Bruno

Discussion (6) ¬

1. 
   Anarcissie

   June 4, 2014 at 7:59 am | #

   Well, it’s worse than that. When the homeless provide for themselves, their encampments and refrigerator boxes are broken up by the police or other virtuous citizens.
2. 
   Christopher

   June 4, 2014 at 8:00 am | #

   I know! Ugh! Argh argh argh argh! :(
3. 
   Jill

   June 4, 2014 at 12:55 pm | #

   That’s happening right now in Lakewood, NJ – the “Tent City” set up in Lakewood is being slowly dismantled by local authorities. I read in the paper that one of the residents said they don’t want to be relocated to a hotel in an unsafe area, and there are a lot of those around Lakewood. Why can’t that town come up with a safer way to house the homeless? Tent City was functioning fairly well on its own, but the local officials and many residents seem to not want them to be there…and I agree with Chris, nobody should be homeless in this day and age!
4. 
   Pete Rogan

   June 4, 2014 at 4:59 pm | #

   I’m going to regret this, but…

   Some ten years ago HUD’s once-yearly count of homeless turned up a 17% increase in the homeless in some parts of North Carolina. Over at least two years and likely more. These people were living in cardboard and other makeshift shacks in the woods and the hills. You don’t have to be a math major to realize that five years of this and more than half the population of a district is gone from the tax rolls and the visible economy into an underground apart from existing political structures and controls.

   The Bush Misadministration response was to create the Homeless Management Information System. That’s not a transposition. Though the purpose of this agency was purportedly to assist HUD in its yearly count, their actual purpose was to publicly minimize and, when necessary, misrepresent the homeless problem. They weren’t there to help people. They were there to hide the problem. And so they did, insisting in the face of the raw data that most homeless were single male veterans, not families, and that the majority of them were unwilling or unable to accept aid. They had a message to deliver and that message was: Nothing to see here, move on.

   Ten years later the problem is still here but the HMIS has been repurposed to actually help HUD determine how many homeless there are, which among them qualify for what kind of housing assistance, and to provide cash assistance for those on the verge of losing their homes. It’s not a complete solution, but it is by God miles ahead of having square-jawed Republican Youth-types controlling the press conferences and insisting there was no actual problem.

   There are still Matthews around. But they are not about to become the majority population in your district. It’s still not a sure thing; in my own district, the homeless have become invisible, but when temperatures dipped into single digits, they swarmed the local shelter with its 130 beds with more than 700. That shelter has since closed. I doubt very much that the people who used to go there have moved to another town.

   I think that if your town or Congressional district’s homeless population is not more than 10% of all people living there, you’re living the dream. Elsewhere, the homeless are legion, and represent an unspeakable problem for all of us and our futures. How long can we live amidst a secret society that has only to become militant to disrupt our lives like a new revolution?
5. 
   Kona

   April 7, 2015 at 3:43 pm | #

   About 20 years ago, I volunteered to computerize the files of a non-profit community clearinghouse for charities in the San Fernando Valley. Eventually I got involved at the street level, and I saw a lot of problems, the biggest being the general impression that there’s a one-size-fits-all solution to homelessness. There are about as many reasons for it as there are homeless. It’s also when I started believing the adage about “Damned lies and statistics”. It’s all about who makes the statistics, and to what ends.
6. 
   llirium

   June 2, 2017 at 2:18 pm | #

   “Basic income” on a federal level is probably too European for American politicians, because it’s strictly anathema to the individualistic “one-size-fits-all” American Dream. Glad it’s at least being seriously considered here in some parts of Canada.

   Other solutions to homelessness that have worked in Europe were making condo and apartment building owners assign “affordable”/”low income” living spaces.