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I've known some homeless people, and for them, it was mental illness that kept them on the streets. They thought everyone was out to get them or control their l
by dawnerd 10y ago
I've known some homeless people, and for them, it was mental illness that kept them on the streets. They thought everyone was out to get them or control their life. It's a shame that they all want the handouts, but they don't want to follow any rules that come with it.
What I realized is a lot of these people don't want any responsibilities. They're not willing, or able to accept that life sucks for everyone. The governments need to start offering better mental health care that doesn't involve locking people up in hospitals (something an old friend of mine had happen to him, and it caused him to lose trust in everyone).
I don't think giving people hotel rooms is going to solve any problems - if anything it's just enabling it. A better solution is to expand affordable housing and job programs so people start to get back on their feet while ultimately leaving the decisions up to them. Ultimately if they want to live under a bridge that a choice they've made and there's nothing we can really do about it.
- tekklloneer 10y agoYou hit the nail on the head, and then turned it into a condemnation and missed the point and problem entirely. It's mental illness. The reason they won't "follow any rules" is because they're mentally ill. There's no easy answer, and saying "there's an easy answer, but it won't work for them" isn't actually an easy answer. Many of them are very mentally ill, and living under a bridge is not a choice they've made willingly. If someone's too mentally incapable of holding a job, or reading, or clothing themselves, then is it right that we force them under a bridge? Note: I am responding to your comment, not to the practicality of the article's proposed solution.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Kalium 10y agoIt should be remembered that not every mental illness can be readily treated in a manner friendly to outpatient care. Not everyone can be treated in a way that turns them into a "normal", functional, employable adult.
- seanp2k2 10y agoAnd not everyone wants to be or do any of those things. Ability and willingness are different, and homeless can be neither, either, or both. It is a complicated problem and I think pretty much everyone agrees that we aren't doing enough to help.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoIf there is a set of people who want handouts, but aren't willing to follow rules, how likely is it for that set of people to hold down jobs, pay rent, etc? I would wager that there is another set of people, that doesn't intersect with that first set very much, that are just down on their luck, for whom a place to shower and receive mail and handle phone interviews for some stable amount of time would help quite a bit.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 10y agoI think we should all be very careful about extrapolating from our limited experiences with the chronically homeless (if you have a particularly rich experience, for instance as someone who works full-time in advocacy or intervention with them, say so!) and, in particular, with anything that suggests the problems of homelessness can be effectively summarized in a short Hacker News comment. The issue of homelessness is a particularly nutrient-rich substrate for germinations of the Just World Fallacy, particularly among nerds like us, with our affinity for pat narratives.
- mistermann 10y agoSadly, it's not that unreasonable that, with the major changes in societies we've undergone in the last century, there may very well be some "brain type" or something that does not cope well under these new conditions, and this is mother nature doing her unfortunate work to thin the herd.
- tptacek 10y agoThank you, yes, this is exactly the kind of broken nerd logic I was warning about, and you phrased it better.
- drbigglesworth 10y agoHow does this comment not violate the site guidelines re civility? Respectfully Thomas, ever since the election I've read an unbecoming undercurrent in your comments that wasn't there before.
- mistermann 10y agoYou think that is illogical?
- tptacek 10y agoI think it is very compelling nerd logic. Nerd logic usually takes the form of conclusions reached by starting from a set of first principles simple and small enough to be captured in a short message board comment, and restricting itself to a series short, plausible extrapolations from those first principles, stopping when a suitably grand and straightforward explanation for complex phenomenon is reached. We're all in the business of breaking things into their simplest constituent parts. We all react strongly to this Moog Synthesizer logic: all we need is a couple oscillators, plugged together just so, and we can generate any conclusion we need. I don't think we do it deliberately!