Don’t let anyone fool you, we have a homeless problem in the United States.
Andy
3 Likes
The mayor said homeless individuals moved into a vacant Econo Lodge motel and left it with millions of dollars of repairs.
“It was inhabitable, and it was unsafe,”
The property is now owned by a bank after foreclosure and has been boarded up.
$#$#$
Vacant/abandoned, unsafe, closed due flooding, boarded up, foreclosed.
And the squatters caused Millions of dollars in damages?
Owned by a bank.
I wonder if the mayor owns the bank and is pumping the value of the property, and the putative damages?
ralph
6 Likes
I’m pretty sure that the Wyoming winter will solve the homeless problem there.
If I had to be homeless, I’d definitely be heading for San Diego.
intercst
2 Likes
You would think that Intercst but that isn’t what is happening anymore. We have a homeless problem all over the northwest and they are staying. This isn’t the 1980’s anymore.
Andy
2 Likes
But the city has to be providing services to allow the homeless to survive the winter. Are they turning on the heat at the vacant EconoLodge?
In the Portland OR area where I Iive, when the temperature gets below 28 degrees in the winter, they have teams of police and social workers trying to round up the mentally ill and put them someplace safe. The Chamber of Commerce has decided that letting them freeze to death on a park bench wouldn’t be a good look for the city.
intercst
4 Likes
Well that would be the humane way to deal with it but what I have noticed in Montana is that they are just letting them live under the bridges along with their hypodermic needles. I really couldn’t believe it, Places that only had a few homeless are now having a huge homeless problem. I wonder if the border states are sending their undocumented workers to the blue states and the blue states are sending their homeless to them. Could you imagine what would happen if California bussed all their homeless to Texas, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri etc. You could see a humanitarian crisis that none of those states could deal with.
Andy
3 Likes
I’m told there’s a homeless problem here on Kauai.
I saw a guy with a back pack and bedroll sitting on a sidewalk by the county courthouse.
Anecdotes are I
ralph
1 Like
I think it all gets back to health care and housing. During the Oregon Governor election last year, the candidates seemed to agree that the State needed 4,000 long-term psychiatric hospital beds statewide to deal with the mentally ill homeless. There are only 400 beds today, and both private and non-profit hospitals are closing those as fast they can to concentrate on serving the health care needs of the “profitably insured”.
Same thing with housing. The rapid rise in real estate values has locked many people out of renting an apartment. Real estate developers who have “bought & paid” for the town council, are getting millions of dollars of tax breaks to build apartments for “low income” people earning a minimum of $83,000/yr. Where is the 40% of the population earning less than $83,000/yr supposed to live? I’m surprised there aren’t even more homeless people wandering around.
intercst
7 Likes
Maybe Casper could give each of the homeless $7500 like they did in Vancouver. However, I suspect the city would run out of money fairly soon as word got out.
DB2
Other than Texas, I don’t think any of the others would be considered border states.
The “bus ticket solution” to homelessness has been around for decades. Here’s one article from 2019:
And from 2018:
“For more than three decades, cities have used bussing programs as a cheap and quick solution to homelessness, sending people out of town with one-way tickets…”
DB2
1 Like
Or is it the wealth divide? Better pay for minimum wage maybe means more can afford a home.
Expensive housing is part of the problem!!
2 Likes
I’ve been harping on the connection between homelessness and mental health for years. Any homeless solution that doesn’t deal with mental health is doomed to fail.
Combine that with the generally terrible coverage of mental health services in most health insurance policies, and it seems to me that mental health services are ripe for a switch to a national mental health care system.
—Peter
2 Likes
Agreed. Or they end up in jail. Better to provide treatment. Mandatory supervision when they skip their meds. Return to the old mental hospital where they receive minimal care to be sure they are well fed and take meds.
Of course, but who defines what is normal mental health?
What percentage of homeless people would self-describe as mentally ill?
Perhaps it’s not as simple as crafting a law to institutionalize/incarcerate people for mental health issues.
Kind of like art, we know it when we see it, but defining it is hard.
3 Likes
I think you’re reading way too much into my comments. I didn’t say anything about forcing people into mental health care, let alone institutions.
All I’m talking about is providing mental health care as a necessary component of a successful approach to reducing homelessness.
No one has to define what is or isn’t a problem. But if we can provide screening for mental health issues and then offer care to those who choose to use it, I think we could make a significant difference to many people experiencing homelessness.
—Peter
5 Likes
That’s true, and it’s also true that you can’t deal with mental health without dealing with homelessness.
“What is normal mental health.”
We do know there are skizophrenics out the ho stop taking their meds and get in trouble. That’s a group that should be monitored if not housed in an institution.
We can do better. We should be trying.
2 Likes
Sounds like a political argument to me…
Shiny mode:
Put them in forced labor camps, so they can be monitored, and medicated, for their own good.
/Shiny mode
Steve
1 Like