As a nation, we need to work on putting together a better social safety net and we need to work on making a whole lot more affordable housing available. I don't recall the exact figures off the top of my head, but the number of available affordable housing units is some relatively small percentage of demand. This is in part because of the way taxes and financing and things like that are structured. It is in part because we have done away with a lot of affordable options in a lot of places, like SROs and boarding houses. The types of places young single people used to live largely no longer exist.

As a nation, our track record for caring for our children really sucks. This is a very poor policy that hurts the future of our country. We are churning out relatively large numbers of people with terrible childhoods and then wondering why so much fails to go smoothly. We are grinding up a very high percentage of future citizens and then expecting them to somehow solve it themselves. Aside from any moral concerns, this is just a terrible thing to do to ourselves as a nation. We are flushing a great deal of human capital down the toilet by caring so little about the welfare of our children.

Edit:

From the end of the article: This also means that we need to de-stigmatize homelessness, so students in need will self-identify and get the help they need.

This is part of why I am open about being homeless, although I know that in the short term it hurts me. I would probably be taken more seriously here and other places if I weren't open about being homeless currently. I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class. I have about six years of college, including an AA and 2 certificates and I am a few classes short of a bachelor's. But I realize that my lack of housing is something that convinces many people I am simply incompetent and I get dismissed and they move on. And that needs to change if things are ever going to improve in this country. As long as people figure homeless folks are merely inept, they aren't going to try to get at the real roots of the problem, like sky high housing costs.

Before that I couch surfed, slept in my truck and took apartments that were highly unsafe (crackling wiring, soft floors).

The trick is to get some sort of fuck you money, stand tall and carry on. You can only be subjugated by will.

I prefer the think of it as houseless. Home is earth.

I am pretty tired of being homeless and very much want off the street, but I did make a choice: I walked away from a Fortune 500 company for health reasons. It was the right choice, given my circumstances. So while there are things that frustrate me, I do have agency. I also run a homeless website trying to help other homeless people preserve their agency: http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/

I also more recently began recording my thoughts on What Helps The Homeless: http://whathelpsthehomeless.blogspot.com/

Largely due to my medical condition, all my websites are updated somewhat sporadically. But my health is improving and that is resolving one of the big underlying problems that I have. Most homeless people have some sort of medical problem or handicap as a root cause of their difficulties.

I left the tab open when I went to sleep to see how this thread works out. The only surprise was your comment.

This place is pretty good to discuss the best opportunities to work while on a cruise ship or an island in the Caribbean (we really had this) or similar bourgeois first world problems.

Unfortunately this is pretty representative for the upper class in our western society. And yes I'm sure everybody has some good cause they are sending money over regularly. Makes falling asleep (in the mag lev bed) easier on the less busy days.

You'll recognize the real friends and people worthy caring about by the way they handle you and your situation. Take this chance to make some real friends. You won't get many chances like that in the future when you are on the other side. Good luck!

I don't have any sure fire answers, but right now every county should have a piece of land reserved for homeless individuals. Just a place you can pitch a tent, access to out house, and portable washing facilities.

Right now most counties/town will ticket you for living in you car, and campgrounds are not available, nor cost effective.(Where are they suspose to go?)

Every county that does not comply will forfeit all funds from the federal government--period. That is if we can get a president/congress really interested in solving the problem?

As to the fear of crime and drug use in these designated areas--if there's a problem police can always be called. I'm sure they can be dragged away from revenue collection?

To the person I am replying to--apply to section 8 housing. It will be awhile, but get on the list if it's even open? Hang in there. We do care! I think most of us are in a state of denial? I do know this--I know too many homeless former Programmers? This community should be discussing the problem?

There is no way in hell I would camp there.

FWIW, I was working on becoming an urban planner when life got in the way. My incomplete bachelor's is in Environmental Resource Management with a concentration in Housing and I took a class on Homelessness and Public Policy as part of that. I was a subforum moderator and active participant for a time on the world's foremost planning forum.

I will reiterate that changing a lot of government policies will have to happen so that housing costs can come down. Right now, we have a lot of really crappy policies that actively inflate housing sizes and prices and create a growing divide between the haves and have nots.

To the person I am replying to--apply to section 8 housing.

Yeah, that's not going to happen. I will suggest that people like you are part of the problem. The only thing you know about me is that I am homeless, so you think a one off suggestion from you can solve significant and complicated problems. You are doing exactly what I described above: Assuming I am inept. That will not help me. It will not help anyone. It only deepens the problem.

We do care!

There are people who genuinely do care. You aren't exactly coming across as one of them.

I am talking about a social safety net for citizens that first and foremost respects them as people with a right to choose and a right to expect a high standard of living. Most American welfare programs are designed in a way that is enormously disrespectful and expects people to accept some pretty crappy things because in order to get help, you first need to be defined as poor. That's a terrible way to create a social safety net. Other countries have a better track record of providing a safety net for their citizens that allows them to access benefits while still middle class or regardless of their social class. America is pretty bad about not doing anything for you until after you are poor and then doing things that help keep your poor and actively discourage upward mobility.

Edit: I have no idea why this has been downvoted, but my medical condition is deadly and torturous. It is also incredibly expensive to treat with conventional medicine, like $100k/year and up. Compared to that, sleeping in a tent is a minor inconvenience. I have done much better since walking away from a crappy, mold-infested apartment. So I have no plans to go back to renting. Ever.

I guess I'm just a little confused because you definitely sound like you have a strong opinion on the matter and disagree with what other people think should be done but don't really get into specifics about what you think should be done.

It sounds like right now we have a safety social net for poor people, but you don't think that's a good idea. Does this mean that you think we need a safety social net for people who aren't poor as well? But if they aren't poor why would they need one? Perhaps I'm "part of the problem" so do enlighten me.

Also, at least based off your situation, it seems like what we really need isn't just affordable housing but treatment for those with mental illness. Despite the fact that I actually have health insurance I'm still hesitant to get treatment because it's so expensive.

From what I've understood from threads like this, I think the idea is that social services designed for people in need should not try to prove that the person requesting actually needs it. It creates friction, and it's a waste of resources (money, people, time), and some people that need the service might not get it because the system fucks up every now and then.

If you'd open it up to whoever asked for it, people in need would naturally request it and get it, and people that don't wouldn't. If someone abused the system (and this is the big assumption IMO), the amount lost would probably be lower than what would have been spent trying to enforce requirements. So you'd solve the false negatives and would also spend less, and the system would be simpler.

Of course, I don't know much about this, this is what I've gathered from reading around.

So, for example:

Affordable, good quality health care for all.

Price breaks on public transit passes for people who are handicapped (this actually exists and I think is a good example of something helpful).

Functioning public transit systems that give people options other than owning a car for how to get around.

An abundance of affordable, decent housing -- where "affordable" is not a code word for slum housing but honestly just means the price is not out of reach of average folks with ordinary jobs. Lack of affordable housing is such a problem in some places that police, teachers and so on often cannot afford to live in the communities they serve. These are not people who are incompetent and looking for a handout, yet some communities have to set up special programs to help them buy a house or live reasonably close to work because our housing policies are so horribly broken.

Maternity leave and other policies that help women get and keep jobs and pursue real careers. I read a lot about this in my twenties. In America, women pursued the American historical position of "Don't tread on me!" and took the position that "I can too do the job if you just get the fuck out of my way." The result is that women who are without a man and without children make about 98% of what men make who have similar education and experience. But the minute you introduce a man or a child into the picture, American women make more like 2/3s what men make -- the same figure cited in the bible as what women were worth compared to men 2000-ish years ago. In contrast, European women have pushed for help in carrying the burden of bearing and raising kids and the result has been substantially more gains in terms of closing the wage gap and overall lower divorce rates.

The things you are suggesting are problematic because it actively disincentivizes working. I am not for just free handouts for poor people. I am for fixing the system so it stops actively creating problems and pushing folks off a cliff and then blaming them when their life falls apart and they can't figure out how to get it back together.

In the 1950s, the average new house was under 1200 square feet. It was bought by a family that either had kids or was going to have kids. The average family had 2-3 kids. It had basics, like a functioning kitchen and heat in the winter.

By 2000, the average new home was over 2000 square feet. The average family had one child. It had all kinds of amenities, like a microwave and multiple bathrooms.

You seem to think, as many people do, that "poor people" are a separate class of people, distinct from everyone else. I was middle class most of my life.

I am not mentally ill. I am physically ill. Most people on the street do have some sort of mental health or medical issue or disability. The fact that the American health care system is such a mess is definitely part of the problem. The last time I looked at stats on the issue, more than half of all bankruptcies involved high medical bills. This held true even in cases where they had good insurance.

So fixing our health care system would help. But also removing some of the tax incentives that give tax breaks to folks who can already afford a house in a way that actively encourages them to buy the largest house they can afford, with the most amenities, would help. We need to stop dividing up the housing market between housing for rich folks and slum housing. There used to be middle class housing. That is essentially disappearing.

The other thing we need is more walkable communities and better public transit. America is arranged such that most people basically need a car in order to have a job at all. I gave up my car while still working for a Fortune 500 company and although it was about a 7-10 minute drive to work, it was an hour long walk and you basically "couldn't get there from here" via public transit -- or, more accurately, it would have taken me longer to use public transit than to walk there. All of the incentive programs at work trying to encourage people to carpool and what not were heavily biased towards an assumption of everyone having a car and driving everywhere and largely worthless for someone like me. I eventually stopped trying to participate in any of them. People who drive everywhere have very biased and inaccurate concepts about how getting around works if your life is not car-centered.

If America worked better, there would be fewer poor people. Fucking people over and then forcing them to become "charity cases" (please note that is a contemptuous term, not one of caring) is an actively harmful, disrespectful model and blames the victims of larger processes that are largely beyond their control. You seem unable to view this as a societal issue that negatively impacts specific individuals. Your comment makes it clear that you view "poor people" as simply incompetents who need charity, not folks who need a system that makes it easier to make their lives work while still exercising agency.

I've read some of your posts with interest. Apologies if I'm making too much of an assumption, but how do you afford to pay for your medical condition without a job and how can you take proper care of it without housing? The kind of money you talk about in your blog is measured in fractions of dollars, not hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to properly care for yourself.

I'm sure I'm missing part of the story here and would be interested to know more.

So, yes, it's more important than the industrial complex or "autism" (what the hell does that even mean? What about "autism"?)

>and are homeless because of their vices and inability or distaste for adapting to society

I knew when you said that you were just a troll. Most homeless have mental problems and many are veterans with shellshock.

Those are both unacceptable, particularly here.

[1] tent, cabin, whatever provides enough shelter.

Edit: note the 'private'. Some people think shelter is enough. But I think you might need to have a private space to get your head straight.

But, as you seem to suspect, it's not that simple. There's an underlying reason for why that particular individual does not have a home in the first place, and that needs to be addressed to truly fix the problem. See Mz's comments in the rest of the thread for one example. Another is that there is a _high_ amount of correlation between homelessness and mental illness (in the States, anyway), and is a result of a lack of care in that area.

People in the former condition tend to be detached from the common way of living in the society; the paradoxical effect is that you may give them money, and they don't know what to do with it (see the homeless coder), or you give them shelter, and they live in it exactly the way they would live in a street (for example, on a mattress laid down on the floor, and without taking care or "using" the place they live in).

>studies fine arts

yep. sure is modern society

Personal theory: it became easier to get loans, and schools know that students aren't exactly price sensitive. What's the difference between $2k and $4k a semester when you're paying it off years later anyway?

(Turns out, a lot, but not when every single influence in the world is _screaming_ that if you don't go to college, you're a failure.)