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This is a complex issue... but in my experience, most of the homeless are not looking for help to find jobs and/or contribute to society in manner that will lea

This is a complex issue... but in my experience, most of the homeless are not looking for help to find jobs and/or contribute to society in manner that will lead them out of "homelessness." A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle"... we try very hard to help the people that want help. Most don't. Go talk to your local EMS/Fire department personnel and most of them will have similar stories. I know the homeless people in my area better than I know my extended family. I have memorized their birthday's, the medications they should be taking, the street drugs they prefer, the kind of beer they drink, where they stash their stuff, where they have their main camp, what their childhood, and adult life were like, their medical history, what shelters they've been kicked out of and are not allowed back to... and more. We are forced to talk with them, sometimes 3 or 4 times a shift. I lost sympathy for most of them a long time ago, that doesn't mean we treat them like sub-humans... we just have less patience with the shit they are inevitably going to give us. Edit: here is an article specific to San Fran about EMS & the homeless: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/us/san-francisco-firefighters-become-unintended-safety-net-for-the-homeless.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/us/san-francisco-firefight...

Mz 11y ago
I am homeless. I have never spent a night in a shelter. I prefer sleeping in a tent. It is cleaner and more humane. The services aimed at helping the homeless are mostly pretty revolting. The free meals are lower quality than fast food. The emergency shelters have mold problems. And you get crowded in with other sick, poor, desperate people to have a shot at the dregs they are willing to provide you. This is part of why I have this blog: http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/ http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/ Homeless people need the same things other people need: Work that works for them and other middle class solutions that are largely disappearing from an increasingly polarized America. But what they are offered is mostly contempt and really low quality options and services rooted in a broken, abusive, horrifying set of mental models. And then we are vilified for not being adequately grateful for the shit offered to us. I don't want to be homeless. But, yeah, I prefer this to the vastly shittier alternatives available to me.
creshal 11y ago
> A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle"... we try very hard to help the people that want help. Most don't. A lot of them are mentally handicapped or dealing with acquired mental illnesses. Even under good conditions, treating either is hard. Of course EMS/fire fighters/volunteers working in shelters aren't able to do that.
- progressive_dad 11y ago
  Ronald Reagan started this catastrophic failure when he was governor of California in 1967. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-men...
- monkmartinez 11y ago
  I've loaded many a homeless into my fire engine to take to the local Crisis Resource Center/ Behaviour Rehabilitation center because they begged and pleaded that they want help. Great! More often than not, we see them a few days later with Steel Reserve cans littered about after someone calls 911 for what appears to them a dead man on the side of the road. Mental illness is brutal. I feel for these guys, especially as I get older and start seeing my age equivalent homeless folks with PTSD and the like. The Vietnam vets are being replaced with Gulf war and Afghanistan vets. It is heart breaking to be sure... especially because many of us have served. We try, again, to hook these guys up with the VA... but they must want the help. It will not work otherwise.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    I wouldn't trust the VA to actually give them the help they need. Navigating a giant bureaucracy is tough for the most sane among us, let alone someone on the ropes.
  - zepto 11y ago
    Wanting help is not the same as being able to be helped. Veterans often have what is called 'treatment resistant PTSD', which is another way of saying that we haven't figured out how to treat them. There is a wealth of material on how even veterans who have supportive families and are housed and in treatment can't always hold down a job. New treatments such as VR based exposure therapy, or MDMA therapy are promising, but the standard of care is currently CBT and/or drugs, which have generally poor outcomes. We just don't know how to treat PTSD in general. This has nothing to do with whether people 'want' help or not.
tim333 11y ago
The issue my be complex but you don't see the same thing in most of Europe or Canada which suggests it's not immune to government action.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  You really need to read up on the issue more then. Even a simple browsing of Wikipedia will show the statement is wrong. What is primarily different is reporting by news sources. If the US is nearing a million or two homeless (numbers reported are lower) for the size of its population how does that put it in perspective of Canada listing around three hundred thousand out of thirty five million people. The EU reports nearly three million. Worse is the homeless situation in third world countries where even less services are available. Being homeless in a Western nation is far different than anywhere else. It may be exaggerated in SF and LA simply because of two reasons, climate and more support for those in need. So the city may actually being doing a good job but is simply attracting more people because they are tl;dr do not for a moment think that homelessness isn't as bad issue elsewhere, let alone countries where the US is equal to economically.
  - Joeboy 11y ago
    > Even a simple browsing of Wikipedia will show the statement is wrong. I looked up "Homelessness in the UK" on Wikpedia and the first line is: > Homelessness in the United Kingdom is kept somewhat at bay > by a reasonable volume of housing, statutory rights, and > various government initiatives. I don't know what figures you are looking at, but one caveat that occurs to me is that the UK's main homelessness charity, Shelter, has a fairly broad definition of homelessness. You don't have to be sleeping in the street for them to consider you "homeless". Which is good, because relying on your friends' sofas for housing is indeed a very crappy situation which government policy should seek to minimize, but bad, because that's not what other people consider homelessness to be.
  - sologoub 11y ago
    Visited Paris last November and the situation looked very differently - homeless were present, but did not appear to be the same mentally ill types that I see in LA and SF. That's not a coincidence - France has universal healthcare (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France). It's really disheartening to see the plight of people who could have been helped. Especially, given that we (US) spend more per capita on healthcare... Another interesting observation is the difference between LA and SF. In LA (beach areas and west LA/Westwood) a side from minor inconvenience of a line outside public beach restrooms/showers and some encampments, there really isn't a disruption. In SF, people walk in yelling into stores, act out aggressively in broad daylight and generally don't seem to feel any restraint. I never felt particularly unsafe in LA, but definitely had to watch my surroundings last weekend in SF, much more than ever before in the last decade.
citizensixteen 11y ago
>A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle" I used to also think that many homeless "preferred the lifestyle of homelessness" but I recently learned of a town in Canada (Medicine Hat) that found it more cost effective to house the homeless. This myth that people prefer to be homeless was shattered and this town found that nearly all homeless were able to reintegrated back into having their own places. The mayor was skeptical at first now, he says, “It makes financial sense. That’s how I had my epiphany and was converted. You can actually save money by giving somebody some dignity and giving them a place to live.” Medicine Hat on brink of ending homelessness http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/medicine-hat-on-brink-of-ending-homelessness-mayor-says-1.2644074 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/medicine-hat-on-brink-... http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/medicine-hat-has-almost-eliminated-homelessness-by-giving-homeless-people-the-keys-to-their-own-apartments http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/medicine-hat-has-al...
- jonknee 11y ago
  Being homeless in Calgary is a lot different than the SF Bay area (you don't die in the Winter being a big one!). I'm positive there are many in SF who would benefit from a similar program, but there would still be a ton of homeless people.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Salt-Lake-City-a-model-for-S-F-on-homeless-5587357.php http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Salt-Lake-City-a-model-... I searched "salt lake city homeless" remembering the program there and the SF Gate article discussing it's applicability to SF happened to be the first result, so I'm just embracing the irony, not trying to force it.
- mabbo 11y ago
  Our super-Conservative government for the last decade (now replaced by a young, hip, Liberal one) was actually really big behind the 'housing-first' method of helping the homeless (you get an apartment, no questions asked, then we work on your drug problems, etc later), and put a lot of money towards it. At first, this seems very socially liberal and at odds with a Conservative party kind of thing until you look at the financials and realize it actually is fiscally very conservative- it saves a ton of money on policing and medical care. All that said, have you been to Medicine Hat? That's not a place with a very relaxed 'homeless lifestyle'. It's -15C here in Toronto today, and we're like 700km further south. In the west coast of the USA, you can survive on the street without the air itself killing you.
a-saleh 11y ago
Sometimes I feel this "most of them prefer the way it is" is just a way to make excuses for us not solving a problem. For example in my city of ~ quarter mil. people, there are approximately 1000 people living on the streets and another 1000 without home (no adress, permanently living in hostels, people in prisons that no longer have home). Currently I know that there is project that focuses on the families without home (afaik 300-400 ppl?), where the plan is to move them into the city owned flats (there is more than 20 000 flats owned by the city with several hundred empty) I like the logic behind that. To catch people without home before they end up on the street and give them an adress. What do you think?
- monkmartinez 11y ago
  Maybe, but funding new programs for homeless/mentally ill is problematic for a lot of reasons; A lot municipalities have budget problems with structural deficits. This puts pressure on basic infrastructure like roads, water, and sewer. Public transportation is under severe stress due to the budgets. Public safety agencies have been relying on grants (SAFER) from the fed to get basic needs met as the cities are tapped out. Government employees in my area haven't had a raise in 10 years while the costs for insurance, medicare, and everything else has gone up more than 10%. To put it bluntly, asking voters to approve bonds/money for homeless will go over like a turd in a punch bowl.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    No wonder there is a homelessness problem then. With an attitude like this from both public officials and voters alike is it surprising that homelessness is getting worse and worse?
  - a-saleh 11y ago
    Well that is why the reasoning here is 1. "We already have lot of empty flats nobody lives in and need to maintain them" 2. "We already rent many flats for like 300$ a month to low income families, that have the courage for like 10 different visits to municipal office" 3. "Families that are on the edge of homelesness already live in some hostel and might be paying more than 300$ a month just to have a place to stay." At least that is the gist of it as far as I know. Second, this is an EU city, so I know that they want to get some initial funds from EU funds (the first set of flats needs to undergo reconstruction, because the basic utilities, like water and electricity are in terrible state) as a pilot 'housing first' project in the republic.
odonnellryan 11y ago
The homeless often have mental illnesses. Forget less severe illness, 1/3 have been found to have severe illness: http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/consequences/homeless-mentally-ill.html http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/consequences/homeless-mentall... So, it isn't they are homeless because they like the lifestyle, but it is often because of an illness that they prefer that lifestyle. We've all certainly felt extraordinary pressures related to common every-day life. Mental illness makes dealing with these pressures very difficult, often almost impossible. I would not blame someone for trying to escape those pressures.
- notthegov 11y ago
  Where I live, it is more the opposite. People come here with irrational dreams, get on the street, fall into bad things, and then through dehydration, stress and living on the street, they become more irrational, and eventually permanently changed.
  - odonnellryan 11y ago
    That's a good point, but if you're talking about addiction, mental illness is a precursor to addictive behavior. It is one of the major reasons why people self-medicate. Certainly is not the only reason. My philosophy is: certain things are good for everyone if everyone has them. Some of these things: food, education, healthcare, place to sleep (securely), modest personal possessions, and so forth. Reasons are mostly because of what you said. Homelessness leads to a general decline in society. If more people have healthcare, the general health of everyone goes up. If more people are fed, more people are productive, and production is good for everyone (to draw an incredibly broad generality). And so on. It's unrealistic to say we'll do all those things 100%, but I do not think they are unrealistic goals for a modern and technologically advanced society. Price breakdown: 30bil/year to end world hunger. 175bil/year to end world poverty. 20bil/year to end homelessness in the US. I can't find numbers for everything, but those are some good ones to think about.
    - notthegov 11y ago
      Humanity and biology in general is a precursor to addictive behavior. One of the major reasons people self-medicate, is because they think they are their thoughts. They indulge every whim and emotional impulse as if it is a command line directing their life. If people could separate themselves from their emotions, if they were taught stoicism, Buddhism or how free will and the self is a (likely) an illusion, then maybe they'd be stronger. I can't elaborate, but I know people worth hundreds of millions of dollars, that are young, beautiful and have everything, but can't handle life, and tried to kill themselves but why? Because an obese corrupt doctor told them that he knew the mysteries of the brain, and that they need to take a lighter form of methamphetamine every day for the rest of their life to be normal. As Dr. Carl Hart explained, adderall is basically meth- http://www.vice.com/read/a-neuroscientist-explains-how-he-found-out-meth-is-almost-identical-to-adderall?utm_source=vicefbus http://www.vice.com/read/a-neuroscientist-explains-how-he-fo... That person is in college, and the social acceptance of taking adderall to succeed is scary. If you can handle a low dose, great, I'm all for practicality. But most can't and the idea that amphetamines can cure a lack of focus is pseudoscience. So excuse my tone, but I don't believe in what you said. The problem is behavioral choices (health, what you read/watch/interact) and learning how to deal with one's own thoughts and impulses, not mythical theories on brain chemisty. What you are saying is often the cause of the problem, not the solution.
huuu 11y ago
Homeless people lost trust in the system so they prefer to live without it. But they don't prefer to be homeless. Try living on the streets and you will become an addicted asshole. I don't think there are a lot of people who can do it for years and stay 'normal'.
jefurii 11y ago
> A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle" For a number of years I helped run a Saturday morning soup kitchen at a church near the VA in West LA. Talked to a lot of people, mostly guys, and heard this a lot too, but for most of them it's not the whole story. Most of the homeless people I encountered had a point in their lives when the system failed them. Many of them had some traumatic event and fell into alcoholism or drugs. Many of them either had a weak social net (family or friends) or burned through that net. Counselling was not available or came too late, and once they were far enough along unemployment ran out. Eventually they embraced homelessness because they could no longer imagine an alternative, so that they could think something positive about themselves. My sense is that there was a window during which the system could have helped them with their problems when it became too much for their friends/family and before they went too far down that path. But certain elements in our society (cough Republicans/Libertarians) just don't want to help people at risk.
- stvswn 11y ago
  "had some traumatic event and fell into alcoholism and drugs" This phrase is doing a lot of work for your argument -- the implication is that alcohol and drugs are like open manholes, and people are just falling in. I believe in treating addiction. I also believe in removing stigmas associated with drug crimes. I think we should help people. But we shouldn't all assume that drugs cause poverty, 100% of the time. Poverty sometimes causes drug use. Hopelessness and despair (economically, socially) lead to chemical escapism. My point is that not every drug addict is a victim of a disease which keeps him from contributing to society. People use drugs for a lot of reasons. I am a Republican/Libertarian, and I take a small amount of offense to the accusation that we "just don't want to help." On the contrary, I believe the current strategies -- house them, feed them, give them clean needles -- is doing more harm than good. It makes the lifestyle sustainable without giving them any hope for something better. A better way forward: - Stop charging drug users with felonies that prevent them from getting jobs in the future - Legalize almost all drugs, except for those that put the public at harm by causing psychosis. - More mental health services, including committing more people. We're failing schizophrenics when we don't force them into treatment. - Grow the economy. We need more jobs for the lower rung of the labor force. The first step towards despair is often unemployment. - If we're going tax dollars, let's create public jobs for people. I don't mind if subsidized housing is part of the package. - Stop creating homeless havens. It's counterproductive. You can't allow people to defecate on the street in broad daylight and call it compassion. When you do that, people travel to that neighborhood from all over because it's a place where they won't be hassled. It becomes impossible to run a small business there, families leave, the neighborhood dies. I'm not saying we should fill the jails with the homeless. But why not provide public restrooms, and then arrest and/or commit those who are using the sidewalk? If we need someone to maintain the restrooms -- pay the homeless.
wpietri 11y ago
From what I can tell your main complaint here is that homeless addicts are... addicts? I really appreciate that you serve homeless residents just like other residents. But you might consider that the people who you are most frequently called to help are not representative of the homeless population. Look at the national stats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States#Other_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta... That's a lot of families. It's a lot of kids. A friend of mine put years into making a documentary about homeless youth in Chicago. I got to meet some of them, and they are entirely different than the picture you paint: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/homestretch/ http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/homestretch/ I think it's also important to note that active addicts generally refuse help no matter what level of society they're in. That's part of the addictive cycle. Homeless addicts claim to prefer their "lifestyle" and will fight to keep it. But so do gainfully employed alcoholics. So do wealthy coke fiends. It's a disease that will kill all of them eventually unless they can start facing how much addiction has screwed up their lives. And as hard as facing that has to be for a well-off person, I expect it's way harder for someone who has fallen so low as to be sleeping under an overpass and living out of a trash can.
notthegov 11y ago
I agree, most prefer the lifestyle because A) life is hard and B) they adapt and/or give-up. There are 25,000 homeless in my city. I don't know exact numbers but a lot come here to pursue their dreams and some to escape a bad situation back home. But it is so expensive here. Housing is difficult. Deception is everywhere, in terms of convincing people they have a chance at a career. But more often, they fall into drugs and prostitution, and running the streets -- because it is fun and easy, at first. So an 18 year old kid who wants to be a singer, can run around meeting interesting people, act like he/she is achieving their dream but really is just partying. Then their irresponsible ways get them on the street. And a once bright kid becomes diminished by drugs, and stress, and the struggle and emotional pain and torture that living on the streets causes. They then look "mentally ill" but most, in my experience, are merely exhausted and are irresponsible. I have young friends who are homeless, and I'd start my day drinking coffee with them at Starbucks and then later eating breakfast at my building (a 5-star hotel) with people who could afford to feed a million people for a year. And my rich friends, a lot are on drugs, and some do insane illegal things, and are generally way worse for society than my homeless friends. And I could often trust my homeless friends more than my rich ones. At the time, I lived in an $8 million condo for free. And through a conflict of over our philosophies on pandering and prostitution, I moved out abruptly, and was nearly homeless myself. I then got to experience first hand the atrocious public transportation services, the difficulty in renting an apartment and how the City just doesn't care about working class people or the homeless. The City is inept and just not thinking about solving the problems in a valid way. Instead, they take away electrical outlets in most areas which just punishes tourists, commuters, regular working people etc. And great institutions, like the pubic libraries, which Carnegie saw as a way to lift up all of society, become refugees for the homeless. Of course, the majority of homeless people are too far gone. Most are lazy, selfish, destructive and just terrible people. Were they like that before or did they learn to be that way? Maybe if schools taught kids critical thinking skills and stoicism and how to separate themselves from the emotions, then we'd have a stronger society that knew how to deal with adversity better. A lot of people, rich poor, smart or uneducated, are slightly fragile and weak. Life is hard, for us all, and society doesn't teach us how to live life very well.
mbrutsch 11y ago
> most of the homeless are not looking for help to find jobs and/or contribute to society in manner that will lead them out of "homelessness." When I worked at a VA Medical Center 25 years ago, the problem was identical. You end up feeling more for the social workers than for the vets.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle"... To the extent that's true, I suspect that says a lot more about the alternatives that they are presented with than anything else.
myblake 11y ago
I suspect also many of the homeless in San Francisco, especially the ones being complained about here, have pretty bad mental health problems going on treated. Government probably needs to step in and help on that front as well.
iuguy 11y ago
> A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle"... we try very hard to help the people that want help. Most don't. As someone who's been homeless twice, I appreciate that you don't intend to offend, but this is a very loaded and offensive statement. You appear to work with homeless people and have very little sympathy for their situation, which I can understand but it still makes me a little sad. Becoming homeless is something that can happen to anyone for any number of reasons, and there are different kinds of being homeless. Once you become homeless it becomes harder as time goes on to move back to something permanent. Booze and drugs can sometimes be a simple manner of being able to sleep, or to get away from the situation you're in or how you got there. Choices that seem nonsensical for those who have a warm bed every night make perfect sense when you're worn down by the elements and incredibly poor sleep. After a while the prospect of having to deal with the build up of shit in your life and get shit together becomes a bigger mountain to climb than carrying on when you are, even though your everyday struggle is a mountain of shit in itself. It's not that people choose a lifestyle as such, it's that sometimes it feels less painful to have a permanent known level of shit in your life than to fight all the way back up to get a permanent place to live and risk being knocked back when you're already pretty fragile. Being homeless is the suckiest thing you can probably reasonably imagine.
- yuudu_literal 11y ago
  These kind of responses have a chilling effect on debate and progress. > this is a very loaded and offensive statement So the fuck what? If you aren't allowed to consider anything offensive, we'd never discuss the difficult issues and make progress on them. > something that can happen to anyone for any number of reasons, and there are different kinds of being homeless Yeah blah blah blah he's not saying 'absolutely every homeless person is like this', he's suggesting that maybe the situation isn't as everyone assumes, which may be the case. But you've shut him down with some 'not every homeless' person bullshit. > It's not that people choose a lifestyle as such He didn't say choose did he? He said they prefer it - I presume he means prefer it to being institutionalised. You seem to suggest that he thinks they prefer it to being a millionaire, which of course they do not. Have you ever heard of the idea of being charitable in how you interpret other people's thoughts? > Being homeless is the suckiest thing you can probably reasonably imagine. Who are you arguing with here? Who disagrees with you? All he said is that some of these homeless people may prefer being on the street to being taken into the care of the state. You are destroying debate!
borkabrak 11y ago
> that doesn't mean we treat them like sub-humans... we just have less patience with the shit they are inevitably going to give us. While I have difficulty agreeing that the homeless generally want to be, it seems worth noting that they're not better than normal people, any more than they are worse - they are normal people, with the same charm and/or asshattery as the rest of us. They're just in a situation most of us (or so I think) find singularly undesirable.
Justsignedup 11y ago
Do you have any idea how taxing it is on the psyche to be homeless? Maybe there are one or two people who chose this lifestyle like developers mooching off Google. But overall this is the exception, not the rule. Reasons many are homeless: - Psychiatric problems. They can't fit in to normal working conditions because they are for lack of a better word crazy. They also don't get the necessary help due to poverty. - Lost a job. In a city like New York where the cost of a studio apartment over an hour away by train can cost 1 grand a month, and minimum wage is still $9 an hour, and food is pricy, and metro isn't exactly cheap either, it can be very easy to fall into the homeless problem if you don't have friends and family helping. I know quite a few people who were fortunate to have had a car and able to get up and leave the state rather than sleep on the street. - Being homeless often means no access to cleanliness which limits your ability to find a job. A self-fulfilling prophecy. - If you are injured to a point where you can't work, it is not very easy to get government disability. My friend took 2 years to get the benefits while she was completely crippled. She was surviving on the generosity of her friends. When the government finally gave her money, she was able to afford a teensy apartment. If she ended up homeless the government wouldn't give her the benefits because you need an official place of residence. - Speaking of a place of residence, a crippled homeless person cannot go to a shelter because they will be preyed upon. And they can't physically fight back. And so they also can't claim benefits because of this. I know one such person.

Mz 11y ago

I am homeless. I have never spent a night in a shelter. I prefer sleeping in a tent. It is cleaner and more humane. The services aimed at helping the homeless are mostly pretty revolting. The free meals are lower quality than fast food. The emergency shelters have mold problems. And you get crowded in with other sick, poor, desperate people to have a shot at the dregs they are willing to provide you. This is part of why I have this blog: http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/ http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/ Homeless people need the same things other people need: Work that works for them and other middle class solutions that are largely disappearing from an increasingly polarized America. But what they are offered is mostly contempt and really low quality options and services rooted in a broken, abusive, horrifying set of mental models. And then we are vilified for not being adequately grateful for the shit offered to us. I don't want to be homeless. But, yeah, I prefer this to the vastly shittier alternatives available to me.

creshal 11y ago

> A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle"... we try very hard to help the people that want help. Most don't. A lot of them are mentally handicapped or dealing with acquired mental illnesses. Even under good conditions, treating either is hard. Of course EMS/fire fighters/volunteers working in shelters aren't able to do that.

progressive_dad 11y ago
Ronald Reagan started this catastrophic failure when he was governor of California in 1967. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-men...
monkmartinez 11y ago
I've loaded many a homeless into my fire engine to take to the local Crisis Resource Center/ Behaviour Rehabilitation center because they begged and pleaded that they want help. Great! More often than not, we see them a few days later with Steel Reserve cans littered about after someone calls 911 for what appears to them a dead man on the side of the road. Mental illness is brutal. I feel for these guys, especially as I get older and start seeing my age equivalent homeless folks with PTSD and the like. The Vietnam vets are being replaced with Gulf war and Afghanistan vets. It is heart breaking to be sure... especially because many of us have served. We try, again, to hook these guys up with the VA... but they must want the help. It will not work otherwise.
- jonknee 11y ago
  I wouldn't trust the VA to actually give them the help they need. Navigating a giant bureaucracy is tough for the most sane among us, let alone someone on the ropes.
- zepto 11y ago
  Wanting help is not the same as being able to be helped. Veterans often have what is called 'treatment resistant PTSD', which is another way of saying that we haven't figured out how to treat them. There is a wealth of material on how even veterans who have supportive families and are housed and in treatment can't always hold down a job. New treatments such as VR based exposure therapy, or MDMA therapy are promising, but the standard of care is currently CBT and/or drugs, which have generally poor outcomes. We just don't know how to treat PTSD in general. This has nothing to do with whether people 'want' help or not.

tim333 11y ago

The issue my be complex but you don't see the same thing in most of Europe or Canada which suggests it's not immune to government action.

Shivetya 11y ago
You really need to read up on the issue more then. Even a simple browsing of Wikipedia will show the statement is wrong. What is primarily different is reporting by news sources. If the US is nearing a million or two homeless (numbers reported are lower) for the size of its population how does that put it in perspective of Canada listing around three hundred thousand out of thirty five million people. The EU reports nearly three million. Worse is the homeless situation in third world countries where even less services are available. Being homeless in a Western nation is far different than anywhere else. It may be exaggerated in SF and LA simply because of two reasons, climate and more support for those in need. So the city may actually being doing a good job but is simply attracting more people because they are tl;dr do not for a moment think that homelessness isn't as bad issue elsewhere, let alone countries where the US is equal to economically.
- Joeboy 11y ago
  > Even a simple browsing of Wikipedia will show the statement is wrong. I looked up "Homelessness in the UK" on Wikpedia and the first line is: > Homelessness in the United Kingdom is kept somewhat at bay > by a reasonable volume of housing, statutory rights, and > various government initiatives. I don't know what figures you are looking at, but one caveat that occurs to me is that the UK's main homelessness charity, Shelter, has a fairly broad definition of homelessness. You don't have to be sleeping in the street for them to consider you "homeless". Which is good, because relying on your friends' sofas for housing is indeed a very crappy situation which government policy should seek to minimize, but bad, because that's not what other people consider homelessness to be.
- sologoub 11y ago
  Visited Paris last November and the situation looked very differently - homeless were present, but did not appear to be the same mentally ill types that I see in LA and SF. That's not a coincidence - France has universal healthcare (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France). It's really disheartening to see the plight of people who could have been helped. Especially, given that we (US) spend more per capita on healthcare... Another interesting observation is the difference between LA and SF. In LA (beach areas and west LA/Westwood) a side from minor inconvenience of a line outside public beach restrooms/showers and some encampments, there really isn't a disruption. In SF, people walk in yelling into stores, act out aggressively in broad daylight and generally don't seem to feel any restraint. I never felt particularly unsafe in LA, but definitely had to watch my surroundings last weekend in SF, much more than ever before in the last decade.

citizensixteen 11y ago

>A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle" I used to also think that many homeless "preferred the lifestyle of homelessness" but I recently learned of a town in Canada (Medicine Hat) that found it more cost effective to house the homeless. This myth that people prefer to be homeless was shattered and this town found that nearly all homeless were able to reintegrated back into having their own places. The mayor was skeptical at first now, he says, “It makes financial sense. That’s how I had my epiphany and was converted. You can actually save money by giving somebody some dignity and giving them a place to live.” Medicine Hat on brink of ending homelessness http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/medicine-hat-on-brink-of-ending-homelessness-mayor-says-1.2644074 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/medicine-hat-on-brink-... http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/medicine-hat-has-almost-eliminated-homelessness-by-giving-homeless-people-the-keys-to-their-own-apartments http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/medicine-hat-has-al...

jonknee 11y ago
Being homeless in Calgary is a lot different than the SF Bay area (you don't die in the Winter being a big one!). I'm positive there are many in SF who would benefit from a similar program, but there would still be a ton of homeless people.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Salt-Lake-City-a-model-for-S-F-on-homeless-5587357.php http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Salt-Lake-City-a-model-... I searched "salt lake city homeless" remembering the program there and the SF Gate article discussing it's applicability to SF happened to be the first result, so I'm just embracing the irony, not trying to force it.
mabbo 11y ago
Our super-Conservative government for the last decade (now replaced by a young, hip, Liberal one) was actually really big behind the 'housing-first' method of helping the homeless (you get an apartment, no questions asked, then we work on your drug problems, etc later), and put a lot of money towards it. At first, this seems very socially liberal and at odds with a Conservative party kind of thing until you look at the financials and realize it actually is fiscally very conservative- it saves a ton of money on policing and medical care. All that said, have you been to Medicine Hat? That's not a place with a very relaxed 'homeless lifestyle'. It's -15C here in Toronto today, and we're like 700km further south. In the west coast of the USA, you can survive on the street without the air itself killing you.

a-saleh 11y ago

Sometimes I feel this "most of them prefer the way it is" is just a way to make excuses for us not solving a problem. For example in my city of ~ quarter mil. people, there are approximately 1000 people living on the streets and another 1000 without home (no adress, permanently living in hostels, people in prisons that no longer have home). Currently I know that there is project that focuses on the families without home (afaik 300-400 ppl?), where the plan is to move them into the city owned flats (there is more than 20 000 flats owned by the city with several hundred empty) I like the logic behind that. To catch people without home before they end up on the street and give them an adress. What do you think?

monkmartinez 11y ago
Maybe, but funding new programs for homeless/mentally ill is problematic for a lot of reasons; A lot municipalities have budget problems with structural deficits. This puts pressure on basic infrastructure like roads, water, and sewer. Public transportation is under severe stress due to the budgets. Public safety agencies have been relying on grants (SAFER) from the fed to get basic needs met as the cities are tapped out. Government employees in my area haven't had a raise in 10 years while the costs for insurance, medicare, and everything else has gone up more than 10%. To put it bluntly, asking voters to approve bonds/money for homeless will go over like a turd in a punch bowl.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  No wonder there is a homelessness problem then. With an attitude like this from both public officials and voters alike is it surprising that homelessness is getting worse and worse?
- a-saleh 11y ago
  Well that is why the reasoning here is 1. "We already have lot of empty flats nobody lives in and need to maintain them" 2. "We already rent many flats for like 300$ a month to low income families, that have the courage for like 10 different visits to municipal office" 3. "Families that are on the edge of homelesness already live in some hostel and might be paying more than 300$ a month just to have a place to stay." At least that is the gist of it as far as I know. Second, this is an EU city, so I know that they want to get some initial funds from EU funds (the first set of flats needs to undergo reconstruction, because the basic utilities, like water and electricity are in terrible state) as a pilot 'housing first' project in the republic.

odonnellryan 11y ago

The homeless often have mental illnesses. Forget less severe illness, 1/3 have been found to have severe illness: http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/consequences/homeless-mentally-ill.html http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/consequences/homeless-mentall... So, it isn't they are homeless because they like the lifestyle, but it is often because of an illness that they prefer that lifestyle. We've all certainly felt extraordinary pressures related to common every-day life. Mental illness makes dealing with these pressures very difficult, often almost impossible. I would not blame someone for trying to escape those pressures.

notthegov 11y ago
Where I live, it is more the opposite. People come here with irrational dreams, get on the street, fall into bad things, and then through dehydration, stress and living on the street, they become more irrational, and eventually permanently changed.
- odonnellryan 11y ago
  That's a good point, but if you're talking about addiction, mental illness is a precursor to addictive behavior. It is one of the major reasons why people self-medicate. Certainly is not the only reason. My philosophy is: certain things are good for everyone if everyone has them. Some of these things: food, education, healthcare, place to sleep (securely), modest personal possessions, and so forth. Reasons are mostly because of what you said. Homelessness leads to a general decline in society. If more people have healthcare, the general health of everyone goes up. If more people are fed, more people are productive, and production is good for everyone (to draw an incredibly broad generality). And so on. It's unrealistic to say we'll do all those things 100%, but I do not think they are unrealistic goals for a modern and technologically advanced society. Price breakdown: 30bil/year to end world hunger. 175bil/year to end world poverty. 20bil/year to end homelessness in the US. I can't find numbers for everything, but those are some good ones to think about.
  - notthegov 11y ago
    Humanity and biology in general is a precursor to addictive behavior. One of the major reasons people self-medicate, is because they think they are their thoughts. They indulge every whim and emotional impulse as if it is a command line directing their life. If people could separate themselves from their emotions, if they were taught stoicism, Buddhism or how free will and the self is a (likely) an illusion, then maybe they'd be stronger. I can't elaborate, but I know people worth hundreds of millions of dollars, that are young, beautiful and have everything, but can't handle life, and tried to kill themselves but why? Because an obese corrupt doctor told them that he knew the mysteries of the brain, and that they need to take a lighter form of methamphetamine every day for the rest of their life to be normal. As Dr. Carl Hart explained, adderall is basically meth- http://www.vice.com/read/a-neuroscientist-explains-how-he-found-out-meth-is-almost-identical-to-adderall?utm_source=vicefbus http://www.vice.com/read/a-neuroscientist-explains-how-he-fo... That person is in college, and the social acceptance of taking adderall to succeed is scary. If you can handle a low dose, great, I'm all for practicality. But most can't and the idea that amphetamines can cure a lack of focus is pseudoscience. So excuse my tone, but I don't believe in what you said. The problem is behavioral choices (health, what you read/watch/interact) and learning how to deal with one's own thoughts and impulses, not mythical theories on brain chemisty. What you are saying is often the cause of the problem, not the solution.

huuu 11y ago

Homeless people lost trust in the system so they prefer to live without it. But they don't prefer to be homeless. Try living on the streets and you will become an addicted asshole. I don't think there are a lot of people who can do it for years and stay 'normal'.

jefurii 11y ago

> A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle" For a number of years I helped run a Saturday morning soup kitchen at a church near the VA in West LA. Talked to a lot of people, mostly guys, and heard this a lot too, but for most of them it's not the whole story. Most of the homeless people I encountered had a point in their lives when the system failed them. Many of them had some traumatic event and fell into alcoholism or drugs. Many of them either had a weak social net (family or friends) or burned through that net. Counselling was not available or came too late, and once they were far enough along unemployment ran out. Eventually they embraced homelessness because they could no longer imagine an alternative, so that they could think something positive about themselves. My sense is that there was a window during which the system could have helped them with their problems when it became too much for their friends/family and before they went too far down that path. But certain elements in our society (cough Republicans/Libertarians) just don't want to help people at risk.

stvswn 11y ago
"had some traumatic event and fell into alcoholism and drugs" This phrase is doing a lot of work for your argument -- the implication is that alcohol and drugs are like open manholes, and people are just falling in. I believe in treating addiction. I also believe in removing stigmas associated with drug crimes. I think we should help people. But we shouldn't all assume that drugs cause poverty, 100% of the time. Poverty sometimes causes drug use. Hopelessness and despair (economically, socially) lead to chemical escapism. My point is that not every drug addict is a victim of a disease which keeps him from contributing to society. People use drugs for a lot of reasons. I am a Republican/Libertarian, and I take a small amount of offense to the accusation that we "just don't want to help." On the contrary, I believe the current strategies -- house them, feed them, give them clean needles -- is doing more harm than good. It makes the lifestyle sustainable without giving them any hope for something better. A better way forward: - Stop charging drug users with felonies that prevent them from getting jobs in the future - Legalize almost all drugs, except for those that put the public at harm by causing psychosis. - More mental health services, including committing more people. We're failing schizophrenics when we don't force them into treatment. - Grow the economy. We need more jobs for the lower rung of the labor force. The first step towards despair is often unemployment. - If we're going tax dollars, let's create public jobs for people. I don't mind if subsidized housing is part of the package. - Stop creating homeless havens. It's counterproductive. You can't allow people to defecate on the street in broad daylight and call it compassion. When you do that, people travel to that neighborhood from all over because it's a place where they won't be hassled. It becomes impossible to run a small business there, families leave, the neighborhood dies. I'm not saying we should fill the jails with the homeless. But why not provide public restrooms, and then arrest and/or commit those who are using the sidewalk? If we need someone to maintain the restrooms -- pay the homeless.

wpietri 11y ago

From what I can tell your main complaint here is that homeless addicts are... addicts? I really appreciate that you serve homeless residents just like other residents. But you might consider that the people who you are most frequently called to help are not representative of the homeless population. Look at the national stats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States#Other_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta... That's a lot of families. It's a lot of kids. A friend of mine put years into making a documentary about homeless youth in Chicago. I got to meet some of them, and they are entirely different than the picture you paint: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/homestretch/ http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/homestretch/ I think it's also important to note that active addicts generally refuse help no matter what level of society they're in. That's part of the addictive cycle. Homeless addicts claim to prefer their "lifestyle" and will fight to keep it. But so do gainfully employed alcoholics. So do wealthy coke fiends. It's a disease that will kill all of them eventually unless they can start facing how much addiction has screwed up their lives. And as hard as facing that has to be for a well-off person, I expect it's way harder for someone who has fallen so low as to be sleeping under an overpass and living out of a trash can.

notthegov 11y ago

I agree, most prefer the lifestyle because A) life is hard and B) they adapt and/or give-up. There are 25,000 homeless in my city. I don't know exact numbers but a lot come here to pursue their dreams and some to escape a bad situation back home. But it is so expensive here. Housing is difficult. Deception is everywhere, in terms of convincing people they have a chance at a career. But more often, they fall into drugs and prostitution, and running the streets -- because it is fun and easy, at first. So an 18 year old kid who wants to be a singer, can run around meeting interesting people, act like he/she is achieving their dream but really is just partying. Then their irresponsible ways get them on the street. And a once bright kid becomes diminished by drugs, and stress, and the struggle and emotional pain and torture that living on the streets causes. They then look "mentally ill" but most, in my experience, are merely exhausted and are irresponsible. I have young friends who are homeless, and I'd start my day drinking coffee with them at Starbucks and then later eating breakfast at my building (a 5-star hotel) with people who could afford to feed a million people for a year. And my rich friends, a lot are on drugs, and some do insane illegal things, and are generally way worse for society than my homeless friends. And I could often trust my homeless friends more than my rich ones. At the time, I lived in an $8 million condo for free. And through a conflict of over our philosophies on pandering and prostitution, I moved out abruptly, and was nearly homeless myself. I then got to experience first hand the atrocious public transportation services, the difficulty in renting an apartment and how the City just doesn't care about working class people or the homeless. The City is inept and just not thinking about solving the problems in a valid way. Instead, they take away electrical outlets in most areas which just punishes tourists, commuters, regular working people etc. And great institutions, like the pubic libraries, which Carnegie saw as a way to lift up all of society, become refugees for the homeless. Of course, the majority of homeless people are too far gone. Most are lazy, selfish, destructive and just terrible people. Were they like that before or did they learn to be that way? Maybe if schools taught kids critical thinking skills and stoicism and how to separate themselves from the emotions, then we'd have a stronger society that knew how to deal with adversity better. A lot of people, rich poor, smart or uneducated, are slightly fragile and weak. Life is hard, for us all, and society doesn't teach us how to live life very well.

mbrutsch 11y ago

> most of the homeless are not looking for help to find jobs and/or contribute to society in manner that will lead them out of "homelessness." When I worked at a VA Medical Center 25 years ago, the problem was identical. You end up feeling more for the social workers than for the vets.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle"... To the extent that's true, I suspect that says a lot more about the alternatives that they are presented with than anything else.

myblake 11y ago

I suspect also many of the homeless in San Francisco, especially the ones being complained about here, have pretty bad mental health problems going on treated. Government probably needs to step in and help on that front as well.

iuguy 11y ago

> A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle"... we try very hard to help the people that want help. Most don't. As someone who's been homeless twice, I appreciate that you don't intend to offend, but this is a very loaded and offensive statement. You appear to work with homeless people and have very little sympathy for their situation, which I can understand but it still makes me a little sad. Becoming homeless is something that can happen to anyone for any number of reasons, and there are different kinds of being homeless. Once you become homeless it becomes harder as time goes on to move back to something permanent. Booze and drugs can sometimes be a simple manner of being able to sleep, or to get away from the situation you're in or how you got there. Choices that seem nonsensical for those who have a warm bed every night make perfect sense when you're worn down by the elements and incredibly poor sleep. After a while the prospect of having to deal with the build up of shit in your life and get shit together becomes a bigger mountain to climb than carrying on when you are, even though your everyday struggle is a mountain of shit in itself. It's not that people choose a lifestyle as such, it's that sometimes it feels less painful to have a permanent known level of shit in your life than to fight all the way back up to get a permanent place to live and risk being knocked back when you're already pretty fragile. Being homeless is the suckiest thing you can probably reasonably imagine.

yuudu_literal 11y ago
These kind of responses have a chilling effect on debate and progress. > this is a very loaded and offensive statement So the fuck what? If you aren't allowed to consider anything offensive, we'd never discuss the difficult issues and make progress on them. > something that can happen to anyone for any number of reasons, and there are different kinds of being homeless Yeah blah blah blah he's not saying 'absolutely every homeless person is like this', he's suggesting that maybe the situation isn't as everyone assumes, which may be the case. But you've shut him down with some 'not every homeless' person bullshit. > It's not that people choose a lifestyle as such He didn't say choose did he? He said they prefer it - I presume he means prefer it to being institutionalised. You seem to suggest that he thinks they prefer it to being a millionaire, which of course they do not. Have you ever heard of the idea of being charitable in how you interpret other people's thoughts? > Being homeless is the suckiest thing you can probably reasonably imagine. Who are you arguing with here? Who disagrees with you? All he said is that some of these homeless people may prefer being on the street to being taken into the care of the state. You are destroying debate!

borkabrak 11y ago

> that doesn't mean we treat them like sub-humans... we just have less patience with the shit they are inevitably going to give us. While I have difficulty agreeing that the homeless generally want to be, it seems worth noting that they're not better than normal people, any more than they are worse - they are normal people, with the same charm and/or asshattery as the rest of us. They're just in a situation most of us (or so I think) find singularly undesirable.

Justsignedup 11y ago

Do you have any idea how taxing it is on the psyche to be homeless? Maybe there are one or two people who chose this lifestyle like developers mooching off Google. But overall this is the exception, not the rule. Reasons many are homeless: - Psychiatric problems. They can't fit in to normal working conditions because they are for lack of a better word crazy. They also don't get the necessary help due to poverty. - Lost a job. In a city like New York where the cost of a studio apartment over an hour away by train can cost 1 grand a month, and minimum wage is still $9 an hour, and food is pricy, and metro isn't exactly cheap either, it can be very easy to fall into the homeless problem if you don't have friends and family helping. I know quite a few people who were fortunate to have had a car and able to get up and leave the state rather than sleep on the street. - Being homeless often means no access to cleanliness which limits your ability to find a job. A self-fulfilling prophecy. - If you are injured to a point where you can't work, it is not very easy to get government disability. My friend took 2 years to get the benefits while she was completely crippled. She was surviving on the generosity of her friends. When the government finally gave her money, she was able to afford a teensy apartment. If she ended up homeless the government wouldn't give her the benefits because you need an official place of residence. - Speaking of a place of residence, a crippled homeless person cannot go to a shelter because they will be preyed upon. And they can't physically fight back. And so they also can't claim benefits because of this. I know one such person.