https://jacobin.com/2023/02/cities-homeless-people-public-housing-police-raids
liberals will defend 
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2222103120
liberals will oppose
https://jacobin.com/2023/02/cities-homeless-people-public-housing-police-raids
liberals will defend
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2222103120
liberals will oppose
“services” that do anything other than reduce homeless statistics by getting them back into housing arent even bandaids, they’re life support for the system that failed these people to start with.
If a ministry puts a shelter together, but all they do is make sure ppl are fed and then promote gospel, well, I’m sorry, but they aren’t helping fix the problem.
I agree. I do case management, and some of the things I do can make a big difference for folks, but just getting them an ID isn’t going to cut it if they don’t have a safe place to put it and it gets stolen or lost a week later. Getting them benefits is awesome but won’t get them off of the street if there isn’t housing that’s readily available, affordable if not free, and not highly competitive to get into. Getting them set up with a PCP is great but without an advocate and without housing they’ll still get discriminated against and passed over, or miss their appointments and get fired from the clinic, etc.
Here we seem to just half bake our ideas to appease the “city liberals” and the “rural conservatives”, because Oregon is extremely conservative outside of Portland and Eugene. There are supposedly a lot of people who were in Portland city/county government that were staunch housing first advocates, but there was so much pushback and supposed bureaucracy that their efforts at housing first were considered a failure.
Then we decriminalize drugs, but don’t build up the harm reduction centers, drop in sites, recovery houses, etc. before we implement it and so now tons of people say it’s a failed measure and want to recall it… And don’t even MENTION the idea of safe injection sites either, that just would make too much fucking sense. It always feels as if any of these supposed efforts at fixing homelessness are intended to fail so everyone, libs and conservatives alike can say “SEE? Nothing works for these VERMIN, they need to just be locked up and shipped off to another state!”.
By happenstance I can speak first hand on almost all those issues.
I’ve been homeless. Living in a tent, no utilities, on raw land with nowhere else to go - luckily. Nvm the years of effort, all day of every day, until I’m asleep from exhaustion - no days off - but from first hand experience, when you don’t have a roof, you don’t have any other problems.
Everything else is bullshit. The law, debt, society, other ppls opinions, retirement, benefits, all of it. Bullshit. Lie after lie. Everyday I can die, and everyday all of this (waves hand at the human built world) doesn’t care, so why the fuck should I care? Once you figure out how to survive outside society, there’s zero allure to going back to slaving away for minimum wage just to always be broke. If that’s societies offer, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. When you’re on the outside looking in, and you’ve landed in the outs due to a series of circumstances that aren’t your fault, let me tell you, sympathy is in short supply. I understand the allure of crime, especially when simply getting an apartment costs $7500 after first/last/deposits. When it’s 10k just to have a roof and the neverending life tax thereafter (plus water/sewer/garbage!), motherfucker, there are people dying all over the world for much much less than that, and I’m supposed to be grateful!?! To be yoked?
I don’t go that route, but I intimately get why some people do, now. Bad luck doesn’t make someone do shitty things. Drugs don’t make people do anything they wouldn’t already do. Life/drugs don’t make you a shitty person, it just exposes that you are one.
Being homeless will break most people. If they weren’t addicts and didn’t have mental health issues before, well, they probably have both now. And I get why. I by chance, have had a fascination with the old native ways since childhood, so much so, that I taught survival skills in my 20s. I wouldn’t be alive today otherwise, guaranteed.
I’m located off Puget Sound. I’ve lived in Portland. I worked off Burnside downtown, so I know exactly what yr dealing with.
You seem to mean well, and I hope you try to really put yourself into the shoes of the fallen. it’s hard to express the disappointment, anger, and disdain you have on the outs to someone who hasnt found themselves in that metaphorical canyon with sheer cliffs on all sides. The despair of an infected tooth. Cauterizing wounds. Smh.
Not unsurprisingly, to me, the “vermin” attitude sounds exactly like Europeans talking about the Roma. People just can’t fathom that life could look at those shit hole we call civilization and say “naw, fam, I’ll take my chances in the wild”. At least the wild is honest, ffs.
Don’t worry about me tho. I’m just picking up where Thoreau left off.
Yoo thanks so much for adding your perspective. It’s definitely one I’ve heard from folks I talk to. It honestly makes more sense to me than doing what I’m doing to struggle to be a “normal, well adjusted” (lol) person. There are people I work with who camp way far out in the woods and refuse to live inside again if they have to be near other people. I will never try to guilt them or pressure them to engage in services when they tell me that. I had a client I was helping get an ID, he was staying in one of those pallet shelter communities. I asked him if he wanted to do any shelter assessment lists or anything like that. He told me “Nope, I have my pallet and that’s good enough for me. I got out of prison and I tried and tried to do what I was supposed to, to try and get a house and a job and y’all didn’t want me, so I don’t fuckin’ want it anymore”. And that’s valid as fuck, he was let down and shit on so much, WHY would he ever want to re-engage in this shitshow again? This world has failed them, other broken people have failed them.
I’ve never been homeless myself, but my mom has and I’ve seen some wild shit that a young kid shouldn’t see so I have my share of trauma but I wouldn’t ever pretend to understand what it’s like to live how my clients live. But I want to listen, and I want to be angry with them and for them, and I want to cheer them on, and just be a safe person for them to just shoot the shit with more than anything.
as for the vermin thing, that is an actual thing that I’ve heard someone call homeless people online. That is some genocidal dogwhistling, I couldn’t believe it. Local subreddits are cesspools
Keep doin what yr doin brother. There are few things in life that mean more than merely having an advocate.
It’s life changing. Truly.
And fuck reddit. The local subreddits especially. The Seattle one is hot garbage, full of people who’ve never lived in Seattle spouting off right-wing hatred that doesn’t reflect 95% of the thousands of people that I’ve personally met in the area. Portlands gotta be exactly the same. I recall reading in the Stranger (our version of the Willamette Weekly) that the police union has motherfuckers astroturfing and spreading the copaganda and I fucking believe it.
I was talking on a Tacoma thread about a guy i personally watched the TPD and state patrol kill and got told they did nothing wrong. When he was on the ground, surrounded, and 5 different tazers hit him. Uh huh. Defending that is unfathomable.
I followed the case. Internal Investigations said they did no wrong. Motherfuckers. ACAB.
It’s so sad that when I hear about that kind of shit that I’m not surprised. There is ALWAYS a reason for people to victim blame.
Also kinda wild that the cops are astroturfing, though. I could definitely see that on Facebook. I think in general people who use reddit regularly are of particular demographics that are privileged and fake progressive, so I can see how the community opinion would be skewed. It’s just so disheartening to see, though
The last guy to run for police union prez in Seattle, for reelection, his motto was literally “controlling the narrative”.
Saying the quiet parts out loud.
The fucking audacity. I’m sure the good ol boys loved that. Ugh