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But if we housed them they'd still have mental health and addiction issues!
Yeah, just like the rest of us motherfucker!
:angery:
Do they think being homeless will make not an addict or fix your mental health? I didn't know homelessness had such a power to heal.
My favorite is
"These homeless people need to stop shitting in public spaces!"
WHERE ELSE ARE THEY GONNA SHIT ASSHOLE? THEIR HOMES? (This also in a small city with no public restrooms and so fully gentrified that most businesses actively turn the homeless away/call cops on them. Only about 2 friendly places to use the bathroom and they're a 45 minute walk apart).
I made a large post in this thread already but the fact that most people talking about "the homeless' do so entirely in the abstract. It's fucking figures and statistics, it's handled so clinically and removed. I've been homeless, a lot of my friends still are, the way people talk it's like they're simply a problem to manage like vermin. Like, you can use poison or relocate your pests non lethally to where they don't bother you but you're still treating human beings literally like you do fucking vermin. The sheer dehumanization of the poor is truly terrifying.
It's also this weird belief that "the homeless" is a monolith instead of just a constantly shifting and moving class of individuals in that state for a multitude of reasons.
Like if you're homeless, that's all you are and everything else about you no longer matters.
Having been in there, you can break it down to some different types just like when a new type of guy drops but that goes for every strata of people. The same with how we only have "Guys' as a meme to describe white people you don't get to discriminate between different types of poor people if you aren't currently in the same boat or are close to such.
The greater your class position the more you are a person. If you're homeless or in prison you're a number or maybe even not accounted for that your entire life is based around the material gains that your broad representation. The other end of the spectrum would be any celebrity who's personal expression becomes popular trends or capitalists who can buy being treated like someone beyond human. I'm just learning all this as I'm writing it but I think I'm on to something .
No, it's the classic leftist "no ethical consumption" thing but said by capitalists.
"Why fix a few things if you can't fix everything?"
The argument that you can't fix homelessness by distributing homes is premised on the idea that "being unhoused" is a symptom of a larger underlying issue that they're alluding to when they use the word "homeless". They're not unhoused because of economic pressure or mental health issues or drug problems, they're homeless, or crazy, or addicts because they're fundamentally unfit to contribute meaningfully to society, and you don't make people fit by giving them houses.
It's nothing more than classist, ableist nonsense.
Every time I was homeless, aside from a few weeks, I was working and contributing more than those ghouls ever did. The shits I took in the park bathroom did more to help people than they will over their entire lives.
Yes! Thank you, you put into words the exact thing that I was thinking, but couldn't articulate, even to myself.
"Homeless" is practically a dogwhistle, half the people using it mean "unhoused" and the other half mean "undesirable", and the people who mean "undesirable" would genuinely rather see these people die out in some kind of social darwinist faux-natural selection than lift a finger to help them.
So I and most people I associate with have been or are homeless. Homeless doesn't automatically mean 'indesirable' of course and 'Unhoused' can sound like patronizing liberal language. It describes a vast array of people in a variety of circumstances, it also doesn't cover say, my roommate who's disability literally only covers rent and bills (which are as low as you can get where we live) and still has to fly a sign for every other dime he makes, and can't really get out because seeking employment means losing disability forever so if he can't do it or could only do part time, he loses that support forever. There's also a lot of working poor in even worse living circumstances, what people think of as 'the homeless' is absolutely myriad. Lumpenprole is a good descriptor but Marx was kind of a dick to them. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but any single term for the manifold ways you can experience extreme poverty won't be enough to describe anyone's actual situation.
There's literally like 3 times as many empty homes as there are homeless people in the U.S
The main issue here is jobs. There are many vacant houses in the US, but most of them are not where there are a great deal of jobs. There needs to be a jobs program and a public housing program.
This is part of why I think we should have a reserve labor force trained and certified in a variety of trades. Dispatch them all around the country to do maintenance and infrastructure projects and pay them even when they're not actively on a job.
We could literally employ every jobless person for the rest of their lives and not even scratch the surface of fixing the USA's awful infrastructure.
It would require decades of rehabilitation. Undoing the damage caused by the private sector is several lifetimes of work in itself, and then building functional, sustainable, and reliable replacements several lifetimes more.
It's closer to 30 times, actually.
FACT CHECK: Are There More Than 633,000 Homeless People And 13.9 Million Vacant Homes In The US?
Verdict: False
The most recent data from the National Alliance to End Homelessness puts the number of homeless people at 552,830. There are more than 17 million vacant homes across the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.
People just can't wrap their head around what it's like to live without a safe place to call home. The constant, low level stress that just wears you down, the inability to keep and maintain any valuable possessions, the total erasure of privacy in your life. Imagine being an introvert who had to sleep in a public park, who's only places to live were shared by anyone, and they weren't even really welcome there. And that person is supposed to be in the right state of mind to nail a fucking job interview?
A home is a lot more than just a place to keep you from getting rained on. It's an emotional and psychological anchor. Giving people showers and check ups is helpful, but it doesn't supplant the need for an actual home. Trying to lift someone out of homelessness without providing them with housing is like trying to teach someone to swim without taking the 40lb ball and chain off of their ankle.
Oh my, currently homeless and even though I’m living out of hotels and camping, this is exactly how I feel. I’m so exhausted from the stress all the time.
It has the same energy as "you can't just cancel student debt, what about the next crop of students after this one?" Bro just cancel their debt too, and give housing to people who need housing.
If I'm being charitable in my interpretation they could be drawing attention to how systemic issues need proactive and preventative solutions to be solved most effectively, but they're more likely arguing in bad faith and trying to overcomplicate a perfectly fine immediate remedy because it conflicts with their ideology.
I hate when people hand-wring about drug and mental health issues. Treatment for both is more effective if a person has a home, which makes absolute sense if you think about it at all. Why people would think you would have more success treating drug addiction and mental health while a person is struggling with the poverty and deprivation of homelessness is way the fuck beyond me.
Drug addiction is often considered to be a moral failing, so it follows that if you "reward" people for acting badly they'll just keep doing it. It's still mainstream addiction mythology that people need to reach "rock bottom" before they decide to change. There's a good Citations Needed episode that digs into this mindset
Why people would think you would have more success treating drug addiction and mental health while a person is struggling with the poverty and deprivation of homelessness is way the fuck beyond me.
They don't think that. They think of those people as entirely beyond help, and so we shouldn't bother trying
I've talked to several people who believe that those who are homeless are choosing to be so. They'll cite different reasons ("They just don't want to work, they just don't want to be part of society, they would rather do drugs and laze around all day") but it's all coming from a just world mindset. I think some people either seriously lack empathy, or they genuinely can't cope with honestly acknowledging the depth of preventable suffering that surrounds them on a daily basis.
Those two explanations are tied to each other. A lot of people straight up do not see homeless people as human
Homelessness is increasingly treated as an essence, not as a changeable material condition.
Go to any city subreddit and you will discover this very quickly
A lot of people will use the logic of like “well some homeless people have gotten homes and then decided to go back on the street” which 1) ignoring how many Stayed in a house 2) ignoring some of the conditions that come with those services sometimes (can’t take a pet with you, can only take 2 bags worth of possessions)
I've following the LA echo park evictions last few days and the amount of fuckin ghouls that were commenting, "actually they want to be homeless" and just make stuff up was insanely high. They keep telling themselves that people want to be houseless and then all circlejerk and victim blame them. it's so disgusting
What, you’ve never taken drugs and immediately had uncontrollable desire to not have shelter? If you give people homes it makes it harder to get off of drugs. That’s how this works, sweaty
What, you’ve never taken drugs and immediately had uncontrollable desire to not have shelter?
:side-eye-1: :side-eye-2:
Because the Protestant work ethic informs the view that poverty is a self-inflicted consequence of moral failure, and therefore a just deserved punishment from God.
To give aid to the undeserving is charity and grace, but only enough aid to give them some relief; not to solve their predicament, otherwise its blasphemous.
poverty can be solved by also giving people a fair source of income too but we're not ready for that conversation 💅
The incredibly frustrating dichotomy often presented to me is it's a violation of individual free will to eliminate homelessness, because what if some people decide they want to be homeless? The only worlds that are possible are the ones that have homeless people or the one where police are beating nomads with sticks and putting them under house arrest. Somehow the world where homeless people exist in the hundreds of thousands is preferable.
My mother said that what often happens is that they don't stay in the houses, and I'm like, …?
lol my dad says that too very matter-of-factly to justify his shit opinions and I'm like, "often"? oh yeah sorry dad I forgot you often work with and interact with homeless folk and know allllll about it. (he does not) like literally just making up a guy to make the liberal contradictions disappear in his head so he can act very nuanced and smart, not at all a bad person. Fuck you dad you're a fucking teacher, and you suck shit at teaching history you literally don't know jack.
Where does that come from? I always get that response, like they forget there's a ton of people who are homeless but live in there cars, they could use a roof over their heads too. It's like the idea of a "too far gone" person is used to represent the whole.
Salt Lake City essentially ended homelessness in their city by housing people, no questions asked. I should look into it further though.
yeah that sounds kinda sus given the general reputation and ethic of mormon-heavy places like salt lake city
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/05/11/utah-was-once-lauded/
It’s complicated but at least the goal is to just house people.
