If you were King, how would you address the homeless issue? (minimum wage, Reagan)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Do you realize what mission impossible it is to go from Homelessness to employment? When I was homeless in Denver in 1972, it was a piece of cake to transform yourself. Took the lowliest job I could find, being an Orderly in a nursing home, and back then, as opposed to today, I didn't need a CNA license, no CPR card, there's was no drug testing, fingerprinting and I didn't need a year's experience to work there. Not today!
As a King, I would end the charitable deductions for these charitable foundations, which is tax evasion, and let the taxes flow to the Federal Government and let them build, like they did in the 60'/70's, housing for the low income.
Has the tax-evading Clinton Foundation built any homeless shelters for the poor, or did it go for aid to Africa? And what about the Bill Gates foundations?
While the goals of the Clinton Foundation are more globally oriented, Bill and Melinda Gates have taken to heart the adage that "charity begins at home." Over the past two decades, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through their Sound Families initiative, has spent millions in providing housing and other services for homeless families in Gates' home state of Washington. You can read about it at these links:
Referring to the original question posed by the OP, I think that Sonic_Spork here presented some very valid points on how to address the problem of homelessness, and also presented a viable plan for doing so. Hopefully, Sonic_Spork's post above is not too long a read for some people. I think it's a worthwhile read.
If I were King (or Queen), I would immediately bring Sonic_Spork onto my Royal Council and charge her with the duty of addressing our kingdom's homelessness problems. Because I think that a wise King (or Queen) ought to employ intelligent people to see that royal proclamations are carried out competently.
@Sonic_Spork: Would you join my Royal Council? I promise there would be an eventual knighthood in it for you. We won't talk about the consequences should you happen to fail your King/Queen.
I post this as a kind of thought experiment in order to avoid going down the political party rabbit holes.
If you had suddenly become in charge of this fictional U.S. with its very real homeless problem, what steps would you take to solve it? You have unilateral control, but similar budget constraints.
Finland solved their homeless problem, and the developing country we retired in, has no visible homeless.
What can be done in this most powerful, richest country in the world?
Many homeless choose that lifestyle. They want to live life on their own terms, period. Don't want to be told what to do, or when to do it. That nixes work and career. Nobody can really force another person to work or want to live like a normal person. If I were king, I would round up the homeless and place them in a gated community for homeless. Here's your house or apartment. If you choose to still loiter in public places then, I would arrest and put them in jail. There have to be limits to their flouting of laws and societal norms.
There are two outcomes: You either get your stuff together or you are put in an institution.
Vagrancy laws were once very effective at solving the problem of beggars. Dagwood used to just run them off.
Institutionalizing them never has worked, but I think enforced laws against begging and vagrancy would have an immediate effect and clean up about half the problem.
The problem with me being King is that whatever great social ideas I (or other posters) have would require an army of good professionals (mental health, drug treatments, etc.) to implement and, much like with "universal child care", we don't have enough good professionals so we'd end up with a huge mess of patchy services and a decent number of dumb-to-dangerous individuals in positioins of authority.
Now, if I were a Genie....
That's actually more the spirit in which I approached the question. "If you could wave a magic wand and fix homelessness, what would that look like?" I don't want to live in a Monarchy anyways. I am a strong believer in Democracy. I'd actually like ours to be more Democratic than it is. I want individuals to feel more connected and involved in their government at every level, more invested in it. I want no American to feel like the bad things that we put up with, we have no choice and that's just the way it is and nothing we can do will ever make anything better. I want every American to have a sense of value and to feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves, and that their voice is important to be heard.
I believe that the government (not just THE government as in the federal one, but at all levels) has a duty and obligation to serve the people who consent to be governed by it. And when it's not doing that, we should have the power to make changes happen.
And I believe that the feeling that "everything just sucks and there's nothing that we can do" is a big contributor to a sense of hopelessness that steers individuals into a sort of "heck it" mindset, where there's no point in working towards a better future for themselves because they have given up on the possibility of it.
It should not be even possible to work your backside off laboring to enrich some distant powerful few, and to live out your life struggling with debt, barely able to survive or afford to keep a roof over your head, the idea of owning your own property distant and almost absurdly improbable, unable to afford to raise a family, unable to retire before your health utterly gives out, or to "do everything right" and have the fruits of your labor, your wealth, stripped away by one serious medical problem in your family. Unable to afford the luxury of having principles, even, unable to afford to do kind things for others like donation of time or money to causes that you believe in or people that you care about, because you must apply every ounce to keeping your own household afloat.
Now I have friends who insist that capitalism is the problem. And I get that, because the above paragraph's worth of problems seems to stem from every hungry conglomerate in this country seeing the slightest sliver of surplus time or money we might have and pouncing on it. But I don't reject capitalism entirely, I actually do believe in the merits of it...just not unchecked. Unequal power limits the efficacy of a truly "free" market. Some regulation is needful, to prevent rampant exploitation of the general populace. We're supposed to have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." I don't believe that a nation achieves its best prosperity in an environment of stark extremes. I am not arguing in favor of full on socialism or communism, here. I just want more balance and less extremes. And less of the desperation in the minds of citizens that primes us for authoritarian power grabs and fearmongering psyops.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rachel NewYork
While the goals of the Clinton Foundation are more globally oriented, Bill and Melinda Gates have taken to heart the adage that "charity begins at home." Over the past two decades, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through their Sound Families initiative, has spent millions in providing housing and other services for homeless families in Gates' home state of Washington. You can read about it at these links:
Referring to the original question posed by the OP, I think that Sonic_Spork here presented some very valid points on how to address the problem of homelessness, and also presented a viable plan for doing so. Hopefully, Sonic_Spork's post above is not too long a read for some people. I think it's a worthwhile read.
If I were King (or Queen), I would immediately bring Sonic_Spork onto my Royal Council and charge her with the duty of addressing our kingdom's homelessness problems. Because I think that a wise King (or Queen) ought to employ intelligent people to see that royal proclamations are carried out competently.
@Sonic_Spork: Would you join my Royal Council? I promise there would be an eventual knighthood in it for you. We won't talk about the consequences should you happen to fail your King/Queen.
I've actually thought about running for office, believe it or not. But I have laid that notion to the side for a while at least, for the same reason I did the idea of going back to college... I want to spend what time I can with my husband. He is 20 years my senior and I feel that the years are going by too fast. One day I won't have him here to love anymore, and I want to make every day count. Doing something big like going into government, or going back to college, rather than coasting with the good job that I have, would take away too much of my time. But I've thought about it.
One thing that has really occurred to me...have you guys SEEN the people who have been elected to legislative office in the last few elections? I mean, some of them are really great (I'm a big fan of Katie Porter)...but there are some real bozos on both team red and team blue in there. I'm starting to feel like just about anybody, if they put enough time, effort and shmooze into it, could get into state or federal government. When I was younger, I had this impression that you had to spend your life, your career, preparing for such a thing. Maybe start in a rich, well connected family, or as a lawyer... That isn't true if it ever was. Not that becoming a Congress Critter would mean I'd have the power to fix all of America's problems, but it would be doing a heck of a lot more towards that end, than I am doing today, no?
Quote:
Originally Posted by MercedesBoy
Many homeless choose that lifestyle. They want to live life on their own terms, period. Don't want to be told what to do, or when to do it. That nixes work and career. Nobody can really force another person to work or want to live like a normal person. If I were king, I would round up the homeless and place them in a gated community for homeless. Here's your house or apartment. If you choose to still loiter in public places then, I would arrest and put them in jail. There have to be limits to their flouting of laws and societal norms.
That's a very lazy answer. You don't have to think too hard, read or write lots of words, tax your mind, if you just say, "I guess they're bad people. Some people are bad." It's a child's answer to an adult's problem, I'm sorry to say.
Because even if you have some rightness in there somewhere, the more important question is WHY. You gonna say the Devil got into them? Gonna stick with the lazy thinking? This is just "it's how it is, nothing can change it" logic. Well, the more people believe that, the less likely it is that anything can or will ever get better.
What laws and social norms do they want to flout and why? I mean, if it's so good, then tell me...would you want to live that way? Does it look like a sweet vacation to you, or hell? I wouldn't want to give it a shot. So what issues do they have, that reasons, for choosing homelessness, if it's nothing but a choice?
And besides that, you're also saying that freedom...you know, that word we Americans love so much... You are anti freedom. Oh, sure, you're all for people having it as long as they use it the way you think that they should. As long as they live the way you think that they should, then yeah. Get your freedom on. But freedom does not always mean "free to make the most responsible choices"...it also means, "freedom to make mistakes."
And other people are not infringing on your freedom or mine, simply by existing in a state that you or I find unpleasant to behold or contemplate.
Thing is, I'm doing pretty well in life now but it wasn't always that way. I was briefly homeless, myself, and only the good fortune of having some family willing to temporarily lend a hand in our time of need allowed us to climb out of that. If you actually talk to people who have endured this, or who are now, there is often a point in their past where just the right kind of momentary intervention could have completely changed their course. But it wasn't there. Many of them fought tooth and nail to try not to wind up in the situation that they wound up in...they just did not have the resources in often one critical area of their lives to make the difference.
But yeah, it takes time and energy to hear people's stories and to offer them sympathy. It is far easier to just say, "they must be bad. Lock them away or something."
If I were king, I would round up the homeless and place them in a gated community for homeless.
The King's dungeon by any other name. What happens when somebody doesnt like your lifestyle and wants to put YOU in the King's Gated Dungeon? See this is theoretical idea behind constitution to keep one political group incarcerating anybody they disagree with. Or one economic class from enslaving another. Also people keep forgetting what it costs to incarcerate somebody. Its cheaper to put them up at fancy hotel in lap of luxury.
My notion, offer every citizen right to small efficiency apartment. Dont occupy it for six month it goes to somebody else, but you then have right to another available apt on demand if available. So everybody always has right to shelter. And not some dangerous army barracks communal shelter to be kicked out every morning, supposedly to trudge the streets looking for work.
Think given option, darn few want to live in cardboard box or under a bridge. But yea always going to be some hobo types that do. Claiming all homeless are mentally ill drug addicts and want to live that way is another BIG LIE. Rents have become so fantastic compared to low end wages, that once you are homeless and jobless, its not THAT easy to reintegrate as some imagine. Cities really rather poor only show up for slave labor shift of work, then go poof and disappear until next shift. They dont want to consider needs of that slave labor class. Middle class and the wealthy are lot more profitable. Small houses/apts for the poor dont generate tax income they want. They rather have vacant luxury condos used as investment tax write off by the wealthy.
I've done hundred's of walking tours, on Youtube, over the last 6 months, and I've looked and looked for beggars and homeless on the streets, of most of those cites, even South America, and where are they? Hiding? Penned up somewhere?
Are you saying you recorded the walking tours you did personally and posted them on youtube, but never saw homeless people?
Or did you watch a bunch of tours on youtube, and there were no beggars on those recordings?
Tucson's "snowbird panhandlers" are back in force, now that it's cooled off. Every streetcorner has been claimed.
I don't think throwing charity at the problem is the answer--it's a bottomless pit. The nicer you make it for people not to work, the more people will choose that option. I think that's why it has blossomed in the last 20 years or so.
A couple of hundred years ago, you'd be sent to the community-funded workhouse if you couldn't earn a living. Workhouses sound like nasty places; dank and dirty and cold, poor food and manual labor. I don't think many people chose to go there if they could possibly scrabble a living on their own.
Maybe something in between a workhouse and free food and lodging is needed. I would outlaw begging and sleeping on the streets. If you're caught doing either, you would be placed in a program that
--Provides help for people with mental health or addiction issues.
--Offers jobs and halfway houses that help workers get back into providing for themselves.
I don't know what could be done with people who simply don't want to work to provide for themselves--and there are some out there. Letting them freeze or starve to death seems inhuman.
I suspect in even the best plans, some people will not go with the program, especially in the US.
Japan has a homeless rate of nearly zero. Might be something to learn.
In Japan, begging is illegal. You will be arrested. My country would start there.
Japan has fairly accessible public housing and there isn’t much of a stigma against it. When I lived there, some teachers lived in public housing because that’s what they could afford. FWIW, contract teachers (who have not yet been certified) often live in this housing because their pay is too low for them to be able to afford anything else.
I think one main difference in places like Japan is that they live in much smaller apartments. You may have just a room to yourself, but it is a fully equipped efficiency apartment. You’ll have a small fridge/burner and can get a microwave and an otherwise convertible setup.
One of the main issues here is that most places do not allow for micro apartments. They may require the size of apartments to be at least 400sqft. That isn’t the case everywhere, but allowing micro apartments that are 200-300 feet (often in a loft setup) would make housing much more affordable.
Neighborhoods also need to do more locally. My town has mixed income housing (including affordable weekly rentals right in the downtown area), but all the new housing is very high end apartments or condos.
Arresting people for being homeless doesn’t help anything. A lot of homeless people really have nowhere to go.
Note I don't say "I would build them houses" because there's already plenty of vacant housing to hold them, they just aren't allowed to live there because of Capitalism.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Listener2307
Vagrancy laws were once very effective at solving the problem of beggars. Dagwood used to just run them off.
Institutionalizing them never has worked, but I think enforced laws against begging and vagrancy would have an immediate effect and clean up about half the problem.
So your theory is that people are homeless because it's too much fun?
Japan has a homeless rate of nearly zero. Might be something to learn.
In Japan, begging is illegal. You will be arrested. My country would start there.
How does that solve the homeless issue? How does that give all people a home? That's the question here.
For starters, I would silence the anti-development, anti-density Nimby's across the country. California, first stop!
I read Ilan Omar's book, a congresswoman from MN, and when she saw her first homeless in NYC, she was shocked, as in Somalia they have a communal culture which wouldn't allow it.
I've done hundred's of walking tours, on Youtube, over the last 6 months, and I've looked and looked for beggars and homeless on the streets, of most of those cites, even South America, and where are they? Hiding? Penned up somewhere?
All these billionaires that set up these charitable causes, it's nothing more than tax evasion. They can create charitable foundations and steer the funds to their liking. And why not to homeless shelters in this country?
I lived in Thailand for a while, and had visited many time before...in all spending about 5 years of my life there. One of the things I did most days was simply pick a starting place usually near the Sky Train, subway, or a bus route, and just start walking. Literally "homeless", no. But many were living in primitive wooden shacks with corrugated tin for a roof, maybe or maybe not running water, maybe or maybe not electricity. I hired one fellow as a guide in one particular area, dressed decently, had been a college student. After a couple of days touring he asked if I wanted to see where he lived. It was a lean-two with a couple of other men at the back of a temple. Homeless, no, not exactly.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We won't talk about the consequences should you happen to fail your King/Queen. 
