Homelessness

I'm pretty sure most people are familiar with the knowledge that there is a growing number of homeless people. However I'm not quite sure they understand the severity of how large that population is starting to become.

Ironically enough, I began to question this in my psychology class. My teacher told us that most homeless people suffer from mental illnesses. I couldn't remember the exact percent she told us, but after poking around on the internet, it turned out to be about 25% of the homeless who are mentally ill. Often, it's a result of these disorders that lands them into being homeless. The movie "The Soloist" shows this, with a talented but schizophrenic musician who used to be in a prestigious music school ending up becoming homeless and playing on the streets.

I looked around some more and found other interesting stuff. About 8% of the homeless are veterans. Many are physically disabled. Some are people fleeing domestic abuse. Often there are homeless children, and other times children are born into homelessness. There's around 60,000 homeless in New York City and Los Angeles's homeless population has grown 12% over the last two years.

But stopping homelessness is far from easy. With most of the homeless having chronic disorders, do we make more mental hospitals to help? How will we fund those hospitals, in which the people need constant care and need to be provided for? And what do we do about those physically disabled? And what of those with substance abuse? What about kids? How will the uneducated be able to provide for themselves? How do we open job opportunities to them?

 

Kill'em.

 

This is what really gets to me. The same men and women who fought so we could have severity in America and in our HOMES are now not certain about tomorrow, where they will eat, or where they can find shelter. They fought for us, the very least we could do is give them homes and some food. This is what I find truly disappointing in America today.

 

I have heard similar statistics as well. Truly a shame. I also read that in most cases in order to get a job, you need an address. Kind of hard to do when you live on le street.

 

One thing I'm proud of is Virginia's 'end to veteran homelessness, which I think all states should go for.

Although they claim to house all homeless vets (besides those who refuse housing) but I've gone and met many personally who haven't been housed. I'd still rather have this effort than the lack of compassion seen from other states.

Maybe petitions can bring these types of things up in other states, you should see what sort of support you can get.

 

I'd think this goes a lot more deeper. Many vets are also committing suicide. Many of them suffer from PTSD, or other similar disorders from having fought before. If you hear some of their stories, you can truly feel how sad they are and how much it has impacted their lives.

And to think, after all that they've been through, many of them are committing suicide and doing many other activities that are bad for them, is very sad. It's not just America that has this problem.

 

This is all true, and very displeasing that our vets have to win this way. It needs to be fixed.

 

The most you can do for a homeless person is offer them food, shelter, and friendship. The United States already has homeless shelters where they can sleep, and many soup kitchens for them to eat. The people having substance abuse be their reason for being on the streets clearly need help, but making a major hospital program specifically for homeless people who are crazy is not on the top of the to do list in the United states.

To be completely honest. In the United States, homelessness is more of a choice that someone began by their decisions priar to becoming homeless. And being homeless doesn't mean they are dying without food or water, they have more than enough means to get free food, and in some places all water is free too. So other than people reaching out personally, there isn't much more the people and government can do.

 

We could uhh...Give them homes.

Most localities with this type of homeless initiative have shown it leads to reduced costs when homeless are housed, instead of in the streets getting sick, being in jails, or hospitals. They even show that it leads to a decent % getting their act together, and finding work.

 

This is a solution that seems obvious to anyone with common sense, and in limited trials the data shows it to be both humanitarian and fiscally responsible in practice. And because Americans are so quick to abandon common sense, science, economics, and their concern for other people when it collides with the near-religious belief in the myth that wealth and hard work are directly related, it'll never see widespread implementation in the US.

If you don't have a car, you might be walking/riding the bus for 4 hours to get to the job interview that's 30 minutes away, so even if you did manage to find a place to wash up and change into something nice (which, being homeless, you probably didn't), you're still going to show up at the interview tired, rumpled, sweaty, and grumpy. Big surprise when you don't get the job, amirite?

 

That's a magnificent idea, but it's not practical. The basic fact is, how would they pay taxes? You can't have a house if you don't pay taxes, unless you're a squatter. Good idea though

 

I recently saw a video starring Mike Rowe and he was talking about how college degrees are becoming more and more useless. You may not think this has anything to do with this conversation but it does. As he was talking, he mentioned that nowadays, more and more people are worried about getting into office buildings but not about building them or maintaining them. I believe that a way we could start to reduce homelessness is to start training those out on the streets in more hands on positions such as mechanics, plumbers, electricians, etc. This would allow the homeless people to learn valuable skills, and get a job in an area of dwindling expertise.

 

I don't think he's talking about a homeless person being handed a title to a single-family home. These would be publicly-owned homes that the homeless would get the keys to. Property taxes wouldn't be a problem. For cost-control, they'd be more like apartments or hotel suites.

 

Have giant rescue missions and make a government body known as the Homeless People Support, or the HPS

 

However good that looks on paper, money unfortunately does not grow on trees.

 

Raise taxes

 

Good idea (mostly), it would allow for more money to be used for helping out the homeless. Unfortunately as it is with most good ideas, there's a problem. It would most likely make the public mad at having to pay more of their paycheck to the government because hey, let's be honest. Would you rather have 75% (ish) of your overall paycheck each payday or would you rather have 65%? I agree though, we do need to help those who are less fortunate than us.

 

I think you missed the part where Deinen pointed out correctly that giving them homes is cheaper than not giving them homes. A significant proportion of the homeless, given a home, will put their lives back together, become productive taxpayers, and move to a home of their own. Every one of those cases becomes a win for local coffers, and would rightly be considered a wise investment in human capital.

For the remainder who don't become self-sufficient, there are still remarkable savings to be had for the public, as these sheltered people go on to consume far less resources in jails and emergency rooms... with taxpayers footing the bills.

The experiment has been tried, and the results are in - if you want to live in safer neighborhoods and pay less taxes, give homes to the homeless.

A conservative doubter in Utah is now one of it's biggest cheerleaders: http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how

Giving them homes is the fiscally-responsible choice.

 

lets face it, boys. infrastructure is starting to degrade pretty rapidly. i think the best solution to this and the homelessness problem is to reinstate some sort of a new deal-esqe program that provides jobs for people that can otherwise not afford any in order to get homeless people some money and repair the infrastructure.

 

Absolutely incorrect. Today's college degrees are the high school diploma of 50 years ago. It's nearly a necessity.

http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-infrastructure/