posted on January 16, 2004 06:29:45 PM newwith which Kiara is so familiar...
No, not so familiar. Just a few life experiences and lots of stories I've seen on TV. There were updates on the squatters in Vancouver parks almost daily for awhile. Vancouver is also under pressure to clean up the homeless problem and get it out of sight before they are host to the Winter Olympics in 2010. Like many others I am almost totally isolated from the truly homeless.
And in all honesty, I would take in a stray dog or cat (which most of my pets have been) but I would probably never offer my home to a street person.
For many years the government has squandered the funds paid to them by the taxpayers and they have closed mental facilities and other help centers and caused much of the problem themselves.
posted on January 16, 2004 06:38:13 PM new
We had a fellow here in town take a young homeless fellow into his house to share what little he had - being on disability and living in a small trailer home himself. The fellow was impressed that he actually had a car and managed his affairs well enough to have a little pocket money. So the first night he got up and crushed his host's head with a hammer and spent the next three days riding around in his car and eating the food in his frig. When he showed up at a local bar and sat drinking someone noticed he had a locket around his neck they were used to seeing on the other fellow and got worried. When the police came out to check on the home owner the guy was not apologetic and made no effort to run or form an excuse. He just outright said that he wanted what little the fellow had and was satisfied at the tree days enjoyment he had gotten from killing him.
You never know what you could be taking home.
posted on January 16, 2004 06:38:36 PM new "For many years the government has squandered the funds paid to them by the taxpayers and they have closed mental facilities and other help centers and caused much of the problem themselves."
I agree, Kiara. It's been the same in the States. But here we are with a new reality, one that doesn't conveniently shunt these people out of the way. Like it or not, they are your problem, and my problem, and Helen's problem.
posted on January 16, 2004 06:49:00 PM new
Gravid, I'm planning to visit your town soon. Lock your doors...
Seriously, folks, I'm not suggesting that we rush out and snag Jack The Ripper off the streets; I'm as confused and overcome by homelessness as any of you, but I think about it... I've tried and tried to come up with solutions for it -- just in my tiny community alone -- but I find myself doing The Sidestep...
posted on January 16, 2004 07:08:10 PM newMy local library is full of homeless people. The study carrels have apparently been leased to snoozing, sprawled folks in perpetuity. Frankly, that bugs me. I'm the one paying local taxes to underwrite my library's existence and yet I find myself stepping around dishevilled folks who haven't read a book in years and most likely don't possess a library card.
While our library does have homeless people who sleep in chairs or at tables, the majority of them spend their time in the library reading. It's true that they may not be paying taxes, but they do read.
There are two or three who get on my nerves by trying to demand special privileges that no one else gets, it's true. But the biggest problems we have regarding homeless people stem from a) odor; b) strange or loud behavior due to mental problems; and c) problems in checking out materials to someone with no fixed address.
Let me ask you something, Bunni: When did it become "policy" at your library to allow such vagrancy? Is it a policy, or merely some unwritten "rule" by which you all abide?
There is no written policy at my library, though some libraries do have them. However, libraries have historically been welcoming of the indigent, the poor, immigrants, etc. as long as they are willing to abide by library rules & policies.
Think back... when's the first time you recall your library becoming a lobby for people who had nowhere else to go?
I graduated as a librarian in 1979 & after working for 6 years at the AMPAS library, went into public library work in 1985. There were many homeless people in the library then. Their number has burgeoned over the years.
Many homeless people have mental problems, and we can thank Ronald Reagan their presence on the street. Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on January 16, 2004 07:36:08 PM new
What should we do?
If everyone stepped in and took care of the homeless I have a feeling the government would just have one less thing to worry about. Then they could continue to close more hospitals and cut more services and move the sick people into our homes and we'd be caring for them too.
And what about the elderly, lets all take them in also. That's a lot of commitment and a lot of money for the average working person to bear/share. BTW, some of that is happening here already.
What about our lives and who will take care of us? How many of us can work daily to make money and then do all this caregiving on top of it?
posted on January 16, 2004 07:39:38 PM new
Gravid, I am not offended by what you said. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. And as you state, there are quite a few pushing god for their own purposes, driving their mercades and talking about the need to tithe. (It is difficult to trust them, on the whole, I know.)
I do think republicans have sloughed off the mentally ill and the issue of homelessness, cutting services left and right. Its not a section of society they as a party, have ever given a great measure of concern for. Thats nothing new.
As far as the govt running them for the funds. That is yet to be seen what will happen. Everyone bites some bullets for the source of their funds though, dont they? Even businesses? But what exactly is the government dictating to receive these funds?
Cant say I would take in someone homeless either -- am afraid to. It is very hard to give purely and trust a stranger without winding up feeling overburdened or used somewhere down the line. I wouldnt know how, or have the skills to cope with it right inside my home.
I may be naive, but I am hoping this program does some good. Maybe because 'something' is better than nothing and some action and funding is so desperatly needed.
If democrates are arguing this though, the only point I could conceed to is using Federal Funds for the prospect of employing people for these programs and then, these programs going against discrimation laws based on religion preferences. They promise they wont do that? But will they? Will a Christian based program hire a qualified social worker who is jewish? But then again, would someone not christian want to work there? And vise versa. Every company, business, program has its culture. So for me - many questions. But I am willing to give this a try and see what it does.
posted on January 16, 2004 07:52:18 PM new
Now here's a culture I thought stuck together; parents living with kids, grandparents ruling the roost with their wisdom...
China's homeless come into view By Michael A. Lev
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
BEIJING - At the train stations, along crowded streets and near the Friendship store where tourists can be found, the city's homeless congregate.
The aggressive beg. The industrious root through garbage cans for bottles to sell for recycling. The forlorn sit idly until it is time to find a park bench or patch of ground on which to sleep.
"All kinds of people come here: tramps, beggars, migrants looking for work," said Meng Qing Guo, who lives outside the main railway station, earning about $1 a day from recycling.
He must forage for food in the garbage and cannot afford medical care for an angry burn on his leg that hasn't healed properly.
Homelessness is suddenly a visible problem in Beijing. For China's government, the issue always has been an embarrassment best swept under the carpet because it conflicted too visibly with the communist ideal that no citizen ever falls through the cracks.
Now there has been a change of heart, with the government willing to consider that China is not so different from other societies, at least when it comes to homelessness.
As a first step, the government rescinded a 20-year-old regulation that allowed police to detain the homeless and deport those from other provinces back to their hometowns.
Four new homeless shelters have opened in Beijing, among hundreds set up across the country, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.
But there has been no immediate effect on the homeless. In fact, the expectation is that over the short term, more people will be living on the streets of Beijing and other big cities because the police have been told to cease making arrests.
What happens next isn't clear because China never stopped to think about the issue before.
If the situation gets too messy, the old rules might be reinstated, said Dou Yupei, the director of the general office of the Civil Affairs Ministry.
"However, if the public thinks it is normal for a big country like us to have some beggars, then there would be no need," Dou said at a recent press briefing.
This is a big change in attitude, brought about by hand-wringing over one much-publicized violent incident, but also by the reality that the government no longer can control who migrates to China's big cities.
To accelerate economic growth and alleviate rural poverty, China has loosened restrictions on travel and internal migration to encourage mobility among the country's labor force.
This has brought millions of people to the cities, some of whom cannot cope.
At night, the troubled and the dispossessed hunker down in public places. Among them are those with no jobs or money, professional beggars and the mentally impaired.
There is also an entire subset of desperate people who came to Beijing to complain to the government about some kind of injustice, then became stranded here.
The treatment of outsiders in big cities became a focal point after an incident earlier this year in which a 27-year-old graphic designer was beaten to death in a detention center for vagrants in the southern city of Guangzhou, China.
He had been picked up and wrongly identified as homeless because he did not have a local residency card.
The incident was publicized by the state-run media, which occasionally has the freedom to highlight certain social problems.
China's authoritarian government does not have to react to public pressure, but in this case a raw nerve was touched.
There is political concern that economic development has allowed the gap between rich and poor to grow to such an extreme that it could one day threaten the Communist Party's hold on power.
In response, Chinese leaders have unveiled plans to create a social safety net to replace the old communist system, in which the government controlled every citizen and there was no recognized phenomenon of people wandering the streets.
Xia Xui Luan, a sociologist at Peking University, said eventually there will be a more comprehensive system for coping with the homeless.
The four new shelters in Beijing, for example, are located on the city's outskirts, where indigents are unlikely to find them.
On a recent day, the center assigned to care for the downtown homeless had only 20 occupants, a security guard said. The center is in an obscure industrial park, an $8 cab ride from downtown.
The whole challenge of caring for the homeless has been made more difficult by a fact the government does not dwell on: the communist system's refusal to allow private organizations to flourish.
In a country where the party maintains control over society, there is no room for civic or church groups to operate shelters or soup kitchens. Nor are there advocacy groups for the homeless or volunteer doctors to tend to the sick on the streets.
"In more than 10 years, so far nobody has offered me a free meal," said Qiao Rui Wing, 54, who lives at the main train station and spent a recent night sleeping outside a $1.20 per night flophouse she could not afford.
Qiao, who kept warm by wrapping a pink towel around her head, said she came to Beijing from Inner Mongolia to find help after being raped by a government official. She became estranged from her family and survives by selling recyclable materials.
She sleeps in the train station or a public toilet when police allow it and said she has been deported from Beijing several times. She returns, she said, because it is easier to survive here -- and she holds out hope that someday her story will be heard.
"There is only one place in Beijing you can sleep for free," said a 15-year-old runaway slouching in the shadows. "The police station."
posted on January 16, 2004 08:04:29 PM new
Jailing mentally ill and homeless people is not the answer. Already, our prisons are overwhelmed with mentally ill prisoners.
One answer is to improve mental health care since many homeless people are mentally ill.
Ronald Reagan's failed policy toward the treatment of mental illness should be reversed. The next administration should work to improve mental health care and facilities with the focus on helping patients rather than rewarding the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Since mental patients were deinstitutionalized, the number of homeless people has increased significantly.
posted on January 16, 2004 08:18:46 PM new
Absolutely! It's 2004 and there are too many sick people in the village to take care of without help from social and health care programs.
posted on January 16, 2004 08:27:36 PM new
Not the homeless as a whole, but certainly those among the homeless who are mentally ill. Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on January 16, 2004 08:32:51 PM new
Before the homeless can be "taken care of", you have to find out what their needs are. If some don't want to work or have a roof over their heads, how can you take care of them?
The homeless include families with children, war veterans, and other good people in addition to those who are mentally ill. They all need our help. Don't you believe that our government should make an effort to offer temporary shelter for those poor people until they can make other arrangements?
posted on January 16, 2004 09:02:52 PM new
"The homeless include families with children, war veterans, and other good people in addition to those who are mentally ill. They all need our help."
War veterans are promised as much when they complete a term of service, yet many do not receive the care they're to which they're entitled.
I'm thoroughly aware of the composite nature of the Homeless, Helen ( -although I have to say that I find it ridiculous that there are those homeless families who've been on the streets for five years and have children under four years of age) .
If the government is supposed to at least attempt to rectify this problem, what should it do?
It's already been stated here that shelters are located miles from soup kitchens and that no self-respecting homeless person would walk the distance to take advantage of both on the same day, so what should be done? What advice could we give to George Bush to assist him in solving this problem?
posted on January 16, 2004 09:14:42 PM new
I've answered that question as well as I can, Pat. I mentioned repealing Reagan's blunder and improving mental health care and facilities. The health and welfare of people should be a high priority in this country instead of corporate welfare. I don't expect any help from the Bush administration.
posted on January 16, 2004 10:23:07 PM new
Hope I'm not too far off topic, but WalMArt is now calling for the federal govt to institute universal health care.
Seems the expose' about WalMart instructing managers to provide information to their employees about free clinics etc because WalMArt doesn't provide adequate health care chaged WalMArt's "tude" toward Hilary's health care plan.
As I have said in previous posts, if we want the health care system to survive, we are will have to go to a single payer universal system on the federal level.
posted on January 17, 2004 12:28:19 AM new
On Topic?
From the Economic and Policy Institute website
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_econindicators_income
September 26, 2003
Furthermore, economic forecasts for 2004 suggest the jobless recovery is expected to persist (e.g., the Congressional Budget Office predicts that unemployment will be 6.2% next year). Thus, the U.S. economy appears to be stuck in another weak recovery that is yielding few benefits for middle- and low-income households. Forecasts for where the economy is headed suggest a continued gap between overall growth and the living standards of working families.
posted on January 17, 2004 09:45:37 AM new
This problem will not go away - may never get solved unless we have a new ecinomic system invented.
The problem right now nobody wants to admit or consider is that production has become almost completely seperated from labor.
The old socialist idea of controlling the means of production - it has no meaning in a world of automation and mass production facilities that have hardly any people in them.
There must be some system devised that awards the basics of life to people who have no skill to sell for which there is a cash market.
The moralists will say well let them starve if they won't work. But it is not a matter of won't - it's a matter of they are not needed. If you do let them starve at some point you will find that a world of cheap goods that have no market seperated from a mass of humanity with no way to obtain them is like a tank full of air and gasoline - just waiting for the spark that will ignite them.
posted on January 17, 2004 12:17:03 PM new
A major war or political upheaval that causes huge capital losses and scares capital away from the low wage producing regions will change things real quick.
WWII left the Western Hemisphere unscathed and in a position for economic dominance. That advantage is gone.
Now the end of the Cold War has dropped even more barriers.
The US is beginning to look a lot like England just priuor to WWI - a super power with a big target on its back, with everyone aiming at either our economy or our destruction.
posted on January 17, 2004 12:24:57 PM new
Faith based charities help has been shown to be more effective than government programs at providing help to the unfortunate. For those who think it's just terrible that these homeless might have to listen to a prayer in order to get a good meal....I say too bad. It's their choice, and maybe they're just not hungry enough. Many drug/alcoholics who have turned to a 'god' have changed their life around and become productive human beings.
On the homeless. My friends and I worked for two years feeding the homeless in downtown San Jose, each and every Saturday. They were mostly men, young and old, with alcohol and drug problems. They didn't want to be a part of our society, they didn't want to abide by any 'rules' in order to have shelter, etc. One of my friends had/has a construction business. He offered many men temp. jobs. Very, very few ever showed up.
I disagree with those who see most of the homeless as not having made life choice that put them in the situation they now find themselves. They most certainly did, at some point in their lives. Those with drug and alcohol problems can turn to NA or AA, but they don't because they don't want to. You can't help people who refuse to help themselves. Most of these people have used family and friends as long as they were willing to 'care' for them with no rules/requirements.
And on the mental hospitals being closed during the Reagan administration and to those now blaming the current administration....how much did your president, clinton, *do for this problem in his 8 years in office with a booming economy*? Not much.
posted on January 17, 2004 12:34:28 PM new
While it IS fair to blame Bush and his predecessors and Congress for the state of the economy and the underfunding of mental health care that puts many on the street as part of the BIG picture. It is however usually the mayor and city officials or county officials who are to blame for mistreatment of the homeless and not allowing facilities to serve them.
An example is right next door to me in Pontiac MI where the city government does not want a homeless shelter down town because the homeless go out in the day and hang around. So instead of finding a way to help them or get them a better location they have simply been going in almost weekly doing fire inspections - building code inspections - zoning studies - anything to shut them down since it is an under funded charity in an older building. Other businesses in the city have not seen a fire or building inspector in YEARS but they are enforcing the letter of the law on this shelter. Including police raids in the middle of the night to see if they can find drugs or people wanted on warrants in the shelter. That is to discourage the homeless directly from using the facility. Including trying to seperate mothers from their small children in the middle of the night will no complain or probable cause.
posted on January 17, 2004 01:43:46 PM new
Hey Linda, I got news for you: Becoming or having a mental illiness is not a "LIFE CHOICE".
They cant manage their thought processes like someone firing on all four cylinders.
(Do you even understand THAT?)
But according to you somehow we're supposed to believe they made choices in life that made them this way, right? Whereas if you have a heart, liver, spleen, or any other organ/bodily defect -o- YOU DIDNT CHOSE IT - This 'happened' to you and thats forgiveable and understandable.
posted on January 17, 2004 01:56:03 PM new
Along with what Neroter said, quite often the meds that "control" certain types of mental illness are harder on the person than the disease. Thorazine, Stelazine, Lithium... I've known people who had to take these drugs in order to "function" according to social norms; the two people I knew well enough to discuss it with both said that the drugs made them feel "out of it" and "inhuman" , so they'd periodically go off their meds, get into some trouble or other, get "re-evaluated" , re-medicated, and the whole cycle would begin again.
