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Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

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Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#271

This isn’t popular, but I’d challenge anyone who thinks homelessness in Seattle isn’t primarily an addiction and mental illness problem to go spend a few afternoons in areas with significant homeless populations (3rd Ave in Pioneer Square is a great place, if you need a suggestion). It’s not that affordable housing isn’t a problem in Seattle. I know people who couldn’t live on their own in Seattle anymore due to rent…

The chronically street homeless, are very different, and far more visible than those who experience homelessness and housing insecurity that have the mental stability to either find someone to stay with temporarily or take advantage of shelter services.

This fund targets homeless families, these aren't groups of people you see shooting heroin on the street corner yet they make up a sizable part of the homeless population.

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#272

I dont't care if this is a PR stint to ward of recent criticism Bezos is getting from Bernie et al but if this fund goes and actually help and make a real life impact on the lives of homeless people, then I am fine and I will hold back my criticism of Amazon. I mean clearly I have not done enough to mitigate homelessness in this country who am I to question others motives trying to solve the same problem?

Looks like this was cheaper than upping the salaries of warehouse workers to get them off food stamps and provide healthcare. For Bezos this is just another calculation, nothing more.

How can you presume to know his thought process, intentions, and goals?

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#273

This isn’t popular, but I’d challenge anyone who thinks homelessness in Seattle isn’t primarily an addiction and mental illness problem to go spend a few afternoons in areas with significant homeless populations (3rd Ave in Pioneer Square is a great place, if you need a suggestion). It’s not that affordable housing isn’t a problem in Seattle. I know people who couldn’t live on their own in Seattle anymore due to rent…

And because people are mentally ill or addicted means you can just ignore them?

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#274
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2B divided by 600k employees would be more than $3000, which is actually huge for many people.

The $2B isn't over 1 year...it's over several years or decades. In reality it would be a few dollars per year extra for 600K employees. Let's not get carried away.

$2B represents the tiniest fraction of Bezos worth. (1.1%)

As another said, "color me unimpressed". He could double that and still be the richest man alive. He could triple that. He could quadruple that...

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#275

I dont't care if this is a PR stint to ward of recent criticism Bezos is getting from Bernie et al but if this fund goes and actually help and make a real life impact on the lives of homeless people, then I am fine and I will hold back my criticism of Amazon. I mean clearly I have not done enough to mitigate homelessness in this country who am I to question others motives trying to solve the same problem?

"...but if this fund goes and actually help and make a real life impact on the lives of homeless people, then I am fine and I will hold back my criticism of Amazon."

That's precisely what Bezos is going for here.

I feel you though... I'm glad something is being done.

But let's keep criticizing Amazon as an exploitative enterprise.

And let's keep criticizing the homelessness crisis as a systemic issue which needs a systemic solution, not just a bone thrown from the table of the world's richest person.

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#276
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in a car is homeless.

What is it about the car, that it doesn't actually have living accomodation or that it is not a house and has no address? For example, does living in an RV mean you are homeless?

Under HUD’s definition, a car is not a place suitable for human habitation, so that’s clearly someone who’s homeless. An RV dweller may be considered homeless if they are in an “unstable” living situation (moved twice or more within the past 60 days), or if the RV is in such disrepair to not be suitable for habitation.

Edit: see https://www.urban-initiatives.org/reports/are-all-persons-sl...

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#277

This isn’t popular, but I’d challenge anyone who thinks homelessness in Seattle isn’t primarily an addiction and mental illness problem to go spend a few afternoons in areas with significant homeless populations (3rd Ave in Pioneer Square is a great place, if you need a suggestion). It’s not that affordable housing isn’t a problem in Seattle. I know people who couldn’t live on their own in Seattle anymore due to rent…

this sounds like really anecdotal evidence. do you have any reliable sources to back up your claim?

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#278
post #55

"Philanthropy" is just another way that oligarchs take tax-free control of our society and shape it to their whims. A fine example of this is Bill Gates - with no educational training or experience, he used his fortune to push failing methods on millions on American kids.[1] Bezos is a great creator of poverty. He is the wrong person to try and fix it. We need to just make these oligarchs pay taxes and living wages,…

Gates also has no educational training in Computer Science / Engineering nor Business, and he's seem to have done pretty well in those areas. :) There's plenty of room to throw rocks at billionaire philanthropists, but Gates is more knowledgeable about the areas in which his foundation operates than the heads of most well-known non-profits and relief organizations.

> Gates is more knowledgeable about the areas in which his foundation operates than the heads of most well-known non-profits and relief organizations.

This is laughably absurd. Come on.

Edited because I was still thinking about this

Who do you think knows more about Malaria, Bill Gates (who is incredibly knowledgeable about Malaria) or Dr. Pedro Alonso who runs the WHO's malaria program?

> His professional career began in The Gambia in the 1980s. A study on the validation of verbal autopsies was followed by the scientific assessment of the efficacy of Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs) as a preventive tool against malaria. The utility of such nets was, at the time, controversial, and the publication of new results in The Lancet[1] was critical for the launching of subsequent studies confirming first evaluations. Based on this evidence, WHO recommended the universal use of ITNs as a vector control tool, since a pillar in the fight against malaria. It is estimated that extensive distribution programs of ITNs can claim responsibility for 69% of the 663 million of averted malaria cases in Subsaharan Africa between 2001 and 2015.[2]

..

> With the support of the Hospital Clínic and the University of Barcelona, he founded in 2006 the Barcelona Centre for International Health Research (CRESIB). In this institution he accomplished one of his most renowned works, the contribution to the clinical development and impact assessment of a new malaria vaccine: RTS,S. In collaboration with the Manhiça Health Research Centre in Mozambique, he implemented two proofs of concept that established for the first time the efficacy of the vaccine in infants[3] and children aged 1–4 years.[4] These results opened the door to subsequent assessments and to a Phase 3 clinical trial performed in 11 African research centres. Ultimately, this vaccine received a positive assessment by the European Drugs Agency, in 2015,[5] while the highest expert committees at WHO have recommended that it starts to be utilized, as of 2018, in pilot programs in three African countries.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_L._Alonso

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#279
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. We should tax billionaires out of existence. This level of wealth and power accumulation is as unseemly as it is dangerous to our democracy and economy.

Taking other people money by force is even more dangerous for democracy and economy.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this idea means we shouldn't have any government at all.
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