Damn hobos and squeegies...

[Dr Strangelove]

A sizeable portion of the homeless are psychotic or borderline retarded. Are you going to employ them? Are you going to have a guy who may go off on a staring spell for a couple hours, or who has a 5 second attention span, or can't read a job in your restaurant, factory, or office? No? Well, then are you going to allocate your taxes to fund decent places for them to stay? By decent places I mean something considerably more humane than the typical state hospital. Remember the psych ward in 12 Monkeys ? Yeah, they really are that bad. We're not willing to do that in the US of A. We're not willing to be oppressed by bleeding heart liberals, that's why we closed our long term state mental hospitals instead of improving them.

The town I live in hosts the state's largest residential facility for the mentally retarded. In the early 1970s the facility housed nearly 4000 retarded people. Scandals about mistreatment in the state's institutions led to a state commission reviewing the necessity of maintaining so many people involuntarily. The commission found a number of cases of inmated who were not clearly retarded, some of whom were mentally ill, and others who had been placed in the facility at the discreation of their families. In the end the state discharged about 1500 inmates onto the streets. Few of these people were prepared to cope with their new found freedom. Those without families to care for them wandered the streets. If the highway traffic didn't get them then disease and malnutrition did. When I arrived in this community in 1992 only about 500 were left alive. I'm sure this information will warm the hearts of the libertarians on this forum.

[SlowwHand]

Yes, many are, but what if you're not? So what?
Live in a shelter, at night. How to wash clothes. Where are employers going to call you. We're talking about a normal person here, on bad times, looking for work for which they're trained.
Once you're down, it's real easy to keep going down.

[MRT144]

ya'll shoudl read an article recently in the new yorker about the homeless issue and "power-law" distribution of resources.

[SlowwHand]

It's y'all. You all. All of you.
I'm not a spelling nazi, except for that.

[Japher]

except?

you mean 'cept!
I am a speling nazi

[Spec]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Once you're down, it's real easy to keep going down.

It's also easy to start going up again, all it takes is will. Will can take you anywhere...or almost. Churches will wash your clothes and lend you their address. Hell some will even take messages from possible employers that ask you for an interview...

And having will is not being special. It's being normal, or self sufficient if you let me say so.

Oh and Japher, I hope you wern't serious about the no homeless people in Canada...Did you even read my opening post? But knowing you, I'm pretty sure you wern't.

Spec.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Spec
I know some clubs that wont allow you to go in if you are were a cap or sneakers....Is that prejudice?

You mean dress code?

Well I was at the door of a restaurant once and the man at the door that they didn't serve people who wore jeans. I said to him, "If Bill Clinton come to your restaurant in jeans, you are not going to keep him out."

He just glared at me.

Originally posted by Spec
Like a Dunkin donuts for example....Coffee for a buck and drink it for 4 hours while its cold outside...Do you want to eat besides a guy that smells like trash cans and piss?

No - but that's actually not prejudice. Prejudice is you don't want him there anyway dispite he doesn't smell.

[SlowwHand]

Churches? How...I don't even know a good word. A church? From an atheist?
Well you're right, but at the very least it's ironic you say that.

[bipolarbear]

Nobody else gives cashola to teh hobo elite?
I do becasue I figure maybe they really are homeless, and what was I going to do with it anyway?
Actually I ahve curbed my giving recently. There was a local bum famuily who got a front page article in the paper about how they make 30,000 a year just pan handling.

Yeah all the other bums who begged to get by got really pissed off after that came out. No one was making money.

I still give if they look disheveled enough. At least their putting effort into their charade.

[Spec]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Churches? How...I don't even know a good word. A church? From an atheist?
Well you're right, but at the very least it's ironic you say that.

It is, but even if am an atheist, I'd use the church anyways.

There's always a way.

Spec.

[Jon Miller]

Not always if you are disabled or have an illness.

JM

[Flip McWho]

if you are disabled or ill thats what social services are for. Unfortunately they suck in the good ole U S of A.

[Vesayen]

I'm a sucker for beggars. I have alot of trouble turning any down..... not that I feel intimidated or embarassed, I feel sorry for them, even though I know full well a large portion of them can work and some proboably should......

Its not a rational feeling. I give entirley too much money to beggars :/

I was in Israel a few months ago and my traveling companions were giving me funny looks because I kept giving money to basically anyone who asked.

Its a little easier for me to blow off beggars in America because most of them seem to be better off.

I look at it this way, if someone is willing to negate their own dignity and beg, give them the benifit of the doubt and assume they really do need it.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
A sizeable portion of the homeless are psychotic or borderline retarded. Are you going to employ them? Are you going to have a guy who may go off on a staring spell for a couple hours, or who has a 5 second attention span, or can't read a job in your restaurant, factory, or office? No? Well, then are you going to allocate your taxes to fund decent places for them to stay? By decent places I mean something considerably more humane than the typical state hospital. Remember the psych ward in 12 Monkeys ? Yeah, they really are that bad. We're not willing to do that in the US of A. We're not willing to be oppressed by bleeding heart liberals, that's why we closed our long term state mental hospitals instead of improving them.

The town I live in hosts the state's largest residential facility for the mentally retarded. In the early 1970s the facility housed nearly 4000 retarded people. Scandals about mistreatment in the state's institutions led to a state commission reviewing the necessity of maintaining so many people involuntarily. The commission found a number of cases of inmated who were not clearly retarded, some of whom were mentally ill, and others who had been placed in the facility at the discreation of their families. In the end the state discharged about 1500 inmates onto the streets. Few of these people were prepared to cope with their new found freedom. Those without families to care for them wandered the streets. If the highway traffic didn't get them then disease and malnutrition did. When I arrived in this community in 1992 only about 500 were left alive. I'm sure this information will warm the hearts of the libertarians on this forum.

Thanks Doc for actually educating people on what the situation really is.

We have the same situation here in California, when many of the mentally ill were discharged in the 1970s. Many of them are incapable of taking care of themselves.

Other people are simply drug addicts so far gone they are either physically and/or mentally gone.

[Flip McWho]

if someone is willing to negate their own dignity and beg

To some people they really don't give a rat about it.