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11.12.09 - 12:39 PM
Shelter From the Storm
After a seven-city tour, a U.N special investigator has accused the U.S. government of pouring billions of dollars into rescuing Wall Street but failing to address the shameful, growing problem of homelessness. Raquel Rolnik said the housing crisis is "invisible" to many people even though we have the resources to address it.
"In the US, it's feasible to provide adequate housing for all. You have a lot of money, a lot of dollars available. You have a lot of expertise. This is a perfect setting to really embrace housing as a human right."
84 Comments so far
Show AllTheLorax, I truly believe that you have a seriously oversimplified view of this issue. Hansjurg has rather eloquently made some wonderful points.
I'd like to add my own perspective here, too.
Simple maths:
Let's assume a person has an $8/hour job, after taxes.
Now, let's assume a full 40-hour week (which is becoming harder to find):
One week of work:
8*40 = 320
One month of work (assuming 4 weeks):
320*4 = 1280
Now, let's look at budgeting. Historically, the recommendation was that shelter costs be <= 25% of the budget:
1280*0.25 = 320
Now, let's bump it to 30%:
1280*0.30 = 384
Apartments in this range can be difficult to find. An apartment in this range that includes utilities? Even more difficult to find.
(Disclaimer: The following paragraph is simply my observations, based on my experiences.)
Once you are homeless, it seems that doors slam shut. Without an address, how do you apply for a job? Without basic hygiene, how do you keep a job if you manage to be hired? If you have no access to shelter, what happens to your body, to your health? To your mental health? Now, even if you are lucky enough to have/find/keep a job, what toll will mental/physical health issues affect performance? (Before anyone tells me that anyone can have health issues, I concede that point. However, in my experience, the stresses that homelessness can place on the body & mind can be extreme.)
There are many misconceptions about just who the homeless are. The reality is far from the stereotype of the drug-addled, alcoholic, layabout who refuses to work. It is true that there are elements of all of these sorts in the homeless population, but people of this ilk are present in *all* sectors of society. (Hollywood stars in rehab again and again and again. The doctor who pops pills. The manager who does just enough work to manage not to get fired.) The homeless I know are, with the rare exception, good people who have fallen on tough times.
Although it is difficult to compile statistics, here are some estimates:
Age:
27% of the homeless are children under 18.
51% are between the ages of 3 and 50.
Gender:
45% of the single adults who are homeless are men.
Veterans:
40% of homeless men have served in the armed forces, while only 34% of the adult male population has served.
19% of urban homeless population are veterans.
50% of America's homeless women and children are running from domestic abuse. (This was me.)
Families with children are the fastest growing group of homeless - about 40% of the people who become homeless each year.
38% of the homeless are families with children.
I don't know offhand how many homeless are disabled, but I suspect it's a significant number. (This also was me.)
TheLorax, while I respect the fact that you've got an opinion, and indeed, you are entitled to it, your post(s) demonstrate(s) a lack of understanding, in multiple senses of the word. Your grasp of the situation is rudimentary at best, and badly informed by stereotypes that are largely inaccurate. Furthermore, your posts come across in a cold, heartless manor. I find your seeming lack of compassion distressing and, unfortunately, all too common.
TheLorax, one other thing:
Before I was disabled, I typically worked at least 9 hours a day, often more like 16-18 hours, 6 days a week. When I was disabled, I was working 2 jobs and going to college (Admittedly, I did cut back on work hours during the week at this time. However, I still worked roughly 40 hours (sometimes more) per week). I was on my way to work when I was in an accident that disabled me and ultimately led me into homelessness when combined with domestic violence. (After the accident, I couldn't support my family without him, and certainly couldn't stay with him after he tried to kill me.)
"...want to throw away all of America's tax revenue so lazy people don't have to work." So, tell me TheLorax, am I lazy? Since I don't know enough about anyone else's situation, I put to you that you are wrong in my case, and blatantly so. Lazy doesn't work two jobs and go to college in search of a better life. And if you are wrong in one instance, is it not possible that you are wrong in others, and perhaps your viewpoint may bear revising, or at the least investigation?
Blatently wrong.
Am I?
So you're disabled but you can still type. That means you can work.
I've watched an amputee on a loading line work 4 hours straight with 1 arm. There is a man that works at a housing office here that is legally blind. We have a lady that works in the administration office that has arthritis so bad she can barely move her hands but she types and files 8 hours a day. Another man I know had rhumatoid arthritis and osteoperosis yet he works at least 40 hours a week even though some days he can barely stand up.
But you are so disabled that you can't work and want (EXPECT) everyone else to work for you. I'm sorry that you are disabled. It is NO EXCUSE not to work to support yourself. Why don't you tell these people (all of whom are disabled) that you shouldn't have to work and they should pay to support you.
Shelter's have addresses. Rooms for rent have addresses. You can "spare change" anywhere for enough to afford a PO Box. Put that address on your resume. Every county in America has a labor office. Nearly every truck stop and county pool has a shower. Here it costs $.75 to take a shower. So I'm not buying that homeless people can't get a job because they have no address or can't take a shower.
How many battered women's shelters are there? They aren't hard to find. There are hotlines everywhere to get help.
Also you are saying that in your entire life you have no friends at all willing to give you a place to stay for a week or two while you get back on your feet? No family at all anywhere? It's hard to believe that you CAN'T get any help anywhere. I'm sure if you put forth a little effort, you would find employment enough to get your own room. Rebuild your life from there.
Sorry to sound insensitive but you are painting things only in the colors you want me to see and obsuring a lot of details to make your point.
With all due respect, TheLorax, you are judging without knowing all the facts. First, you don't know what disabilities I have. Therefore, you are in absolutely no position to comment on my employability. Second, you assume that I have not attempted to work since my accident. I have. Third, you assume that I expect everyone else to work for me, that I am looking for a handout. Again, your assumption is in error. I have income, limited though it may be, but I found an area where it was enough to support myself and my children.
Here's another thought: domestic violence (and homeless) shelters are forced to turn people away all the time. Some numbers to consider:
In one day:
60,799 domestic violence victims served
8,927 unmet requests for domestic violence services - more than half of these requests were seeking emergency shelter or transitional housing.
21,683 domestic violence hotline calls answered - that's 14 calls per minute
You assume that everyone who seeks shelter gets shelter. You assume that every area has certain amenities and options, and that is, unfortunately, not the case. You assume that everyone has friends or family willing and able to help. Again, unfortunately, not the case.
You claim that I am painting things only in the colors I want you to see. However, I charge that you are seeing things only in black and white.
I hope you never find yourself on the streets with no home. But, rest assured, if you do, and if we should encounter one another, I'll help you find the "county labor office". But don't ask me for any help other than that, because I would never insult you by offering you an hand up. I would never wish to denigrate your sense of pride in such a fashion. You are a rugged individualist, a man among men. This country needs more like you.
I honestly don't understand the logic on this thread.
You sound like a bunch of "Friends of Jesus" who want to throw away all of America's tax revenue so lazy people don't have to work. We can pay for their food, medicine, room and board, and any other living expenses and they can sit back and get drunk or watch TV while we work to support them. While we get foreclosed on because were scraping to try to earn a living in this economy you want to GIVE these people the homes we got foreclosed on.
These people need WORK. There are plenty of places that hire temporary work (see your county labor office) and a room-for-rent is less than welfare or minimum wage. I have seen handicapped and amputee people working hard for the barest of profit. Yet I'm called heartless when I resist tossing free money to perfectly healthy people. There are MANY homeless people in this community and NONE of them would lift a finger if offered work. Not a single one. They are crack addicts, scammers, freeloaders, and thieves who have had lots of time to think up their own particular sob story to gouge money out of people. I work 40 hours. Sometimes that's not even enough. I had to sell some important things to me to try to keep my home. I lost my job and it took me 6 months of searching to find another (during which I never collected welfare). I went to bed hungry several times. So now you want to take the little money I do make and give it to some bum so he doesn't have to work. Not a chance.
Another post mentioned living in the same valley as your grandparents did. She seemed to think that ended in medieval times.
I live in the same valley as my grandfather did. So do my parents who my sister and I care for, so does my sister and her husband, so does my daughter, her husband, and her three kids, so do some of my cousins and nephews and some of the kids (old now) I grew up with.
It's a good life as life goes. All human life sucks (Buddha and Schopenhauer knew it) but any of us would do anything for the other. Hell, we do. We are not perfect people. I am a recluse, some of us are bossy gossips, all of us have our quirks, but one of my daughter's friends moved to within a half mile of me with her family and built a big house. she thinks she has found heaven.
She raises chickens and distributes eggs to us pro bono. Her kids play with me and my grand kids. Her husband works away from home Monday through Friday; I have never met him. There are concessions we have to make to earn a living, but it's as close to a nineteenth century country lifestyle as I can imagine, and without the hard work that killed them young.
Pleasant Valley Sunday suburbia does not have to be norm. I have friends who live there and they hate it. They know their neighbors but they have no real connections with them. Many of them are from out West or up North---good people, but not like extended family; and all have bought into the I'll-get-mine-to-hell-with-you mentality, even if they try not to let it show.
Lorax, I am sorry you are suffering so much. I live on a meager income but I make sure I give away at least a tenth of that income. If you tried it you might be surprised at how much your attitude toward your neighbors could change. You have nothing to lose. How is your present philosophy of life working out for you?
The neighborhood I am describing is real, but I no longer attend the community church. A denomination twenty miles from home is more in line with my theological position. I fantasize about moving sometimes, but all sentiment aside, this tree, that creek, the field I used to plow where my house now sits are a part of me.
One third of the homeless are Viet Nam veterans, unlike, I suppose, most commenters here. George W. Bush, for example, lives in splendid luxury although he was a deserter and a coward during that war. As always, combat veterans prove to be, in the U.S., utterly disposable and best kept poor and hopelss.
Soldiers are just dumb stupid animals..."
-- Nobel Peace Prize Winner Henry Kissinger
Only 40 hours a week? You lazy bastard. And you have the chutzpah to tell other people they should WORK? What sheer arrogance.
In the mid-1980's empire had receded and Thatcher's neoliberal policies threw England into further recession. Large sections of London stood nearly uninhabited, much of it purchased by foreign investors.
Government and capital colluded to keep residences off the market and property prices artificially high. Armed with a squatters rights law that had stayed on the books since pre-industrial times, poor Londoners squatted buildings throughout the city, engaging in legal and sometimes literal struggle with an army of bailiffs, officials, unfriendly press, and corporate lawyers.
The squatters I met in Brixton, Southwark, and other districts were educated, creative, productive, and mostly hardworking.
Outside of a hard-earned suspicion of writerly questions, they were open-minded, too.
Here in California, large swaths of suburb stick out of the dry mountains relatively uninhabited. Bankers know that REO properties get inhabited quickly, frequently by people who damage the property.
In the United States, the people who occupy REO property do not turn on the water or electricity because they cannot afford to be seen on the property. They sneak in at night and defecate at various parts of the house because the water's off and they don't want to even go near the smelly bathroom.
Banks lose quite a lot of money from the resultant property damage.
The English squats I entered were well tended, albeit cheaply furnished. Squatters paid for water, heat, and light, and where they were left in relative peace often made repairs to the property. They often did so when the property owners themselves damaged the property to drive out their unpaying tenants.
Lorax says the homeless are so because it's their choice.
Better than choosing to be heartless.
Why don't we just rename this the economics of being homeless? Lorax, you must surely live in South Dakota or be from there, because I lived there and know a racist ideology when I hear one. Don't need a lecture on "Sure I support programs for them, I just don't want to fund it." attitudes. Because in the end it means, "Sure I'd to help homeless people, I just don't want to." So might as well save it, because everyone here is proposing programs of which you're slamming. As to the economics, I spent most of my adult life helping people in need wherever I can working for various nonprofits. Where did it get me? Laid off, mostly because my views were considered too conservative. Ended up without a home and lived in shelters and it's an eye opening experience. For one, when you live in a system that you actually can make more money being on welfare or unemployment than taking a $7 an hour job, there's an easy argument to become a lazy drunk, and why not if you've never had anything or you're a vet that is struggling with coming to grips with reality. Why not, if your people have been degraded for hundreds of years. I've been to Pine Ridge, it's a sad place. Especially when everyone in South Dakota views the Native Americans as drunks (which a shocking amount are.) But it's a perpetuating cycle, I'm from the Twin Cities where the American Indian Movement (AIM) took hold and started eating away at the cycle. Unfortunately, perpetual racism in SD makes that a tough reality to come to. As for being homeless for most of last year, I did what any semi-young enterprising college grad living in a shelter would do, I got a job teaching English in South Korea and see what I could do to get my head straight. Unfortunately, I have since discovered that I had the right ideas all along, and that I was living in a society where it's alright to step on the necks of the non-entities (ie: those with no addresses) and you'll get rewarded for it (ie: Citibank) Economics of being homeless is simple, put me in a job that pays less than welfare and why would I take it? (when I say pay, I also mean benefits.) Take that on the surface, and shove it up Wall Street's orifice.
Some of the comments in here about the homeless are just so far to the right if we were living in a civilized country such as Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand or any of the others it would be just nuts. Way back when Gerald Ford was in the White House, he called for a national income policy. We need it right now. For all Ford's faults, that wasn't one of them. The congress should have passed it. But if we could have it up for discussion then we could surely do it again. Not everybody will find employment which will pay the bills. It has been that way in the USA for sometime and was when Martin Luther King Jr attacked this same problem. Dr King had it just right. We need to, and he said, we need to have an income policy for those who can't find employment which will provide them with enough income to live on. In all other industrial countries, this is just the official policy. Let's get with USA. It's time to stop being a Third World country, but only when it comes to helping the folks, but as long as it has to do with Wall Street the US taxpayers can fork over the two or three trillion dollars to to keep bank robbers on Wall Street living like damn royalty while we live like hell and fight their damn wars for them. They have to take us for damn fools.
As for the French revolution, some people need to read about the real deal. Back in 1789 to 1799 those running that revolution did engage in some excesses, but compared to the monarchial states including Britain, they were saints. In the monarchial states, they would draw and quarter people for being against the government or other silly offenses. In Spain those people had their inquisition, until the French put a screeching halt to it, after Spain went to war with France.
Read the real history, even if you have to read outside the accepted and established versions of same. The official version has been written by the pro British and other pro monarchist historians who were on the winning side. What else isn't new? The winners always write the history of any period.
AD
Here's another preview.
Some of the comments in here about the homeless are just so far to the right if we were living in a civilized country such as Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand or any of the others it would be just nuts. Way back when Gerald Ford was in the White House, he called for a national income policy. We need it right now. For all Ford's faults, that wasn't one of them. The congress should have passed it. But if we could have it up for discussion then we could surely do it again. Not everybody will find employment which will pay the bills. It has been that way in the USA for sometime and was when Martin Luther King Jr attacked this same problem. Dr King had it just right. We need to, and he said, we need to have an income policy for those who can't find employment which will provide them with enough income to live on. In all other industrial countries, this is just the official policy. Let's get with USA. It's time to stop being a Third World country, but only when it comes to helping the folks, but as long as it has to do with Wall Street the US taxpayers can fork over the two or three trillion dollars to to keep bank robbers on Wall Street living like damn royalty while we live like hell and fight their damn wars for them. They have to take us for damn fools.
As for the French revolution, some people need to read about the real deal. Back in 1789 to 1799 those running that revolution did engage in some excesses, but compared to the monarchial states including Britain, they were saints. In the monarchial states, they would draw and quarter people for being against the government or other silly offenses. In Spain those people had their inquisition, until the French put a screeching halt to it, after Spain went to war with France.
Read the real history, even if you have to read outside the accepted and established versions of same. The official version has been written by the pro British and other pro monarchist historians who were on the winning side. What else isn't new? The winners always write the history of any period.
AD
I'm waiting for The Lorax to develop medical problems. Boy, will he change his tune. His insurance company--if he can afford one--will look for every reason to drop him. He won't be able to afford all the medications. His business will suffer or his employer will start looking at him funny. After a while he won't be able to earn a living. He won't be able to pay his mortgage or rent. But there's a bright side: without having to pay rent, he'll finally be able to pay for all his meds. And he can use his car/motel to drive to Canada to get the pills more cheaply.
THIS WAS A MAJOR NEWS STORY ALL THROUGHOUT THE EUROPEAN PRESS AND MEDIA. DID ANYONE SEE ANY MAINSTREAM MEDIA SOURCE IN THIS COUNTRY PICK IT UP AND REPORT IT? I SEARCHED SEVERAL SOURCES AND FOUND NARY A MENTION, OUTSIDE OF ALTERNATIVE WEBSITES LIKE THIS ONE AND NEWS SHOWS LIKE FAIR AND DEMOCRACY NOW ETC..
TOCQUEVILLE ONCE SAID YOU CAN NEVER CRITICIZE OR EVEN MAKE LIGHT FUN OF AMERICAN IDEAS AND INSTITUTIONS THE WAY YOU CAN IN ALL EUROPEAN COUNTRIES, EVEN THE MOST AUTHORITARIAN ONES, OR THE PEOPLE WILL "GROW FIERCE" AND "SHUN YOU," AS "THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND BEING MOCKED LIKE THAT." HE ALSO SAID EVERY AMERICAN AUTHOR, AND PRESUMABLY JOURNALIST, HAS A DUTY TO BE "FOREVER SWINGING INCENSE" OVER THE COMMON BROMIDES OF THE AMERICANS, HOWEVER FACILE THEY MAY BE.
SEEMS LIKE NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED. A FOREIGNER WITH THE TEMERITY, AND U.N. MANDATED AUTHORITY!, TO CRITICIZE HOW WE TREAT OUR MILLIONS OF DESTITUTE, IMPOVERISHED, UNEMPLOYED, HOMELESS AND, WORST OF ALL, TRULY HOPELESS, CITIZENS? WHO THE HELL DOES THIS DUDE THINK HE IS??!!
Excellent observations.
De Tocqueville's nearly 200 yr old observations indeed apply to the USA today more than ever.
But USAn's would take you more seriously if you wouldn't type in all-upper case letters.
We are forgetting the principle of the DANGEROUS PRECEDENT.
If we were to help the homeless now, then in the future, we (or our equally timid successors) might be called upon to do another admittedly right thing which we may not have the courage to do.
It would be heartless of us to disappoint the citizenry (or the future citizenry), so the only responsible course is to fail to do the admittedly right thing.
Thank you.
housing, and the ownership of property, will be the line in the sand in the coming conflict...there will be a point of critical mass following increasing numbers of foreclosures and evictions as incomes fall or disappear, and rent or mortgage payments become impossible for ever larger numbers...
My best friend became homeless after suffering mental illness.
He really needed free early healthcare to get better. However, it just isn't available. Reagan killed free mental healthcare services in the state of California long ago.
My friend could not care for himself and he could not work. He just got worse and finally left on a quest to use the last of his funds to pay for expensive treatment in another city. I'm sure he never made it. He didn't have enough money to pay for food, lodging and the treatment, which was outpatient only.
I am sure this story happens again and again. The only solution is strong public funding for mental illness services, making it free, along with general healthcare.
I hear stupid talk about "bums" in this thread, but such folks don't know what they are talking about. My friend worked most of his life and paid for his own college education, but in the end, mental illness took him down.
-TIA
By no means is this a representative sample of the homeless in my town. This is just a list of the people in the dry (as in not stinking drunk) men's shelter tonight:
Me: severe health problems
Geoff: Iraq vet with PTSD
John: arthritis but not bad enough for disability
Steve: young kid addicted to dextramethorphan (sp?)
DuWayne: idiot and failed career criminal
Gary: recently divorced and fired
Frank: recently divorced, drunk, in a career slump but working at a gas station
Juan: Guatamalan illegal alien, speaks no english
John: drunk
Brad: drunk
Jack: not sure
John: miserable prick nobody can stand, also a drunk
Manolin: marriage trouble, can't find work
Roland: sober, can't find work
Eddy: functioning drunk, can't find work
Eric: 19 yr old orphan recently kicked out to fend for himself by Dept of Youth Services
Milton: Works, had a falling out with his brother
Evan: Bright, sober, out of work
The old white haired guy: not sure, seems sober
Tony: drunk
George: drunk
Jason the Listerine Marine: gulf war vet who drinks listerine, just diagnosed with untreatable cancer
Rob: had a falling out with his boyfriend, ex-junkie on methadone
Adam: ex-junkie/junkie/ex-junkie/junkie/ex-junkie...
Peter: old, can't find work
Brian: lazy, gambling problem, becoming a drunk
Abel: old, alzheimers, almost deaf and blind
Paul: can't find work, becoming a drunk
Kilton: piddly jobs, drunk
Francis; old as dirt, waiting for subsidized housing
Paul: schizophrenic but refuses treatment
Robbie: Level 3 sex offender, sober, works
Chris: Diabetes like you can't imagine
Jim: heart attacks every 3 weeks or so
Dave/Sheila: gender confusion, can't find work
Tom: ex-junkie, drunk
36 people, and the shelter is licensed for 27 max. We're all lined up like sardines on mats on the floor, and it is very, very cramped.
Not sure if anyone dug more into the links in the article but one of them has this paragraph:
"Doris Tinson certainly doesn't but she is on the brink of losing the house she bought in 1964 for $29,000. She paid off the mortgage several times as she borrowed against the house to supplement her pay as a nurse and send her children, and then grandchildren, to college"
So she has kids and grandkids that she put thru college yet none of them would help her pay off the loan?
A totally other issue appears later in the article:
"Then a few years ago, a man came knocking offering her a cheap mortgage, a fraction of the value of the house by then put at $750,000. Tinson took out the $87,000 loan but along the way the monthly payments quadrupled to $2,324, nearly her entire income and they are set to rise again'
I guess good lesson out of this is: read the friggin contract before signing.
When you suggest we read our contracts, you do not suggest that no one's out to rob us, I assume.
If not, I don't see how this is much of an answer to Doris Tinson's situation or homelessness in general. (Perhaps you did not mean it to be an answer, only a warning, but I have known many who made such statements and apparently thought that they were responding to situations on the ground; the following responds primarily to them).
In most neighborhoods, we would also have advised Ms. Tinson to have locked her door at night, while she had one, no?
If I leave my door unlocked, and my neighbor enters and steals my TV, is my neighbor less a thief because the door was unlocked?
If I phrase a contract so that a nonprofessional cannot or is not apt to both read and understand it, and I do so to complete a contract favorable to me, regardless of whether it might become unfavorable to the other individual, how am I better than a burglar?
What % of homeowners understand their mortgage contracts?
I only worked in the industry for a few years, but I spoke to a lot of clients and never met any SFR client who showed an understanding of more than a few rough points, though some may have understood more than they showed.
When a bank recruited me because regulators told them that they had to market to a nearby Hispanic community. The market changed abruptly weeks after I entered, so I never wound up making a sales call either way, but it did not take much to see that the bank had lied to me.
They claimed that most of my work would be educational and would involve little or nothing resembling a typical sales call. The materials that they gave me provided some reasonable information, but only insofar as that coincided with their potential sales and with the retrieval of their loaned money.
They were not out to hurt people; they just did not know or care whether the clients or their problems existed. The corporate relationship to the clients was basically a social engine designed for money extraction.
But you know, the same applies to a burglar.
Oh, i'm pretty sure there's a lot of con men out there.
It's not a big deal if you get scammed at the flea market, no big losses there. You learn your lesson and move on.
A mortgage tho is a huge expense (not sure why some call it an investment). That's why, when you put your signature on the dotted line to the tune of $100k you spend an extra $300 and get an attorney to go thru the contract.
" FREEDOM FROM WANT" : FDR 1930s. We are still waiting to fulfill Roosevelt's vision. Trickle down doesn't trickle. Unrestrained greed makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Democracy must include freedom from want.
There has never been, nor can there ever be, "freedom from want".... sorry to pop your balloon, but it ain't never gonna happen. The closest that I've ever read about is always in agrarian, pre-technolocical societies. You know, back when families stayed in the same valley for generations, helped neighbors etc., but WITHOUT government interference. I will agree that it is an "ideal" that a society should strive for, but in the metaphorical sense, one's grasp should ALWAYS exceed one's reach.
You're trying to pop the wrong balloon, Nobody. You're correct about a lot of this; however ---
Freedom from want exists right now: I was hungry; I am not. I was homeless; I am not. That is by no means all that should be done, but any pretence that nothing can be done because everything is not accomplished does not merit repeating
I am no longer homeless because individuals and government chose to help me, albeit only occasionally.
My thanks to
- the man who showed me a church soup line and how to open canned meat with a pocket knife and was patient when I vomited the stuff for the stench
- the man who told me to shave and wash at McDonald's
- the man who showed me where I could sleep during the day when I could not lay on the cold ground at night
- the man who showed me where to break into the subway, explained why I would need to do so when the canals froze over, explained about how much time I might have, and taught me how to hide where the trains run without being run over or electrocuted
My thanks for the nights in spare rooms, garages, warehouses, and attics. My thanks for the sundry advice about lice and bedbugs, and the access to typewriters, computers, pens, paper, and old clothing.
My thanks for directions to local libraries and to those who did not run me off when the warm air bid me sleep.
I think of all the trouble people go through on my behalf now that I do have money and a place and a position held to merit some small respect among some members of a community, and how little I get from it all compared to the value of a demi of strong cheap wine to stop my shaking in my coat on the cold ground in a park on a day the kids played round about in shirtsleeves.
Bardamu - a little late in responding, sorry. YOU may have freedom from want at this juncture, but that does not mean that 'everybody' has the same, which I believe was what the original poster was trying to convey, that the government needed to provide "freedom from want". I take this to mean 'of the basic necessities, to wit, food, clothing, shelter. Other items are 'luxuries' even though we may deem them necessary. I'm happy to hear that YOU made it, but thousands have not.
I wasn't trying to say, 'don't try', only that irrespective of the attempt, there will ALWAYS be those who are in need of the basic necessities of live, in every industrialized culture.
I have witnessed homelessness in Denmark and in Germany. Even though these two countries may provide MORE for their citizens, "gray-hound therapy" is alive and well there as well as here in the US.
Hunter gatherers had the upper hand being able to utilize a greater diversity of food sources. The agrarians suffered from monotone diets, disease from close quarters, and were screwed when crops failed.
I think you are saying that cavemen had it good after they stopped hunting mastodon and started growing wheat. Then someone invented currency and government and they all got poor, except for those who put in that extra mile.
Let me guess: those advanced beings today are called Republicans! No government handouts for them. They thrive from their own strength and cunning.
Well, this has been really hilarious, and patently absurd. Many thanks!
-TIA
The first two words of your reply belies the rest.... WHAT A TREMENDOUS LEAP OF LOGIC! But alas, not a thought involved.... Hey, how about sharing whatever you're smoking. To state that "freedom from want" is a utopian pipe dream says not a word about mastodons or republicans (redundancy).
Cavemen, I suspect were never "free from want", as there was always the danger of being eaten by the prey you sought (speculation here). Many hunter/gatherers also had 'want', either of shelter, food, fresh water or a defensive position. SOME agrarian/gatherer societies MAY have come close, but again, speculation.
"Freedom from want" is one of those catch phrases, used in political speeches, to make people swoon. From your reply one may summize that you think otherwise... your right...
I can't add much to the conversation, except that I agree with so many of them, with the exception of the heartless comments by TheLorax.
Let me defend him a little.
Please note that in my reply to him I disagreed with several of his positions, but I also acknowleged that he did understand part of the problem. He's right about this much - there is a segment of the homeless population that is absolutely determined to lay around, drink, do drugs, and mooch whatever they can from every sucker they can bamboozle. It's not a big segment - maybe 10% or 15% - but it's there, and it's very frustrating. What do we do about THEM?
I'm in a shelter tonight, and I've got WiFi from next door, so I'm going to treat everybody to a glimpse at my peeps in my next post.
Here's my final rant on this subject:
It can happen to you!
I had a good sales job, what I thought was a good marriage, and I was on my way to a nice, middle class existence. I don't mean to beat my chest - I just want you to understand that life can kick you in the teeth and keep on kicking. In four years time all this happened to me:
The grandmother I'd cared for died from a massive stroke.
My mother died from ovarian cancer.
I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea.
My wife ran off with one of her coworkers.
My favorite uncle died from complications from diabetes.
My father died from kidney failure.
I was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.
I was diagnosed with diabetes 2.
I was diagnosed with high blood pressure.
I was diagnosed with recurrent atrial flutter.
I was diagnosed with recurrent unspecified tachycardia.
Unable to work, I had to quit my job to qualify for state subsidized prescriptions.
I lost my apartment and moved into my car.
I've had 6 pulmonary embolisms in the past 4 months.
I simply CAN'T work...but I can't collect disability because my oxygen levels are a few points too high to satisfy the COPD requirements, atrial flutter is usually treatable, and embolisms usually disolve within ten months, which doesn't meet the one year requirement for disability. I can't collect unemployment because they won't grant it if you left your job for medical reasons.
I currently live in a shelter whenever I'm in the front of the line. It's first come, first served, and all of them are overcrowded.
I managed to land a little job - sweeping and vacuuming for an hour a day at a thrift store, but honest to God, I haven't been able to do even that much in a week or so. I think I'm in tachycardia again, but this'll make the 9th? 10th? trip to the hospital this year, and I'm quite sick of the place.
To tell you the truth, I'm considering committing a serious crime or two. I don't know what else to do, and I haven't got much to lose.
The point of all this whining is to illustrate that I'm not a drunk or a junkie. I just got stomped down by circumstances and IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU.
So you failed to get medical insurance and expect others to pay for your health care?
You quit your job when they could have let you go and you would have been able to collect unemployment. (Enough for an apartment)
You have made a series of poor choices in your life - your marriage, health care options, personal health, and financial decisions.
Sorry that you are homeless but you're there because you got yourself there.
Lorax is toying with Progressive sensibilities for the purpose of personal entertainment.
Lorax,
Are you a real human being?
think of it this way... under a national system, you costs for keeping hansjurg in health benefits would be about 0.004 cents per year. Are you that stingy?
Hate to pop your little bubble, but having health insurance is not always a matter of choice. After my divorce, I did not qualify for COBRA because our family plan was sponsored by an organization, not by an EMPLOYER. So I went searching for a private plan -- BC/BS, USAA, Golden Rule, and one other. One of the first questions I was asked by the insurance companies was: "Have you ever had psychological counselling?" Answer: "Yes". Company: " Have you ever been on anti-depressants?" Answer: "Yes." Company: "You must not have been taking anti-depressants for at least 1 year before we can consider insuring you." End of health insurance coverage for me until I reached Medicare age (11 years). I was financially stable and could have paid high rates for insurance, but that did not matter to the insurance companies; I don't understand what there was about depression that made me dangerous to insure! I was ultimately one of the lucky ones who managed to live to age 65 without losing her assets to the health care industry.
No, I was fully insured when I got sick, but I was unable to work and therefore had no money. Without money I could not afford the copays for my prescriptions, without which I'd die. They ran about $20 apiece, but I was on 11 different drugs, and if you're broke $220 a month is an impossible sum. The State had a program that brought that down to $2 apiece, but if you were employed and insured you didn't qualify. I reasoned that since I was unable to work or afford my meds the only way out was to resign and let my insurance lapse, which qualified me for the state program.
As for unemployment, they do not compensate you if you are unable to work for medical reasons, period. One of the weekly questions you have to answer is "Are you willing and able to work?" I was willing, but unable.
My marriage? It's none of your business, but I never saw it coming.
I'll admit that I made some poor choices about my personal health. In my youth I was addicted to nicotine, and I was running about 25 pounds overweight. I corrected both, but not early enough, apparently. On the other hand, Mom had a lot of problems with her heart and Dad had diabetes and high blood pressure, you rude prick.
Hansjung, YOUR second sentence of the original post said it all. IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! It can happen to anybody, irrespective of bad or good choices. I'd suggest that you not waste too much energy arguing your point, since, as my wife always tells me... "you can't fix stupid".... peace
In that case, you should support corporate bailouts.
The corporations have obtained their bailouts because they got themselves there. They put themselves in a position to get trillions of dollars of bailouts. Unlike you. They deserve the trillions of dollars.
You don't. Too bad. That is the logical conclusion of your theory.
Well aren't you special.
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
- The Lorax by Dr. Suess
http://www.seussville.com/lorax/
-TIA
Homelessness is a heartbreaking national disgrace in America. No human being with good mental health would want to be homeless. Many of the homeless are Veterans with PTSD and many of the non vets who are homeless are people living with mental illness. One of the most common symptoms of mental illness is the inability to handle money on a budget. They get into serious credit problems and are unable to rent even the least expensive place. Although there are all sorts of accommodations made for physically disabled and people who are developmentally delayed, there is no help for the mentally ill who get in trouble with bills they cannot pay in a corporate capitalistic society. When they(I don't know who they are) de-institutionalized the psychiatric patients, they did not legislate the necessary outpatient care for budget management, shelter, nutrition, medical care, or socialization. Now with the economic problems and joblessness there is an increase in homelessness of workers who have families and especially single mothers. Why do Americans resent government helping disadvantaged people and down on their luck Americans but support as patriotic, killing and destroying foreigners in counterproductive wars? Some of the people who protest helping the needy the most are Christian conservatives who say they will get dependent and never work but Jesus never said don't help the needy because you will make them dependent..
None of you have to wait for somebody else to end homelessness. You can start right now, all by yourself, no matter what your financial situation is. Here's how:
Go find a homeless person, and make getting that person a home your personal project. Busy taking care of Mom and the kids? Get them involved too. Talk to everyone you know until you find that person a job. Don't stop until you do. If you can't find them a place in one of the overcrowded shelters, and you're nervous about having them in your house, put them up in your garden shed. Clean them up, sober them up, drive them to interviews, drive them to and from work, and help them manage their bank account until they have enough to get an apartment, or a camper, or schoolbus, or somewhere else to live.
That's right. Be a wild anarchist and go fix the problem yourself without help from any corrupt government. It'll be a huge pain in the ass, and it'll cost you money, and the person you're trying to help may very well let you down. Just try again, harder, and eventually you'll succeed in restoring one person to a dignified life worth living.
The alternative is to roll your eyes and point at the Republicans while that person freezes to death.
We'll never be able to end homelessness because there will always be people who end up without a place to stay. The best we can hope for is to put systems in place to immediately address the needs of those people.
The first thing that has to happen is a sea change in attitudes like TheLorax's. People - all people - possess intrinsic worth, and nobody is better than anybody else. You are equal to the homeless wino in a refrigerator box, and she's equal to your young daughter.
The next thing we have to do is concentrate on making decent jobs available. I'm not talking about minimum wage jobs, either. $15 or $20 an hour jobs, and nothing less. Those jobs need to be available to everyone, regardless of criminal records or bad credit.
Then we need affordable housing, and by affordable I mean no more than $8,000 a year for a two-bedroom apartment, and they also need to be available to everybody regardless of criminal records or bad credit.
We also need support services for substance abuse, but they need to be EQUAL TO THE TASK. Three days at a Spin-Dry center and then a boot to the curb doesn't cut it.
We need support services for the mentally ill, and again, they must be EQUAL TO THE TASK. A one hour session every other week with an overworked therapist is not enough.
We need ADEQUATE public transportation.
Do those things and 80% of the homeless problem will disappear. How will we pay for it?
Start by taxing business owners, and I mean tax the hell out of them. Capitalism requires the business owners to underpay the workers to raise capital, and they've been doing that to us for centuries. There's plenty of money out there - it's just concentrated and in the hands of the rich. Let's liberate some of it for a while. If things don't work out we can always go back to a system that methodically crushes the most vulnerable, but let's try something different and see if it works.
Loved your comments and agree with every single one of them.
Same here.
Hansjurg, Thanks for your insight and ideas.
Our government is totally transparent when it comes to dealing with the poor and homeless-- no help will be given. Let's not forget the horrendous first display of this policy: Katrina and New Orleans. If I remember correctly, then-Speaker of the House Hastert spoke seriously of just razing NOLA. It hasn't been torn down: just left to rot with no replacement homes or jobs for the working class poor.
We are only just beginning to see a pattern here: the ruling class slowly eliminates the middle class, leaving only the working class to fight against the former; only the poor can't revolt because they will be jobless, landless, homeless, healthcareless while sick, starving and dying. It's in the cards.
I am homeless, and I'd like to comment on Thelorax's post.
"Most of these "homeless" people are homeless because they want to be."
Completely false. I know boatloads of homeless people and none of them - not a single one - wants to be homeless.
"Many won't work even if offered the simplest of jobs."
True, but don't be misled by the word "many." If I had to guess, and it would be a very tentative one, I'd say that about 15% have no intention of ever working if they can possibly help it.
"Some are addicted to drugs and won't go to rehab to try to break their habit."
True, and drugs aren't even the worst of it...alcoholism is much more prevalent. I think I'd take issue with them not going to rehab, because most of them go up to ten times a year, spend three days drying out, and hit the liquor store within hours of their release.
"Others realize that with a $7 an hour minimum wage, it is easier to ask for handouts than it is to get a job."
Very few panhandlers make as much as $7 an hour. Most spend three or four hours at it and are lucky to bring in 6 or 8 bucks, which is usually enough for a pouch of cheap tobacco and a pint of rotgut.
"(They can collect welfare/unemployment as well)"
In my state welfare pays homeless people about $116 dollars a month. People with fixed addresses get the princely sum of $305, but we're not talking about them. As for unemployment, it usually pays enough to get an 8X10 room in a weekly flophouse, though I'll admit that there are some homeless guys collecting unemployment.
"So what's the point in working?"
Most of them would work in a heartbeat if given the chance. Period. I'll address why they're not able to momentarily.
"If we are to get real about the "problem" of homelessness we need to attack it at the source."
Erm.....yes.
"Stop giving these people handouts and educate them on how to support themselves."
Again...erm...yes. Presumably on something better than those $7 an hour jobs you were talking about. I'll bet anything you've never tried to save up first month, last month, and security deposit earning minimum wage, and then had to find something accessible by public transportation, then convince a landlord to ignore your police record or credit report.
"Drug test all homeless persons coming to shelters..."
Impossible. What shelter can afford to have ten drug tests a day? Those tests take time, too. Sometimes up to a week. Forget the problems with false positives, but think about this: It's 8 degrees out, and the police won't do their jobs and pc anymore drunks. You gonna' send them out into the snow to freeze to death? That isn't some wildly improbable scenario, either. I see it every night.
"...and force them into rehab if positive."
Only a judge can do that, and the process takes weeks.
"Clean them up and give them some self esteem."
An incredibly simplistic view of the massively complex problem of substance abuse, and you obviously know more than a handful of drunks/junkies, so you ought to know better. I'm sure you do, and were just firing from the hip, so to speak.
"Giving these people handouts and (LAUGH) "opening the doors" of foreclosed properties only increases the problem."
No, it doesn't. I'll admit it does nothing to fix it, but neither does it make it worse. It just eases their suffering for a while.
"Our tax dollars can be put to better use than giving them to some junkie that's too lazy to work."
Amen, brother. Amen. But I think my suggestions vary from yours more than a little. I need a break to get my thoughts together for the next post, but I'll be back in a few.
Thanks for your thoughtful post. I hope you get back on you feet soon, although by what you say and know it won't be easy.
Just to blow up this myth about people not wanting to work let me tell you my experience. I had the opportunity to leave my former job has an early retiree. I had worked there for well over 20 years, and due to several reasons including an outsourcing I figured it was a good time to leave the place. We decided to move from CT to NC for the weather and cheaper cost of living. I started working right out of high school and was NEVER unemployed for my 30 plus year working life. This made me figure I'd have no problem getting a job.
Once we got settled into our new house in January of this year I started looking for a job. Well it's November and I still don't have one, and I am willing to do almost anything that I can physically do. Fortunately we have savings to live on and I have a pension I can fall back on if needed. But if it was not for that we ourselves could be homeless now, so I can first hand appreciate how tough things are out there. The stats say there are 6 unemployed people for every job that is available.
Sure there are some people that don't want to work out there but I can guarantee they are the minority. Unfortunately for all those that want to work but can't I don't see things turning around anytime soon.
It wasn't satire or an attempt at satire. My post was 100% sincere.
So you want to give all your money to the homeless so they can shoot up meth and get drunk that's fine with me. Don't ask me to donate thank you.
If it's a program to actually END homelessness (not one to give away free housing or money) then I'm in on it.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not for bailing out wall street either. Our money should be going to education, transportation, and alternative energy. Instead we're wasting it on war and corporate bailouts.
Giving these people money and housing is NOT the answer. Do that and you will doube the number of homeless. Build huge condominiums and hire caterers to ensure they all get meals and soon everyone will be homeless. What you are suggesting is NOT the solution.
Get these people OFF drugs, OFF welfare, and OFF the streets. Help them WORK to earn money for themselves. EDUCATE and promote their self-esteem.
Not seeing your logic in giving them money and housing so they can be happier in their homelessness.
What "welfare". Homeless men aren't even eligible for Medicaid; and wher is their food-card even going to be mailed to?
You seem to be unaware that since the Clinton's end-welfare act, the US doesn't even have a welfare system that anyone from a civilized country would recognize.
And last I checked, unemployment insurance is NOT a handout - one has to to work to earn it, and all workers pay into.
And no, homeless people have exhausted any unemployment they might have been due long ago.
Lorax, haven't you ever taken unemployment? I thought everyone by the time they are 40-50 has taken unemployment a least a couple times. Never been out or work? Have you ever worked at all? Oh, I see, maybe just get a automatic deposit from you rich-daddy's trust fund every week. Or are you such a brainwashed slave of the capitalists that you refuse to draw unemployment even when you are due it?
Then you are a heartless dumb ass.
As far as a homeless person finding work.
Where does that person fill out an application that does not ask for their home address and telephone?
This is ALSO a problem if trying to register to vote or even rent a post office box. One must give a physical street address in order to register or to rent from the US POST OFFICE.
Wake up. Not all people who are homeless fit your ideas. Many are regular families who for various reasons, including job loss or dire medical situations have lost their income. Or how about the working poor who have 2 or 3 mnimum wage jobs but still don't earn enough for first and last month's rent etc. You need to get down off your high horse and see how the poor are struggling these days. I find you pathetic.
Since it was a U.N. special investigator who made this report, will the congress now pass an act condemning the report?
The French guillotined about 2000 aristocrats. Not many, but enough to empower the middle and working classes. I think 10,000 bankers and predator capitalists would be a fine start here. Of course the Paris Commune of 1871 got it right, but they were massacred by the establishment.
No, the French didn't guillotine 2000 aristocrats. They guillotined 2000 people, who consisted of the royals, nobles, AND middle class, AND working class.
Empower the middle and working classes? What was empowered was just another new group of elite rulers. All the Terror did was replace one group of authoritatrian elite rulers with another group of authoritarian elite rulers.
2000 aristocrats. About 40,000 total.
this is the more correct version.
what really happened in france was:
the KING - the monarchy , was basically a more or less "benign" ruler - by most standards...the nobility around him, was really the RIVAL faction TO the king , with their own interests. below them was the RISING "bourgiesie" or "middle class" - consisting of the merchants, businessmen..who - with the rise of the "monetary system" began to see their own power.
below them were the peasants and laborers .
the rising bourgoisie actually USED the peasantry to act against the NOBILITY whom the businessmen wanted to replace as the main drivers of society .
the Monarchy, the king of course was, by that time, , though still powerful, partly at the mercy of either the nobility or their rising rivals -= the bourgoisies -- today , known as the "middle class" .
although today's "nobility" would probably be the "corporatocracy" or big businesses.
the peasants would be most of us working EITHER for the
"bourgoisie" BUSINESS CLASS - whether small or big - but basically "without possession".
at least that's how it seems to me.
but France, indeed, came (and still does, imo) closest to a path leading to a socialist state..where the end of the monarchy actually was brought about BY the bourgoisies USING the peasantry -- in order for the bourgoisies to become the replacement rulers over the peasantry after getting rid of the power of the monarchy and the "nobility" to which LEVEL
the BOURGOISIE ALSO aspired.
in a way - this one reason, perhaps, that Karl Marx and other socialist/communist thinkers of class war - POINTEDLY focused on the BOURGOISIE itself as PART of the problem.
someone correct me , please, if i comprehended these things wrongly.
As Madame Defarge would say, "Nobody is perfect. We were just setting some examples". It's the old breaking some eggs to make the omelette rule. Wall Street applies that rule to us every fucking minute of every day. Turnabout can be ugly but it's still fair play.
I know that if Geithner, Buffett, Blankfein, Schumer, Dodd, Lieberman, Paulson, Summers, etc. et al were suddenly "involuntarily suicided" (old CIA joke), a fresh crop of fecal, cancerous coliforms would rush in to take their place.
However, I wouldn't miss the old crop of crap.
The joke is new to me and funny as hell.
This is a serious issue. But our nations true terrorist group and certified chicken hawks did this yesterday on the growing problem of homeless Vets.
Yesterday, the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development held a hearing on ending veterans' homelessness, a growing problem, especially in the midst of the current recession. The hearing was noticeably without its Republican members. So here's the list of those domestic terrorists who were too busy to give a damn about homeless vets:
Richard C. Shelby, Ranking Member (R-AL)
Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Bob Corker (R-TN)
Jim DeMint (R-SC)
David Vitter (R-LA)
Mike Johanns (R-NE)
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)
Judd Gregg (R-NH)
In his defense, Hutchison was at Fort Hood for the memorial service, but his state of Texas has the highest number of homeless vets. The rest of them should be iiving under a freeway bridge eating cat food.
The bankers have received their orders: "Cry 'Havoc' and unleash the dogs of war."
Welfare for the homeless in Los Angeles County consists of $228 a month. It is not even enough to pay for a cheap room in a flop house. So even the homeless who are on welfare remain homeless.
I don't know if Lorax is serious or not.
It's true that some are pro's that boast of bagging $200 a day, then rent motel rooms, and I'm sure that some welfare recipients do sit on their porches drinking beer all day.
But, I'll tell you this as a lifelong campaholic that cruises these lower 48. The homeless are showing up in campgrounds all over; men, women, and whole families. Some towns have four or five houses for sale on every block, curtainless empty houses. Remember that as you waste a hundred candles in paper bags to make the neighborhood look cool for the holiday, or when you're fully stuffed with turkey and sprawl out in the stratolounger to watch the ball game.
Well said. The eyes wide shut crowd is going to have to buy body suit rubber bumpers to keep from getting injured from numerous daily run ins with walls and reality.
And these morons really believe the criminals in government and Wall street aren't the real welfare cheats. Don't these morons know basic mathematics? Wall Street has done a great PR job on these idiots by convincing them that the ROI (return on investment) from bailing out wall street crooks is better than spending to help the homeless live lives of dignity. It seems okay for banks to rip off billions but if 3 to 6% of homeless are trying to milk the system, it's okay to shaft the other 94%. It's okay to reward massive wall street grand larceny but heaven forbid allowing petty larceny from a tiny group for the benefit of the entire community. I would pity these people that are so calloused about the homeless if I didn't get so angry just reading their profound hate speach founded on ignorance and bigotry.
Cars sleep in heated garages. Oil-war veterans sleep in the park. Get it? Stop the autosprawl subsidies.
http://freepublictransit.org
Nonsense.
Most of these "homeless" people are homeless because they want to be. Many won't work even if offered the simplest of jobs. Some are addicted to drugs and won't go to rehab to try to break their habit. Others realize that with a $7 an hour minimum wage, it is easier to ask for handouts than it is to get a job. (They can collect welfare/unemployment as well) So what's the point in working?
If we are to get real about the "problem" of homelessness we need to attack it at the source. Stop giving these people handouts and educate them on how to support themselves. Drug test all homeless persons coming to shelters and force them into rehab if positive. Clean them up and give them some self esteem.
Giving these people handouts and (LAUGH) "opening the doors" of foreclosed properties only increases the problem.
Our tax dollars can be put to better use than giving them to some junkie that's too lazy to work.
To: TheLorax
Judging from your comments, you must have had a free ride in life. Just wait and see what it is waiting for you in the near future. YOU MIGHT BECOME ANOTHER HOMELESS INDIVIDUAL.
You are another one of those living within your own family little cub. It makes me sick that you show no empathy for others who are having a hard time now.
Vive la France, Vive la revolution
ABAJO LA MUGRE USURERA
I don't know if everything after "nonsense" is satire or not. I hope so, because inartful satire can always be improved with thought and practice.
If it's sincere mean-spiritedness, I suggest that the Lorax try to wrap a tune around it if he/she hopes to sell it.
Because the musical version might hit the charts with a bullet; it nicely fills the niche created by "Welfare Cadilac".
ยท Yr Obd't Servant
You are either joking or are a heartless dumb ass.
Very poor satire. Makes you look stoopid and immoral. Good satire is subtle and doesn't use cliches or vomit up propaganda.
LOL, LOL, LOL!
TheLorax
Did you not read the piece or are you being sarcastic? Sometimes it's hard to tell just by reading what somebody wrote.
The UN was complaining that the Government was spending huge amounts of money to bailout Wall Street while ignoring the homeless. Then you say "Stop giving these people handouts and educate them on how to support themselves". Who are you talking about the homeless or Wall Street?
We have basically bailed out a bunch of irresponsible Wall Street reckless gamblers that should be in Jail, or some Gamblers Anonymous twelve step program themselves. And may I add here I wonder how many Wall Streeters could pass a drug test themselves. With all the money they have my guess is that many of them are pretty well self medicated.
"Our tax dollars can be put to better use than giving them to some junkie that's too lazy to work."
LOL again. OK let me get off the floor and back in my chair before I type any more.
Yea our tax dollars are better spent giving it to a bunch of rich, self absorbed, sociopathic, wealth squandering, tax money stealing, lowlife Wall Street types that don't want the goberment to regulate them but then goes running to the goberment to bail out their sorry butts when they get themselves into trouble. They are like a bunch of irresponsible teenagers. They say mommy and daddy are jerks and want mummy and daddy to leave them alone until they get in trouble, then the want mommy and daddy to bail them out.
LOL, ROTFLMAO, too funny, yuck yuck, Oh god I can't catch my breath.
NC-Tom
Thank you for saying what I'm thinking.
thanks for your reply to Thorax re who are the ones getting the "handouts". Most ppl can't imagine what its like to be homeless unless it happens to them. Unfortunately more and more are receiving that rude awakening. What we need is more compassion and less generic stereotyping.
And so often the people that cant imagine it happening to them are many times only a paycheck or two away from it themselves. You would think that would make them more empathetic to the homeless. I really don't get it at all.
So you personally know "most" of the homeless? it seems like your poor "insight" stems from ignorance, lack of empathy and a big lump of coal where humans normally have a heart.
don't feed the trolls.
Small towns are littered with empty houses.
Larger ones have tens of thousands of sq. ft. in abandoned industrial buildings.
Cities have foreclosures everywhere.
Open the doors.