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Well, at some level he is homeless. Statistics use things like "crashing in a friend's spare room" or "renting a cheap motel week by week" in their homeless num

Well, at some level he is homeless. Statistics use things like "crashing in a friend's spare room" or "renting a cheap motel week by week" in their homeless numbers. They're not lacking a roof over their head, but they do lack standard, stable accommodation. However, you're getting at the truth - "homeless" here is an "emotional baggage" word, and so often conveys that implied image of some poor, struggling, but otherwise "good" people just trying to make it. Except that's largely a solved problem, folks actively trying to end their homelessness will spend an average of three months or less in some sort of "homeless" criteria (on a friends couch, a hotel, a temporary accommodation). The bulk of the issue is folks dropping out of society and causing trouble for their surrounding communities. Personally, I come from this community. I spent a majority of my middle and high school years bouncing around motels, squats, and friends spare rooms with my father. We were statistically homeless at some level, just not "sleeping rough." My father was and remains that way over a decade later - he cannot and will not be helped other than taking money for his own ends from an occasionally week-willed family member. He works under the table (an otherwise reasonably skilled plumber), pays no tax, bounces around a series of motels in a one-stoplight town along I-95, drinks, drugs, gets DUIs in a series of unregistered junk vehicles. At one point he did a few months for burning down our squat in a drug-bender gone wrong. There exists a large, and growing subset of the population who have no interest in playing ball, in straightening up and flying right. No amount of "free housing" or "free healthcare" or "free _" is going to solve a cultural rot. When no one cares they will simply abuse the good-natured systems that fail to take into account ill intent.

dash2 5y ago
There’s also a third category of people who have really serious problems, which can’t be fixed by resources, but who aren’t necessarily just “bad guys”. I worked with some long term homeless guys as a volunteer, and many had problems going back to tragic episodes in their childhood, long term addictions, and other stuff that needed more than (a) materially-based “charity” or (b) punitiveness.
- formersquatter 5y ago
  > which can’t be fixed by resources, but who aren’t necessarily just “bad guys”. You're correct, the problem is certainly mosaic and does not fall into a binary "good guy" vs. "bad guy" ... and I'll never understand our nation and its response to long-term mental health facilities that were cesspool levels of bad. Instead of rebuilding them and reforming them, we just did away with them in their entirety. Some strange blend of anti-tax Reaganite and bleeding-heart ACLU-led progressivism combined into creating a hell we all have to suffer, or at least those of us in cities. I have a soon-to-be FiL with a schizophrenic brother he cares for. The FiL is a man of means, and purchased a home for his brother many years ago in a nice neighborhood. He has family to take him to all appointments, address all of his needs... yet in spite of his absolutely ideal condition he is a menace to his community and would be on the streets were it not for this brotherly love. The standard behaviors, pacing around in the neighborhood muttering to himself, smoking crack, and just general nuisance behaviors. He has accidentally burned down two of his homes through smoking / sleeping in bed but miraculously survived both incidents. This is a real issue, but a fractional amount, and orthogonal to the issue of the societal drop-outs that are mentally sound, capable of contributing, but choose the path of the drop-out and burn-out. We could solve that problem, we just don't.
honkdaddy 5y ago
This is a much more substantive comment than mine, thanks for sharing your experience. In your case, what brought you from the situation you were in before to wherever you are now?
- formersquatter 5y ago
  If you guessed "programming" ... I had one "normal" parent, in the sense of having a home and a stable job, living in a decent community. I was just persona-non-grata in that household by middle school age, as there were some issues with an abusive live-in-boyfriend of my mothers. So I had a stable schooling, and if I needed something like a TI-83 for school I would be furnished it. I wasn't truly destitute, but at the same time had an unstable living arrangement and frequently had to be used as some sort of sympathy bait in the second-hand bread line. I befriended a student fiddling with a hex editor and a NES ROM in a typing class and that was a bridge into programming for me. Got into a mess of languages and systems (Java, PHP, Javascript, graphic design, etc.) Met some more classmates that were of good means, and of similar interests and so I just sort-of aped their bleeding-edge interests, whether it was PHP, Web 2.0 CSS / jQuery wizardry, or general systems administration. Following high school, I landed a job out of high school as an intern programmer for $10 / hour on a 1099, getting some number of promotions and raises to $75K full-time with benefits with a little over two years. From there, I'm pretty much just any other programmer. I told my father if he ever wanted to get his shit together, to reach out and we'd figure it out... but that has never happened. I have some contacts that through their daily lives end up keeping tabs on him, he still scrapes by living his itinerant life.

dash2 5y ago

There’s also a third category of people who have really serious problems, which can’t be fixed by resources, but who aren’t necessarily just “bad guys”. I worked with some long term homeless guys as a volunteer, and many had problems going back to tragic episodes in their childhood, long term addictions, and other stuff that needed more than (a) materially-based “charity” or (b) punitiveness.

formersquatter 5y ago
> which can’t be fixed by resources, but who aren’t necessarily just “bad guys”. You're correct, the problem is certainly mosaic and does not fall into a binary "good guy" vs. "bad guy" ... and I'll never understand our nation and its response to long-term mental health facilities that were cesspool levels of bad. Instead of rebuilding them and reforming them, we just did away with them in their entirety. Some strange blend of anti-tax Reaganite and bleeding-heart ACLU-led progressivism combined into creating a hell we all have to suffer, or at least those of us in cities. I have a soon-to-be FiL with a schizophrenic brother he cares for. The FiL is a man of means, and purchased a home for his brother many years ago in a nice neighborhood. He has family to take him to all appointments, address all of his needs... yet in spite of his absolutely ideal condition he is a menace to his community and would be on the streets were it not for this brotherly love. The standard behaviors, pacing around in the neighborhood muttering to himself, smoking crack, and just general nuisance behaviors. He has accidentally burned down two of his homes through smoking / sleeping in bed but miraculously survived both incidents. This is a real issue, but a fractional amount, and orthogonal to the issue of the societal drop-outs that are mentally sound, capable of contributing, but choose the path of the drop-out and burn-out. We could solve that problem, we just don't.

honkdaddy 5y ago

This is a much more substantive comment than mine, thanks for sharing your experience. In your case, what brought you from the situation you were in before to wherever you are now?

formersquatter 5y ago
If you guessed "programming" ... I had one "normal" parent, in the sense of having a home and a stable job, living in a decent community. I was just persona-non-grata in that household by middle school age, as there were some issues with an abusive live-in-boyfriend of my mothers. So I had a stable schooling, and if I needed something like a TI-83 for school I would be furnished it. I wasn't truly destitute, but at the same time had an unstable living arrangement and frequently had to be used as some sort of sympathy bait in the second-hand bread line. I befriended a student fiddling with a hex editor and a NES ROM in a typing class and that was a bridge into programming for me. Got into a mess of languages and systems (Java, PHP, Javascript, graphic design, etc.) Met some more classmates that were of good means, and of similar interests and so I just sort-of aped their bleeding-edge interests, whether it was PHP, Web 2.0 CSS / jQuery wizardry, or general systems administration. Following high school, I landed a job out of high school as an intern programmer for $10 / hour on a 1099, getting some number of promotions and raises to $75K full-time with benefits with a little over two years. From there, I'm pretty much just any other programmer. I told my father if he ever wanted to get his shit together, to reach out and we'd figure it out... but that has never happened. I have some contacts that through their daily lives end up keeping tabs on him, he still scrapes by living his itinerant life.