4 ms·

Maybe they already have?

• wpietri 8y ago
  They have definitely worked hard to do so. On BART I happened to start talking with somebody wearing a jacket from the Homeless Outreach Team. It's his job to talk people into getting the help they need and getting off the streets. The ones we talked about are definitely the difficult cases. That doesn't surprise me at all. There's a homeless guy in my neighborhood I've been talking with at least 7 years. He has mentioned being born at the hospital 3 blocks from my place, and I'm sure he grew up in the neighborhood. He's polite, friendly, and very set in his ways. I suspect he has some sort of alcohol-induced anterograde amnesia. He has absolutely no interest in living in any sort of setting where he'd be constrained by others. From the way he talks about it, I expect there's some sort of history of abuse by authority figures. I don't think it's impossible for him to get help. But I think it would have to include living in his neighborhood and I think it would need a lot of patient and intensive help from professionals. Otherwise he's just going to do what's familiar to him.