Homelessness ended: a plan to end it forever

[oscar111]

how to end it for good
================================
three groups in the hmless:

1. addicts: need funds to treat them all: funds to end the despair that drives them to selfmedicate with street drugs: access to legit RX pills for depression: jobs for all to end despair

2. mentally OR physically ill: need restoration of funds for state mental hospitals, now cut in half by RR and GOP followers: need funds for mental health clinics: PHYSICALLY ill: need nationalized health, as in all other developed nations. Free docs, with housecalls too, as in Eng. and Germany.

3. the just plain poor: need JFA jobs for all.. see sig. : need "living wage" for the employed yet still poor due to lousy wages: need fund to subsidize building of affordable homes, or have the government do the building with no private builders. A new WPA would be a fine thing to do the building.

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HISTORY LESSON: there were virtually NO homeless between 'fourty one, and RR's cuts in the early 'eighties. So there is no need for homelessness. Social programs and good minimum wages and a good health system, can end it as was done right here in the US at the end of the 'thirties on through to the end of the 'seventies.

I might add, Sweden kept joblessness below one percent all through its LW period, roughly fifties to 'nineties, when the RW lied its way into power. Note that their idea of RW is our idea of mid-LW, so things there today are nowhere near as horrible as they are here.

[nannah]

1. building affordable housing would my first step

Many of the dollars for homelessness are already going to social service and mental health programs. In the rural community in which I have been a social worker for 20 plus years, millions of dollars have been spent by Head Start, DSHS, mental health, public health, and other agencies for programs directed at the homeless.... those same dollars could have created affordable housing, increasing affordable housing for all throughout the community. Instead, the crush for low income housing actually boosts the price of the least desirable rooms with the bath down the hall.

I am not ignoring the role mental health and substance abuse plays in homelessness, but providing services for mental health and substance abuse works so much better for families that are housed. Imagine the additional stress and anxiety created by sleeping in the streets, under the bridge, or in a crowded shelter by someone who is already struggling with mental health issues.

Adults living on a full SSI disability payment, a likely situation for those with chronic mental health or physical health problems, have less than $600.00 per month for housing, utilities, clothing, entertainment, food to supplement their food stamps, non food items, etc. If they do not have the unblemished record needed to qualify for most federal low income housing programs, they will not be able to find housing for less than 250.00 to 300.00 month (at this price it is a room with a bathroom down the hall); and these are prices in a small rural town in the north west; urban rooms would be more.

We will soon be facing increased homelessness by families as the hammer falls on the inflated real estate market. Foreclosures are up all over the US. In CA there is over a 100% increase in foreclosures over last year.

Investing in affordable housing, a dynamic alternative energy industry to increase job opportunities and respond to environmental issues, and single payer health care would go a long way to easing the strain that pushes so many people past their limits and into the streets. Who knows, perhaps lifting the fear of being homeless, jobless, and without medical care would reduce the number of people suffering from mental health problems?

And once the capitol investment is made in the housing infrastruction and new industries they become the investment that keeps on giving.

[oscar111]

13. Very good points. Thanks! I am integrating your ideas

into my thinking and changing some of my ideas.

Keep giving us your seasoned, expert input.

oscar

[oscar111]

14. anxiety lowers our competitiveness

liked your next to last paragraph.

fear pervades our whole economy. The middle class fears losing their jobs on a whim by the boss.

imagine how productivity would jump if folks could sleep better due to no more job insecurity?

Perhaps that is much of why other economies perform better than our own?

[lgn19087]

2. While i think you're recommendations are sound

wasn't it the deinstitutionalization of all the people in the psychatric hospitals in the 70's one of the biggest causes of homelessness? You said that there were "virtually NO" homeless, but IIRC taking out all the crazy people and letting them out to roam the streets is the cause of most of the homeless today.


It's a sound plan you have there, but it would cost a lot of money. How much do you think it would cost and do you think America would be willing to pay?

[oscar111]

3. COST: 4 billion.. just rollback taxcuts for the rich .. done by bush

easy to pay the rollback. Middle class would pay zero of a rollback. three hundred fifty billion would be gained by a rollback.

cost... i am not sure just what that estimate included. I read it, but dont recall where.

[lgn19087]

5. Maybe

but that $4 billion doesn't include the economic reverberations from rolling back the tax cuts. The tax cuts were and still are a shitty idea, but no matter which way you cut it taking $4,000,000,000 out of the economy and giving it to the government is going to do some harm to the economy. Wall Street alone wouldn't be happy about it, and the money lost there would influence capital spending by companies, which in turn influences wages and employment. It's a solid plan you have there, but the economic ramifications need to be better thought out.

[oscar111]

11. GREAT for the economy, wages of middle class upped too

"prime the pump" was how the Great Depression of the republicans was finally ended. Government spending ended the GD misery.. spending not on the rich, but on

one...poor people.. WPA etc

two... WW2

Government spending on ordinary folks income, gets spent by us peons on food, landlords, cars, warm coats, electric heat bills, phone bills, kid's shoes, and dog food.

Great way to create a "demand pull" on factories, leading to the reopening of idle factories, and sparking the entire economy into vigorous growth. See J M Keynes, and toss M Friedman, the "shame of chicago".
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2. Wage Ladder

When the folks at the bottom are desperate for just any job , they pull down the whole wage ladder, which includes the wages of you, the hi wage office worker or professor.

Conversely, when desperation at the bottom is lessened... as by my plan... the entire wage ladder is no longer under such a strong down pull. So wages float up, which helps the whole working middle class and .. of course.. lower class too.

============================
The economy is hurt when one takes money away from the government. Infrastructure is just one area... a third of our bridges are now in need of repair. Cops have too few officers to chase crooks.. we have too few firefighters.. schools crumbling.. asylums for the criminally insane cut in half, so we now see heinous crimes daily on the news.. BTW, that new neighbor of yours, was he just released from Babbling Brook Haven for the criminally insane due to fund cuts? LOL Lock your backdoor, mon ami. LOL.

[oscar111]

4. not sure, but impression is that

crazies are just a third.

good point tho, about the first wave of deinstitutionalization.

New tranqs were the cause of the first wave... GOP taxcuts necessitated fund cuts later.

GOP cut two thirds of housing assistance.. Section eight.. in early eighties.. causing the largest jump in homelessnes since the 'thirties. {one DU poster said it was not such a large cut, so this point needs research}.

"virtually no" and "too few to count" are phrases i have read here and there,
and were the basis for my picture of hmlssness up to the early 'eighties. Friends have also buttressed this view.. citing a sudden enormous appearance of homeless folks in the early eighties, .. in churches for warmth, in cafeteria waiting rooms for warmth, and on park benches.

anyone have good solid academic sources on this matter?

thanks.

[bobbolink]

15. This is how you refer to human beings, and you want to be seen

as a compassionate liberal?

Wow... amazing...

I really hope some of you will take the time to educate yourselves by actually listening to homeless people, and talking to them, instead of spouting all this RW stuff!!

This is just revolting!

[bobbolink]

7. Who'd you hear all that from?

The disinformation campaigns are.... really something....

[lgn19087]

8. Is it not true?

That would actually seem a very plausible explanation for a number of the homeless in this country. No doubt, I'm sure many are independantly homeless but I've seen it mentioned many times as a primary cause of the large numbers. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

[oscar111]

10. 'seventies wave of crazies was housed by Section 8, till RR cut it out

and tossed them into the streets to freeze to death.

Such is my casual impression...any experts able to give a sound answer?

Sorry to say "crazies".. mean no condemnation. They are victims and due respect and help, not slur words like crazies. It was just a shorter word than "mentally ill", and i was in a hurry.

give me a good short term?

BTW, i just recalled that an academic article did put the number of mentally ill on skid row at one-third. dont recall the article source. alas.

[bobbolink]

6. WOW!! I don't exist... who knew.....

So, those of us not in one of those three magic groups...

We can just disappear, eh?

Who's the genius who came up with this?

Yanno, if these "experts" would ever actually consult with homeless people themselves instead of just proclaiming their own prejudices, something might actually begin to happen...

This really ticks me off!

[lgn19087]

9. So what group would you fall into? n/t

nm

[oscar111]

12. bobolink, 3 categories are not meant to cover all

just ninety percent of them. Miscellaneous causes also exist.

sorry to leave you out. Please add the categories you wish to add.

thanks for your imput, and welcome to the forum.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. The mental hospitals that were closed in the 1980s were often

hellish warehouses where people were just confined, not treated, and they deserved to be closed, BUT...part two of the plan, establishing community mental health center and small residential facilities, was never implemented.

There were some homeless pre-Reagan, but they were almost entirely late-stage alchoholics who had drunk up all their money and shattered all their relationships except with booze.