I’ve never seen that camp in such detail before, despite walking past it somewhat regularly. It’s a lot less squalor than I’d imagined.
"“Dignity Village,” “Village of Hope,” “Community First!,” " Names usually chosen by the professional “Helpers of the Poor” who flock to these things like vultures to a carcass.
Then they go off to a catered lunch to discuss the “plight of the poor” at a nice four star hotel someplace a long ways from this spot in the picture.
How many full time 'professional" advocates for the poor" are there in this country and how much do they earn? No one knows I will wager. Such people tend to have a vested interest in not seeing their “clients” go away as they’d be left without a cause.
The gist of the article seems to me to be that society should cheerfully pony up to pay the rent on a nice apartment for each and ever homeless person for the rest of their lives, give them free food, free medical care etc but ask nothing of them in return.
Put up communal housing (aka barracks?) That would insult their dignity. Each one needs their own private apartment, no questions asked.
I’ve no idea how to solve this as there’s going to be a solid percentage of such people will will not ever get off the dole because they see no need to do so. But I do think that handing out free room and board just because someone is breathing and knocks on the door is a very bad road to head down.
Our cities are filthy and decaying, if we are to hand out freebies, let’s also hand out brooms and shovels and cleaning gear. Teach personal responsibility too. Ever see one of these sites after the homeless move on? I have. One in the city I live in took about two weeks and a load of volunteers and even some heavy equipment to clean there was so much refuse and junk and filth.
And you could track where it moved to simply by looking at police statistics for property crime, vandalism and shoplifting and a wild assortment of confrontations, domestic violence within the encampment and general harassment of neighborhoods.
The Homeless in the USA are no more than a political football to be casually tossed about. If evidence is needed just take a city bus, anytime, anywhere.
In my sweet hometown, Atlanta, city gov regularly bulldozed tent cities after a certain period of time, destroying all of the inhabitants’ belongings in the process. Several of my closest friends, as well as numerous people involved in organizing during and after Occupy, were homeless for prolonged periods in their lives, and made it out by getting help from people organizing in counter-culture currents. My dad died homeless, a veteran sick with diabetes, leaving behind three small children. My mother worked in social services (therapy) for thirty years and many of her patients were homeless, particularly after Reagan’s changes. The politicians responsible for our country’s mistreatment of the homeless should be put up against a wall.
We’ve come full circle back to Hoovervilles. How far the US has sunk since my dad fought in WWII! He’s spinning in his grave - this is NOT what he fought for!
Reagan should be freely blamed for endless tax breaks for the idle rich, sabre-rattling foreign policy blather that alienates allies, and the mass destruction of small business concerns that makes job seeking in real small-town America a hopeless cause.
American mental institutions were notorious hell-holes. The fact that they were shuttered and replaced with exactly nothing during the 1980s is a non-partisan affair. The problem is solvable and enough time has passed to solve it.
What if doing that were actually cheaper than the alternative?
Yeah, we’re a Christian nation all right. Too bad our definition of ‘Christian’ doesn’t even come close to Jesus.
Human beings, by no other virtue but being human, should be privy to some basic needs.
Food.
Shelter.
Health Care.
With those three things come opportunity- the opportunity to look for a job (because, you know, you need an address to get paid). The opportunity to not spend all day scratching for some food, but to improve themselves. To take classes, get training, to become the people they’d like to be.
Your vote for President Trump will fix all of this.
I certainly hope not. That’s how you get witch burnings.
Also in the article they say it is in Eugene Oregon, not true. Right 2 Dream Too is in downtown Portland, on the edge of Chinatown.
I was wondering what that was called. I’ve noticed it when I’ve visited a few times.
And you know what that leads to!
Agreed, we are the most Christian nation on earth. And, the most punishing nation, with more people in jail and prison than any other nation.
IOW, following Jesus in name only. All those angry assholes telling us how to vote – we can thank them for this.
In the area where I live in California, for years now the homeless population sets up camps in green-belts along waterways where they absolutely trash the place, creating significant ecological devastation, because the city has refused to allow anyone to camp out in more appropriate locations. People have been forced to camp out in the most ecologically sensitive areas, basically, because that’s where they were least likely to be seen. The idea of a tent city was explicitly rejected because there wasn’t any political will (and the city would be on the hook for liability issues). Now the homeless population has grown to about 5,000 people thanks to housing having become absurdly expensive and the city has been spending millions every year to regularly clear out these creek and river-side shanty towns and pick up all the trash (and possessions that people inevitably lose in the process). They’re building more shelter spaces, but it’s a joke as it can’t even begin to hold a sizable fraction of the homeless (they’re also building most of them in one low-income neighborhood so as not to piss off the middle class neighborhoods). The city is sure as hell thinking about setting up a location for a tent city now. Given how bad housing costs are in the rest of California, it seems like a common story throughout the state.
I often wonder what the veterans who fought and died on D-day would have made of what their country has become.
I’m sure their ideals had nothing to do with what an Imperialistic shit-hole that it has devolved into.
I don’t wonder at all. I’m pretty sure I know what they’d make of the security state, NSA surveillance, DHS, TSA, and all the controlling bullshit from the “Patriot” act on down. They’d think we’d gone fascist.
It happened by inches and I blame the decades long Cold War for most of it.
