But your surname is Driscoll?!? What’s your first language, Gaelic?
No kidding, give the homeless half a chance to get out of their situation and remain stable, (i.e. address mental illness, physical illness, bad family situations etc) and virtually all will become productive (and taxable!) members of society.
I’m going to advertise here for a group called Solid Ground with a very good program. They started 40+ years ago as the usual “do-gooders with mixed results” but some years back got a bunch of funding to do in-depth studies of what works for the long-term and the results lately have been astounding. They are trying to spread it to other states - if you are connected to any local programs that are open to changing how they do things (very important!) please be an ambassador and make the connection!
C’mon, on BB?
All threads are “the pedant thread” 
Well personally I help raise a bunch of money to help feed the hungry. Because that’s a problem in the richest country in the world…
And my car is a real piece if crap. 
But actually you do have a point. The environmental org that owns my building has this ‘owner’… He’s always on the building staff to get ‘those people’ out of his ecologically sound bioswales. It’s kinda covered so people sleep there sometimes.
He gives not a single fuck about them. But he wants to ‘save the earth’. So yeah…
However from screaming angrily at people here about the same issues and saying the same thing you are… No. Actually the BB crowd is pretty pro radical social change. And not a lot of land rovers amongst us…
But I bet the asshole that left this drives a Prius…
Clinton vetoed two harsher versions of welfare reform, but having actually campaigned on welfare reform, he ended up passing the current version of the bill. But it’s not as if he wrote it; it came from the Republican Congress.
If you want to see it changed, vote out Republicans.
I’m definitely no expert on the LA situation, and certainly don’t wish to romanticize it; so I’d be totally unsurprised by turf wars(Americans occasionally do “Solidarity”; but it’s rarely our first response to the problem…).
That said, a state of war is exactly the sort of situation that leads people to seek allies. Sometimes out of genuine need for comradeship and support in the face of violence and stress, sometimes just allies of mutual convenience because it’s hard to watch your own back all the time. People outside of your alliance-group may well be fair game, and potentially even worse off because you can gang up on them; but the Hobbesian war-of-all-against-all simply doesn’t seem to be a stable social arrangement: the groups between which the fighting occurs can often be pretty small(and often feature internal intrigue); but very few people seek to go to war alone; fewer still do so successfully for any length of time.
I’d be wholly unsurprised if the threat if you move into the wrong area, or are cornered by people from another group, is dire; but I would suspect that within a given area/group territory, there are rules regarding what you can and cannot do to another member of the group.
Dunno: lots of tech activity in Portland. Have you considered the possibility that he drives a Tesla?
Are you implying that our laws should at least meet the Anatole France ‘majestic equality’ test? That’s practically class warfare!
Haha! I hadn’t seen that before.
A NV unique, if you help out Sgt. Contreras. Clearly some patriotic fellow fighting the resource wars was familiar with Guthrie; but either not a fan or possessed of a dark, dry, sense of humor.
Cory. For shame. BB. Why hast thou forsaken my viewpoint.
So… Just so we’re clear…
35% of the people now required to live out of trashcans are under 24.
About half of those were abandoned by their parents. About half escaped because they were being beaten.
They’ll continue to be retraumatized. They’ll continue to be sexually and physically assaulted on the street.
Many are LGBT teens who have been rejected by their families of origins.
Don’t worry because within 48 hours most will find pimps or whatever else… Who will provide them income as…
And here’s why I think people are monsters…
Prostitots!
A portmanteau of protitute and tot! Shall we unpack that?
So. These folks don’t vote. They don’t have anything, and they certainly have no voice or solidarity. It’s very hard to plan shit when you are Homeless.
Also the whole mental illness is really often misdiagnosed trauma and it’s effects and…
Oh hay… Did you know? That most psychologists will agree privately that schizophrenia and the rest of the flavors of the month are related to trauma in childhood?
And…then of course there are those who ‘choose’ this lifestyle. They’re better put together. They have camp gear, and army surplus clothing, and dogs for protection… And to get sympathy from strangers. Money for dog food.
Most the adults who are Homeless experienced homelessness as children.
And lots of Homeless people transition to a normal life through family or luck or services and transitional housing… To end up there again!
But don’t feel too bad. The average age of when they die (on the streets) is 50… A little less. Roughly half.
All that physical abuse prematurely ages them about 10 years.
All the malnutrition and deprivation does a number on their brains too… From when they’re wee little soon to be homeless people until 25 brains continue to develop… Or fail to.
So we literally have a population made up of LGBT teens, who are sexually abused, and who are physically abused, who get AIDS and TB, who are alcoholic and drug addicts, who are neglected and weathered and abused… And will have a whole life to look forward to enjoying the same conditions that put them there and will keep them there!
And roughly 44% have some kind of job. Some horrifically shitty one.
So LA just told the homeless runaway abuse victims to keep their possessions to a trashcan full. Because they don’t actually give a single fuck about humanity at all. Nor do the churches. Nor does anyone who doesn’t see this as a problem on the say… Top 5 facing America.
Occupy got it. They actually opened their camps and little art parks and whatnot. And the deluge started. And pretty soon you couldn’t tell an occupy camp from a homeless camp… Because it was just… At one point, the bottom 1% protesting the top 1%. And the 98% didn’t give a fuck. Stopped honking. Started complaining.
And when no one with jobs that voted showed up anymore… It was bulldozer time!
That’s the time where.everyone’s gear and worldly possessions are stolen, and they rightly scatter… Because exposure means death on the streets.
They have to disperse and hope they find a place to live! It’s literally a struggle to survive.
Oh America.
Theres empty houses proportionate to the number of people living on streets.
We can borrow trillions for war, but not find the political will to do a thing about these folks.
I think the top 1% does more than the middle 98% for the bottom 1%
Early help? It would make such a difference. But mostly what’s needed is people helping people. And who’s got the time… Right?
We’re some busy bee’s and our nation faces a crisis!
Terrorists have killed 3000 Americans in 15 years! It’s a national priority.
I bet we could build a wall with all the bodies of people who’ve died in the streets in America, on our southern border. Usually they just get sold to medical companies and used to train medical students where organs are in paying living customers.
But that wall of what we do to poor people in this country? That would seriously discourage immigration!
But that would be gross and inhumane.
Better to ignore them to death.
I lament that I have but one like to give
Those will be the classiest trash cans you’ve ever seen. They’ll be so fantastic that your head will spin.
I heard an awful story about someone going around and telling people to counterfeit bills and distribute them amongst the homeless population.
That’s clearly an unamerican answer.
I hope they think it through and just throw those bills away. In publically accessible trashcans.
If the homeless are really lucky, Trump will also make those cans yuuuge
I find that dancing quite distracting, I really hope that isn’t a delay tactic.
