California and the homeless issue

[El Vaquero]

The vast majority of homeless are homeless by choice. Like others have said the vast majority are mental cases and/or drug users. Most have exhausted all patience with family members. Most want to do what they want when they want, and don’t want anyone to tell them what to do or how to do it. And to their credit, this is America. You can do that.

There’s no fix for this.

The only thing is to setup homeless communities dare I say like containment camps. Where city ordinances restrict them from certain areas. Still baffles me how cities haven’t addressed it from a public health angle. The homeless living on the street pee and poop right there on the sidewalk and carry roaches, bed bugs, and other nasty critters. How this isn’t a public health nuisance is beyond me.

[ddbtoth]

Needs more money.

[ChattanoogaPhil]

Don't see many so-called 'homeless' around here. A lot of bums live in camps in the woods or behind a tree line close enough to the city to beg and steal but otherwise stay out of sight. For some it's a way of life. For others it's temporary. Now and then a developer will have to clear them put for a project. Below is a classic example around the end of last year. Of course it's always a sob story of victimization.

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A plan to develop the site of a decades-old homeless encampment in Chattanooga, Tennessee has led to the forced displacement of its approximately 50 inhabitants. The eviction takes place as temperatures in the state are beginning to drop and the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage unabated.

On Tuesday, September 29, inhabitants of the campsite were abruptly met with bulldozers and excavators, along with police, and given as little as five minutes to collect their belongings and vacate the premises. The partially wooded lot, located approximately 10 minutes from downtown Chattanooga, has been vacant for at least two decades and is a well-known location in the community.

Patricia Rector, a longtime inhabitant of the site, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press, “They didn’t tell us. I lived here 20 years, and they don’t give me any notice before taking away my home.” Crystal Ellis, who had been living at the camp for a year and a half, also speaking to the Times Free Press, said that the police “wouldn’t let us get our tents, they wouldn’t let us get half of our stuff, and they never gave us any warning.” Scarlet Newsome, a wheelchair-bound amputee who had been living at the site for three months, noted that she had been given just minutes to exit the site.

More here: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/202.../chat-o02.html

[duece71]

Help people that WANT help. All the rest are just a burden and a continuous cycle to no where.

[JoshNC]

Help people that WANT help. All the rest are just a burden and a continuous cycle to no where.

Yep. This is the correct answer.

[Averageman]

Austin keeps throwing money at the problem. The money attracts more homeless.

They are actually putting tens of millions in to buying entire Hotels for them to stay in. Wanna guess what they will look like in five years, think Cabini Green with a Western flair. Keeping Austin weirder.

[CrashAxe]

At my department, the mayor initiated a “road home program”. They got with several non profits and offered free bus tickets to anywhere in the country. This was done to let them go home to their families. In reality it was just to get them to go anywhere but there.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Back in the day, we made any transients feel very unwelcome by citing or arresting them for any actual violation or crime that they committed, while also offering them a ride to the nearest larger city.

Free travel "anywhere but here" has been a popular course of action in a lot of cities:


https://nypost.com/2019/10/26/nyc-ho...eiving-cities/

"New York City generously shares its homeless crisis with every corner of America.

From the tropical shores of Honolulu and Puerto Rico, to the badlands of Utah and backwaters of Louisiana, the Big Apple has sent local homeless families to 373 cities across the country with a full year of rent in their pockets as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Special One-Time Assistance Program.” Usually, the receiving city knows nothing about it..."



https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020/...ess-back-home/

"People in Hawaii were outraged when the New York mayor’s office last year sent a homeless family to an unidentified island with a guaranteed job and a year’s worth of housing payments.

By comparison, since 2014, private and public Hawaii funds have paid for half of the airfare to send 744 homeless people back to their families on the mainland and to the Federated States of Micronesia — without any obligation from Hawaii of prearranged jobs or housing support. The homeless people’s families paid the other half of the airfare...


...On the other end, there are three rules that homeless people in Hawaii and their families have to meet in order to qualify to be reunited:

“A loved one, a family member, had to be identified on the other side,” Hannemann said. “Secondly, the individual had to be ready to go back. And thirdly, the message is, ‘We don’t want you to return.’..."



https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/u...francisco.html

"SEATTLE — The solution is cheap and simple: As cities see their homeless populations grow, many are buying one-way bus tickets to send people to a more promising destination, where family or friends can help get them back on their feet.

San Francisco’s “Homeward Bound” program, started more than a decade ago when Gov. Gavin Newsom of California was the city’s mayor, transports hundreds of people a year. Smaller cities around the country — Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Medford, Ore., among them — have recently committed funding to the idea.

And in Seattle this past week, a member of the King County Council proposed a major investment into the region’s busing efforts, fearing that the city was on the receiving end of homeless busing programs from too many other cities..."



https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yor...es-11575412379

"The city of Newark, N.J., has filed a lawsuit against New York City and its mayor, Bill de Blasio, over a program that has relocated thousands of New York’s homeless-shelter residents to municipalities across the country.

The suit, which was filed on Monday in a federal court in New Jersey, accuses Mr. de Blasio and New York City of coercing shelter residents to move into apartments that were illegal, had no heat or electricity and were rife with rodent and roach infestations.

Under the program, about 1,100 families in shelters have been moved to apartments in Newark in the past two years, making the New Jersey city the second-most-common relocation destination, according to New York City records. That has led to a “public nuisance in the form of increased homelessness and dilapidation” in Newark, the lawsuit says..."

[SteyrAUG]

Help people that WANT help. All the rest are just a burden and a continuous cycle to no where.

I would only add help the people who WANT help and who actually CAN be helped. A lot of them are so detached from our reality / civilization that they can't be helped very easily. Even if it isn't your fault, if you live as a constant victim of street predators who exploit you for anything and everything they can and that happens long enough...normal is a different state of mind.

Also homeless isn't a "single issue" challenge.

People are homeless because they:

Lost everything in some kind of financial / economic disaster.
Lost everything because of destruction of family or their family.
Lost everything because of some mental challenge.
Lost everything because they F'ed with drugs and drugs won.
Lost everything because they never had anything.
Lost everything because they never had the skills to get anything.
Saw or experienced some really bad shit and just don't care anymore.
Prefer the Hobo Joe / Riding the Rails experience.
Rejected conventionalism and decided to be a full time camper / hiker.

Or any number of 100 other things that can happen. People who think they have a One Size Fits All solution are as deluded as those who think they can solve crime by banning guns.

Obviously many, many, many homeless people end up with common challenges such as substance abuse, physically impaired, some level of mental illness and everything that comes with being treated like a disposable paper plate. But we forget that for much of their lives those frontier men we grew up reading about and learned to respect were kinda...well...homeless. They only difference is they made their own way ON PURPOSE and by design and had the tools and the skills to pull it off. I know a small handful of people who try and live that life but it's difficult to cross borders and own defensive tools such as guns without a fixed address.

[1986s4]

My city had a huge homeless problem so we passed an ordinance outlawing panhandling. So they migrated to the cities north and south of us... and those cities did the same. I don't know where they went, probably the next city w/o anti-panhandling laws.

[Johnny Rico]

Back in the day, we made any transients feel very unwelcome by citing or arresting them for any actual violation or crime that they committed, while also offering them a ride to the nearest larger city.

Free travel "anywhere but here" has been a popular course of action in a lot of cities.

IIRC that very phenomenon was depicted in an early scene in First Blood.