And this is nothing new either. I recall a piece in the Village Voice from back in the 1980s whose title asked the question "What do homeless people want?" Which was helpfully answered in the first sentence: "Homes mostly."[0]
And another piece in the San Jose Mercury News from 2000 reporting on full-time public school teachers in San Jose living in homeless shelters because they couldn't afford the rent there.[0]
Homelessness is, at its heart, a housing affordability issue, not the "moral failings" of someone who can't afford to pay rent/mortgage.
The solution is, of course, more housing. But that would require local rezoning and likely higher density housing.
But there are powerful special interests that aren't interested in that, and are perfectly happy to see their fellow humans suffer. And more's the pity.
[0] I've repeatedly searched for online copies of these pieces, but have been unsuccessful on numerous occasions. That may be due to deficiencies in my search-fu, but there's also a lot of stuff from back then that just isn't online.
Yes, for most homeless the issue is housing affordability, but for the homeless that people complain about, the mentally ill and violent drug addicts, housing affordability is not the problem. If the "annoying" homeless were all forcibly institutionalized no one would care about the "quite" homeless which is why discussion ignores them.
>Yes, for most homeless the issue is housing affordability, but for the homeless that people complain about, the mentally ill and violent drug addicts, housing affordability is not the problem.
I don't know about you and can't speak for anyone else, but I complain the loudest about people who are homeless (especially families with young children) because of housing affordability.
Those with mental health and/or substance abuse issues are (at least in my mind) a separate issue -- one that is related to public health and not housing. And we fail those folks even worse than those who just can't afford housing.
>If the "annoying" homeless were all forcibly institutionalized no one would care about the "quite" homeless which is why discussion ignores them.
Are you really making that argument? If so, why stop with incarceration? We used to sterilize[0] those folks too. They're not really human anyway, since if they were, they wouldn't be homeless or mentally ill right? Because homelessness, addiction and mental illness are moral failings that only reflect on the individual and not on the society in which they live. In fact, why don't we just euthanize them. And why stop with the homeless? Those useless unemployed folks need to go too. And don't forget about the old and infirm. They don't add anything productive, so why should we suffer them to live at all?
Yes, I realize that you're not advocating for euthanizing Grandma, but what you are advocating isn't so far (as history has shown) from that. Or, as the old saw goes, "Don't wish for what you want. You might just get it."
You don't need to make the argument to me. I'm just pointing out why political discourse seems to ignore those "quiet" homeless as you have discovered. It's because there's minimal political will to help them.
Maybe I shouldn't have said nobody, but certainly the media and politicians wouldn't be talking about them.
>You don't need to make the argument to me. I'm just pointing out why political discourse seems to ignore those "quiet" homeless as you have discovered. It's because there's minimal political will to help them.
Thanks for this. I am going to use it in my area of California. There is a lot of people here that believe that people dont want to pay rent and its really about cost inflation due to house flipping and ect.
And another piece in the San Jose Mercury News from 2000 reporting on full-time public school teachers in San Jose living in homeless shelters because they couldn't afford the rent there.[0]
Homelessness is, at its heart, a housing affordability issue, not the "moral failings" of someone who can't afford to pay rent/mortgage.
The solution is, of course, more housing. But that would require local rezoning and likely higher density housing.
But there are powerful special interests that aren't interested in that, and are perfectly happy to see their fellow humans suffer. And more's the pity.
[0] I've repeatedly searched for online copies of these pieces, but have been unsuccessful on numerous occasions. That may be due to deficiencies in my search-fu, but there's also a lot of stuff from back then that just isn't online.