The Homeless Crisis

I would be interested to hear what WP64 and Chrondog think about this.

Give people homes. That's it.

Duff... wrote:Give people homes. That's it.

The problem with this statement is that they don't want to leave. I've been studying up for months on this one and it's very complicated.



That's just one LA news clip, but it illustrates that the people are there because they don't want to be in housing. In the case of Los Angeles county, they create housing, but they don't want to offer any mental health, or drug rehabilitation. And, this is literally by design if you listen to the "architects" of the "housing solution". So, just imagine you are a legit family that lost their livelihood and now they want to put you into crappy housing where 50% of the people are mentally ill or using heroin.

And, on top of that, the housing that they do create is incredibly expensive to create, while being lacking in amenities that the homeless would want.

John Boy Walton wrote:

Duff... wrote:Give people homes. That's it.

The problem with this statement is that they don't want to leave.

Don't want to leave what?

Also I don't watch videos.

Duff... wrote:

John Boy Walton wrote:

Duff... wrote:Give people homes. That's it.

The problem with this statement is that they don't want to leave.

Don't want to leave what?

Also I don't watch videos.

The gist is that the homeless don't want to leave being homeless. It's a conscious choice. In the video the people outright say it to the camera, that's why I shared. But, I also saw a video with a Venice Beach business owner and he said the same thing. And, I watched a video of an former investment banker who outlined why he loves being homeless in California and it's a choice. He illustrated in his interview that being homeless is actually a lot of work in order to survive.

So, my point is that I don't think they want to be housed for the most part. Which complicates things greatly. The housing that is provided is junky and while it's easy to label homeless as grubby and "just looking for a bed", they also have standards and living in dirty housing, surrounded by addicts and the mentally ill: doesn't appeal to a lot of people.

Age variance is also a huge factor. Homeless youth are very hard to even track. They generally sleep couch to couch, and they avoid the stigma of being homeless by pretending like they aren't homeless. They generally look like any other kid: their clothes are important, stuff like that. While a person in their 50s who is homeless is completely different. Now, factor in families and street gangs who use encampments as a front for nefarious activity and you have a very complex situation.

Homelessness is a terrible problem.

It is only ever brought up as a "crisis" to paint "liberal"-leaning areas as lawless disaster zones and to pin the blame for the problem on any policy that's more compassionate than simply throwing the poor in jail. This is why there is a "crisis" in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and LA, not because anyone reporting on it actually cares about the people who make up the statistics, but because some people are very interested in magnifying any problem that's naturally going to be concentrated in urban areas.

Most Americans despise the homeless but would rather not dirty their conscience with the guilt of throwing them in gas chambers. But they absolutely view them as less than human nuisances that they just wish would disappear.

Yeah. Undo is right. I have been working on a lot of local housing justice campaigns for a while and so I might have some insight into this. The basic problem is that private residential homeownership is one of the few mechanisms through which middle-class Americans are able to establish and build real equity, which gets passed down to their children. As a result, any legislative proposals that would deflate the market value of those assets (the construction of public and social housing) is resisted by homeowners associations. This is something that not only affects the poor but is increasingly a major generational issue since younger Americans are feeling locked out of the housing market by constantly inflating assets and mortgage payments that they will never be able to afford. As more middle-class Americans are trapped in the the rental market for longer durations, there are more serious efforts at meaningful reform and there are legitimate proposals to establish an alternative residential development model that privileges the material needs of residents over the profit-motives of landlords, real estate developers, and other corporate interests.

I think it's definitely a crisis, it's escalating.

How many social/political crises do we currently have running simultaneously in this country? 20? 30?

John Boy Walton wrote:

The gist is that the homeless don't want to leave being homeless. It's a conscious choice. In the video the people outright say it to the camera, that's why I shared. But, I also saw a video with a Venice Beach business owner and he said the same thing. And, I watched a video of an former investment banker who outlined why he loves being homeless in California and it's a choice. He illustrated in his interview that being homeless is actually a lot of work in order to survive.

So, my point is that I don't think they want to be housed for the most part.

Yeah, gonna need some numbers on that. Certainly there are some out there who "voluntarily" dropped out of society (which if you actually dug into almost certainly overlap with other issues of addiction, mental health, abuse, economic issues etc., making what might look like a "conscious choice" into something else entirely), but the majority? Doubt it. And if it turns out it's just a buncha people living how they wanna live, than it's not a problem, let alone a crisis.

John Boy Walton wrote:
The housing that is provided is junky and while it's easy to label homeless as grubby and "just looking for a bed", they also have standards and living in dirty housing, surrounded by addicts and the mentally ill: doesn't appeal to a lot of people.

Uh, yeah. So give them good housing.

Which is a bit more complicated in ways it sounds like WP can address, but you don't warehouse people in one part of town in lousy homes. You make places people actually wanna live in so people won't mind living in or near them.

Duff... wrote:

John Boy Walton wrote:

The gist is that the homeless don't want to leave being homeless. It's a conscious choice. In the video the people outright say it to the camera, that's why I shared. But, I also saw a video with a Venice Beach business owner and he said the same thing. And, I watched a video of an former investment banker who outlined why he loves being homeless in California and it's a choice. He illustrated in his interview that being homeless is actually a lot of work in order to survive.

So, my point is that I don't think they want to be housed for the most part.

Yeah, gonna need some numbers on that. Certainly there are some out there who "voluntarily" dropped out of society (which if you actually dug into almost certainly overlap with other issues of addiction, mental health, abuse, economic issues etc., making what might look like a "conscious choice" into something else entirely), but the majority? Doubt it. And if it turns out it's just a buncha people living how they wanna live, than it's not a problem, let alone a crisis.

John Boy Walton wrote:
The housing that is provided is junky and while it's easy to label homeless as grubby and "just looking for a bed", they also have standards and living in dirty housing, surrounded by addicts and the mentally ill: doesn't appeal to a lot of people.

Uh, yeah. So give them good housing.

Which is a bit more complicated in ways it sounds like WP can address, but you don't warehouse people in one part of town in lousy homes. You make places people actually wanna live in so people won't mind living in or near them.

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/25/999969718/high-cost-of-los-angeles-homeless-camp-raises-eyebrows-and-questions

Duff... wrote:
but the majority? Doubt it. And if it turns out it's just a buncha people living how they wanna live, than it's not a problem, let alone a crisis.

You just need to learn a lot more about it then get back to me.

John Boy Walton wrote:

Duff... wrote:

John Boy Walton wrote:

The gist is that the homeless don't want to leave being homeless. It's a conscious choice. In the video the people outright say it to the camera, that's why I shared. But, I also saw a video with a Venice Beach business owner and he said the same thing. And, I watched a video of an former investment banker who outlined why he loves being homeless in California and it's a choice. He illustrated in his interview that being homeless is actually a lot of work in order to survive.

So, my point is that I don't think they want to be housed for the most part.

Yeah, gonna need some numbers on that. Certainly there are some out there who "voluntarily" dropped out of society (which if you actually dug into almost certainly overlap with other issues of addiction, mental health, abuse, economic issues etc., making what might look like a "conscious choice" into something else entirely), but the majority? Doubt it. And if it turns out it's just a buncha people living how they wanna live, than it's not a problem, let alone a crisis.

John Boy Walton wrote:
The housing that is provided is junky and while it's easy to label homeless as grubby and "just looking for a bed", they also have standards and living in dirty housing, surrounded by addicts and the mentally ill: doesn't appeal to a lot of people.

Uh, yeah. So give them good housing.

Which is a bit more complicated in ways it sounds like WP can address, but you don't warehouse people in one part of town in lousy homes. You make places people actually wanna live in so people won't mind living in or near them.

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/25/999969718/high-cost-of-los-angeles-homeless-camp-raises-eyebrows-and-questions

That's, uh, definitely an article about homelessness in Los Angeles.

John Boy Walton wrote:

Duff... wrote:
but the majority? Doubt it. And if it turns out it's just a buncha people living how they wanna live, than it's not a problem, let alone a crisis.

You just need to learn a lot more about it then get back to me.

You made the claim, homeboy, back it up if you can.