Understanding Homelessness
The campaigning is over, thankfully. All the camera-grabbing riots, the scandals, the chest thumping and finger pointing is done.
Sort of, anyway. Something missing, though. What happened to the homeless crisis? That was a big hammer for the Left, because if you didn’t care for them you were racist! Or Capitalist, which is worse somehow. But recently, nada.
The argument can be made that the issue doesn’t have a constituency, or an advocacy group that has enough clout, err, money. I’d say the subject lapsed because anarchists took over some Left Coast city centers and Marxists rioted nearly every time a LEO fired their service weapon. Homeless panhandlers just can’t compete.
Now that’s all in our wake, right? Mostly yes, so stand by while the Left resurrects their same old ineffectual band-aids to a mounting problem.
Poetrooper sends.
Understanding the homelessness that plagues West Coast cities
By Andrea Widburg
The West Coast’s big cities are awash in a sea of homeless people. This is not an accident. The cities are engaging in policies that are not only homeless magnets, but that kill the people they’re supposed to be helping. Christopher Rufo’s video from the Discovery Institute sets out the facts with compassion and clarity.
Before this year, I don’t believe I’d heard of Christopher Rufo. Within this year, I’ve come to have the highest admiration for him. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because his Twitter feed is a vehicle for exposing the plague of Critical Race Theory that is damaging America just as surely as the Wuhan virus (or, rather, the insane response to the Wuhan virus) has hurt our country.
In addition to his Twitter work and his writing for City Journal, Rufo is the Director of the Discovery Institute’s Wealth & Poverty Review. In this capacity, Rufo has created and narrates a 12-minute video that examines the homelessness crisis in West Coast cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. Rufo is intimately familiar with the problem, for he’s a Seattle resident.
The video resonated strongly with me. Having worked as a lawyer in San Francisco for two-and-half decades, I spent a lot of time in the downtown area. That meant constantly walking by the homeless. It was apparent that these people were not just down on their luck and stuck in a difficult phase. Instead, they were quite obviously either mentally ill or substance abusers – or both.
Or all three- addicted, mentally ill and homeless. Read the article, and watch the vid here: American Thinker
Thanks, Poe.
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Democrats, Guest Link
If you have an hour to waste, here’s a full hour explaining why Seattle is so bad, it actually came out in March of 2019 before all the “protests”.
If you have the time, this Seattle video is very well done and I highly recommend it. If you’re looking for some insights into WHY the problem continues to grow, the video at American Thinker is very informative and only 12 minutes.
Christopher Rufo is spot on. The dumpster fire known as Seattle has over 20 organizations providing “needle exchange” services. This is actually a needle give-away because you can get up to 100 needles without returning a single used needle. You see used needles everywhere in the streets and parks. Their spiel given with a monotone voice and a straight face is “their effort is to prevent HIV and there is absolutely NO evidence that their providing needles promotes drug abuse”.
There is a KOMO News follow-up to their “Seattle is Dying” called “The Fight for the Soul of Seattle” and is an hour and a half and looks at the effects of the city’s permissive posture:
I’ve watched both of these and I’m starting to see some of this creep into the major Midwest city I live in. Decriminalization, BLM protests this summer unopposed, late last summer through early spring before Covid took off, more and more homeless staking out corners at the exit ramp I took everyday on my way home, I really hope it doesn’t go the same as Seattle.
I thought “homeless veteran” was their rally cry.
Guess they must of starting checking DD-214’s and couldn’t one.
Homeless Vietnam veteran was primarily an agitprop fraud of the ‘80’s and 90’s, courtesy of Gunga Dan and the MSM.
Video in the AT article is spot on. Addressing the real issues is too embarrassing for those clowns to face, so they just throw money at it, and it gets worse.
I’m going to go back to watching my favorite online show about physics. It’s much less annoying.
Bison Bagels! I will do my best to help anyone that wants to help themselves. That being said, these whiney, drug infused parasites on society can go ahead and self medicate themselves into oblivion all day long, even unto self murderings themselves. I have eggsactly ZERO (0) phuques to give to/for them. There are way too many “programs” out there, local, state, federal, private, religious, whatever, that will help anyone the WANTS to be helped. I have survived situations that maybe I should have self medicated or even self murdered but I grabbed myself by the seat of my pants, used the back of my heel to kick myself in the azz and I soldiered on.
Grubmints role in this is stoopid policies that chased away affordable housing, good jobs, and/or decent people. Get off your ass, stub out your camel, pick up a shovel and dig yourself out of the hole that you put yourself into. Or use that shovel to pull the dirt into the hole with you. YMMV
You mean it’s not a result of an individual’s poor decisions and bad judgement?
Street People and Homeless are two vastly different things…
True. Almost all of the bums you see living on the street want to be on the streets. They flat reject any help offered (unless it’s well below zero).
There are many programs available for those who want a home and are homeless, particularly veterans. A lot of people would rather live in their car than admit defeat and ask for help though.
I concur. I’ve seen “Professional Homeless” people in larger cities who do all they can to prey on others’ sympathy and gullibility!
To paraphrase a line from the Seattle video:
“To expect people whose brains have been rewired by drugs and/or mental illness to be capable of making rational decisions about their own welfare is a form of insanity in itself.”
Amen…those politicians who think they can deal with this mess by decriminalizing all these bad behaviors are suffering from one of the most insidious forms of mental illness:
Liberal insanity…
As an aside, the VFW National Home for Children puts up families for up to 4 years with no charge for housing or utilities. They are assigned a case manager who helps the family at risk for homelessness identify obstacles and create a plan to navigate them. The desired end state is getting these families back on their feet.
They have 40+ single family units set up base housing style. The only prerequisite is you have to have someone in the family lineage who was eligible for membership in the VFW.
And they do all this by donation. No government funding.
If any of you are looking for a worthy cause to donate or know someone who may benefit, check them out.
Because I have to:
TAH does not support any charitable organization. Mention of such organizations in member’s comments are beyond the control of TAH, and should not be construed as an endorsement.
That being said, by all means support the organizations you choose. Just take care in ensuring your support goes where intended. Scammers never sleep.
Wasn’t trying to speak for TAH. I have no financial stake in the org. I just really believe in what they are doing. And their financials are publicly available.
Wasn’t intending on overstepping my bounds.
No harm no foul, Pen. I need to get this disclaimer in the TAH FNG FAQ section and be done with it.
Single moms, now…
Ed, that should’ve been, “No harm–no fowl”.
I mean that IS Penguinman, after all…😜
*sigh*
One punster is already too many, Poe.
Ol’ Poe, ya gots to understand that ‘Ed wuz just wingin’ it. He didn’t have a leg to stand on, but now that he’s a’breast of the situation, I know he won’t chicken out.
So, if it was a double header at the old electric chair, would you say, “birds of a feather fry together”?
Or is that reserved for a large special Saturday lunch when Army beats Navy?
One punster is already “two” many, Ed…
Prior to the 1980s there was very little of a homeless ‘crisis’ in the US. Why? One thing that stands out was the system of mental health homes for the mentally ill and deeply addicted. However, the “visionary anointed” spent the 1970s suing everyone over the “inhumane” nature of these facilities resulting in a SCOTUS decision that resulted in the wholesale closure of such facilities around the country. Residential mental or addiction treatment became the province of the private health industry and those without insurance were shut out of both treatment, and residential options. The homeless population is mostly the population that 45 years ago would have been resident in the state homes. Now, without any attempt at any form of treatment for addiction or illness, they are homeless. The political left created the homeless “problem” to serve as a weapon against the moderates in the US. They succeeded beyond anyone’s predictions. Mix in some half baked “woke” rhetoric, and you have a nation that can afford to address this issue–indeed did so for more than 100 years–but can not because the very policies and people who created the problem are now those proclaiming the solutions. As everyone knows, the source of the problem is very, very rarely the source of the solution. Having released those incapable of caring for themselves, they moved on to rationalizing the situation as a result of “capitalist exploitation”, raysism, or uncaring evil whiteness. Meanwhile, these grifters are grabbing an estimated $80K per homeless person per year from taxpayer and charity funds. Odd how the “problem” is actually the business plan of the woke corporatists in the left. One would believe it was always part of the plan. And one would be correct. But, as Commissar Dumkopf is likely to come tell us with the same old, tired, Leninist lies, it’s all a vile conservative plot. The solution is accountability. Long prison terms for the leftists who perpetuate the suffering and short ropes for the activist community who profit from it. For the useful idiots–and I’m looking at you, Commissar Dumkopf–total annexation of their property,… Read more »
He’s more equal than the rest of us. Of course he’s exempt from accountability.
There’s also been a major shift in how people expect society to take care of each other. It used to be we had a sense of community that was centered on the church. Churches have centuries of experience in helping the poor, the needy, and the ill.
Now, instead of giving to actual charity like churches people vote to make themselves feel better. They think that the government is better to handle these issues, despite thousands of years of history showing that government is terrible at it.
It is a reflection of a societal form of narcissism rooted both in an insane concept of virtue signaling without actual virtue coupled with a weird nihilistic outlook on the future.
A people completely self absorbed while also totally apathetic to the actual consequences of their bleating will have their dreams of dystopia fulfilled.
On the day that the gods of the copy book headings return in fire and wrath, they will be the first to cry “why me?”
On one internet forum I recommended that the only Taxpayer money spent on homelessness should be spent to build facilities that were in remote areas that had strict control and required people to stay within its borders, take medication, attend therapy and work programs and have zero tolerance for substance abuse.
I also said that panhandling, loitering and “urban camping” be considered illegal with violations resulting in being placed in treatment centers or incarcerated.
I was call a Nazi quicker than a cat can lick its own ass.
Sounds like a system that worked for 100 years in the US. But, the people have spoken loudly. They do not want solutions, they want things to wail about.
California, Oregon and Washington are feeding the wildlife.
When we lived in the mountains of New Mexico, ol’ Poe started feeding deer corn to the few mule deer who came around our place. Every day the herd seemed to grow. It got to the point that when I opened the slider and stepped out on the deck to open the feed bin, I could hear hoofs thundering down the mountainside.
The last time I fed them before I gave up my good intentions, I counted thirty-eight deer milling about my deck, the larger bucks and the alpha does pawing, kicking and even biting the lesser deer to get closest to the man dispensing the golden goodies.
California, Oregon and Washington are feeding the wildlife…
I put bird food out. Before long, it’s 10 to 15 cardinals, male & female, many sparrows, and eventually woodpeckers of several species.
Word gets around. They tell each other everything and you are doomed!
But I would rather have the birds on my front steps than bums on sidewalks of the stores that I go to.
A brother-in-law, who also lives in the mountains of New Mexico, was in the same situation. That’s why the town he lived in outlawed the practice.
My wife feeds everything. I have counted 20+ deer in my back yard on a regular basis. And that’s just one shift. We have deer trails through what is left of our back yard. She even feeds a buzzard or two.
Probably the same town. TAH currently has a follower living there now.
Having worked in EMS in a city we dealt with the homeless on a regular basis the vast majority of those we dealt with flat out refused to go stay at a shelter because they didn’t want to either be clean and/or sober or live by the rules. They knew the magic words to use to go away for a stay in a nice warm mental health unit if it got too cold; or they would call 911 with a vague complaint to go to the ED; if they needed booze it was “I drank Sterno” or “I drank antifreeze” because they knew how the ED treated that (although some doctors would deliver the alcohol by a large nasogastric tube to discourage repeat customers). The two dirtbags responsible for the fire that killed 6 Worcester firefighters in the Cold Storage Warehouse fire were among the population who chose to be homeless. I blame the idiots who decided to close the state hospitals and dump the patients on the streets.
Yeah, we dealt with the homeless too. In the winter months, they’d go to a phone and call in a fight or some other disturbance, then make sure they were “fighting” or pushing each other around or were just drunk, they’d get arrested, next day they went to court, and they’d plead guilty and get 90 days in the county jail.
The problem is that there is a supreme court case that says that incompetent people can make their own health decisions. They can refuse to take their medications or participate in their health regimen. They have the right to be crazy or sick like everybody else.
I used to work for a non-profit that treated the mentally disabled. The problem with the old system of State “Schools” is that they didn’t train them to have life-skills and they never left the institutions and farms. Plus the places were snakepits full of people too lazy and incompetent to work at a VA Hospital. Most clients are too messed up to get better, but some can live independent lives with training.
The problem with most homeless people is that they have no long-term plan. They grift and scam people all day for small change. But they have no plan for what to do tomorrow. Add that they are usually DD (Dual Diagnosis: crazy and substance-abusing) complicates it.
I thought for certain that with this being a liberal-created problem in his uber-liberal backyard, that Commie-czar would jump in here to tell us all how full of shit we are, but so far–crickets.
It seems post-election that Lars’ output has dropped off significantly, reinforcing the charge by many here that he was being paid to troll, compensated by word count, accounting for those long, poorly-researched, factually inaccurate diatribes he was dumping here almost daily–that seem now to have come to a halt. To me, that makes him even worse.
What a sleaze bag…
I have been posting here since long before the last few election cycles.
And if I was being paid to post why would anyone pay me to post here? Small user base of almost entirely intransigent partisans. My posts have essentially zero impact on anyone’s opinion. Your delusional conspiracy lacks any critical thought whatsoever.
I dropped off because I am completely blown away that many of you support throwing out an election just to install your Donald McDespot in chief.
Pretty much means many of you all are full of shit with all the patriotic “freedom” rhetoric thrown around here.
Though it is perfectly consistent with the sycophantic way many of you have been willing to accept anything and everything your cult leader says or does and turn on anyone and everyone that says anything negative about him.
It is hard to take most of you seriously anymore. I am not sure many of you hold any meaningful democratic values.
I at least thought we shared a concern for making our country a more functional democracy.
You priced that if right wing ideologues don’t get they want democratically they will throw out democracy itself.
Also, “liberal cities cause homelessness”…
Ok, boomer.
“It is hard to take most of you seriously anymore.”
I take it you mean unlike the serious thought and weight which we accord your every word???
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha…
Thanks for giving this old geezer his best laugh today, although I know it was surely unintentional.
Your lack of self-awareness is priceless…
“Also, ‘liberal cities cause homelessness’…”
We’ll be waiting breathlessly for your extensive list of conservative-governed cities where homelessness exists on a Left Coast level…
This made almost no effort to try to understand homelessness.
It is true that mental health and addiction are significant contributing factors, but ignoring economic and social factors is a ridiculous failure of effort in trying to understand homelessness.
Hey, look!!! It’s the sleazebag seagull, squawking again.
YOu really are an imbecile. Those “poor things” put themselves into drug addiction and crime. NOBODY MADE THEM TO THAT, DUMBASS! But you missed that part, didn’t you??? You see ONLY what you want to see, hear ONLY what you want to hear.
I have pretty much stopped engaging with you or reading anything you post. Including whatever that was.
You have always been intellectually lazy. Now you seem to be in severe cognitive decline.
“I have pretty much stopped engaging with you or reading anything you post. Including whatever that was.”
Lars, you need to come up with a new kiss-off for Ex. You’ve used this same message so many times the poor thing is going to start thinking you’re insincere…
😂😂😂
There are as many reasons for homelessness as there are homeless. No one is capable of understanding it, not even the mighty Commissar. There is no cure-all, no one size fits all fix. One thing I know just as sure as God made little green apples, you can’t fix it. You’re a fraud.
I never said I could fix it. And based on what you said we agree more than we don’t on this issue.
However, considering the average home cost is 7X-12X the median income in liberal cities, and rental costs are equally in unaffordable, any discussion of homelessness without discussing structural problems in the economy is a bullshit discussion.
As is any discussion of urban homelessness in highly desirable real estate cities without regard for housing costs is also bullshit.
And any discussion of homelessness in liberal cities without regard for the fact they have programs, non profits, and don’t criminalize homelessness and thus ATTRACT homeless people is also a bullshit discussion.
Any discussion of homelessness in highly desirable cities with mild climates which also attracts homelessness without regard for those factors is also a bullshit discussion.
Finally, any discussion of homelessness that merely uses a random opinion piece as is motivated ENTIRELY to promote a partisan narrative is a bullshit discussion.
I can hear the ole Kommisar fap fap fapping cuz he got to post “bullshit discussion” 5 times.
He has his “empiric data” (aka: feelings) to back him up…
“Any discussion of homelessness in highly desirable cities with mild climates which also attracts homelessness without regard for those factors is also a bullshit discussion.”
And in typical Lar’s clueless fashion, you never stop to consider that it’s your foolish liberal tolerance that takes your homeless problems to the extreme levels where they now are.
Are you honestly going to try to tell us that all those homeless folks would continue to flock to your cities if you had sensible policies and no-nonsense enforcement programs? Just for the mild climate?
Do you seriously think if LA enacted a strict policy of enforcement that all those homeless folks would hang around for the balmy weather?
YOU, and those clueless virtue-signalers like you, with that kind of foolish, fuzzy reasoning are precisely who have caused and are perpetuating this problem.
Gonna go out on a limb that ritzy zip codes like Malibu don’t have homeless camps filled with used needles and feces.
So, so much bullshit.
No, we don’t agree. Liberal cities are enablers, just like the spouse that enables an addict. They create a system that attracts the homeless, then pays lip service to helping solve the problem they created. It’s a self licking lollipop, and endless loop.
Here’s a “contributing factor” from your liberal utopia:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QTgj8DMLuK0J:https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Drug-overdoses-in-S-F-kill-58-people-in-November-15814242.php+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Now compare that with COVID. Drug ODs are causing four times more deaths than COVID.
Dear Commissar Dumkopf,
Economic and social factors are drugs, alcohol and untreated mental illness. All other factors are effects of leftist interference with the economy.
This is YOUR utopia. Deal with it.
The line to the gulag forms “to the left”. Stand quietly and await your master’s decree, comrade.
Comrade Dumkopf, simple minded twit (SMT) extraordinaire.
Ignorant an idiotic. Willfully so.
Yes, you really are. You should ask Santa for some self-awareness.
Willfully, you say?
Like a commissioned officer who swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution but instead decides abandon that sacred oath to side with the barbarians who want to burn everything to the ground?
How does hypocrisy taste?
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but my word actually means something. It doesn’t bend with the the political winds. Some of us didn’t throw our ideals to the side because we sat in a class room at Berkley.
How intellectually shallow and devoid of purpose does one have to be in life to swallow the garbage you have?
Wait, you’ve never actually communicated your stance….on anything.
To paraphrase Musashi and Marcus Aurelius, you appear to lack anything resembling a penis or testicles. Your contribution to the human race is suspect.
Then again, I actually have a spine and am a man of principal who judges others on their actions. Not on skin color or similar surface characteristics you seem to think define the human condition.
In short, you’re an intellectual coward.
Since you think nothing of value has been added to the discussion of homelessness, how about you actually add something?
All you have done so far is throw in your BS psuedo scientific critical race theory shit.
Actual adults who make the work a better place have intellectual input. Or is it too hard to flex your brain muscle?
Hypocrisy is the norm for Commissar Pravadnik here, Penguinman000.
Hell, I expect to see him begin prefacing his comments with “Внимание, говорит Москва!” (“Vnimanie, govorit Moskva!” when transliterated from Cyrillic alphabet to Latin alphabet) any day now.
Hypocrisy and mental masturbation are the two things that Lars excels at…
We must redistribute all of the wealth from you proles! Only us in the commissariat will be able to control you earnings and personal property! Prepare to lose it all, you capitalist scum!
Leftist areas shed productive folk and attract drug addicts, mentally ill, and vagrants.
Deliberately.
Typical, you get presented with a solution and just pretend it wasn’t thrust before your eyes.
Does it ever cross the very thin membrane that encapsulates your brain that you may not have the solutions to every problem life offers?
The negative impact of progressivism is blatantly obvious. When the result is importing vagrants “because the climate is mild”, and driving out the productive because taxes/regulations/progstuff and shantytowns and human shit everywhere,
Well, moar progtard obviously!
The idiot-spawned housing regulations price folks out of homes of any sort, as do idiot-high taxes. The supposed lifestyle and culture perks are all lockdowned-away. The power grid fails because of green mandates and regulatory nightmares, and folks who want prosperous lives wont tolerate darkness and no A/C.
Bums will.
Illegals from failed states will.
Neither see a problem. Neither care who casts ballots on their behalf. Hmm
Many of the oligarchs who are the remaining cash-cows also leave. Why stay? They can be princes in places where sidewalks are not covered in turds and tents. Quick! Raise taxes again to fix the lost revenue!
Moar progtard!
The wheels are coming off, and the progtards say “drive faster!”
Watch the insanity they now ram through with their stolen election. Watch them defy or destroy courts that say “you can’t do that”. Watch them demand and demand and dictate when demands don’t work. “for the duration of the emergency” “for your own good” “obey”. And be glad the “dictator” is gone, and you are now free to obey your betters.
All the while blaming their opponents, and everyone else but progtards, for the “unexpected” negative consequences.
But they will make it work this time! Moar!
CA could build some CANDU type reactors and solve their power supply problems. (Or, even more advanced designs.) Focus on line reliability, not “green” bullcrap.
CA could deregulate businesses and re-ignite a thriving entrepreneurial culture.
CA could deregulate housing and see a construction boom to meet the vast demand.
Cut taxes and see the boom grow.
Cut the dipshit spending and focus on safety and infrastructure.
Don’t coddle violent crooks. Lock them up. As the cost of crook-ing goes up, crime goes down. Self-stupid is not a crime. Crime is violating others’ rights to life, liberty, and property.
Don’t reward sloth.
Fire the progtards.
Building nuclear power plants would be far “greener” in terms of total environmental impact than other alternatives – including solar and wind. However, the ignorant and Luddite environmental movement says “Nuke . . . baaaaaaaaaad!!!!!” – and the political Left (which needs their support) had adopted that mantra as well.
The sad part is that a large fraction if not a majority of the US population is too technically illiterate to see through their lies.
It’s almost as if their aim is not to fix and/or improve things but to destroy us…
MEEEEEE!!!! MEEEEEEEE!!! PAYYYYYY ATTENTION TO MMEEEEEEEE!!!!
Okay Edgelord.
Fucking “Edgelord” never fails to make me giggle.
(When used properly and this is used properly)