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Alan Graham. founder of Community First Village, a 27-acre community in East Austin that provides affordable, permanent housing for the homeless believes that

Alan Graham. founder of Community First Village, a 27-acre community in East Austin that provides affordable, permanent housing for the homeless believes that the single greatest cause of homelessness is “a profound, catastrophic loss of family,” whether by forces like death or divorce, or institutional failures in the criminal justice and foster care systems. “The Community First Village is the recognition that human beings need to be in relationship with each other, and that housing will never solve homelessness but community will,” Does housing availability have an effect on homeless, sure. But addiction, mental health, and trauma, play a much more prevalent role. I'm far from am expert in this topic, this just reflects my understanding. I'd love to hear a different point of view.

lazypenguin 5y ago
Community first is a wonderful initiative. Everyone always comes up with grandiose solutions to many world problems but it’s amazing how “community” is usually a good fix for many issues.
ahelwer 5y ago
All of these things interact and affect one another. Say you're living in some common marginal situation working a low-wage job with high rent. Some event happens where suddenly you require a few hundred dollars, nothing serious for most of us here but the sort of thing that happens every year or two - maybe your ancient car you have to use to commute to your job conks out, maybe you have a common medical issue requiring care and time off work, maybe your dental work can no longer be ignored, maybe you need an abortion because the idea of having a child in this situation is too ridiculous to even consider. This shock makes you short on rent. Maybe you're able to recover the next month, but maybe not. Ideally you have family you can fall back on. If not, now you're homeless. Without housing it is massively more difficult and time-consuming to perform basic maintenance acts like showering, shaving, defecating, or feeding yourself. Think of any camping trip you've gone on. It's easy to start slipping at your job and you're much more likely to be fired. But say you really hustle and actually keep your job, like many unhoused people. Without a safe place to retreat to & relax, without a quiet place to sleep undisturbed by cars roaring by, you enter a spiral. Your mental health, already not great after years of stress associated with your marginal financial situation, decreases markedly and then drops off a cliff. You become deeply depressed or are unlucky enough to finally trigger more serious mental health disorders that have been lurking, waiting for the chance to rear their heads. It's very easy to stop showing up for your job here, but you still manage to put yourself together and drag yourself over there pretty well. Your coworkers start to complain about the way you smell. Your physical health begins to deteriorate. At any stage of this process your plunge could have been arrested by a supportive family. And at any stage in this process your plunge could have been massively accelerated by the introduction of drug use. Once mental health starts to go, self-medicating seems more and more appealing. Few joys are left available to you. For most unhoused people, it's only a matter of time. Once you are addicted to drugs all of the difficulties enumerated above are multiplied. It is extremely difficult to kick drugs in the best of times (how many of us know of some well-off family with a black sheep child who has been to family-funded rehab nearly double-digit times?) and now there is basically no incentive nor ability to do so. Mental health issues are also extremely difficult to heal. Many of us here have been depressed and understand how difficult it is to recover even in good economic circumstances. The absolute best you can hope for upon escaping all of this is to return to a marginal low-wage high-rent existence doing its best to kick you back down the cycle. The #1 takeaway here is that people like to talk about homeless people with mental health or drug addiction issues, and it is impossible not to admit the simple truth - their recovery is impossible without being given housing. A safe place to retreat, rest, and convalesce.
ahahahahah 5y ago
> I'd love to hear a different point of view. Not enough to read the article, I guess.
- Schiendelman 5y ago
  Yeah, the article explicitly controls out the parent’s assertion and yet they show up handwaving. I’m glad I’m not the only one who was frustrated.

lazypenguin 5y ago

Community first is a wonderful initiative. Everyone always comes up with grandiose solutions to many world problems but it’s amazing how “community” is usually a good fix for many issues.

ahelwer 5y ago

All of these things interact and affect one another. Say you're living in some common marginal situation working a low-wage job with high rent. Some event happens where suddenly you require a few hundred dollars, nothing serious for most of us here but the sort of thing that happens every year or two - maybe your ancient car you have to use to commute to your job conks out, maybe you have a common medical issue requiring care and time off work, maybe your dental work can no longer be ignored, maybe you need an abortion because the idea of having a child in this situation is too ridiculous to even consider. This shock makes you short on rent. Maybe you're able to recover the next month, but maybe not. Ideally you have family you can fall back on. If not, now you're homeless. Without housing it is massively more difficult and time-consuming to perform basic maintenance acts like showering, shaving, defecating, or feeding yourself. Think of any camping trip you've gone on. It's easy to start slipping at your job and you're much more likely to be fired. But say you really hustle and actually keep your job, like many unhoused people. Without a safe place to retreat to & relax, without a quiet place to sleep undisturbed by cars roaring by, you enter a spiral. Your mental health, already not great after years of stress associated with your marginal financial situation, decreases markedly and then drops off a cliff. You become deeply depressed or are unlucky enough to finally trigger more serious mental health disorders that have been lurking, waiting for the chance to rear their heads. It's very easy to stop showing up for your job here, but you still manage to put yourself together and drag yourself over there pretty well. Your coworkers start to complain about the way you smell. Your physical health begins to deteriorate. At any stage of this process your plunge could have been arrested by a supportive family. And at any stage in this process your plunge could have been massively accelerated by the introduction of drug use. Once mental health starts to go, self-medicating seems more and more appealing. Few joys are left available to you. For most unhoused people, it's only a matter of time. Once you are addicted to drugs all of the difficulties enumerated above are multiplied. It is extremely difficult to kick drugs in the best of times (how many of us know of some well-off family with a black sheep child who has been to family-funded rehab nearly double-digit times?) and now there is basically no incentive nor ability to do so. Mental health issues are also extremely difficult to heal. Many of us here have been depressed and understand how difficult it is to recover even in good economic circumstances. The absolute best you can hope for upon escaping all of this is to return to a marginal low-wage high-rent existence doing its best to kick you back down the cycle. The #1 takeaway here is that people like to talk about homeless people with mental health or drug addiction issues, and it is impossible not to admit the simple truth - their recovery is impossible without being given housing. A safe place to retreat, rest, and convalesce.

ahahahahah 5y ago

> I'd love to hear a different point of view. Not enough to read the article, I guess.

Schiendelman 5y ago
Yeah, the article explicitly controls out the parent’s assertion and yet they show up handwaving. I’m glad I’m not the only one who was frustrated.