Homelessness Solutions

[Rhea]

I agree that skin in the game and people wanting to pull their own weight is the norm. And we need to remember that many of these people were overcome from their ability to do it - and the daily stress of this can and will overwhelm rational deision-making. So support that lets them get past the daily anxiety of whether they will eb homeless - will help ensure that they do not become homeless. And at a lower cost than helping them recover from homelessness.

That said, there are individuals who are not ready to live in an apartment with a landlord and who really are better off, at least for a time, in something more akin to a dormitory (single occupancy only) with some basic furnishings, bathroom and small kitchenette.

Also a good point and speaks to the value to our society of having “assisted living” available to those that need it, because that, again, is less costly to society than homelessness.


And while being less costly will be important to some, being more humane will be more improtant to others. Win win.

 

[Rhea]

merged two threads on same topic

What are some suggestions (or success stories) to reduce, mitigate or solve the promlem of unhoused people?

Can we discuss various options? It would be helpful to include in your discussion WHAT problem you’re addressing - whether that is housing affordability, job stability, medical care or rugged individualist entitlement.

Because obviously each losution will sove some aspect of homelessness, but not all of them. One solution may help homeless families, while another helps homeless single vets with PTSD.


Thoughts? Discussion?

 

[robnisch]

What are some suggestions (or success stories) to reduce, mitigate or solve the promlem of unhoused people?

Can we discuss various options? It would be helpful to include in your discussion WHAT problem you’re addressing - whether that is housing affordability, job stability, medical care or rugged individualist entitlement.

Because obviously each losution will sove some aspect of homelessness, but not all of them. One solution may help homeless families, while another helps homeless single vets with PTSD.


Thoughts? Discussion?

The Housing First movement has had some success. The idea is that it takes a lot burden off the police and the health care system. My sister is involved here with neighborhood associations. As with any program it is funding.

 

[Jarhyn]

What are some suggestions (or success stories) to reduce, mitigate or solve the promlem of unhoused people?

Can we discuss various options? It would be helpful to include in your discussion WHAT problem you’re addressing - whether that is housing affordability, job stability, medical care or rugged individualist entitlement.

Because obviously each losution will sove some aspect of homelessness, but not all of them. One solution may help homeless families, while another helps homeless single vets with PTSD.


Thoughts? Discussion?

Comprehensive Homeless Persons Resource Centers, in a structure or campus containing food services, clinical services, a rehab center, a vocational training center, veterinary services, a safe injection site, secure drug distribution desk, and a large number of individual housing units distributed among rehab, vocational/veterinary, clinical, and drug user areas.

I'm not sure if it would have to be laid out like a campus or more like a medical facility, or something of a combination.

It has to be a place where someone can go to either climb out of a hole or go flushing themselves down it.

I would expect vocational services to focus on training for exactly the kinds of tasks that are necessary in such a place, be it veterinary technician/premed training, cleaning services, food prep, or agriculture (mostly, growing/making the drugs), and possibly a pipeline to a college admissions program.

The fact is that homeless people need all of these services in one place, and they need all of these services in a place that will not bar them from making their own decisions on which direction to take in their life, and it would probably be prudent to have separate dining facilities serving the same food from the same kitchen so to keep separate families/vocational residents, rehab, and drug users.

There would need to be a good number of such shelter campuses across the country.

Without direct and immediate access to all of "rehab, drugs, preventative medical, veterinary, vocational, residential, and food (, day care?)" services, most homeless assistance efforts are doomed to fail miserably. It takes a comprehensive approach and that means a campus-sizwd carve-out.

Then, I would also make all those services from that place available to people WITH homes.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Housing and rehabilitating a person who is living on the street or in car is a social services issue, quite obviously. Large cities which have the condition need to address it as such. This is done on a case by case basis and requires lots of case workers who have means at their disposal to address the issue. This costs money. However much money we are spending to imprison people we should spend up to that amount to relieve the homeless condition.

 

[TV and credit cards]

I addressed this in another thread. Much is being done. I don't think this can be concentrated in a campus-like setting though. There are security issues for employees coming in contact with the homeless. There are bad people mixed in there. Others not necessarily bad but they are in "survival mode" and need to be approached with caution. People working with the homeless are on occasion attacked. Even in smaller settings, they go in pairs for safety.
I do think it's important to consider how they became homeless in the first place. Their individual issue(s) need to be addressed properly if they are to be helped effectively. It could be as simple as a need for budget counseling or as severe as psychological issues keeping a person from integrating into society.

There is a strategy in place. There is residential substance abuse treatment approved by MediCal, temporary bridge shelter for single adults with employment assistance, homeless outreach where staff go out and ask folks if they want to come in, fast rehousing for families that provides rental and deposit assistance and advocacy for landlord issues, hospice so folks don't have to die in the street like they're trash, help with court cases, home finder programs for the mentally ill, and general support services for help with everything you and I take for granted.

 

[bilby]

There are bad people mixed in there.

There are bad people mixed in everywhere.

Homed people have bad people mixed in with them.

For some reason that's not considered a show stopper when seeking solutions to help out people who aren't homeless.

People who work with the general public are, on occasion, attacked. Even by people who have very nice homes indeed.

 

[Jarhyn]

There are security issues for employees coming in contact with the homeless

Hence why you need a campus.

It's much easier to handle these kinds of things when you have a purpose-built infrastructure where people who cannot drive can access services without smearing across an entire city and be in the faces of exactly the people who would protest their presence otherwise.

Others not necessarily bad but they are in "survival mode" and need to be approached with caution

And this is why a campus. It allows the division of groups based on needs for the space and strips them out of "survival mode" promptly.

Their individual issue(s) need to be addressed properly if they are to be helped effectively

The problem is that homeless individuals don't have individual issues.

Their issues are often myriad, and they generally will need access to many things all at the same time: drugs, veterinary services, housing, food for one; rehab, vocational training, family housing for another; clinical support, counseling, vocational training, drugs, for yet another...

The only way to actually address this huge pile of complicated issues is to make a place where they can be addressed in a comprehensive manner.

A lot of it comes down to actually designing the campus itself, and a lot of the security issues created by homeless people all orbit around the fact that a jail is safer than a bench or sidewalk in a bad part of town.

I just don't get why we can justify billions of dollars on rockets we know will explode and take 5 years of work with them, but we can't justify several million dollars on a campus we know will be badly designed and take 1-2 year of re-work and re-design to iterate.

To me, dealing with homelessness is just as significant as a space program, and it is a technology that MUST be designed, and we must accept that we will fail badly at least the first few times.

 

[rousseau]

I thought I saw this one before

 

[Rhea]

Oh, hey! Good catch. I guess it’s something I like watching discussions about. LOL. I’ll merge them.

threads merged