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Like you, I’ve also been homeless myself in the past. I’m in the 80%. Using a combination of public and private help, I was able to pull myself out of homelessn

Like you, I’ve also been homeless myself in the past. I’m in the 80%. Using a combination of public and private help, I was able to pull myself out of homelessness after several months. I was eventually able to graduate with a degree, enabling me to become a software engineer. My experience matches the research. I’ve also volunteered at soup kitchens for a while. That personal experience also matches the research concerning the chronically homeless.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
Perception and reality don't always align and our existing point of view shapes our perception. While homeless, I was throwing up my lunch one day in the bushes because of my medical condition and someone driving past in a car yelled out their window "Drink too much last night?" taking glee in what they were all too happy to assume was evidence that their prejudice against the homeless and hatred of them was justified. I will also note that I'm quite nonplussed by the people showing up here to insist in writing in public that they were part of "the good homeless," the deserving homeless, the folks in need of a small break and not like those people. My father was mixed race and routinely told racist jokes. I've recently realized he probably looked a lot more mixed race than I understood growing up because of photos I've seen of a full-blooded Native that bear an uncanny resemblance to my father. So I strongly suspect that my father told racist jokes to implicitly signal he was white and "not one of them" in a racist world that does terrible, horrible things to non-whites on a routine basis. To me, that reads as an expression of fear and an act of self preservation in an ugly, hostile classist world. But it's an act of self preservation that preserves the status quo. I blog to try to present the data and point of view I'm aware of that conflicts with the accepted narrative that I believe keeps these problems entrenched. Perhaps it won't make any difference. But perhaps it will.
- chaostheory 7y ago
  Research data tends to trump personal anecdotes, both yours and mine included. Several separate studies on the homeless have consensus. I did not say I was part of the “good homeless”. What I said was that the vast majority of the homeless aren’t chronically homeless and I was part of that non-chronic population. I’m also saying that for the chronically homeless, homelessness is just the symptom of the underlying problem of mental illness. This is another way of saying, “they didn’t get the right kind of help that they needed”. When people still can’t be high functioning with all the social safety nets available, we have to re-examine the strategy that isn’t working for them. I don’t feel the half measures you’ve described is enough for the mentally ill We’ve had this discussion before months ago. We can just agree to disagree.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    Studies get created by people with their own biases. Historically, IQ tests were used to insist that people of color were inferior to whites, not because it's true but because it served the agenda of racist whites. Social phenomenon are inherently hard to study in some kind of objective fashion. People will give the answers they know are expected of them in a world that is openly and unapologetically hostile to them. "How to lie with statistics" is one of my favorite works. Two people with different points of view can look at the exact same data and reach completely different conclusions about what the data means. Humans are incredibly prone to confirmation bias. Humans look for the data that supports their existing world view and hand wave off data that conflicts with it. This is a very well known phenomenon. Edit in response to your edit: We’ve had this discussion before months ago. We can just agree to disagree. Sure. I don't recall discussing it with before and I didn't start this discussion. You did. You chose to reply to something I said here, knowing we've discussed it before and we don't agree. So calls to "agree to disagree" sound a bit like I should just shut up and let you have the last word. I'm not rebutting every single comment in the discussion of the article I wrote. If you didn't want to actually talk to me in specific, you absolutely didn't have to.
    - chaostheory 7y ago
      Let’s be very clear here since you like making insinuations for my comments. All I am saying is homelessness isn’t the real problem for the chronically homeless. It’s only a symptom. Consequently, society isn’t helping the chronically homeless ie the mentally ill effectively. I’m just saying society needs to drastically change their strategy of help by including more medical professionals and institutions into the mix. It’s hard to lie with data when mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are involved. Many of these people were discharged from institutions for financial reasons, which adds further credibility for the studies’ conclusions ie these people needed special medical help and society just kicked them out into the streets At no point did I call the chronically homeless “bad” which really angers me when you accused me of it. Your personal anecdotes are always interesting but they don’t give people the big picture
      - 7y ago

DoreenMichele 7y ago

Perception and reality don't always align and our existing point of view shapes our perception. While homeless, I was throwing up my lunch one day in the bushes because of my medical condition and someone driving past in a car yelled out their window "Drink too much last night?" taking glee in what they were all too happy to assume was evidence that their prejudice against the homeless and hatred of them was justified. I will also note that I'm quite nonplussed by the people showing up here to insist in writing in public that they were part of "the good homeless," the deserving homeless, the folks in need of a small break and not like those people. My father was mixed race and routinely told racist jokes. I've recently realized he probably looked a lot more mixed race than I understood growing up because of photos I've seen of a full-blooded Native that bear an uncanny resemblance to my father. So I strongly suspect that my father told racist jokes to implicitly signal he was white and "not one of them" in a racist world that does terrible, horrible things to non-whites on a routine basis. To me, that reads as an expression of fear and an act of self preservation in an ugly, hostile classist world. But it's an act of self preservation that preserves the status quo. I blog to try to present the data and point of view I'm aware of that conflicts with the accepted narrative that I believe keeps these problems entrenched. Perhaps it won't make any difference. But perhaps it will.

chaostheory 7y ago
Research data tends to trump personal anecdotes, both yours and mine included. Several separate studies on the homeless have consensus. I did not say I was part of the “good homeless”. What I said was that the vast majority of the homeless aren’t chronically homeless and I was part of that non-chronic population. I’m also saying that for the chronically homeless, homelessness is just the symptom of the underlying problem of mental illness. This is another way of saying, “they didn’t get the right kind of help that they needed”. When people still can’t be high functioning with all the social safety nets available, we have to re-examine the strategy that isn’t working for them. I don’t feel the half measures you’ve described is enough for the mentally ill We’ve had this discussion before months ago. We can just agree to disagree.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Studies get created by people with their own biases. Historically, IQ tests were used to insist that people of color were inferior to whites, not because it's true but because it served the agenda of racist whites. Social phenomenon are inherently hard to study in some kind of objective fashion. People will give the answers they know are expected of them in a world that is openly and unapologetically hostile to them. "How to lie with statistics" is one of my favorite works. Two people with different points of view can look at the exact same data and reach completely different conclusions about what the data means. Humans are incredibly prone to confirmation bias. Humans look for the data that supports their existing world view and hand wave off data that conflicts with it. This is a very well known phenomenon. Edit in response to your edit: We’ve had this discussion before months ago. We can just agree to disagree. Sure. I don't recall discussing it with before and I didn't start this discussion. You did. You chose to reply to something I said here, knowing we've discussed it before and we don't agree. So calls to "agree to disagree" sound a bit like I should just shut up and let you have the last word. I'm not rebutting every single comment in the discussion of the article I wrote. If you didn't want to actually talk to me in specific, you absolutely didn't have to.
  - chaostheory 7y ago
    Let’s be very clear here since you like making insinuations for my comments. All I am saying is homelessness isn’t the real problem for the chronically homeless. It’s only a symptom. Consequently, society isn’t helping the chronically homeless ie the mentally ill effectively. I’m just saying society needs to drastically change their strategy of help by including more medical professionals and institutions into the mix. It’s hard to lie with data when mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are involved. Many of these people were discharged from institutions for financial reasons, which adds further credibility for the studies’ conclusions ie these people needed special medical help and society just kicked them out into the streets At no point did I call the chronically homeless “bad” which really angers me when you accused me of it. Your personal anecdotes are always interesting but they don’t give people the big picture
    - 7y ago