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This has always stuck with me. When I was a lot younger, in the early 90s I was dating a guy who was pretty high up in Washington state's DSHS. I remember him s
by 1_2__3 10y ago
This has always stuck with me. When I was a lot younger, in the early 90s I was dating a guy who was pretty high up in Washington state's DSHS. I remember him saying that massive cutbacks were forcing all the institutions they had left to close. I asked him naively what the plan was for everyone who was going to be released and he said "Nothing. There is no plan. There're just going to live on the streets."
I was aghast and assumed he had to be wrong somehow. Fast forward ten years and downtown Seattle is full of homeless people. Fast forward to today and multiple cities are basically overrun with them, when the population of them was tiny just 20 years ago.
I hate feeling old and partisan but my personal experience leads me to believe this is the crazy GOP policies of the 80s coming home to roost. It's certainly the most likely explanation given what I know and doesn't require some of the mental backflips necessary for other explanations.
- Nomentatus 10y agoI remember around then being a policy analyst for the Mental Health department of a government and being told (from above) that lots of money would be made available for services in the community once institutions were closed - but knowing perfectly well that it was a bald-faced lie at the time, given which political party was in charge, and their record. As one example, the Social Services manual at the time made it a firing offence to reveal to a client the existence of an available service or entitlement that the client didn't already know about. In print. Or to publish any part of the (quite official) manual.