Housing First?
The Tiimes- Standard write up on the recent joint meeting between Eureka and the county over solutions to the homeless problem seems rather optimistic to me. The way I read it, the consensus seems to be simply putting the homeless in houses is a no- brainer. Really? As I've wrote here before, how's that going to work in the real world?
First of all, how many of us want those living- and making the mess- behind the Bayshore Mall moving in next door to us. The homes will be next to somebody.
Call me skeptical that those newly occupied homes won't end up being a mess after too long. Never mind whatever activities the formerly homeless chose to continue right next door.
It would also be a permanent drain on city and county finances with local government likely paying for the upkeep of those newly adopted homes for the foreseeable future.
I don't know what the answer is. I appreciate those putting all the effort into finding a solution but I'm not sure just putting someone in a house will be as rosy a solution as some seem to think.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 7:46 AM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Look at your last post for the answer. We are spending all of the money that we print on wars. No money left for some homeless old lady who lies in the cold, hungry and sick.
Not that it really matters or you even care. Ive read your blog enough to understand that you have the typical California attitude of " I've got mine, forget everyone else".
If the matrix money is saved by not spending and wasting tax dollars on corporate government military industrial complex excercizes of war, then such godly ideas like taxing less, investing in your country at home where over 50% homeless now most likely would be employed and not homeless, etc...
Also, part of problem is the American injustice system arrest and release.
Also is rural setting/county
Also easy black market drugs to make $$$$$$
Also the DHHS being so large and structured/tiered to attract new clients/patients.
Also, crappy retail jobs, little industry or manufacturing. Training programs are not working when jobs don't exist as needed.
Also, stigma of POT lures poorer and homeless folks too looking to make $$$$.
Personally, government has no responsibility to nanny any citizen, especially not helping those who refuse to help themselves. Any person could argue that the government causes a proportion of homelessness by its case by case actions and behaviors that were implemented which damaged and injured that citizen.
To weed out those who want to better themselves, question is always what that person needs for their preferred lifestyle.
First is food, water and shelter. Health is secondary.
If housing is offered, it must be placed on a single parcel large enough for the project. It should be small single units designed in sections: men only, women only, families only, friends/acquaintances only, seniors only, disabled persons only, special needs only, etc.
Think about that Fred, ADA needs for wheel chairs to get into a small unit up a ramp. So, a single ramp that gets wheel chair up to floor level designed as a porchwalk/deck that serves say 20 wheel chair accessible units.
Essentially, this housing will have to be a single project like when Hoover Dam was built, the workers first built a large encampment of homes one after the other.
This housing will be a failure if it is peppered throughout the community in areas where existing housing is already located, built out. It has to be remote and away from single family residential and multi family residential. It has to be treated as its own "mobile home park".
Monitoring the site is a must. A social contract must be agreed to for the tenant homeless to move out successfully. They can't stay forever for free. Tenants must pay back society somehow like a waiver and release to pull weeds out of sidewalk, sweep, wash down/clean government buildings, etc... maybe supervised through SWAP or any of a number of local community civic function events, etc....
Facts point that directly dealing with homeless people who want out cost taxpayers less overall.
Facts point that homeless people who don't want out cost society enormously, but nowhere near the costs and taxes lost and wasted through wargames.
JLM5D
Except, of course, this idea isn't new, and it has proven successful. But let's pretend it's never been done before and will be ruinous.
The truth is, only a massive Federal Housing Program is the answer. There has to be a major expansion of low income housing across the nation, even if those buildings are 8 stories high.....even if they resemble the housing one can witness in the former communist countries in Europe. So what? They are called "housing projects" for a reason...the are constructed to house the many unemployed, disable or simply plain crazy ass losers. "Build them, and They will come"...and be off the streets.
Slum projects are not the answer. Single story only!
I vote for providing a space whereas they can build their own little shanty town. When they grow tired of their lifestyle, healed from their misery or sickness, terrified of their neighbor's, they have free choice to clean up their act, get a job, go to school, move into their own over priced rental.
Exactly, but remember a proportion of the homeless will never grow tired of their lifestyle. So, at what point do these types of people get kicked out? Once kicked out, some will loiter in and around the shanty town and some will spillover back to Devils Playgroundesque areas.
At some point, loiterers and spillovers will need to be dealt with. Moochers need to be shunned, not rewarded or financially serviced.
JLM5D
Move 'em all into the elite neighborhoods and into the gated communities and let 'em live next door to the politicians that created the problem.
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