21 ms·

I Used to Be Homeless

197 points by evo_9 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
yters 8y ago
I wonder if the high minimum wage makes it harder to employ people who tend to be homeless. I ask because I see many young people homeless these days, and it isn't clear why they are homeless.
- fredgrott 8y ago
  it can be even as simple as working for a startup it crashing and burning and resulting in no broadband for years...my case have code out the wazu for android app dev such as this devops setup' https://gitlab.com/fred.grott/droidktdevops https://gitlab.com/fred.grott/droidktdevops and yet yc early stage cos once they find out that I have no phone and getting wifi through mcdonalds refuse to take a llok at code...will be homeless shortly
- josh_p 8y ago
  What do you mean by "high minimum wage"? Federal minimum wage in the United States is still $7.25 which is not enough for someone to live on, especially in a high cost of living area. I don't understand. https://www.minimum-wage.org/federal https://www.minimum-wage.org/federal
  - yters 8y ago
    Well, I'll venture into non-pc territory here, but for some reason immigrants do not seem to have the same homelessness problem, and undocumented workers can work for much less than Americans.
    - povertyworld 8y ago
      That's because undocumented workers live in undocumented housing which is to say illegally subdivided dwellings that people who aren't part of that community will not have access to even if they wanted to live in a fire trap.
      - yters 8y ago
        Yes, it seems that our legislation on wages and housing make it harder for citizens to have a home than it is for undocumented immigrants.
        toomuchtodo 8y ago
        The problem is a lack of social safety nets and a minimum wage not indexed for inflation, not government regulation against squalor.
        yters 8y ago
        It could be both/and instead of either/or. The other angle is we as a society have given up on personal responsibility for each other (i.e. lack of social safety net), and instead look for help from big government, which is notoriously inefficient, corruption prone and scammable.
        toomuchtodo 8y ago
        Government is the framework through which we help each other. My tax money goes in, social services should come out. I will not comment on the unfounded generalization ("notoriously inefficient, corruption prone and scammable"). Government is not perfect, but it is not what you describe.
        kazen44 8y ago
        I would like to ask the parent comment if he thinks there is a more efficient way of managing society and all it's people. Actually, lets start with defining what "efficient" actually means in this context? That the goverment spends little money? That it is able to do it's duties effectively?
    - norealidea 8y ago
      But they usually don't. They work harder, longer, and more efficiently than most americans and there's just as many people paying them fair wages as not. Also, when you have 6 working people in a house, it's a lot easier to justify the costs. How many roommates do you have working full time jobs and contributing to everything in the house?
      - dsajames 8y ago
        They're not more efficient. It's a combination of willingness to work for less, longer hours to make up for it, and pooling resources with extended families that enables them to get by
      - potta_coffee 8y ago
        If you've ever worked in the trades, you'd know this is untrue. In America, $$$ is everything and jobs go to the lowest bidders.
    - srum 8y ago
      It may seem that way, but at least here in the UK homelessness is a huge problem in the immigrant community. It is virtually invisible though. You can get kicked out of the UK as a migrant (even from the EU) for being homeless, so keeping a low profile is essential. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/05/st-mungos-homeless-charity-helped-target-rough-sleepers-to-deport https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/05/st-mungos-ho... https://www.homeless.org.uk/connect/blogs/2018/jan/10/migrant-homelessness-stark-reality-of-destitution-in-england https://www.homeless.org.uk/connect/blogs/2018/jan/10/migran...
    - stevenwoo 8y ago
      When you write immigrants do you mean undocumented immigrants? It's confusing because your next clause is about undocumented workers so we the reader are left unclear. My personal experience just from San Jose is there are a lot of immigrant homeless from southeast Asia, Mexico, and central America, it just depends on what neighborhood one visits. Also, people who actually interviewed homeless, found something different from your speculation (I am assuming you didn't actually talk to a lot of homeless people), this story is just Los Angeles but there were a lot of other news stories and it's obviously an issue because the federal government made undocumented immigrants not eligible for federal aid in 1996. https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/07/14/62582/immigrants-a-largely-hidden-segment-of-la-s-homele/ https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/07/14/62582/immigrants-a-larg...
  - nroets 8y ago
    I recently toured for 5 months in the US on my bicycle. My average cost was $30 per day. That included sightseeing, an airline ticket every month and a bus ticket every month. I used Warm Showers and wild camping, so I rarely paid for housing. $7.25 per hour is enough to live on. You just need to work enough hours, do long commutes and be very, very disciplined in all your purchases.
    - nothrabannosir 8y ago
      Just to get this clear: you’re suggesting a viable alternative to homelessness is… being homeless? Or is wild camping considered a domicile, these days?
    - CompelTechnic 8y ago
      Question for you: at most national/state parks, there are available campsites that cost in the range of $5-$20 per night. These are advertised on their usual websites. These are sites for car camping. However, the couple times I've called, I've asked about primitive camping (aka hike into the woods and camp at the primitive sites), and it turns out that this is free. But the primitive campsites aren't ever discussed on the park websites. Does this match with your experience? Where did you usually camp?
      - nroets 8y ago
        Many state parks in California has a special area for cyclists and hikers at a special rate ($5 - $10) and no reservation is needed. 1 night only in each park. AFAIK, primitive camping for a night or two in a National Forest is free. Just be far enough away from roads and water sources. And many national parks have national forests near them. Also check out freecampsites.net I did camp on private property a few times without permission and only got discovered once: It was at a church and the pastor gave me free breakfast.
    - elliekelly 8y ago
      Even if you live in a state with no income tax, work full-time at your minimum wage job, and live as you describe (which is homeless) your take home pay would only barely cover your $30/day budget. What happens when you get sick and have to miss a shift? Or need to see a doctor? What happens if your job is in New England where it's well below freezing at night for a significant portion of the year? It's disingenuous to perpetuate the notion that "discipline" is all that's needed to survive on minimum wage and it's patently ridiculous to suggest that people on minimum wage ought to "wild camp" in order to make ends meet.
  - francisofascii 8y ago
    "high minimum wage" probably refers to the minimum wage set by high costs cities, that is "higher" then the federal. Seattle , for example, it is $15 for certain types of employment.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >What do you mean by "high minimum wage"? Federal minimum wage in the United States is still $7.25 which is not enough for someone to live on, especially in a high cost of living area. I don't understand. He/she means "higher than the federal minimum". Homelessness problems seem to loosely correlate with cities and states that have higher minimum wage (edit: so do many other things and homelessness problems might actually be correlating with one or several of those).
    - kazen44 8y ago
      this has more to do with the fact that cities are far more favourable for homeless people to live.
- mijamo 8y ago
  The US has more holess problem than all the other developed countries yet has a very low minimum wage. So I would say no.
  - ameister14 8y ago
    That's not true. The rate of homelessness is higher in France, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the UK, etc.
    - kazen44 8y ago
      do you have some sources for this?
      - ameister14 8y ago
        https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pdf https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pd... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homeless-stats-uk-latest-figures-new-study-shelter-housing-a8042841.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homeless-sta... https://web.archive.org/web/20170521060915/http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/images/publications/Infographics/Homelessness_in_Australia_-_updated_Jan_2014.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170521060915/http://www.homele...
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  Read the article and the links he provided, he touches a little upon why people are homeless. There are numerous causes, including mental illness like schizophrenia, financial woes, losing your housing unexpectedly, losing your job unexpectedly, as well as the scourge of drug addiction. Suffice to say, there are MANY reasons, and your pointing to the "high minimum wage" (you call 7.25 per hour high??) is not sensible or squared with my own knowledge. One common myth you're expounding here is that homeless = jobless. The reality is housing is very pricey in many cities, and the minimum wage may actually be too low, not too high. A friend working for a homeless non-profit told me nearly 50% of the homeless in my state have employment.
  - yters 8y ago
    It would certainly be interesting to see exactly the state of homeless people. If they cannot afford housing individually, yet have jobs, why not band together and rent an apartment?
    - nyghtly 8y ago
      Toxic relationships with other homeless people. Desire to avoid the substance use of peers. Inability to gather enough money for the first, last and security deposit. Lack of large apartments that are affordable. Inability to coordinate a group of people who have strict shelter schedules. Discrimination by landlords. (I worked in a shelter clinic for 2 years--these examples come from conversation and experience working with homeless people.)
    - tarboreus 8y ago
      Because the economics frequently don't work out? Because you need a lot of documentation to rent an apartment, and saying you want to move in with a bunch of other homeless people isn't going to make a prospective landlord jump up and down with excitement?
    - rifung 8y ago
      Would they be able to get past a credit check? I'm not saying they wouldn't; I honestly don't know but I imagine these are the kinds of problems that they deal with which are difficult for people who aren't homeless to empathize with.
- nyghtly 8y ago
  "it isn't clear why they are homeless." Domestic violence, for starters. "Among families [typically a single mother and child, which account for 37% of the homeless population] that reported domestic violence in the prior five years, 88 percent reported that it contributed to their homelessness a lot." [1] Other causes include: lack of affordable child care, underemployment, lack of affordable housing, societal neglect of substance use and mental health disorders, inability to find work because of disability or discrimination against those with a criminal record. [2] Naturally, an adequate social safety net would address many of these issues. Moreover, an effective anti-poverty program (such as an expansion of the child tax credit, or the creation of a social wealth fund), could outright eliminate a few as major contributing factors. Finally, did you not read the article? One of Mark Anthony's main points is literally: "Not all homeless people are jobless people" [1] https://www.doorwaysva.org/our-work/education-advocacy/the-facts-about-family-homelessness/ https://www.doorwaysva.org/our-work/education-advocacy/the-f... [2] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-causes-homelessness/ https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-cau...
  - hnal943 8y ago
    you forgot to mention bad decisions as a source of homelessness
- michaelt 8y ago
  Do you believe a person can have negative productivity after their employer takes into account costs of supervision, losses arising from poorly done work, and suchlike? Seems to me you might get some rough sleepers into work by lowering the minimum wage, but so long as there are rough sleepers with untreated mental health and/or addiction problems, you're never going to get them all into work even if there was no minimum wage whatsoever.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  > I ask because I see many young people homeless these days, and it isn't clear why they are homeless. The people you see on the street have drug abuse and mental health issues.
  - Nomentatus 8y ago
    Wow. Sources needed. You're right in some instances. But the U.N. says a third of young people are raised in abusive homes, and escaping that is the main source of youth homelessness according to what I've read.
athenot 8y ago
> People often ask me what they can do to help the homeless and I always say, "Just look around you!" When someone has so little, it doesn't take much to help. You can start by not judging the homeless. This indeed where it all starts. There are so many voices telling us that these people aren't human, but deep down these rationalizations are just trying to cover the uncomfortable emotion we feel when we see a fellow human who is down on luck. Even if it's just $1 or a granola bar we can give, it can make a huge difference in someone's day. After all, the crisis they are going through is objectively more important than my comfort.
- closeparen 8y ago
  This may work when the concentration is low. I’d estimate 15-20 homeless people on the daily walk between my front door in SOMA and the Muni Metro. Often in relatively dense tent encampments. I’d feel pretty weird giving to one and not the others on the same block. Especially since it’s probably the same people day in and day out. It’d take some serious preparation before going out the door to pack enough for everyone, and then stop every few feet to deliver it. At an even lower level than compassion fatigue, it’s logistics. If only there were some sort of professional, centralized entity to collect some of our money and distribute it equitably.
  - harias 8y ago
    Charities? Some waste too much money on administration, but I think the smaller ones are pretty good.
    - dexterdog 8y ago
      True, but few of them waste 1/10 as much as the government and they all work off of willful contributions.
  - cujo 8y ago
    I understand what you're saying, but you're literally saying you feeling awkward is more important than someone having food that day. Sure, it's not the most efficient or probably effective, but giving a little bit does make a difference.
ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
This man escaped homelessness by winning $50,000 on Wheel Of Fortune. It seems like he might have an even more interesting story to tell than what's in this article.
- dstryr 8y ago
  Link to Wheel of Fortune win - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ThuQb2uz34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ThuQb2uz34
- ravenstine 8y ago
  I wonder where he is now, though? $50k these days will only get a person so far.
  - hnal943 8y ago
    If you are still homeless after getting an $50,000 pay day, your problem is not lack of money.
yosefzeev 8y ago
We have experienced a form of homelessness due to gang stalking and intimidation and a lack of the system doing anything about it because of Antisemitism: https://www.scribd.com/document/389212460/Antisemitism-in-Western-Kentucky https://www.scribd.com/document/389212460/Antisemitism-in-We...
- kevinwang 8y ago
  Wow
lisper 8y ago
Ten years ago I spent two years trying to get a homeless person off the streets and made a movie about it: http://graceofgodmovie.com http://graceofgodmovie.com I can vouch for everything this guy says, particularly the "Homeless != uneducated" part. My main subject had a masters degree.
ryanmercer 8y ago
>You can start by not judging the homeless. Instead of flying out the gate accusing people of judging homeless, consider this: Not everywhere is like San Francisco where you have actual homeless people living in tent/tarp hovels on sidewalks in busy neighborhoods, come to downtown Indy and many of the 'homeless' people you find randomly around are absolutely not homeless and simply know they can make much easier money off of people coming/going from bars and restaurants. The bulk of the properly homeless people congregate around the Wheeler Mission shelter downtown, or are in suburban neighborhoods spread out over 368 (three hundred and sixty eight) square miles. If there isn't a big event downtown, or it's a slow bar/restaurant night, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them. If the weather is harsh, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them. A few years back we passed a law (here's an article how it was only partially effective https://www.wthr.com/article/panhandling-law-loophole-lets-roadside-begging-continue https://www.wthr.com/article/panhandling-law-loophole-lets-r... ) here preventing people from pan handling within so many feet of intersections, guess what happened? Within a month they were completely gone, they quickly discovered they couldn't make worthwhile money that far away from the stoplights and stopped. I used to say multiple every day on my commute, now I only ever see the occasional people in suits 'collecting donations' coughbullshitcough for their 'ministry' and they will just pop up at a busy intersection with a long light for an hour or two because they know they have a very short window until they get run off by police. What I'm getting at is, a lot of 'homeless' people get judged because there are a considerable amount that aren't actually homeless in many places. I honestly believe I've NEVER seen a homeless person on the street until I visited San Francisco in June and saw tent/tarp cities and people passed out on the middle of sidewalks in broad daylight. Here in Indy the common homeless you'll see have relatively clean nice clothes, will usually have some sort of phone, look well fed, shoes in great condition, and sometimes are considerably overweight. In San Francisco I saw people in filthy clothes, a few people had shoes that were beyond shot and had clearly been worn well beyond their useful life, that were often pushing being underweight. From my window at the Proper I watched a man sleep on the sidewalk all night, when public transportation started running in the morning he got up and paced the sidewalk wrapped Assasin's Creed-style in his blanket with sneakers that looked nearly as old as I am, that guy was legitimately homeless, the feelings I have for the 'homeless' in Indy are nothing what like I felt for that man, watching him for an hour or so over the course of 12 hours left me in a funk for days, the 'homeless' here you walk by thinking "I bet he makes more in a few hours on the weekend than I will in a day of work". Truly homeless people here aren't a common site in public unlike what I saw in a day and a half in San Francisco. There's absolutely a homeless population here but the bulk of 'homeless' that we see are fakers, so we get conditioned to judge. They're also attempting to pass more legislation to end panhandling downtown as it's still very much a problem https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/14/indy-proposal-seeks-eliminate-panhandling-downtown/1303768002/ https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/14/indy...
wjossey 8y ago
I live in Central LA (near LACMA / La Brea Tar Pits), and share my neighborhood with dozens of homeless. Most of the homeless in my area are what I would deem "regulars", as they tend to sleep / hang out in the same spots day in and day out. I can't tell you how they landed in the situation they are in, but I can safely say that 9/10 appear (and I'm not a doctor, so I can't obviously say for certain) to have at minimum a substance abuse issue, which could be masking or exacerbating a mental health disorder. As such, I choose not to give cash to any of the homeless near my home and only ever give food. Having seen first hand with my father and step-mother the pull of substance abuse, I'd rather know any donation I give helps them sustain life, not speed up their demise. All that being said, I constantly struggle with what is the right moral thing for us to do as a collective society about homelessness. On the one hand, these are cognitive human beings who have a right to self-determination. On the other hand, their self-determination comes with the detriment of my neighborhood. I get harassed a few times a week, mostly just yelling incoherently at me, but sometimes following me. I've had garbage thrown at me as I walked past an encampment. And, I've had my dog come up limping a few times from shattered glass that gets up into her paws. To me, every community in LA, whether you're in the richest part of Beverly Hills, or the Watts housing projects, deserves clean & safe streets. I'm unconvinced that we can have that while we allow people to live arbitrarily on them day in and day out. So, what do we do? [1] We shouldn't send these people to jail, as incarceration is just a revolving door of negative reinforcement. [2] We should detain individuals indefinitely in mental health and substance abuse facilities, and give those facilities the time it takes to start the process of recovery and treatment (we're talking months, not days or even weeks). [3] We should provide indefinite housing & treatment for those who are unable to take that next step and fully re-enter society and take care of themselves. [4] We should repeat the cycle as many times as necessary, given that we know substance abuse relapses are common, and going off medication for those who are mentally ill is a common issue as well. This is expensive. This is complicated. And, in many states, this wouldn't be legal. We've decided that humans have the right to self-determination (which is a good thing), but we've lost sight of the fact that when a human being is in the grips of an addiction or mental health disorder, they have already lost control. The addiction is what is now determining their behavior, not their own personal choice. When I tried to get my father hospitalized in 2015 during the final days of his alcohol addiction, he was unable to walk, rarely ate, and spent the entirety of his day in bed drinking. We were finally able to get the local sheriff to pink slip him (72 hour hold) at a hospital in Columbus, where they kept him alive while the alcohol left his system. It took 10 days for the hospital to choose to release him because of how poor his health was, and their primary recommendation was that he go into a nursing home (for context, he was 61 at the time). While he initially refused, we convinced him to give it a try, but that lasted only 48 hours before he returned back home. Once home, he was able resume his drinking, and was dead 5 months later. Less than three years later, my step-mother would be dead as well from the same issues. In neither case did I, or the state, have any legal authority to get him into real rehabilitative care. Lawyers reaffirmed that even given his diminishing cognitive state, Ohio's laws made it clear that he had a right to drink himself to drink himself to death. I contend that his addiction was the one making that choice, not him, and that our laws are enabling addiction, rather than defending independence. While my father was not homeless, that was just a byproduct of his early good fortune. If he had come from lessor means, he would have been on the street for years and potentially died more rapidly. In both cases, the state would have (and did) protected his right to be homeless and drink himself to death. I recognize how reasonable people can disagree heavily on this topic. I recognize how I very well may be wrong (massively wrong) in my vantage point. However, I can tell you that whatever we are doing as a society right now is not working, and it feels worth trying something new at this point.
dumbfoundded 8y ago
In San Francisco, nearly $40K is spent per homeless person. How much money do we need to spend and how should we spend it?
- bluetidepro 8y ago
  Where did you get that stat? Not debating it, just curious about this data and what else it has.
  - dumbfoundded 8y ago
    The budget is ~$270M: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-increase-for-San-Francisco-12902707.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-incre... The number of homeless people is around 7,500. This also doesn't include medical emergency services, private organizations, federal & state programs and many other sources of money. This is just the budget for the city program.
- perfmode 8y ago
  does it not dawn on you that perhaps this is the wrong way to think about solving the problem?
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    I think it's great to hear this number, as long as it's accurate. A lot of regular folks probably think we spend very little on homeless people, so they think anything we do to help will be a net cost and more taxes. Getting people aware that we spend money either way is very helpful because then you can make arguments about how to save money. If we spend 40K right now, then how much can we save if we spend $10K a year instead in free housing. I.e. what SLC did.
- wolfgang42 8y ago
  Measuring "dollars per homeless person" is, IMO, worse than useless. The problem is that the better you do the job, the worse the number looks. If you manage to house all but 1 person, suddenly it rockets into millions of dollars per remaining homeless person!
ravenstine 8y ago
> Homeless people are not going to kill you I understand a lot of the insight this person has provided us about homelessness, but I beg to differ on this point, and I'm sure it's location dependent. I currently live in Santa Monica, and the vast majority of the homeless here clearly either have substance abuse problems or mental illness(I'm sure it's often both at once). I've had countless instances where a homeless person will step in front of my car, blocking my way into an intersection or parking lot, and try to intimidate me by shouting obscenities. The other day, I had to tell off a homeless man who was standing at an outdoor cafe and rambling on about how "women are whores" and other wisdom in front of women and children(not that men should be exposed to that either). Yesterday I witnessed a homeless man urinating in the middle of the street in broad daylight. When I was living in Pasadena earlier this year, I worked next to a homeless shelter. For the most part it was safe, but there were days where we were warned to be on the lookout for certain characters who were harassing people on their way to work. There was the occasional rape and the occasional stab, although it was almost always homeless-on-homeless. Down the street there was a vacant restaurant where a homeless couple sneaked in and lived for some time, until it turned into a murder/suicide and they had to put up extra fencing to prevent such incidents from happening again. One of the biggest reasons that people drive instead of take the train in LA, besides the fact that our civic planning has a history of sucking, is the fact that the homeless make many train rides very unpleasant. I don't have enough fingers on my hands to count the number of times I witnessed homeless individuals, sometimes barely clothed, out right screaming and threatening random passengers. In my experience, this sort of thing happened at least a few times a week. It happened enough that there came times where I thought "fuck this shit" and decided to start driving to work again. The homeless aren't viewed as dangerous for no reason. Even if they aren't technically dangerous, many of them are legitimately scary. There are places where the homeless are mostly people down on their luck or living that way by choice; I grew up in a town where the homeless are that sort of benign. But in cities like LA, the word "homeless" has an almost completely different definition. Sorry, but I'm not about to throw out my pepper spray. ADDENDUM: The reason I bring up relatively harmless behavior like the public urination is that when the average person sees that, they're going to think in the back of their minds that "If he's going to do that so brazenly, what else is he capable of?" Add to that the perception that the police are ineffective against the homeless, which they are, and even small misdemeanors can seem as signs of danger to the non-homeless.
megaman8 8y ago
To live in, In SF. your choices are a 1.5 million dollar condo or a 50$ dollar tent. Seriously people, we need to allow for more choices than that. I'm sure builders and entrepreneurs would line up around the block to build solutions that are cheaper and more cost effective, but you first have to make it legal (get rid of the mountains of regulations and zoning headaches that make this problem so insurmountable), without that, will never make any progress on this problem. Why do you think the internet took off as quickly as it did? or the facebook app store in 2008, etc. It's because there were no regulations (or almost none). This allowed thinks to take off very quickly. Let's designate a section of several cities, say a 1 square mile section as regulation free, with an absolute minimum of zoning requirements, and almost 0 regulations. Then let the market have at it, see what gets built. Sure, maybe you don't like what happens in version 1. But, if we never iterate on this problem, we'll never make progress on it and in a 100 years we'll still be talking about this same self imposed problem which is completely solvable.
- codydh 8y ago
  The cost of your "regulation free zone" will likely be measured in human lives. Does that seem like an acceptable risk?
  - gtCameron 8y ago
    The cost of the current homeless situation can also be measured in human lives
  - megaman8 8y ago
    That's just in the beginning. Not every regulation saves lives - some are just on the books to protect rent seeking entities and lobbyists, and some are just there because they've always been there.
    - mwfunk 8y ago
      This is true of course, but it's always a giant red flag for me whenever someone refers to the vague concept of "regulations" as being the problem, vs. complaining about specific regulations. Complaining about the very concept of regulations seems really naive, like precoscious high schooler who just had his mind blown by Atlas Shrugged naive. The current POTUS made a campaign promise that he would only allow a regulation to be added if two more were eliminated. This is asinine. If there are unnecessary regulations, get rid of them. Get rid of them because they're unnecessary or counterproductive, not because they fall into a category of legislation referred to as "regulations". Losing a regulation isn't an inherently good thing any more than gaining one is an inherently bad thing. The only thing that matters is whether or not it's a net positive, and that's specific to each regulation. It's like saying, "there's too many laws! We need to get rid of some laws!", and proceeding to randomly choose laws to get rid of until numberOfLaws <= totallyArbitraryMaximumLawCountThatSomeoneMadeUp.
deckar01 8y ago
> I was overqualified for most minimum wage jobs. The author lost me here. I have taken jobs way below my expectations to make ends meet. I got startlingly close to not making rent, but I took a job that barely got me by and rode it out until I was able to move to a company that understood the value of my experience.
- sam0x17 8y ago
  People are often turned away for being overqualified at such jobs.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    So go through a temp agency. They don't care how over-qualified you are. You're just another body on their call list. If they don't like you they won't call you with any work. Edit: I worked for temp agencies for through college. At the time I probably would have been more useful to them automating some parts of their workflow. They stored everything in spreadsheets but manually copy pasting everything around for their workflow. I kept my mouth shut and did the work they asked me to do.
    - Aloha 8y ago
      Even temp agencies will not take you for the same reasons often - you're too qualified for an entry level role, but no one will hire you because of a lack of recent experience - the min wage, and temp places dont want you, because they assume you will leave as soon as you find a better role.
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        I've worked for temp agencies. That is absolutely not the case. They don't care if you're over-qualified. If they think you're going to leave they're just not going to give you any temp to hire or long term roles. They'll still call you up when the convention center calls them up asking for bodies to serve food and sweep floors. If you are over-qualified then working for a temp can give you access to potential employers who (after you've shown them you're not a deadbeat while working as a temp) you can then approach about a direct hire position in something you're qualified for if they happen to have one available.
TallGuyShort 8y ago
Question for the author or anyone else with similar background: I've previously done a lot of work with homeless and poverty-stricken people, and one of my biggest remaining difficulties is people who won't accept help, or are offended when people only do little things to help. Part of that certainly could come from any drug or mental issue that contributed to their homelessness in the first place, but I'm sure it's also unavoidable when you're an outcast from much of society for so long even without those problems. So my question is this: What can people who work at food pantries, distribution centers or just strangers do to come off as less condescending and have their help be more readily accepted?
- nyghtly 8y ago
  When you say that they won't accept help, what do you mean? What did you try to offer that they didn't accept?
  - technobabble 8y ago
    I can't speek for the parent poster. I don't feel comfortable giving money, so instead I offer to get them something at a local restaraunt, or try to give them some of my food if I have it on me. In some (but not all) circumstances, I've been told to "f!ck off" and "suck a c!ck" becaue they want money, presumably for drugs/alcohol/etc. Again this is my experience. Your mileage may vary.
    - elliekelly 8y ago
      I don't give money to homeless people for the same reason. The occasional rude responses can absolutely be frustrating but I think it helps (and is very difficult) to try to put yourself in the shoes of someone suffering from addiction. There's a homeless man in my neighborhood named Kevin that I chat with most mornings when I walk my dog. He goes to a methadone clinic to help treat his addiction. I usually see him when I'm walking towards the coffee shop, ask him for his coffee/breakfast order, and he hangs out with my dog while I go inside. Most days he's a nice, personable, friendly guy who tells me "dad jokes" and has a bag of dog treats for his neighborhood friends. Sober Kevin is appreciative and would never dream of asking me for a dime. Some days he's coming off a bender and looking for money to buy more drugs and is kind of a dick. A lot of the benders coincide with him being unable to get to the clinic for one reason or another. Occasionally sober Kevin will apologize for the way he spoke to me when he was single mindedly focused on his next high. He once offered the analogy of when you really need to pee. The absolute only thing your brain is capable of focusing on is finding a bathroom. You're urgently trying to solve this one, desperate problem. You're walking around asking and asking where the bathroom is and people keep saying "I can't help you find the bathroom, but here's a vending machine." It's by no means an excuse for someone to be rude to a stranger trying to help but it certainly helps me have a little bit more compassion for those dealing with addiction. I think it's frustrating for them, too.
jl2718 8y ago
I was homeless in Silicon Valley many years ago. There were a lot of ‘us’. We stayed hidden in the woods, bathed often, and dressed impeccably in public. Some had jobs. Some were grad students. Several couples. There were no drugs, alcohol, beggars, or thieves out there. $5/day was enough. It was hard physically, but very spiritual, financially free, and altogether one of the best times of my life. Today it’s too dangerous. There are way too many criminals and addicts on the street. There’s nothing worse for a good person who has fallen on hard times than a policy that is lenient on crimes, drug use, public consumption, and public nuisance of the homeless. You can walk away and lock the door. They can’t. Just imagine yourself out there being victimized by bad people only because rich people feel guilty for them. For them. The one that just mugged you for their next high, or worse. Guilt for them. Good luck, kid.
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  This is so on point. I can not stand how little the police does to address the entirely open air drug sales and use, indecent exposure, and plethora of public safety issues (shattered glass bottles, prostitution, trespassing, selling stolen goods like bicycles) because the perpetrators are homeless. I’m not saying punish homelessness, I’m saying enforce existing laws regardless of who the perps are.
  - post_break 8y ago
    Do you think it has to do with generating income? Like if someone is homeless the odds of getting them to pay a fine is next to nothing. But snag a guy walking out of a bar pissing on the wall you're going to get some money out of it.
    - smileysteve 8y ago
      Probably as much to do with the revolving door as it does with generating income. If you have a home / money, a fine or brief jail time are punishment. If you don't have home / money, you won't pay a fine, your time and lack of freedom won't solve an addiction brought on by being desolate. So, a month later, a cop has wasted hours, a judge has wasted hours, and the "criminal" still can't pay the fine, is still addicted, and will waste that same time again. tldr; A fine of $50 for someone who doesn't have money to eat is in ways as inconceivable as a $1bln fine to someone in the middle class.
troydavis 8y ago
For anyone who wants to better understand homelessness, check out Seattle’s 2018 survey: http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FINALDRAFT-COUNTUSIN2018REPORT-5.25.18.pdf http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FINALDRAFT-C... The first section is a one-night count. Scroll past it to page 23 for the the survey results, which are incredibly informative. n=1056, margin of error +- 2.9%.
milesvp 8y ago
This article reminded me of a childhood experience of mine. At some point when I was in high school my dad brought home a homeless man to live in our house. At first it seemed weird, but I understood that we were in a position to help so I got over the feeling that our family was different for helping someone from the street. Then it started to feel weird that this guy completely bunkered down in his room. The few times I was able to peer through his door, it totally looked like a horder’s nest. He kept all kinds of things that seemed of little value and layed on top of it all. And there was definitely a stink of body odor that wafted out whenever the door opened. Mostly he stayed in his room and watched TV day and night. Which made sense, he was on disability for back issues, so eventually I got over the weirdness that someone would choose to lock himself and in his room 24/7. At some point though, after several years of this he seemed to really be getting better. He was always friendly, and he’d smile and say a few words if I saw him, but he seemed to be getting genuinely happier and psychologically better. The smell in the room started to subside, I think my folks had a talk with him about showering as terms of staying at one point, but it was still a steady increase. And he seemed to be getting out more and more, and I was more likely to see him outside than just in the hall. I say all this, because it somehow feels pertinent in this forum. It’s also not something you hear a lot. There is a real healing that can often only be possible with long term stability. I often wonder how I’d cope if I was homeless, who I’d turn to. I’m not sure I have as many multi year options as I’d like. I also wonder if I’d be able to tolerate someone living in my house for as long as my folks did.
- nouveaux 8y ago
  It would be great if you and your family elaborate more on this experience through an AMA and/or blog post?
  - darpa_escapee 8y ago
    Sharing an experience like this would definitely help bring awareness and empathy to the cause. OP's parents and the man they hosted should consider if reaching out to someone about their story would be something they'd like to do.
- 8y ago
throw-far-away 8y ago
"Homeless" for 9 years in the Valley. AMA.

197 points by evo_9 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

I wonder if the high minimum wage makes it harder to employ people who tend to be homeless. I ask because I see many young people homeless these days, and it isn't clear why they are homeless.

fredgrott 8y ago
it can be even as simple as working for a startup it crashing and burning and resulting in no broadband for years...my case have code out the wazu for android app dev such as this devops setup' https://gitlab.com/fred.grott/droidktdevops https://gitlab.com/fred.grott/droidktdevops and yet yc early stage cos once they find out that I have no phone and getting wifi through mcdonalds refuse to take a llok at code...will be homeless shortly
josh_p 8y ago
What do you mean by "high minimum wage"? Federal minimum wage in the United States is still $7.25 which is not enough for someone to live on, especially in a high cost of living area. I don't understand. https://www.minimum-wage.org/federal https://www.minimum-wage.org/federal
- yters 8y ago
  Well, I'll venture into non-pc territory here, but for some reason immigrants do not seem to have the same homelessness problem, and undocumented workers can work for much less than Americans.
  - povertyworld 8y ago
    That's because undocumented workers live in undocumented housing which is to say illegally subdivided dwellings that people who aren't part of that community will not have access to even if they wanted to live in a fire trap.
    - yters 8y ago
      Yes, it seems that our legislation on wages and housing make it harder for citizens to have a home than it is for undocumented immigrants.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        The problem is a lack of social safety nets and a minimum wage not indexed for inflation, not government regulation against squalor.
        yters 8y ago
        It could be both/and instead of either/or. The other angle is we as a society have given up on personal responsibility for each other (i.e. lack of social safety net), and instead look for help from big government, which is notoriously inefficient, corruption prone and scammable.
        toomuchtodo 8y ago
        Government is the framework through which we help each other. My tax money goes in, social services should come out. I will not comment on the unfounded generalization ("notoriously inefficient, corruption prone and scammable"). Government is not perfect, but it is not what you describe.
        kazen44 8y ago
        I would like to ask the parent comment if he thinks there is a more efficient way of managing society and all it's people. Actually, lets start with defining what "efficient" actually means in this context? That the goverment spends little money? That it is able to do it's duties effectively?
  - norealidea 8y ago
    But they usually don't. They work harder, longer, and more efficiently than most americans and there's just as many people paying them fair wages as not. Also, when you have 6 working people in a house, it's a lot easier to justify the costs. How many roommates do you have working full time jobs and contributing to everything in the house?
    - dsajames 8y ago
      They're not more efficient. It's a combination of willingness to work for less, longer hours to make up for it, and pooling resources with extended families that enables them to get by
    - potta_coffee 8y ago
      If you've ever worked in the trades, you'd know this is untrue. In America, $$$ is everything and jobs go to the lowest bidders.
  - srum 8y ago
    It may seem that way, but at least here in the UK homelessness is a huge problem in the immigrant community. It is virtually invisible though. You can get kicked out of the UK as a migrant (even from the EU) for being homeless, so keeping a low profile is essential. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/05/st-mungos-homeless-charity-helped-target-rough-sleepers-to-deport https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/05/st-mungos-ho... https://www.homeless.org.uk/connect/blogs/2018/jan/10/migrant-homelessness-stark-reality-of-destitution-in-england https://www.homeless.org.uk/connect/blogs/2018/jan/10/migran...
  - stevenwoo 8y ago
    When you write immigrants do you mean undocumented immigrants? It's confusing because your next clause is about undocumented workers so we the reader are left unclear. My personal experience just from San Jose is there are a lot of immigrant homeless from southeast Asia, Mexico, and central America, it just depends on what neighborhood one visits. Also, people who actually interviewed homeless, found something different from your speculation (I am assuming you didn't actually talk to a lot of homeless people), this story is just Los Angeles but there were a lot of other news stories and it's obviously an issue because the federal government made undocumented immigrants not eligible for federal aid in 1996. https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/07/14/62582/immigrants-a-largely-hidden-segment-of-la-s-homele/ https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/07/14/62582/immigrants-a-larg...
- nroets 8y ago
  I recently toured for 5 months in the US on my bicycle. My average cost was $30 per day. That included sightseeing, an airline ticket every month and a bus ticket every month. I used Warm Showers and wild camping, so I rarely paid for housing. $7.25 per hour is enough to live on. You just need to work enough hours, do long commutes and be very, very disciplined in all your purchases.
  - nothrabannosir 8y ago
    Just to get this clear: you’re suggesting a viable alternative to homelessness is… being homeless? Or is wild camping considered a domicile, these days?
  - CompelTechnic 8y ago
    Question for you: at most national/state parks, there are available campsites that cost in the range of $5-$20 per night. These are advertised on their usual websites. These are sites for car camping. However, the couple times I've called, I've asked about primitive camping (aka hike into the woods and camp at the primitive sites), and it turns out that this is free. But the primitive campsites aren't ever discussed on the park websites. Does this match with your experience? Where did you usually camp?
    - nroets 8y ago
      Many state parks in California has a special area for cyclists and hikers at a special rate ($5 - $10) and no reservation is needed. 1 night only in each park. AFAIK, primitive camping for a night or two in a National Forest is free. Just be far enough away from roads and water sources. And many national parks have national forests near them. Also check out freecampsites.net I did camp on private property a few times without permission and only got discovered once: It was at a church and the pastor gave me free breakfast.
  - elliekelly 8y ago
    Even if you live in a state with no income tax, work full-time at your minimum wage job, and live as you describe (which is homeless) your take home pay would only barely cover your $30/day budget. What happens when you get sick and have to miss a shift? Or need to see a doctor? What happens if your job is in New England where it's well below freezing at night for a significant portion of the year? It's disingenuous to perpetuate the notion that "discipline" is all that's needed to survive on minimum wage and it's patently ridiculous to suggest that people on minimum wage ought to "wild camp" in order to make ends meet.
- francisofascii 8y ago
  "high minimum wage" probably refers to the minimum wage set by high costs cities, that is "higher" then the federal. Seattle , for example, it is $15 for certain types of employment.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >What do you mean by "high minimum wage"? Federal minimum wage in the United States is still $7.25 which is not enough for someone to live on, especially in a high cost of living area. I don't understand. He/she means "higher than the federal minimum". Homelessness problems seem to loosely correlate with cities and states that have higher minimum wage (edit: so do many other things and homelessness problems might actually be correlating with one or several of those).
  - kazen44 8y ago
    this has more to do with the fact that cities are far more favourable for homeless people to live.
mijamo 8y ago
The US has more holess problem than all the other developed countries yet has a very low minimum wage. So I would say no.
- ameister14 8y ago
  That's not true. The rate of homelessness is higher in France, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the UK, etc.
  - kazen44 8y ago
    do you have some sources for this?
    - ameister14 8y ago
      https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pdf https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pd... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homeless-stats-uk-latest-figures-new-study-shelter-housing-a8042841.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homeless-sta... https://web.archive.org/web/20170521060915/http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/images/publications/Infographics/Homelessness_in_Australia_-_updated_Jan_2014.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170521060915/http://www.homele...
WhompingWindows 8y ago
Read the article and the links he provided, he touches a little upon why people are homeless. There are numerous causes, including mental illness like schizophrenia, financial woes, losing your housing unexpectedly, losing your job unexpectedly, as well as the scourge of drug addiction. Suffice to say, there are MANY reasons, and your pointing to the "high minimum wage" (you call 7.25 per hour high??) is not sensible or squared with my own knowledge. One common myth you're expounding here is that homeless = jobless. The reality is housing is very pricey in many cities, and the minimum wage may actually be too low, not too high. A friend working for a homeless non-profit told me nearly 50% of the homeless in my state have employment.
- yters 8y ago
  It would certainly be interesting to see exactly the state of homeless people. If they cannot afford housing individually, yet have jobs, why not band together and rent an apartment?
  - nyghtly 8y ago
    Toxic relationships with other homeless people. Desire to avoid the substance use of peers. Inability to gather enough money for the first, last and security deposit. Lack of large apartments that are affordable. Inability to coordinate a group of people who have strict shelter schedules. Discrimination by landlords. (I worked in a shelter clinic for 2 years--these examples come from conversation and experience working with homeless people.)
  - tarboreus 8y ago
    Because the economics frequently don't work out? Because you need a lot of documentation to rent an apartment, and saying you want to move in with a bunch of other homeless people isn't going to make a prospective landlord jump up and down with excitement?
  - rifung 8y ago
    Would they be able to get past a credit check? I'm not saying they wouldn't; I honestly don't know but I imagine these are the kinds of problems that they deal with which are difficult for people who aren't homeless to empathize with.
nyghtly 8y ago
"it isn't clear why they are homeless." Domestic violence, for starters. "Among families [typically a single mother and child, which account for 37% of the homeless population] that reported domestic violence in the prior five years, 88 percent reported that it contributed to their homelessness a lot." [1] Other causes include: lack of affordable child care, underemployment, lack of affordable housing, societal neglect of substance use and mental health disorders, inability to find work because of disability or discrimination against those with a criminal record. [2] Naturally, an adequate social safety net would address many of these issues. Moreover, an effective anti-poverty program (such as an expansion of the child tax credit, or the creation of a social wealth fund), could outright eliminate a few as major contributing factors. Finally, did you not read the article? One of Mark Anthony's main points is literally: "Not all homeless people are jobless people" [1] https://www.doorwaysva.org/our-work/education-advocacy/the-facts-about-family-homelessness/ https://www.doorwaysva.org/our-work/education-advocacy/the-f... [2] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-causes-homelessness/ https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-cau...
- hnal943 8y ago
  you forgot to mention bad decisions as a source of homelessness
michaelt 8y ago
Do you believe a person can have negative productivity after their employer takes into account costs of supervision, losses arising from poorly done work, and suchlike? Seems to me you might get some rough sleepers into work by lowering the minimum wage, but so long as there are rough sleepers with untreated mental health and/or addiction problems, you're never going to get them all into work even if there was no minimum wage whatsoever.
toasterlovin 8y ago
> I ask because I see many young people homeless these days, and it isn't clear why they are homeless. The people you see on the street have drug abuse and mental health issues.
- Nomentatus 8y ago
  Wow. Sources needed. You're right in some instances. But the U.N. says a third of young people are raised in abusive homes, and escaping that is the main source of youth homelessness according to what I've read.

athenot 8y ago

> People often ask me what they can do to help the homeless and I always say, "Just look around you!" When someone has so little, it doesn't take much to help. You can start by not judging the homeless. This indeed where it all starts. There are so many voices telling us that these people aren't human, but deep down these rationalizations are just trying to cover the uncomfortable emotion we feel when we see a fellow human who is down on luck. Even if it's just $1 or a granola bar we can give, it can make a huge difference in someone's day. After all, the crisis they are going through is objectively more important than my comfort.

closeparen 8y ago
This may work when the concentration is low. I’d estimate 15-20 homeless people on the daily walk between my front door in SOMA and the Muni Metro. Often in relatively dense tent encampments. I’d feel pretty weird giving to one and not the others on the same block. Especially since it’s probably the same people day in and day out. It’d take some serious preparation before going out the door to pack enough for everyone, and then stop every few feet to deliver it. At an even lower level than compassion fatigue, it’s logistics. If only there were some sort of professional, centralized entity to collect some of our money and distribute it equitably.
- harias 8y ago
  Charities? Some waste too much money on administration, but I think the smaller ones are pretty good.
  - dexterdog 8y ago
    True, but few of them waste 1/10 as much as the government and they all work off of willful contributions.
- cujo 8y ago
  I understand what you're saying, but you're literally saying you feeling awkward is more important than someone having food that day. Sure, it's not the most efficient or probably effective, but giving a little bit does make a difference.

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago

This man escaped homelessness by winning $50,000 on Wheel Of Fortune. It seems like he might have an even more interesting story to tell than what's in this article.

dstryr 8y ago
Link to Wheel of Fortune win - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ThuQb2uz34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ThuQb2uz34
ravenstine 8y ago
I wonder where he is now, though? $50k these days will only get a person so far.
- hnal943 8y ago
  If you are still homeless after getting an $50,000 pay day, your problem is not lack of money.

yosefzeev 8y ago

We have experienced a form of homelessness due to gang stalking and intimidation and a lack of the system doing anything about it because of Antisemitism: https://www.scribd.com/document/389212460/Antisemitism-in-Western-Kentucky https://www.scribd.com/document/389212460/Antisemitism-in-We...

kevinwang 8y ago
Wow

lisper 8y ago

Ten years ago I spent two years trying to get a homeless person off the streets and made a movie about it: http://graceofgodmovie.com http://graceofgodmovie.com I can vouch for everything this guy says, particularly the "Homeless != uneducated" part. My main subject had a masters degree.

ryanmercer 8y ago

>You can start by not judging the homeless. Instead of flying out the gate accusing people of judging homeless, consider this: Not everywhere is like San Francisco where you have actual homeless people living in tent/tarp hovels on sidewalks in busy neighborhoods, come to downtown Indy and many of the 'homeless' people you find randomly around are absolutely not homeless and simply know they can make much easier money off of people coming/going from bars and restaurants. The bulk of the properly homeless people congregate around the Wheeler Mission shelter downtown, or are in suburban neighborhoods spread out over 368 (three hundred and sixty eight) square miles. If there isn't a big event downtown, or it's a slow bar/restaurant night, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them. If the weather is harsh, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them. A few years back we passed a law (here's an article how it was only partially effective https://www.wthr.com/article/panhandling-law-loophole-lets-roadside-begging-continue https://www.wthr.com/article/panhandling-law-loophole-lets-r... ) here preventing people from pan handling within so many feet of intersections, guess what happened? Within a month they were completely gone, they quickly discovered they couldn't make worthwhile money that far away from the stoplights and stopped. I used to say multiple every day on my commute, now I only ever see the occasional people in suits 'collecting donations' coughbullshitcough for their 'ministry' and they will just pop up at a busy intersection with a long light for an hour or two because they know they have a very short window until they get run off by police. What I'm getting at is, a lot of 'homeless' people get judged because there are a considerable amount that aren't actually homeless in many places. I honestly believe I've NEVER seen a homeless person on the street until I visited San Francisco in June and saw tent/tarp cities and people passed out on the middle of sidewalks in broad daylight. Here in Indy the common homeless you'll see have relatively clean nice clothes, will usually have some sort of phone, look well fed, shoes in great condition, and sometimes are considerably overweight. In San Francisco I saw people in filthy clothes, a few people had shoes that were beyond shot and had clearly been worn well beyond their useful life, that were often pushing being underweight. From my window at the Proper I watched a man sleep on the sidewalk all night, when public transportation started running in the morning he got up and paced the sidewalk wrapped Assasin's Creed-style in his blanket with sneakers that looked nearly as old as I am, that guy was legitimately homeless, the feelings I have for the 'homeless' in Indy are nothing what like I felt for that man, watching him for an hour or so over the course of 12 hours left me in a funk for days, the 'homeless' here you walk by thinking "I bet he makes more in a few hours on the weekend than I will in a day of work". Truly homeless people here aren't a common site in public unlike what I saw in a day and a half in San Francisco. There's absolutely a homeless population here but the bulk of 'homeless' that we see are fakers, so we get conditioned to judge. They're also attempting to pass more legislation to end panhandling downtown as it's still very much a problem https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/14/indy-proposal-seeks-eliminate-panhandling-downtown/1303768002/ https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/14/indy...

wjossey 8y ago

I live in Central LA (near LACMA / La Brea Tar Pits), and share my neighborhood with dozens of homeless. Most of the homeless in my area are what I would deem "regulars", as they tend to sleep / hang out in the same spots day in and day out. I can't tell you how they landed in the situation they are in, but I can safely say that 9/10 appear (and I'm not a doctor, so I can't obviously say for certain) to have at minimum a substance abuse issue, which could be masking or exacerbating a mental health disorder. As such, I choose not to give cash to any of the homeless near my home and only ever give food. Having seen first hand with my father and step-mother the pull of substance abuse, I'd rather know any donation I give helps them sustain life, not speed up their demise. All that being said, I constantly struggle with what is the right moral thing for us to do as a collective society about homelessness. On the one hand, these are cognitive human beings who have a right to self-determination. On the other hand, their self-determination comes with the detriment of my neighborhood. I get harassed a few times a week, mostly just yelling incoherently at me, but sometimes following me. I've had garbage thrown at me as I walked past an encampment. And, I've had my dog come up limping a few times from shattered glass that gets up into her paws. To me, every community in LA, whether you're in the richest part of Beverly Hills, or the Watts housing projects, deserves clean & safe streets. I'm unconvinced that we can have that while we allow people to live arbitrarily on them day in and day out. So, what do we do? [1] We shouldn't send these people to jail, as incarceration is just a revolving door of negative reinforcement. [2] We should detain individuals indefinitely in mental health and substance abuse facilities, and give those facilities the time it takes to start the process of recovery and treatment (we're talking months, not days or even weeks). [3] We should provide indefinite housing & treatment for those who are unable to take that next step and fully re-enter society and take care of themselves. [4] We should repeat the cycle as many times as necessary, given that we know substance abuse relapses are common, and going off medication for those who are mentally ill is a common issue as well. This is expensive. This is complicated. And, in many states, this wouldn't be legal. We've decided that humans have the right to self-determination (which is a good thing), but we've lost sight of the fact that when a human being is in the grips of an addiction or mental health disorder, they have already lost control. The addiction is what is now determining their behavior, not their own personal choice. When I tried to get my father hospitalized in 2015 during the final days of his alcohol addiction, he was unable to walk, rarely ate, and spent the entirety of his day in bed drinking. We were finally able to get the local sheriff to pink slip him (72 hour hold) at a hospital in Columbus, where they kept him alive while the alcohol left his system. It took 10 days for the hospital to choose to release him because of how poor his health was, and their primary recommendation was that he go into a nursing home (for context, he was 61 at the time). While he initially refused, we convinced him to give it a try, but that lasted only 48 hours before he returned back home. Once home, he was able resume his drinking, and was dead 5 months later. Less than three years later, my step-mother would be dead as well from the same issues. In neither case did I, or the state, have any legal authority to get him into real rehabilitative care. Lawyers reaffirmed that even given his diminishing cognitive state, Ohio's laws made it clear that he had a right to drink himself to drink himself to death. I contend that his addiction was the one making that choice, not him, and that our laws are enabling addiction, rather than defending independence. While my father was not homeless, that was just a byproduct of his early good fortune. If he had come from lessor means, he would have been on the street for years and potentially died more rapidly. In both cases, the state would have (and did) protected his right to be homeless and drink himself to death. I recognize how reasonable people can disagree heavily on this topic. I recognize how I very well may be wrong (massively wrong) in my vantage point. However, I can tell you that whatever we are doing as a society right now is not working, and it feels worth trying something new at this point.

dumbfoundded 8y ago

In San Francisco, nearly $40K is spent per homeless person. How much money do we need to spend and how should we spend it?

bluetidepro 8y ago
Where did you get that stat? Not debating it, just curious about this data and what else it has.
- dumbfoundded 8y ago
  The budget is ~$270M: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-increase-for-San-Francisco-12902707.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-incre... The number of homeless people is around 7,500. This also doesn't include medical emergency services, private organizations, federal & state programs and many other sources of money. This is just the budget for the city program.
perfmode 8y ago
does it not dawn on you that perhaps this is the wrong way to think about solving the problem?
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  I think it's great to hear this number, as long as it's accurate. A lot of regular folks probably think we spend very little on homeless people, so they think anything we do to help will be a net cost and more taxes. Getting people aware that we spend money either way is very helpful because then you can make arguments about how to save money. If we spend 40K right now, then how much can we save if we spend $10K a year instead in free housing. I.e. what SLC did.
wolfgang42 8y ago
Measuring "dollars per homeless person" is, IMO, worse than useless. The problem is that the better you do the job, the worse the number looks. If you manage to house all but 1 person, suddenly it rockets into millions of dollars per remaining homeless person!

ravenstine 8y ago

> Homeless people are not going to kill you I understand a lot of the insight this person has provided us about homelessness, but I beg to differ on this point, and I'm sure it's location dependent. I currently live in Santa Monica, and the vast majority of the homeless here clearly either have substance abuse problems or mental illness(I'm sure it's often both at once). I've had countless instances where a homeless person will step in front of my car, blocking my way into an intersection or parking lot, and try to intimidate me by shouting obscenities. The other day, I had to tell off a homeless man who was standing at an outdoor cafe and rambling on about how "women are whores" and other wisdom in front of women and children(not that men should be exposed to that either). Yesterday I witnessed a homeless man urinating in the middle of the street in broad daylight. When I was living in Pasadena earlier this year, I worked next to a homeless shelter. For the most part it was safe, but there were days where we were warned to be on the lookout for certain characters who were harassing people on their way to work. There was the occasional rape and the occasional stab, although it was almost always homeless-on-homeless. Down the street there was a vacant restaurant where a homeless couple sneaked in and lived for some time, until it turned into a murder/suicide and they had to put up extra fencing to prevent such incidents from happening again. One of the biggest reasons that people drive instead of take the train in LA, besides the fact that our civic planning has a history of sucking, is the fact that the homeless make many train rides very unpleasant. I don't have enough fingers on my hands to count the number of times I witnessed homeless individuals, sometimes barely clothed, out right screaming and threatening random passengers. In my experience, this sort of thing happened at least a few times a week. It happened enough that there came times where I thought "fuck this shit" and decided to start driving to work again. The homeless aren't viewed as dangerous for no reason. Even if they aren't technically dangerous, many of them are legitimately scary. There are places where the homeless are mostly people down on their luck or living that way by choice; I grew up in a town where the homeless are that sort of benign. But in cities like LA, the word "homeless" has an almost completely different definition. Sorry, but I'm not about to throw out my pepper spray. ADDENDUM: The reason I bring up relatively harmless behavior like the public urination is that when the average person sees that, they're going to think in the back of their minds that "If he's going to do that so brazenly, what else is he capable of?" Add to that the perception that the police are ineffective against the homeless, which they are, and even small misdemeanors can seem as signs of danger to the non-homeless.

megaman8 8y ago

To live in, In SF. your choices are a 1.5 million dollar condo or a 50$ dollar tent. Seriously people, we need to allow for more choices than that. I'm sure builders and entrepreneurs would line up around the block to build solutions that are cheaper and more cost effective, but you first have to make it legal (get rid of the mountains of regulations and zoning headaches that make this problem so insurmountable), without that, will never make any progress on this problem. Why do you think the internet took off as quickly as it did? or the facebook app store in 2008, etc. It's because there were no regulations (or almost none). This allowed thinks to take off very quickly. Let's designate a section of several cities, say a 1 square mile section as regulation free, with an absolute minimum of zoning requirements, and almost 0 regulations. Then let the market have at it, see what gets built. Sure, maybe you don't like what happens in version 1. But, if we never iterate on this problem, we'll never make progress on it and in a 100 years we'll still be talking about this same self imposed problem which is completely solvable.

codydh 8y ago
The cost of your "regulation free zone" will likely be measured in human lives. Does that seem like an acceptable risk?
- gtCameron 8y ago
  The cost of the current homeless situation can also be measured in human lives
- megaman8 8y ago
  That's just in the beginning. Not every regulation saves lives - some are just on the books to protect rent seeking entities and lobbyists, and some are just there because they've always been there.
  - mwfunk 8y ago
    This is true of course, but it's always a giant red flag for me whenever someone refers to the vague concept of "regulations" as being the problem, vs. complaining about specific regulations. Complaining about the very concept of regulations seems really naive, like precoscious high schooler who just had his mind blown by Atlas Shrugged naive. The current POTUS made a campaign promise that he would only allow a regulation to be added if two more were eliminated. This is asinine. If there are unnecessary regulations, get rid of them. Get rid of them because they're unnecessary or counterproductive, not because they fall into a category of legislation referred to as "regulations". Losing a regulation isn't an inherently good thing any more than gaining one is an inherently bad thing. The only thing that matters is whether or not it's a net positive, and that's specific to each regulation. It's like saying, "there's too many laws! We need to get rid of some laws!", and proceeding to randomly choose laws to get rid of until numberOfLaws <= totallyArbitraryMaximumLawCountThatSomeoneMadeUp.

deckar01 8y ago

> I was overqualified for most minimum wage jobs. The author lost me here. I have taken jobs way below my expectations to make ends meet. I got startlingly close to not making rent, but I took a job that barely got me by and rode it out until I was able to move to a company that understood the value of my experience.

sam0x17 8y ago
People are often turned away for being overqualified at such jobs.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  So go through a temp agency. They don't care how over-qualified you are. You're just another body on their call list. If they don't like you they won't call you with any work. Edit: I worked for temp agencies for through college. At the time I probably would have been more useful to them automating some parts of their workflow. They stored everything in spreadsheets but manually copy pasting everything around for their workflow. I kept my mouth shut and did the work they asked me to do.
  - Aloha 8y ago
    Even temp agencies will not take you for the same reasons often - you're too qualified for an entry level role, but no one will hire you because of a lack of recent experience - the min wage, and temp places dont want you, because they assume you will leave as soon as you find a better role.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      I've worked for temp agencies. That is absolutely not the case. They don't care if you're over-qualified. If they think you're going to leave they're just not going to give you any temp to hire or long term roles. They'll still call you up when the convention center calls them up asking for bodies to serve food and sweep floors. If you are over-qualified then working for a temp can give you access to potential employers who (after you've shown them you're not a deadbeat while working as a temp) you can then approach about a direct hire position in something you're qualified for if they happen to have one available.

TallGuyShort 8y ago

Question for the author or anyone else with similar background: I've previously done a lot of work with homeless and poverty-stricken people, and one of my biggest remaining difficulties is people who won't accept help, or are offended when people only do little things to help. Part of that certainly could come from any drug or mental issue that contributed to their homelessness in the first place, but I'm sure it's also unavoidable when you're an outcast from much of society for so long even without those problems. So my question is this: What can people who work at food pantries, distribution centers or just strangers do to come off as less condescending and have their help be more readily accepted?

nyghtly 8y ago
When you say that they won't accept help, what do you mean? What did you try to offer that they didn't accept?
- technobabble 8y ago
  I can't speek for the parent poster. I don't feel comfortable giving money, so instead I offer to get them something at a local restaraunt, or try to give them some of my food if I have it on me. In some (but not all) circumstances, I've been told to "f!ck off" and "suck a c!ck" becaue they want money, presumably for drugs/alcohol/etc. Again this is my experience. Your mileage may vary.
  - elliekelly 8y ago
    I don't give money to homeless people for the same reason. The occasional rude responses can absolutely be frustrating but I think it helps (and is very difficult) to try to put yourself in the shoes of someone suffering from addiction. There's a homeless man in my neighborhood named Kevin that I chat with most mornings when I walk my dog. He goes to a methadone clinic to help treat his addiction. I usually see him when I'm walking towards the coffee shop, ask him for his coffee/breakfast order, and he hangs out with my dog while I go inside. Most days he's a nice, personable, friendly guy who tells me "dad jokes" and has a bag of dog treats for his neighborhood friends. Sober Kevin is appreciative and would never dream of asking me for a dime. Some days he's coming off a bender and looking for money to buy more drugs and is kind of a dick. A lot of the benders coincide with him being unable to get to the clinic for one reason or another. Occasionally sober Kevin will apologize for the way he spoke to me when he was single mindedly focused on his next high. He once offered the analogy of when you really need to pee. The absolute only thing your brain is capable of focusing on is finding a bathroom. You're urgently trying to solve this one, desperate problem. You're walking around asking and asking where the bathroom is and people keep saying "I can't help you find the bathroom, but here's a vending machine." It's by no means an excuse for someone to be rude to a stranger trying to help but it certainly helps me have a little bit more compassion for those dealing with addiction. I think it's frustrating for them, too.

jl2718 8y ago

I was homeless in Silicon Valley many years ago. There were a lot of ‘us’. We stayed hidden in the woods, bathed often, and dressed impeccably in public. Some had jobs. Some were grad students. Several couples. There were no drugs, alcohol, beggars, or thieves out there. $5/day was enough. It was hard physically, but very spiritual, financially free, and altogether one of the best times of my life. Today it’s too dangerous. There are way too many criminals and addicts on the street. There’s nothing worse for a good person who has fallen on hard times than a policy that is lenient on crimes, drug use, public consumption, and public nuisance of the homeless. You can walk away and lock the door. They can’t. Just imagine yourself out there being victimized by bad people only because rich people feel guilty for them. For them. The one that just mugged you for their next high, or worse. Guilt for them. Good luck, kid.

ilikehurdles 8y ago
This is so on point. I can not stand how little the police does to address the entirely open air drug sales and use, indecent exposure, and plethora of public safety issues (shattered glass bottles, prostitution, trespassing, selling stolen goods like bicycles) because the perpetrators are homeless. I’m not saying punish homelessness, I’m saying enforce existing laws regardless of who the perps are.
- post_break 8y ago
  Do you think it has to do with generating income? Like if someone is homeless the odds of getting them to pay a fine is next to nothing. But snag a guy walking out of a bar pissing on the wall you're going to get some money out of it.
  - smileysteve 8y ago
    Probably as much to do with the revolving door as it does with generating income. If you have a home / money, a fine or brief jail time are punishment. If you don't have home / money, you won't pay a fine, your time and lack of freedom won't solve an addiction brought on by being desolate. So, a month later, a cop has wasted hours, a judge has wasted hours, and the "criminal" still can't pay the fine, is still addicted, and will waste that same time again. tldr; A fine of $50 for someone who doesn't have money to eat is in ways as inconceivable as a $1bln fine to someone in the middle class.

troydavis 8y ago

For anyone who wants to better understand homelessness, check out Seattle’s 2018 survey: http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FINALDRAFT-COUNTUSIN2018REPORT-5.25.18.pdf http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FINALDRAFT-C... The first section is a one-night count. Scroll past it to page 23 for the the survey results, which are incredibly informative. n=1056, margin of error +- 2.9%.

milesvp 8y ago

This article reminded me of a childhood experience of mine. At some point when I was in high school my dad brought home a homeless man to live in our house. At first it seemed weird, but I understood that we were in a position to help so I got over the feeling that our family was different for helping someone from the street. Then it started to feel weird that this guy completely bunkered down in his room. The few times I was able to peer through his door, it totally looked like a horder’s nest. He kept all kinds of things that seemed of little value and layed on top of it all. And there was definitely a stink of body odor that wafted out whenever the door opened. Mostly he stayed in his room and watched TV day and night. Which made sense, he was on disability for back issues, so eventually I got over the weirdness that someone would choose to lock himself and in his room 24/7. At some point though, after several years of this he seemed to really be getting better. He was always friendly, and he’d smile and say a few words if I saw him, but he seemed to be getting genuinely happier and psychologically better. The smell in the room started to subside, I think my folks had a talk with him about showering as terms of staying at one point, but it was still a steady increase. And he seemed to be getting out more and more, and I was more likely to see him outside than just in the hall. I say all this, because it somehow feels pertinent in this forum. It’s also not something you hear a lot. There is a real healing that can often only be possible with long term stability. I often wonder how I’d cope if I was homeless, who I’d turn to. I’m not sure I have as many multi year options as I’d like. I also wonder if I’d be able to tolerate someone living in my house for as long as my folks did.

nouveaux 8y ago
It would be great if you and your family elaborate more on this experience through an AMA and/or blog post?
- darpa_escapee 8y ago
  Sharing an experience like this would definitely help bring awareness and empathy to the cause. OP's parents and the man they hosted should consider if reaching out to someone about their story would be something they'd like to do.
8y ago

throw-far-away 8y ago

"Homeless" for 9 years in the Valley. AMA.