7 ms·

In the US, we dont associate homelessness with wealth but rather mental illness. You can get a place to live for 400/mo dollars in the south, and easily 500$/m

In the US, we dont associate homelessness with wealth but rather mental illness. You can get a place to live for 400/mo dollars in the south, and easily 500$/mo with roommates in 'civilization' where there are high paying jobs. None of this is particularly difficult to afford, even for minimum wage workers(who dont really exist). I find this an odd topic. Living isnt hard to do in first world countries where food is plentiful, jobs pay decent, and getting space to live in is cheap.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
I would be very interested in seeing listings for $400/month. If you would be so kind as to give me links to such, I would be grateful and it might even help get a few homeless people off the street.
- mkirklions 8y ago
  https://detroit.craigslist.org/d/apts-housing-for-rent/search/apa https://detroit.craigslist.org/d/apts-housing-for-rent/searc... Its not the south, but its detroit craigslist. I see 2 ads for 500 dollars on the front page, both mention multiple bedrooms. Have you tried craiglist in rural areas?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I'm specifically hoping to find listings at $400. I have found two cities with listings at about $500 or a bit less. I have done internet searches trying to find places at $400 or less and things that look at first blush like they meet the criteria often turn out to actually be something else entirely, like an RV park. Most places do not have apartments at $500 per month. I am willing to talk about how to find a roommate situation in that price range, but most homeless people have special needs, whether medical or mental health, that make them unsuited to a roommate situation or a roommate situation unsuitable for them. I am interested in specific names of cities, websites with good search parameters for finding such and other general advice on how to get it that low. I've done a lot of searching and listings that are substantially below $500 are pretty rare in my experience. I'm happy to be proven wrong. I would like to do a write up on one of my blogs for where you can find truly cheap housing if you have portable income. Thanks to folks who have already replied. Feel free to shoot me an email with such info to avoid cluttering up this discussion too much.
    - rkeene2 8y ago
      I've rented housing in Nicholson, MS for around $200/mo. I worked at John C. Stennis Space Center, MS (a 200 square mile federal city with a huge buffer zone, nearest town is Nicholson, MS). You can find such these listings in local papers, but I don't think much of it is online. It was not the best housing, but a 2 bedroom duplex (only 1 half of the duplex was included, that half had 2 bedrooms, I don't know how many bedrooms were in the other half). Trash, electricity, and water were not included in this price.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Thank you. How recently was this roughly?
- magic_beans 8y ago
  You can definitely rent a room in an apartment in NYC for that much. It's probably not going to be very nice, you'll be far from the city, and you are subject to roommates. https://www.apartments.com/559-vincent-ave-bronx-ny/0kg0371/ https://www.apartments.com/559-vincent-ave-bronx-ny/0kg0371/
- warent 8y ago
  These places are just an internet search away. https://hotpads.com/windsor-apartment-homes-abilene-tx-79601-1kyr6dm/pad https://hotpads.com/windsor-apartment-homes-abilene-tx-79601... https://hotpads.com/sugar-creek-apartments-wichita-ks-67210-svmdj3/pad https://hotpads.com/sugar-creek-apartments-wichita-ks-67210-... https://hotpads.com/newton-village-newton-falls-oh-44444-skzbgw/pad https://hotpads.com/newton-village-newton-falls-oh-44444-skz...
- fein 8y ago
  There are houses in my town going for $50k. For that you get 1600sqft, 2 bed, 2 bath, .36 acre lot in the city with city water and sewer. At the worst you would need to drive an hour to get a big city job, but there's plenty within a 30 min drive. Cleveland is about an hour away, Akron is 30 mins. The locals that are homeless here are not in that situation because of some fixable problem with a city policy. It's unanimously mental illness or drug problems, often both. This is also the county seat, and where the welfare offices are located. 80% of the properties in the city are rentals, and there are multiple charity organizations that provide discount housing. Homelessness is not a problem that will be eliminated until we no longer have people that cannot take care of themselves.
  - ThirdFoundation 8y ago
    Canton?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    If you have no down payment and lousy credit, etc, you can't get a mortgage for $50k. I'm off the street. I applied for a zero down mortgage. It would still require thousands in closing costs, money I don't have. The bank never emailed me. I was unable to log in to my application for some reason to check it's status. I emailed a mortgage officer at the bank. They asked for my phone number. They never called me. I have since decided I don't want a house in the burbs. I want to stay downtown. That's an entirely different process. But I have earned income and decent credit and 6 years of college etc and I am finding it challenging to arrange to purchase real estate. I have had these conversations on HN before with people and it always seems to be an assertion that comes from privilege and cluelessness about what reality is like if your income is low. I have done internet searches for dirt cheap housing across multiple states. The truly dirt cheap stuff frequently says stuff like "No foundation. Will not qualify for financing. Cash buyer only." If I had a few $10k cash laying around, I would handily qualify for a conventional mortgage because that would cover down payment and closing costs. So, no, I can't buy the houses listed at a mere $10k or $20k that theoretically would have super low monthly payments because that just isn't how that works. People who have challenges to taking care of themselves can sometimes manage it if they can arrange decent housing that is super cheap. I'm medically handicapped and I manage to work part time. I am currently in a super cheap rental and off the street. I paid my student loan off last July and was in housing in early September. Student loans are a pox on this nation, impoverishing a great many people. You don't need to be mentally ill or addicted for that to be a huge and problematic burden. I'm not asking you to solve homelessness. I'm just looking to crowdsource a little information. It would be nice if folks refrained from raining on my parade and trying to tell me to not bother to try to do anything about the problem. Thanks.
madaxe_again 8y ago
I suggest you take a look at property and rental prices in the UK, and fuel, and public transport, then reconsider. In the UK, for a single bed flat in an area with jobs you're looking at £1000 a month. You'll earn just over £12,000 a year on minimum wage - and there are plenty of minimum wage workers here - about 7% of working people. The cheapest you will find a house to buy is about £90k - for a ruin, on Orkney. In a city, £200k+ - and you'd better have a 25% deposit if you don't want a penurious rate. Gas is $7.90 a gallon, and that transport cost is reflected in most consumer goods.
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  This is not accurate. I’m within walking distance of central London, and single rooms here are available for about £100/wk, and if you need a full one-bed flat it’ll be around £200/wk. A one-bed flat can be purchased for about 150k in the same area. Property is substantially cheaper almost anywhere else in the country. In Glasgow, for example, £100/wk would cover the rent on a one-bed flat, and 50k can buy you a two-bed flat. 90% mortgages are available with interest rates under 4%, which is hardly punitive. There are many problems with housing costs in the UK, but we don’t do anybody any favours without being honest about the numbers.
  - madaxe_again 8y ago
    You're within walking distance of the City of London and it's £400 a month? I assume tower hamlets? The cheapest room I can find in a flat share is £550 a month - although for the numbers you mention, you could rent an outdoor parking space. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E61224&maxBedrooms=0&minBedrooms=0&minPrice=100&radius=1.0&sortType=1 http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locati... So yes, there are options that are cheaper than I posited, but it's still hardly the $400 a month for a house you see in the US. To buy, for under £150k, all I can see is garages, boats, and sub-decade leaseholds - you can't live in a garage, a boat costs a fortune to maintain and moor, and a six year lease for £150k is a bum deal in my view, and not really ownership. Would love to be proven wrong. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E61224&minPrice=50000&radius=1.0&sortType=1&index=24 http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locat...
pavel_lishin 8y ago
> even for minimum wage workers(who dont really exist). Minimum wage workers don't exist?
- josefresco 8y ago
  Probably a reference to this sort of analysis: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/08/who-makes-minimum-wage/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/08/who-makes-mi...
- mkirklions 8y ago
  I have been trying to hire people for 8$/hr, 10$/hr, 12$/hr, finally I can hire people at 15$/hr. Sure you might have some teens that dont realize they can make more than minimum wage, but thats about it. Ive meet moms that work for under minimum wage if they can watch their kid (work from home). But these are not the homeless.
  - VLM 8y ago
    Its worth putting in context that my last job, a round trip commute into the downtown of the biggest local city regardless of pay rate would be $11.50 and about four hours by public transit or roughly $25 and a bit under 40 minutes in my car outside rush hour. There was a nice condo in walking distance to a former employer similar in quality to my house although a little smaller, that was only three times the purchase price of my house and the HOA fee was twice my current property tax, so yeah, not moving downtown. Also the "crime rate per thousand" stat is about four times higher downtown, I wonder how long my family or I would survive. Of course at $6500/year spent on my commute, a walking distance condo would become profitable after only 61 years of employment. The point being that even full time work is not terribly appealing at $15/hr if I have to work two hours per day just to break even on the travel costs to and from work. Or I could work 87.2 hours per week just to pay the mortgage on the condo using half my income toward housing, assuming no PMI but adding in the cost of HOA. Obviously I get paid a large multiple of that per hour, but I wonder if your labor market situation is similar.
protonimitate 8y ago
It's easy to armchair theorize about how one should be able to pull themselves out of poverty, but it's not quite as simple as you make it sound. Poverty/Homelessness is a cycle. Once you're in it, it becomes exponentially harder to climb out the longer you are in it. Even if you maintain your mental faculties, don't have a drug/alcohol problem, and are willing to work - doesn't mean you will find a job. In cities it is a bit easier to take the first job that comes up, but if you live in a rural area you are subject to geography. Maybe the only job that is hiring is 30 miles away and you can't get there because your car is broken down. >>Living isnt hard to do in first world countries where food is plentiful, jobs pay decent, and getting space to live in is cheap. I don't know your history but this seems like a comment made by someone who has never had to struggle for those things. It is absolute hard for some, just as it comes easily for others. Casting out blanket statements like this does nothing other than turn a blind eye to an issue.
- mkirklions 8y ago
  I dont think you read my post. It was about mental illness.
  - protonimitate 8y ago
    If your comment was about mental illness than you need to be more clear in your writing. Either way, your point doesn't make sense. If you are saying it IS a mental health issue, than pointing out how easy it is to find work and how cheap living is in rural areas has nothing to do with that point. If you are saying it is NOT a mental health issue, then my counter arguments stand. Poverty is a cycle that affects even those with good mental health.
    - DuskStar 8y ago
      I believe his argument is this: 1. Cheap housing exists ($400-500/mo) 2. Minimum wage jobs are readily available in the areas that the cheap housing exists 3. Working a minimum wage job and living in said areas is preferable to being homeless 4. The primary reason someone might choose not to, or be unable to, take that path is mental illness 5. Therefore, homelessness must be a mental health problem There are a number of ways to attack this, but "ease of finding housing and jobs" is actually relevant to his argument - namely, that because such opportunities exist and the homeless are not taking them, there must be something preventing the homeless from taking them (and that something is mental illness)
pavel_lishin 8y ago
> In the US, we dont associate homelessness with wealth but rather mental illness. Probably because when we see a visibly homeless person, they are also very obviously mentally ill. There are lots of "invisible homeless" - in the sense that they don't look homeless, because they're not pushing a shopping cart around, aren't nursing oozing sores, and don't smell like they haven't bathed in two weeks. Last fall, I was walking in my neighborhood and saw a woman asleep in her car. She didn't look like she pulled over to take a nap because she was too tired to drive safely; she looked like she was living in her car. But she looked just like any other person you'd pass in the street. So, you're right, but it doesn't mean that homelessness-due-to-poverty doesn't exist.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  This is actually a really important distinction that I think is lost when people argue about the homeless problem. I think most people who have a problem with the homeless, myself included, are speaking primarily about people living on the street and very obviously either A) addicted to drugs, or B) mentally unwell. Whereas it seems that people who advocate for the homeless are advocating mostly for people who have fallen on hard times and are struggling to get by. FWIW, I don't think people who are anti-homeless really have much of a problem with somebody who is sleeping in their car because they're struggling financially. But we do have a problem with people who live out of their car because drugs and/or mental illness render them unable to participate productively in society.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Ah, the good old deserving/undeserving poor distinction. You say yourself that their "mental illness render them unable to participate productively in society", which is true - so why is this their fault?
    - exolymph 8y ago
      It's not their fault, but their presence is still disruptive and unpleasant.
    - 8y ago
pjc50 8y ago
There are serious problems with actually getting to full-time minimum wage work; there's a lot of controversy over the so-called "zero hour" contracts where people are not guaranteed any minimum amount of shifts, and because the shifts are on-demand it's not compatible with another job. (Having said that, all the example people mentioned in the article are there from forms of "mental health" issues; "mental breakdown"/abused child leaving 'care'/bad divorce) Then there's the huge numbers of families in "temporary" accomodation. It's so bad that even the Grenfell survivors are in this state: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/29/100-households-around-grenfell-still-in-temporary-accommodation https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/29/100-househol...
icantdrive55 8y ago
1. I have a feeling if every person who was mentally ill was cured; the USA would still have stellar rates of homelessness. It's so easy to blame it on mental health, rather than a horrid Social Support system. An exploitive educational system. A society that lost it's compassion? And any sense of Spirituality has been stepped on? I don't know. I just know the homeless people I knew didn't have a mental illness, or very slight impairment. They just weren't foxey enough to compete with the successful ones. 2. Cut throat relatives (I have a greedy sister who legally extorted money from my mother during an estate matter.). 3. Lousy jobs, and very high rent, along with outrageous fees/fines by government. Along with every 4. "A place to live for $400/mo in the south." It's so hard to move after a certain age. 5. Cities, and towns are using that "Break in the Glass whatever" to harass the homeless into moving to a different county, or country. They realized the homeless will move if harrased enough. Move? Yea, many commit suicide. Problem solved? Disgusting policy. I know two homeless men who died this since 2017. They both told me they were being harassed by my county. Hell--I live on Marin County. Your bosses will end up in this "liberal" enclave? Cops are literally combing the hills ticketing them. One of the guy's I knew was Jim Fox. I don't know how he died, but for the last few years; his biggest complain was fines, and random searches. He was one of the key Programmers for Word Star. He was always facinated by technology, even while homeless. In the end, he would ware a Penguin outfit, and beg for money. The people thought it was cute, but he said, "I never thought I would be begging?" You claim living isn't hard in a first world country. Our homeless are feed. But finding a free place to pitch a tent, or take a chit is practically impossible. All the land is taken by the 1 percent, or the government. Finding a bathroom is a whole other ordeal. Sleep in vechicle=ticket. Sleep in park=ticket. Go ahead an sleep on BLM land--fine, but for two weeks? I only know one hellhold in CA that let's people camp on their property. It's in the desert. There's no water. There's no restrooms. If I knew homelessness would be Americas biggest problem--I would have devoted my professional life working for a cure thirty years ago. Ugh--nothing else to say. But it's not just mental illness. I almost think they claim it's such a complex problem because they really don't want to solve the problem? If I was in charge, all empty federal, state, county property would be open to the homeless. And there would be very many public bathrooms. Homelessness is basically a death sentence here. Why make them criminals too? Ugh--
u90g4u8904 8y ago
What US do you live in? The one I live in definitely associates homelessness with poverty, as well as mental health issues. (The mental health issues are usually exacerbated by being homeless in the first place.)

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I would be very interested in seeing listings for $400/month. If you would be so kind as to give me links to such, I would be grateful and it might even help get a few homeless people off the street.

mkirklions 8y ago
https://detroit.craigslist.org/d/apts-housing-for-rent/search/apa https://detroit.craigslist.org/d/apts-housing-for-rent/searc... Its not the south, but its detroit craigslist. I see 2 ads for 500 dollars on the front page, both mention multiple bedrooms. Have you tried craiglist in rural areas?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I'm specifically hoping to find listings at $400. I have found two cities with listings at about $500 or a bit less. I have done internet searches trying to find places at $400 or less and things that look at first blush like they meet the criteria often turn out to actually be something else entirely, like an RV park. Most places do not have apartments at $500 per month. I am willing to talk about how to find a roommate situation in that price range, but most homeless people have special needs, whether medical or mental health, that make them unsuited to a roommate situation or a roommate situation unsuitable for them. I am interested in specific names of cities, websites with good search parameters for finding such and other general advice on how to get it that low. I've done a lot of searching and listings that are substantially below $500 are pretty rare in my experience. I'm happy to be proven wrong. I would like to do a write up on one of my blogs for where you can find truly cheap housing if you have portable income. Thanks to folks who have already replied. Feel free to shoot me an email with such info to avoid cluttering up this discussion too much.
  - rkeene2 8y ago
    I've rented housing in Nicholson, MS for around $200/mo. I worked at John C. Stennis Space Center, MS (a 200 square mile federal city with a huge buffer zone, nearest town is Nicholson, MS). You can find such these listings in local papers, but I don't think much of it is online. It was not the best housing, but a 2 bedroom duplex (only 1 half of the duplex was included, that half had 2 bedrooms, I don't know how many bedrooms were in the other half). Trash, electricity, and water were not included in this price.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      Thank you. How recently was this roughly?
magic_beans 8y ago
You can definitely rent a room in an apartment in NYC for that much. It's probably not going to be very nice, you'll be far from the city, and you are subject to roommates. https://www.apartments.com/559-vincent-ave-bronx-ny/0kg0371/ https://www.apartments.com/559-vincent-ave-bronx-ny/0kg0371/
warent 8y ago
These places are just an internet search away. https://hotpads.com/windsor-apartment-homes-abilene-tx-79601-1kyr6dm/pad https://hotpads.com/windsor-apartment-homes-abilene-tx-79601... https://hotpads.com/sugar-creek-apartments-wichita-ks-67210-svmdj3/pad https://hotpads.com/sugar-creek-apartments-wichita-ks-67210-... https://hotpads.com/newton-village-newton-falls-oh-44444-skzbgw/pad https://hotpads.com/newton-village-newton-falls-oh-44444-skz...
fein 8y ago
There are houses in my town going for $50k. For that you get 1600sqft, 2 bed, 2 bath, .36 acre lot in the city with city water and sewer. At the worst you would need to drive an hour to get a big city job, but there's plenty within a 30 min drive. Cleveland is about an hour away, Akron is 30 mins. The locals that are homeless here are not in that situation because of some fixable problem with a city policy. It's unanimously mental illness or drug problems, often both. This is also the county seat, and where the welfare offices are located. 80% of the properties in the city are rentals, and there are multiple charity organizations that provide discount housing. Homelessness is not a problem that will be eliminated until we no longer have people that cannot take care of themselves.
- ThirdFoundation 8y ago
  Canton?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  If you have no down payment and lousy credit, etc, you can't get a mortgage for $50k. I'm off the street. I applied for a zero down mortgage. It would still require thousands in closing costs, money I don't have. The bank never emailed me. I was unable to log in to my application for some reason to check it's status. I emailed a mortgage officer at the bank. They asked for my phone number. They never called me. I have since decided I don't want a house in the burbs. I want to stay downtown. That's an entirely different process. But I have earned income and decent credit and 6 years of college etc and I am finding it challenging to arrange to purchase real estate. I have had these conversations on HN before with people and it always seems to be an assertion that comes from privilege and cluelessness about what reality is like if your income is low. I have done internet searches for dirt cheap housing across multiple states. The truly dirt cheap stuff frequently says stuff like "No foundation. Will not qualify for financing. Cash buyer only." If I had a few $10k cash laying around, I would handily qualify for a conventional mortgage because that would cover down payment and closing costs. So, no, I can't buy the houses listed at a mere $10k or $20k that theoretically would have super low monthly payments because that just isn't how that works. People who have challenges to taking care of themselves can sometimes manage it if they can arrange decent housing that is super cheap. I'm medically handicapped and I manage to work part time. I am currently in a super cheap rental and off the street. I paid my student loan off last July and was in housing in early September. Student loans are a pox on this nation, impoverishing a great many people. You don't need to be mentally ill or addicted for that to be a huge and problematic burden. I'm not asking you to solve homelessness. I'm just looking to crowdsource a little information. It would be nice if folks refrained from raining on my parade and trying to tell me to not bother to try to do anything about the problem. Thanks.

madaxe_again 8y ago

I suggest you take a look at property and rental prices in the UK, and fuel, and public transport, then reconsider. In the UK, for a single bed flat in an area with jobs you're looking at £1000 a month. You'll earn just over £12,000 a year on minimum wage - and there are plenty of minimum wage workers here - about 7% of working people. The cheapest you will find a house to buy is about £90k - for a ruin, on Orkney. In a city, £200k+ - and you'd better have a 25% deposit if you don't want a penurious rate. Gas is $7.90 a gallon, and that transport cost is reflected in most consumer goods.

matthewmacleod 8y ago
This is not accurate. I’m within walking distance of central London, and single rooms here are available for about £100/wk, and if you need a full one-bed flat it’ll be around £200/wk. A one-bed flat can be purchased for about 150k in the same area. Property is substantially cheaper almost anywhere else in the country. In Glasgow, for example, £100/wk would cover the rent on a one-bed flat, and 50k can buy you a two-bed flat. 90% mortgages are available with interest rates under 4%, which is hardly punitive. There are many problems with housing costs in the UK, but we don’t do anybody any favours without being honest about the numbers.
- madaxe_again 8y ago
  You're within walking distance of the City of London and it's £400 a month? I assume tower hamlets? The cheapest room I can find in a flat share is £550 a month - although for the numbers you mention, you could rent an outdoor parking space. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E61224&maxBedrooms=0&minBedrooms=0&minPrice=100&radius=1.0&sortType=1 http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locati... So yes, there are options that are cheaper than I posited, but it's still hardly the $400 a month for a house you see in the US. To buy, for under £150k, all I can see is garages, boats, and sub-decade leaseholds - you can't live in a garage, a boat costs a fortune to maintain and moor, and a six year lease for £150k is a bum deal in my view, and not really ownership. Would love to be proven wrong. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E61224&minPrice=50000&radius=1.0&sortType=1&index=24 http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locat...

pavel_lishin 8y ago

> even for minimum wage workers(who dont really exist). Minimum wage workers don't exist?

josefresco 8y ago
Probably a reference to this sort of analysis: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/08/who-makes-minimum-wage/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/08/who-makes-mi...
mkirklions 8y ago
I have been trying to hire people for 8$/hr, 10$/hr, 12$/hr, finally I can hire people at 15$/hr. Sure you might have some teens that dont realize they can make more than minimum wage, but thats about it. Ive meet moms that work for under minimum wage if they can watch their kid (work from home). But these are not the homeless.
- VLM 8y ago
  Its worth putting in context that my last job, a round trip commute into the downtown of the biggest local city regardless of pay rate would be $11.50 and about four hours by public transit or roughly $25 and a bit under 40 minutes in my car outside rush hour. There was a nice condo in walking distance to a former employer similar in quality to my house although a little smaller, that was only three times the purchase price of my house and the HOA fee was twice my current property tax, so yeah, not moving downtown. Also the "crime rate per thousand" stat is about four times higher downtown, I wonder how long my family or I would survive. Of course at $6500/year spent on my commute, a walking distance condo would become profitable after only 61 years of employment. The point being that even full time work is not terribly appealing at $15/hr if I have to work two hours per day just to break even on the travel costs to and from work. Or I could work 87.2 hours per week just to pay the mortgage on the condo using half my income toward housing, assuming no PMI but adding in the cost of HOA. Obviously I get paid a large multiple of that per hour, but I wonder if your labor market situation is similar.

protonimitate 8y ago

It's easy to armchair theorize about how one should be able to pull themselves out of poverty, but it's not quite as simple as you make it sound. Poverty/Homelessness is a cycle. Once you're in it, it becomes exponentially harder to climb out the longer you are in it. Even if you maintain your mental faculties, don't have a drug/alcohol problem, and are willing to work - doesn't mean you will find a job. In cities it is a bit easier to take the first job that comes up, but if you live in a rural area you are subject to geography. Maybe the only job that is hiring is 30 miles away and you can't get there because your car is broken down. >>Living isnt hard to do in first world countries where food is plentiful, jobs pay decent, and getting space to live in is cheap. I don't know your history but this seems like a comment made by someone who has never had to struggle for those things. It is absolute hard for some, just as it comes easily for others. Casting out blanket statements like this does nothing other than turn a blind eye to an issue.

mkirklions 8y ago
I dont think you read my post. It was about mental illness.
- protonimitate 8y ago
  If your comment was about mental illness than you need to be more clear in your writing. Either way, your point doesn't make sense. If you are saying it IS a mental health issue, than pointing out how easy it is to find work and how cheap living is in rural areas has nothing to do with that point. If you are saying it is NOT a mental health issue, then my counter arguments stand. Poverty is a cycle that affects even those with good mental health.
  - DuskStar 8y ago
    I believe his argument is this: 1. Cheap housing exists ($400-500/mo) 2. Minimum wage jobs are readily available in the areas that the cheap housing exists 3. Working a minimum wage job and living in said areas is preferable to being homeless 4. The primary reason someone might choose not to, or be unable to, take that path is mental illness 5. Therefore, homelessness must be a mental health problem There are a number of ways to attack this, but "ease of finding housing and jobs" is actually relevant to his argument - namely, that because such opportunities exist and the homeless are not taking them, there must be something preventing the homeless from taking them (and that something is mental illness)

pavel_lishin 8y ago

> In the US, we dont associate homelessness with wealth but rather mental illness. Probably because when we see a visibly homeless person, they are also very obviously mentally ill. There are lots of "invisible homeless" - in the sense that they don't look homeless, because they're not pushing a shopping cart around, aren't nursing oozing sores, and don't smell like they haven't bathed in two weeks. Last fall, I was walking in my neighborhood and saw a woman asleep in her car. She didn't look like she pulled over to take a nap because she was too tired to drive safely; she looked like she was living in her car. But she looked just like any other person you'd pass in the street. So, you're right, but it doesn't mean that homelessness-due-to-poverty doesn't exist.

toasterlovin 8y ago
This is actually a really important distinction that I think is lost when people argue about the homeless problem. I think most people who have a problem with the homeless, myself included, are speaking primarily about people living on the street and very obviously either A) addicted to drugs, or B) mentally unwell. Whereas it seems that people who advocate for the homeless are advocating mostly for people who have fallen on hard times and are struggling to get by. FWIW, I don't think people who are anti-homeless really have much of a problem with somebody who is sleeping in their car because they're struggling financially. But we do have a problem with people who live out of their car because drugs and/or mental illness render them unable to participate productively in society.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Ah, the good old deserving/undeserving poor distinction. You say yourself that their "mental illness render them unable to participate productively in society", which is true - so why is this their fault?
  - exolymph 8y ago
    It's not their fault, but their presence is still disruptive and unpleasant.
  - 8y ago

pjc50 8y ago

There are serious problems with actually getting to full-time minimum wage work; there's a lot of controversy over the so-called "zero hour" contracts where people are not guaranteed any minimum amount of shifts, and because the shifts are on-demand it's not compatible with another job. (Having said that, all the example people mentioned in the article are there from forms of "mental health" issues; "mental breakdown"/abused child leaving 'care'/bad divorce) Then there's the huge numbers of families in "temporary" accomodation. It's so bad that even the Grenfell survivors are in this state: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/29/100-households-around-grenfell-still-in-temporary-accommodation https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/29/100-househol...

icantdrive55 8y ago

1. I have a feeling if every person who was mentally ill was cured; the USA would still have stellar rates of homelessness. It's so easy to blame it on mental health, rather than a horrid Social Support system. An exploitive educational system. A society that lost it's compassion? And any sense of Spirituality has been stepped on? I don't know. I just know the homeless people I knew didn't have a mental illness, or very slight impairment. They just weren't foxey enough to compete with the successful ones. 2. Cut throat relatives (I have a greedy sister who legally extorted money from my mother during an estate matter.). 3. Lousy jobs, and very high rent, along with outrageous fees/fines by government. Along with every 4. "A place to live for $400/mo in the south." It's so hard to move after a certain age. 5. Cities, and towns are using that "Break in the Glass whatever" to harass the homeless into moving to a different county, or country. They realized the homeless will move if harrased enough. Move? Yea, many commit suicide. Problem solved? Disgusting policy. I know two homeless men who died this since 2017. They both told me they were being harassed by my county. Hell--I live on Marin County. Your bosses will end up in this "liberal" enclave? Cops are literally combing the hills ticketing them. One of the guy's I knew was Jim Fox. I don't know how he died, but for the last few years; his biggest complain was fines, and random searches. He was one of the key Programmers for Word Star. He was always facinated by technology, even while homeless. In the end, he would ware a Penguin outfit, and beg for money. The people thought it was cute, but he said, "I never thought I would be begging?" You claim living isn't hard in a first world country. Our homeless are feed. But finding a free place to pitch a tent, or take a chit is practically impossible. All the land is taken by the 1 percent, or the government. Finding a bathroom is a whole other ordeal. Sleep in vechicle=ticket. Sleep in park=ticket. Go ahead an sleep on BLM land--fine, but for two weeks? I only know one hellhold in CA that let's people camp on their property. It's in the desert. There's no water. There's no restrooms. If I knew homelessness would be Americas biggest problem--I would have devoted my professional life working for a cure thirty years ago. Ugh--nothing else to say. But it's not just mental illness. I almost think they claim it's such a complex problem because they really don't want to solve the problem? If I was in charge, all empty federal, state, county property would be open to the homeless. And there would be very many public bathrooms. Homelessness is basically a death sentence here. Why make them criminals too? Ugh--

u90g4u8904 8y ago

What US do you live in? The one I live in definitely associates homelessness with poverty, as well as mental health issues. (The mental health issues are usually exacerbated by being homeless in the first place.)