mental institution, because they won't function in the society no matter what you do.

Also, of course nobody wants to live with poor people. I don't buy this romantic image of poor people being fair citizens failed by the rest of the society. I moved into a poor neighborhood and immediately had my bike stolen, literally living the meme. Real estate prices are lower here exactly because it's a black immigrant neighborhood full of poor people.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#242

Post by Loughla »

bitlax wrote: post #239
Loughla wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can go weeks without smelling cigarettes or seeing someone smoking a cigarette. But every fucking day marijuana. Every public park; marijuana. Sports events; marijuana. Just sitting in traffic; marijuana. Waiting in fucking line at my kids' after-school pickup, marijuana. It's a little ridiculous at this point. I am a huge proponent of legalized marijuana, but for real. The people that do this are ruining it for th…

The commenters here have simply assured me that allowing these people to live near me will expose my young children to marijuana smoke, and that I will not and should not have any recourse. Many of them are marijuana smokers themselves. They have no answers, to the extent they could even see this as a problem at all or understand my very common point of view. This seems like a no-brainer, and I will continue to vote…

I live in a relatively affluent (upper-middle class) area away from any urban center.

It's not poor people that are smoking more pot, sorry for the bad news.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#243

Post by [deleted] »

Loughla wrote: post #225
freeone3000 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marijuana usage is now in the mainstream. You might as well ask how to prevent your property from smelling like cigarette smoke.

I can go weeks without smelling cigarettes or seeing someone smoking a cigarette. But every fucking day marijuana. Every public park; marijuana. Sports events; marijuana. Just sitting in traffic; marijuana. Waiting in fucking line at my kids' after-school pickup, marijuana. It's a little ridiculous at this point. I am a huge proponent of legalized marijuana, but for real. The people that do this are ruining it for th…

[deleted]

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#246

Post by danaris »

edude03 wrote: post #206
Hilift wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rarely is it the actual cost of the home that’s the problem. It used to be rare. But LA managed to make $700,000 the minimum cost for housing someone. That is a studio or one bedroom, without laundry. That is why LA City and LA County terminated the current housing organization (LAHSA). LA and San Francisco spent billions and accomplished very little. They probably housed two or three people/households per day. Now…

Now, this is a whole other philosophical debate - but why does anyone need to live in LA? I really doubt that people of sound mind are living their homes willingly to be homeless in LA. Sure - there is the crowd that think LA is where they need to be to make it - and I'm sure more than 0 of them believe in the grind so much that they do decide to be homeless on purpose HOWEVER (with no data to back it up) I'm confide…

I think that's the wrong angle to look at this from.

People do live in LA, and they expect to be able to do things like shop at a grocery store and buy their coffee at a Starbucks.

Therefore, there's a need for people to work at such jobs.

If those jobs don't pay enough to afford to live in LA, that means there's a structural problem that needs to be solved, one way or another, and individual choices (like "I will move away from LA") will never be enough to fix it.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#248

Post by danaris »

foldr wrote: post #224
darkerside wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting in a plug for a great book called Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. https://www.amazon.com/Another-Bullshit-Night-Suck-City/dp/0... This is the book that humanized homelessness for me. I better understand how it can happen to just about anyone, the vicious cycles involved, and how it affects observers on a deep level. For the record, I found the article pretty annoying as well. Overwrought and vague. The b…

The concept of humanizing homelessness fascinates me. It really does seem that the cultural default in the US is to view homeless people as subhumans who deserve to lead miserable lives. I’m not saying that this is what you yourself consciously believe(d), but it seems to be the implicit belief underlying much of the discourse around homelessness on HN and in the US more broadly. Normally when we talk about “humanizi…

The US has a very strong thread of Calvinist/Puritan/Protestant theology and thought running through its cultural foundations. One of the effects of this is a cultural predisposition to believe in something approximating the Just World theory—that is, that if someone is rich, it is because they are a better person (or blessed by God, or destined to be rich), while if they are poor it is because they are inferior people who deserve to be so.

This cultural background makes it very easy for people to look at their own lives and see their successes as their own work, and their failures as bad luck—but then look at other people's lives and see both success and failure as being 100% a product of their own deserving. (When in reality, everyone's successes and failures are a blend of luck and merit, with a pretty heavy emphasis on the luck, especially the luck of what family you were born into.)

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#249

Post by paulnpace »

grugagag wrote: post #229

There’s a disturbing trend of people living im their car who have a job or more and who aren’t doing drugs or have a serious mental ilness aside from the anxiety from the lifestyle of living in their cars. Youtube is full of interviews of these people.

Came here to say exactly this.

People living in their cars is a kind of shadow population that is almost impossible to count. I lived in a small-ish town with literally a handful of the type of homelessness we normally think of, yet at least once per month I would see someone getting gas that was clearly living in their car, and this was at a really cheap gas station nowhere near the interstate, so it was locals who knew where to get gas.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#250

Post by bitlax »

Loughla wrote: post #242
bitlax wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commenters here have simply assured me that allowing these people to live near me will expose my young children to marijuana smoke, and that I will not and should not have any recourse. Many of them are marijuana smokers themselves. They have no answers, to the extent they could even see this as a problem at all or understand my very common point of view. This seems like a no-brainer, and I will continue to vote…

I live in a relatively affluent (upper-middle class) area away from any urban center. It's not poor people that are smoking more pot, sorry for the bad news.

It's gone up among many demographic slices, including the two we're discussing. At this point I don't have to experience it. The commenters here --including yourself-- think that I do and some think that I should, and I'm wondering how I would continue to prevent it. They've provided no clear answers, only insults and condescension. And that's fine! I just leave here unconvinced and will not follow their prescriptions.

> sorry for the bad news

Sorry you didn't realize that supporting legal pot would make you smell more pot.

Post reply on HN