If they believe what they’re preaching [you know you misspelled proselytize, right?], why should that make their other actions insincere? For that matter, how do you know ALL the people feeding the poor aren’t doing it to make themselves feel good?
Selfish jerks. Glad I’m not one.
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Damon Wells
Another closely related problem is the lack of any rights or legal protection for people who choose to be homeless. Many areas treat nomadism as something inherently problematic rather than recognize it as a valid living choice. This is especially hypocritical in places like the US which has a traditions of thousands of years of nomadism. Even just the word “homeless” implies that this is what defines them as people, as a deficiency. When I had no residence, I found “urban survivalist” to be a more useful description. But it was apparent that many social structures simply deny the possibility of enjoying the rights and responsibilities of normal citizenship as a nomad, that they do this deliberately, and the the bias is so deeply ingrained (at least in the US) that nobody seems to question it.
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Why don’t those lazy homeless just live the american dream?
How many of the “homeless” have made a reasoned decision to be so?
#notallflorida
thanks or the markdown tip, @anon29631895!
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A good question, but I am skeptical that anyone is in a position to answer it. Getting a representative sampling from the people themselves is not likely, and those who make “homelessness” their business approach this with IMO overwhelming bias.
It also begs the question of how many people actually reason through their decision to live in a fixed residence, versus being pressured into it by group dynamics, legal machinations, consumerism, and other external factors. Most people I have spoken with about this have intimated that there is not even a decision to be made, which suggests that they don’t.
Besides - if people’s rights are supposedly innate, it doesn’t really matter how many.
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What shelter?
As I said, the people proselytizing (stupid fingers) weren’t providing a needed service (which was being provided a couple blocks away), had been part of a discussion where they had actually hashed out how they could provide better, more meaningful benefits to the homeless - and they decided not to do that because it didn’t give them an opportunity to proselytize. That’s pretty damning. I found out that one of the churches involved solicited funds outside stores “for charity,” but an examination of their finances showed that 99.9% of the money raised went towards paying salaries of the church hierarchy (who were mostly related), and their only “charitable” act was handing out bologna sandwiches in the park. So yeah, definitely insincere.
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Including you?
No, I do not know how many, nor do I have any evidence that anybody else know how many either. I doubt that there would even be much consensus about how many of any decisions people make may be “reasoned”.
My point was not that this is a large population. My point was that instead of the agenda being merely a marginal population treated badly, that the deeper agenda is that of marginalizing nomadism in the first place.
So are you saying that a significant number of the homeless are noble nomads (happy hobos?) rather than people who have been deprived of shelter due to things like poverty, abuse, and mental illness?
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If that’s what I was saying, then I would have typed something to that effect. But if you choose to interpret it thusly, knock yourself out. You could simply disagree instead of taking the piss.
Granted talking about noble nomads and happy hobos is sarcastic. I will be straight to the point.
You talk about homelessness being a choice. Is it a path deliberately and thoughtfully chosen by enough people that it is worth mentioning in a discussion about the homeless?
I’m sure there have been some people who made the decision to become nomads and it has worked out wonderfully for them. However, for the vast, vast majority of the homeless, I would wager that homelessness was not a well-reasoned choice, except perhaps as a way of getting out of an even worse home situation. Most didn’t directly choose it at all, it was simply thrust upon them. These people do need less stigma and more agency, but it seems to me that the best way of helping them is concentrating on the realities of their situation and not getting distracted by idealistic fantasies.
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Is this the fourth time within several posts that you’ve asked the same question? You sound like a broken record - I responded to your question, countered it with several which you ignored - and yet you keep asking it. If you think it’s irrelevant, than simply say so. The innuendo of your repeated question frames me as being responsible for a degradation of the threads signal-to-noise ratio while you draw out a point I briefly touched upon without adding anything to the discussion yourself.
I have lived on the streets, and interacted with other people there. I don’t claim that this makes me an expert, but I do have experience. Your “wagering” an opinion hasn’t compelled me to re-evaluate my experiences. I am not suggesting that you don’t have any valid points in there somewhere. Perhaps I, who have been homeless for several stretches at a time, should gracefully bow out of the topic to let the gentry put forth their informed position on the phenomenon.
Your last paragraph reads like pure, reactionary dismissal. Imagine the reaction I would get if I pasted it into a gender conversation and replaced the words “nomads” and “homeless” with “homosexual”! Go on, re-read it this way. It is typical of a biased attitude of “accepting” people by helping them to overcome the very trait that they are being identified with. The gist of what you are saying seems to be the tautology that homelessness/nomadism is unrealistic and undesirable because “we” have already chosen to define it that way. It tends to be properly defined as a lifestyle, not an ideal, nor a fantasy. It is a way of life which is purposefully marginalized by many people, which I think was the purpose behind the article being linked here. People who refuse to be integrated into your kind of society are using more agency than it takes to conform.
Sorry if my perspective seems disconcertingly difficult or un-PC. But I think that the crusade against homelessness being an ideologically neutral way of helping these people (as opposed to reifying your own lifestyle choices) is the fantasy. YMMV of course.
Yep, I admit I’ve been repetitious, because you’ve responded but you haven’t actually answered, other than saying there is no way of knowing the answer because “a representative sampling … is not likely” and apparently there is “overwhelming bias” preventing accurate information about the homeless population. I have, no doubt foolishly, pressed the issue because I felt that when someone is arguing against the accepted wisdom, as you of course are, then it’s up to them to back it up.
I suppose you think you have. But I didn’t want your philosophy/ideology. I was hoping for some real evidence that there is a significant number of “nomads” doing just fine and dandy without reliable lodging, as compared to the relentlessly beaten down people I see in the downtown parks and library, or read about in studies. But I guess that’s just bias. People don’t really need shelter. (Abraham Maslow, what an asshole that guy was.)
Based on our past interaction, I should have realized there was no point to this argument. However, having been rendered virtually homeless in the past due to a family member’s actions, I guess too many triggers were pulled.
Hopefully, this little contretemps hasn’t dissuaded anyone from posting something more useful.
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Is there a difference? Wisdom as accepted by whom, precisely? Saying that the one sensible view on a situation has already been decided and needs to be recognized could well serve as the very definition of “overwhelming bias”. I don’t mind discussing my opinions an experiences about this in detail, but sarcastically pushing me into a one-sided argument is not my idea of an good-faith discussion between equals. It sounds like you feel compassionately about the topic, I can appreciate that, at least.
Why would you assume that nomads don’t use shelter? It can be found or improvised without needing a fixed address. But of course, a person who toils at their job for 40 hours per week doesn’t necessarily have time to find or make shelter. Although I have done it. Those who get underfoot in public spaces tend to be people who can’t or won’t take care of themselves. In urban environments there tends to be enough wasted food and space that begging for help can be unnecessary. And in rural environments, it is much easier to devise shelter and be left alone. Suburbs tend to be the worst.
As for studies - it’s not as if you referred us to any. The nomenclature tends to be tricky, “nomad” = good, “homeless” = bad. There is no fundamental difference, but even quickly plugging both terms into wickipedia shows drastically different interpretations. In US culture, nomadism is a quaint, antiquated lifestyle which is paid enough respect to sound liberally multicultural, but only accepted if it is elsewhere. It’s an exotic way of life for foreigners, such as third-world people. But in Europe and the US, they are classified as “homeless”, and publicized as being dysfunctional.
How do I know that the problem is deliberate? What makes homeless life dysfunctional is that the law strips away rights which fixed-dwelling people take for granted. People in this position are forbidden from voting, driving a car, having a bank account, starting a business, or any number of other basic contracts which other people use. And the reason why this is done is to “discourage” people from living rootlessly, it damages peoples lives, and it is unjustified coercion. But if you notice, there are no laws which require one to have a residence, or property - why not? It is a way of providing an illusion of choice - illusory because this option is framed (as you noted) as a non-choice. Not having a home is not easy, but Western societal structures deliberately make it far more difficult than it needs to be. It’s the Americas, and nobody has provided any compelling reason to me why I should live like a European, I’m just not interested.
Why not? It is an exchange of ideas and opinions! Is this not a valid enough pretense for interaction? Neither of us need to be “convinced”.
If it means anything to you, “beaten people” is a pretty fair description of all those I have known. The only cheerful ones I knew were severely schizophrenic, and then only cheerful when not having a full-blown psychotic episode. (I suppose that, when you get through to the other end of a period when you couldn’t sleep, and were spending long periods pacing up and down the shelter’s halls growling, even living in a shelter looks good.)
I suppose that some can learn to like the itinerant life (I haven’t met any), but I’m pretty sure that would be a case of making lemonade when life throws lemons your way. The ones I’ve known who travel from city to city can’t live a settled life, to be sure, but they’re not particularly good at living on the road either - they are usually people who have severe difficulty living comfortably in their own skin.
The situation @Shuck describes doesn’t sound quite aboveboard. Yeah, I don’t doubt the problems with the groups serving food in the park, but I’ve seen homeless people trek a considerable distance for good community meals, do so consistently, and even do so in winter (which is a lot more miserable here than in California). I’ve also seen shelters run by very respectable NGOs serve slop - nutritious slop, perhaps, but slop nonetheless. (Those selfsame NGOs are usually front and centre in these task-forces to figure out what the homeless need. The homeless in these task-forces are usually self-selected as well, usually those who know the system. The long-homeless, those who really need the help, generally can’t tell you what they need, either because they’ve lost hope, or because they never really knew in the first place, which is why they are out on the street.)
So when bologna sandwiches in the park become more popular than the “nutritious meals” in the shelter a short distance away, it might be a good idea to ask why. Regardless of the BS the groups in the park are perpetrating, something smells bad about the official community meals. It would probably be a good idea for a few “ringers” to join the community meal line for a couple of weeks. I say that because some of the shelters I’ve seen are very good at putting on the “Potemkin village” for visitors.
I’m not “talking through me bum” here. I wasn’t “rendered virtually homeless”: there was nothing virtual about it.
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There used to be a Buddhist group that would let you have a free serving of lentils if you stayed for a talk on why Buddhism was awesome.
I’m pretty sure there were a bunch of homeless folk who knew a crap-ton about Buddhism. I’m pretty sure the Buddhists weren’t assholes either.
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There used to be (maybe still is) a rather well appointed soup kitchen (actually, if you got there early, there was fried chicken!) In Bristol run by some fabulously dressed friars in indigo robes with gold ropes for belts known colloquially as ‘The Monks Punks and Drunks’ that I used to frequent. They’d politely ask if you would like to come to mass and if they could pray for you, which in my mind is a fair exchange for a plate of fried chicken and a big TV to watch for a couple of hours. Beats lentils off the bhuddists (or worse, Hare Krishna glorp for dinner. That’s some nasty free food… 
).
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