5 ms·

This is very interesting! Why isn't this a popular method to "rehome" the homeless? Instead of paying hundreds of $$ min a day for a hotel in SF/NYC, why not

This is very interesting! Why isn't this a popular method to "rehome" the homeless? Instead of paying hundreds of $$ min a day for a hotel in SF/NYC, why not create farms in rural areas for the homeless to work and rehab at?

PaulHoule 5y ago
It's a good idea but it takes some discipline. For instance if you have multiple people with drug problems one of them will go to town and bring back a supply and now you have people using, overdosing and making trouble. You might give some people a task like moving rocks from here to there and think it is straightforward but some people need an astonishing amount of supervision to stay on task. Also dealing with severe mental illness is hard. We had a woman (E) living at our house who I think had schizoaffective disorder who had nowhere else to go; she reminded me of my aunt who suffered from bipolar and some of my desire to help this person came from wanting to "pay forward" the kindness my aunt showed me. My son was an only and badly needed the sibling experience and being an adult who didn't behave like an adult, E was a pretty good "sister" to my son. Being embedded in our family routine was good for E and she lasted 18 months at our farm which was longer than she stayed anywhere. One night though she lost it; my son and I barricaded ourselves in the bedroom and called the sheriff but E threatened my wife with a knife and then disappeared into the night. She came back to the farm to visit a few years later and then passed away two weeks after that. This place https://www.wgaforchildren.org/ https://www.wgaforchildren.org/ is well-regarded but it is a running gag that they are always hiring people because it a high stress place to work at.
voakbasda 5y ago
I have had this exact thought, but zoning laws would prohibit this in most places. I own a 100 acre hobby farm, and I am not permitted to house anyone else on my property. I would gladly trade farm work for housing, but I would be breaking the law. Not coincidentally this would be the only way for me to bootstrap to profitability, because there is zero labor available in my very rural area.
- MaknMoreGtnLess 5y ago
  > I own a 100 acre hobby farm, and I am not permitted to house anyone else on my property. I would gladly trade farm work for housing, but I would be breaking the law I have the same exact problem here in California. It's almost as if the cities want the homeless to remain homeless even if a section of the homeless are willing not to be
  - voakbasda 5y ago
    Of course, the real irony in all of this is that it’s an open secret that many bigger farms hire illegals for their labor, pay them less than minimal wage, house them in leaky shanties, and basically hold them hostage by thinly veiled threats about calling INS. Profitable farms cannot afford to follow every law, because they are competing in a marketplace where almost all of the winners cheat.
    - PaulHoule 5y ago
      We are lucky to be in a town in Upstate NY that has no zoning. It keeps property prices low because the main thing that makes a house a $400,000 house is being surrounded by $400,000 houses. In our town you could always have a trailer across the street owned by a someone from a family that has a street named after them. Having zoning in the town is a controversy, something that some people want to do because they want to keep Dollar General out, but it seems absurd to thing Dollar General would harm other businesses in the area or somehow turn the area into a food desert if it isn't already.
    - MaknMoreGtnLess 5y ago
      > real irony in all of this is that it’s an open secret that many bigger farms hire illegals for their labor, pay them less than minimal wage, house them in leaky shanties, and basically hold them hostage by thinly veiled threats about calling INS IDK how upto date you are on this but in California this arbitrage opportunity is gone. "thinly veiled threats about calling INS" is no longer a point of leverage, actually a quick way to lose any farm hands in California. The current arbitrage opportunity in California are to use these people for EDD and WIC fraud but this is offtopic for this post and likely too political for HN.
vanilla_nut 5y ago
Interestingly, this is basically what asylums were originally (back in the 1800s) before they expanded too much and became essentially just prisons for the mentally ill. There's a really great 99% invisible episode about this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-kirkbride-plan/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-kirkbride-plan/ In particular, this episode goes into a lot of detail about why asylums got so big (price efficiency and scalability, basically) and why that essentially ruined the "recovery" side of treatment for the mentally ill, because things weren't personal any more.

PaulHoule 5y ago

It's a good idea but it takes some discipline. For instance if you have multiple people with drug problems one of them will go to town and bring back a supply and now you have people using, overdosing and making trouble. You might give some people a task like moving rocks from here to there and think it is straightforward but some people need an astonishing amount of supervision to stay on task. Also dealing with severe mental illness is hard. We had a woman (E) living at our house who I think had schizoaffective disorder who had nowhere else to go; she reminded me of my aunt who suffered from bipolar and some of my desire to help this person came from wanting to "pay forward" the kindness my aunt showed me. My son was an only and badly needed the sibling experience and being an adult who didn't behave like an adult, E was a pretty good "sister" to my son. Being embedded in our family routine was good for E and she lasted 18 months at our farm which was longer than she stayed anywhere. One night though she lost it; my son and I barricaded ourselves in the bedroom and called the sheriff but E threatened my wife with a knife and then disappeared into the night. She came back to the farm to visit a few years later and then passed away two weeks after that. This place https://www.wgaforchildren.org/ https://www.wgaforchildren.org/ is well-regarded but it is a running gag that they are always hiring people because it a high stress place to work at.

voakbasda 5y ago

I have had this exact thought, but zoning laws would prohibit this in most places. I own a 100 acre hobby farm, and I am not permitted to house anyone else on my property. I would gladly trade farm work for housing, but I would be breaking the law. Not coincidentally this would be the only way for me to bootstrap to profitability, because there is zero labor available in my very rural area.

MaknMoreGtnLess 5y ago
> I own a 100 acre hobby farm, and I am not permitted to house anyone else on my property. I would gladly trade farm work for housing, but I would be breaking the law I have the same exact problem here in California. It's almost as if the cities want the homeless to remain homeless even if a section of the homeless are willing not to be
- voakbasda 5y ago
  Of course, the real irony in all of this is that it’s an open secret that many bigger farms hire illegals for their labor, pay them less than minimal wage, house them in leaky shanties, and basically hold them hostage by thinly veiled threats about calling INS. Profitable farms cannot afford to follow every law, because they are competing in a marketplace where almost all of the winners cheat.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    We are lucky to be in a town in Upstate NY that has no zoning. It keeps property prices low because the main thing that makes a house a $400,000 house is being surrounded by $400,000 houses. In our town you could always have a trailer across the street owned by a someone from a family that has a street named after them. Having zoning in the town is a controversy, something that some people want to do because they want to keep Dollar General out, but it seems absurd to thing Dollar General would harm other businesses in the area or somehow turn the area into a food desert if it isn't already.
  - MaknMoreGtnLess 5y ago
    > real irony in all of this is that it’s an open secret that many bigger farms hire illegals for their labor, pay them less than minimal wage, house them in leaky shanties, and basically hold them hostage by thinly veiled threats about calling INS IDK how upto date you are on this but in California this arbitrage opportunity is gone. "thinly veiled threats about calling INS" is no longer a point of leverage, actually a quick way to lose any farm hands in California. The current arbitrage opportunity in California are to use these people for EDD and WIC fraud but this is offtopic for this post and likely too political for HN.

vanilla_nut 5y ago

Interestingly, this is basically what asylums were originally (back in the 1800s) before they expanded too much and became essentially just prisons for the mentally ill. There's a really great 99% invisible episode about this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-kirkbride-plan/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-kirkbride-plan/ In particular, this episode goes into a lot of detail about why asylums got so big (price efficiency and scalability, basically) and why that essentially ruined the "recovery" side of treatment for the mentally ill, because things weren't personal any more.