Where To Put The Homeless
A writer in the City Journal looks at New York's efforts to deal with the mentally ill homeless echoing something I've wrote before. In regards efforts to put them into housing or treatment centers:
"...the only idea that de Blasio and liberal homeless advocates can come up with is what they call “community-based solutions”—that is, placing facilities for the homeless, the mentally ill, and even convicted criminals in residential neighborhoods. But by basing treatment in such areas rather than in sequestered settings, these solutions introduce destabilizing populations into functioning communities. They damage the city’s social fabric, further marginalize residents already at risk, and poorly serve those in need. Yet they also enrich certain landlords and homeless-industry insiders, who profit from their incursion."
As I've asked before, would you want them moving in next door to you? I don't know what the answer is but, from reading the article, the author doesn't either.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 8:11 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Your logic is as poor as your grammer. Cutting wages and benefits, shipping jobs to Communist China, cycling people through a "criminal" justice system that makes them unemployable and our education dollars going towards football stadiums instead of libraries is what causes homelessness.
The only way to deal with the issue is to address the CAUSES. Sweeping fellow humans under the rug is lazy lazy lazy thinking.
City has vacant lots, ports have shipping containers, builders & remodelers need jobs, homeless need housing. Shipping container apartments, designed around a basic vegetable garden, might improve the county situation.
" cycling people through a "criminal" justice system that makes them unemployable and our education dollars going towards football stadiums instead of libraries is what causes homelessness."
There are many reasons for homelessness. Some are easier dealt with than others. Quite frankly, from what I've seen, there's not much that can be done for a good number of them.
"City has vacant lots, ports have shipping containers, builders & remodelers need jobs, homeless need housing. Shipping container apartments, designed around a basic vegetable garden, might improve the county situation."
That was the idea behind the legal encampment proposed for...somewhere in Eureka. I wished them the best of luck, not having any other answers myself. Problem with that idea, as others have pointed out, is it would be akin to an entitlement.
It would likely grow and take more and more county and city resources as time went on. You'd also likely have residents getting used to it and making it their permanent lifestyle as opposed to using it as a temporary place to stay.
Also, as I've wrote here before, it's not so much what they do when sleeping that bothers people. It's what they do when they're up and about. Regardless where they stay, they'll still be up and about- likely doing nothing productive- for at least most of the day.
Even legal homeless encampments probably wouldn't end up well, although you do hear of an occasional one that was supposedly successful. One in Placerville comes to mind, at least from news reports, but that one was closed when the landowner wouldn't continue allowing it to be used. I never read exactly why he backed out of it.
And I thought you were going to offer a helpful suggestion of where you thought people without houses could be, besides on the streets.
Nope. I've said time and again people should have a legal place to sleep...and stay, for that matter. There's no easy answer I've heard that I've been totally satisfied with.
Certainly otherwise normal people that have fallen on hard times are probably the easiest to deal with. Things like the Multiple Assistance Center seem the proper way to help them find housing and jobs. Others, which I suspect consist of the vast majority of people we see on the streets, are not so easily dealt with in getting back on their feet. I question whether some can be helped at all.
"And I thought you were going to offer a helpful suggestion of where you thought people without houses could be..."
I guess the title suggests that. Poor choice, but best I could come up with at the time.
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