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Homelessness Pt 1
Homelessness revealed
Ok, I've had about enough of the judgment, bias, assumptions, ignorance, disdain, stigma, and fear directed at the homeless. We are not who you think we are. We are not secret millionaires. We are not lazy or unwilling to work. We are not all drug addicts or criminals, and those that are have very little opportunity to remedy it. We did not choose to be homeless. It is not our character flaws that got us here. It is not our lack of motivation that keeps us here. We are not an eyesore. We are not as dangerous as you think we are. We are not all lunatics. We are people. We are brothers, sisters, mothers, children, fathers, aunts and uncles. The homelessness I am going to talk about is chronic homelessness, I'm not referring to someone spending a couple weeks couch-surfing or moving into their parents' garage after a few weeks in a motel. What I'm referring to is living on the streets, sleeping in bushes or at bus stops, you look homeless, you smell homeless, people can tell you're homeless from a distance. The people I'm talking about have dealt with their situation for years with no end in sight.
I have no idea where the story of the homeless millionaire got started, hell at one time there may have been one or two. But I assure you that we are all not walking around with secret stashes of hundreds in our pockets. And so, what, what if there was a millionaire that chose to be homeless, I don't see how this incredibly rare situation justifies not helping those truly in need. I can't tell how many times I've had this story come up when I put someone on the spot about their treatment of the homeless. One example of anything is never enough evidence to make any kind of rational decision about an occurrence. By using that logic, one could assume that by seeing one black dog for the first time you assume all dogs are black and if it's not black it's not a dog. See the flaw now. One can never represent all or even some. That story about that one guy that one time is just that, a story about one guy. It says nothing about anything else but him and cannot be used as any kind of benchmark to make assumptions about an entire group. Just like the fact that not all tall black people play basketball. All assumptions like that do is just prove how ignorant you are.
As for being lazy or unwilling to work well, I have a surprise for you. A large percentage of the homeless do work. But these aren't the ones you see sleeping on sidewalks or in parks. The chronic homeless are the ones you typically see sleeping on park benches, and they're not just enjoying a delightful snooze after a nice day in the park. When your homeless your chance for any kind of restful sleep is severely limited. For one there's very few places you can actually lay down and sleep without getting harassed or arrested for simply trying to get some rest. Many homeless will not return to their camps until very late at night and will get up and leave at the first sign of daylight simply so they don't get caught camping. And as for not working when you are on the streets survival is your occupation. And it is a 24/7 365 days a year job. There are no lunch breaks, no sick days, no vacation time, no snooze button, no Christmas break. When you're in that position you're always doing something to assure you'll be able to make it just one more day. And it never ends there's no retirement once homelessness gets to that stage there is very little that can help you break that cycle. So, when your walking to your lunch break and sneer at the homeless man catching some z's on a bench it's not because he's just resting his eyes it's because he is completely exhausted, and this might be his last chance to sleep for a long time.
O and by the way it's really hard to get and keep a job when you have no regular access to shower, clean clothes or even a place to shave. And there's a good chance you do not have access to reliable transportation to and from work. You don't have any way to store or cook food so you're not going to have anything to eat on your break, if you do want food you're at the mercy of the local soup kitchens meal schedule which would interfere with your work hours. It's really hard to concentrate and maintain a good work ethic if you're hungry all the time, and once you did receive a paycheck there's a good chance that anyone that knows you have money is going to try to relieve you of it in some way or simply rob you. Also, I dare you to name one business you can think of that would be willing to hire a homeless person if they came in off the streets and asked for a job.
Our county does offer general assistance which they just raised to over 500 dollars, but this program is very short-lived you can only receive it for 3 months out of a 36-month cycle and you have to pay it back if you acquire an income. I can see that this program might keep you afloat if you are transitioning between jobs and it happens quickly, but it is not going to pay rent or anything other than the basics. It will definitely not help with housing. The only other benefit, besides medical, that most homeless have access to are food stamps, but as of April first, they are implementing new rules that will make it very difficult for the homeless to maintain their food stamps. The new rules will require all able-bodied precipitants ages 18-49 to be working 20 or more hours or take 20 of training offered by the county office. These new requirements are going to make it very difficult for most homeless to keep the only real assistance they have access to. Having to travel across town multiple days of the week for classes is going to put an unnecessary burden on the already miserable and exhausted homeless population. Nearly eliminating one's only access to food is going to have disastrous consequences for all involved. Our town already has an enormous problem with shoplifting, and recently started coming down really hard on shoplifters. These new regulations are going to exacerbate the already tense situation when stealing becomes many homeless people's only way to acquire food. Our current food banks will not help control the problem because most do not give food to anyone that cannot prove residency, i.e. they do not provide any food relief to the homeless.
One way that a few homeless people do acquire a regular income is by applying for disability. This process takes years with no guarantee it will be successful. The only way to successfully navigate this process is to have access to mail. Which as you can imagine might be difficult if you do not have a physical address, our local homeless center does provide mail, but they charge 5 dollars a month for the service and that can be hard to come by. Also, the mail is so overrun with unclaimed letters that it is very easy to lose important paperwork in the mess. And checking your mail can become an issue, there is a four-block no camping zone around the center and all homeless are forced to leave the area after the center is closed. This is rigorously enforced by nightly police patrols. Many who need to eat and claim mail at the center are camped rather far away from it, if all you have is your own to feet it can become an exhausting trek to check your mail regularly. Getting anywhere around town for services and resources can become a challenge. There is a bus, but it runs pretty infrequently, and no one provides bus passes. Gathering all the required paperwork and information for your disability claim is pretty laborious as well. The whole process involves flurries of rushed info gathering and weeks of sitting and waiting for a response. If you miss a form or an appointment you'll get pushed back, miss too many and you must start all over. You're going to get denied right off the bat and because the social security administration has been denying everyone that applies the first time the appeal courts are backed up for over eight years last I heard. And if you get granted and receive back pay there's no guarantee that you will even be able to find a place that will rent to you or that you can afford on a fixed income. Many with disability benefits end up splitting a motel room with others on disability. At the cheapest motel in town, it is about 1400 a month for the room, it's probably more since the fire, and you have to leave for 24 hours every 28 days so there's no guarantee that you would still have a room when you returned. Many homeless are driven out of motels by ever-increasing room rates, thanks to things like the transient occupancy tax, the 28-day rule, and police raids.
As for drugs and criminal records here's some food for thought. Being homeless is miserable and when there is no clear end in sight, you'll turn to anything that provides any modicum of relief. And it's hard to quit drugs when you're a normal person with a roof over your head and access to treatment; ask anyone in recovery, you need lots of support and stability. You have none of that when you are on the streets. I have no idea how people honestly expect a person at the most difficult point in their life to just stop doing drugs or drinking overnight and pull their life together. There are many in the position that if they had to go cold turkey it would actually be lethal. Addiction is no joke it is a serious affliction that is very difficult to overcome, it is not a lack of character or a sign of weakness when someone with no support is expected to just get clean and fails. I do not understand the logic behind expecting someone to get sober on the streets before you make any attempt to help them get stable.
Now on to criminality. Yes, many homeless people have criminal records. Many are themselves arrested for what they refer to as quality of life crimes, such as trespassing, illegal camping, open container, or shoplifting food. Small infractions that start to add up over time. When you're living on the streets contact with law enforcement is only a matter of time, no matter how hard you try eventually you're going to do something that breaks the law. With no access to a proper address or method of communication keeping on top of court dates becomes impossible. Many can't even get to court when they are aware of it. So, the warrants for failure to appear start to accumulate to the point where any kind of police contact is a direct ticket to jail. Once on probation, the charges really start to add up. Any violation affects your probation and it starts a vicious cycle that is hard to get out of. Its hard to not break the law when they keep making laws that make what you are doing just trying to survive a crime. Also, many homeless are felons. Once out of jail they have very few options for any kind of return to a normal life. You can't find a job; you can't rent an apartment. Many social services disqualify you once you are a felon. You may have done your time but that mark on your record will haunt you for life no matter how much you've changed. I don't understand how punishing someone for the rest of their lives for a mistake is doing any good at all. All it does is show them that they will never be a part of society so why bother to try to be, this lack of opportunity and resources is why so many end up reoffending as criminal acts are the only way they can find to support themselves.
Here's another joy of being out of jail and back on the streets. In my county, if you are homeless at the time of release they will fit you with an ankle monitor because you have no fixed address and they need to be able to keep track of you, I see the logic in this, but this is where it becomes unfair. The monitors require charging for several hours every day so if you don't have a friend that will let charge at their home, I'm not really sure where and how they expect you to keep the damn thing charged. No businesses are going to let you do it there, and we have no public outlets in my town. The library had to stop people from doing it there because there were arguments over access to plugs. And you better keep it charged because if it does dead every cop in the area is going to come pay you a visit. Yes, let's give people with very limited access to electricity a device that needs to be kept charged and then punish the hell out of them when they can't do it. And my favorite way they have invented of criminalizing the homeless is to apply a sex offender charge if caught urinating or defecating in public, as if their lives were not hard enough as it is slapping them with a charge that will make it impossible for them to ever rejoin society and pretty much ensure denial of any useful resources for life just takes the cake.
Ok, I've had about enough of the judgment, bias, assumptions, ignorance, disdain, stigma, and fear directed at the homeless. We are not who you think we are. We are not secret millionaires. We are not lazy or unwilling to work. We are not all drug addicts or criminals, and those that are have very little opportunity to remedy it. We did not choose to be homeless. It is not our character flaws that got us here. It is not our lack of motivation that keeps us here. We are not an eyesore. We are not as dangerous as you think we are. We are not all lunatics. We are people. We are brothers, sisters, mothers, children, fathers, aunts and uncles. The homelessness I am going to talk about is chronic homelessness, I'm not referring to someone spending a couple weeks couch-surfing or moving into their parents' garage after a few weeks in a motel. What I'm referring to is living on the streets, sleeping in bushes or at bus stops, you look homeless, you smell homeless, people can tell you're homeless from a distance. The people I'm talking about have dealt with their situation for years with no end in sight.
I have no idea where the story of the homeless millionaire got started, hell at one time there may have been one or two. But I assure you that we are all not walking around with secret stashes of hundreds in our pockets. And so, what, what if there was a millionaire that chose to be homeless, I don't see how this incredibly rare situation justifies not helping those truly in need. I can't tell how many times I've had this story come up when I put someone on the spot about their treatment of the homeless. One example of anything is never enough evidence to make any kind of rational decision about an occurrence. By using that logic, one could assume that by seeing one black dog for the first time you assume all dogs are black and if it's not black it's not a dog. See the flaw now. One can never represent all or even some. That story about that one guy that one time is just that, a story about one guy. It says nothing about anything else but him and cannot be used as any kind of benchmark to make assumptions about an entire group. Just like the fact that not all tall black people play basketball. All assumptions like that do is just prove how ignorant you are.
As for being lazy or unwilling to work well, I have a surprise for you. A large percentage of the homeless do work. But these aren't the ones you see sleeping on sidewalks or in parks. The chronic homeless are the ones you typically see sleeping on park benches, and they're not just enjoying a delightful snooze after a nice day in the park. When your homeless your chance for any kind of restful sleep is severely limited. For one there's very few places you can actually lay down and sleep without getting harassed or arrested for simply trying to get some rest. Many homeless will not return to their camps until very late at night and will get up and leave at the first sign of daylight simply so they don't get caught camping. And as for not working when you are on the streets survival is your occupation. And it is a 24/7 365 days a year job. There are no lunch breaks, no sick days, no vacation time, no snooze button, no Christmas break. When you're in that position you're always doing something to assure you'll be able to make it just one more day. And it never ends there's no retirement once homelessness gets to that stage there is very little that can help you break that cycle. So, when your walking to your lunch break and sneer at the homeless man catching some z's on a bench it's not because he's just resting his eyes it's because he is completely exhausted, and this might be his last chance to sleep for a long time.
O and by the way it's really hard to get and keep a job when you have no regular access to shower, clean clothes or even a place to shave. And there's a good chance you do not have access to reliable transportation to and from work. You don't have any way to store or cook food so you're not going to have anything to eat on your break, if you do want food you're at the mercy of the local soup kitchens meal schedule which would interfere with your work hours. It's really hard to concentrate and maintain a good work ethic if you're hungry all the time, and once you did receive a paycheck there's a good chance that anyone that knows you have money is going to try to relieve you of it in some way or simply rob you. Also, I dare you to name one business you can think of that would be willing to hire a homeless person if they came in off the streets and asked for a job.
Our county does offer general assistance which they just raised to over 500 dollars, but this program is very short-lived you can only receive it for 3 months out of a 36-month cycle and you have to pay it back if you acquire an income. I can see that this program might keep you afloat if you are transitioning between jobs and it happens quickly, but it is not going to pay rent or anything other than the basics. It will definitely not help with housing. The only other benefit, besides medical, that most homeless have access to are food stamps, but as of April first, they are implementing new rules that will make it very difficult for the homeless to maintain their food stamps. The new rules will require all able-bodied precipitants ages 18-49 to be working 20 or more hours or take 20 of training offered by the county office. These new requirements are going to make it very difficult for most homeless to keep the only real assistance they have access to. Having to travel across town multiple days of the week for classes is going to put an unnecessary burden on the already miserable and exhausted homeless population. Nearly eliminating one's only access to food is going to have disastrous consequences for all involved. Our town already has an enormous problem with shoplifting, and recently started coming down really hard on shoplifters. These new regulations are going to exacerbate the already tense situation when stealing becomes many homeless people's only way to acquire food. Our current food banks will not help control the problem because most do not give food to anyone that cannot prove residency, i.e. they do not provide any food relief to the homeless.
One way that a few homeless people do acquire a regular income is by applying for disability. This process takes years with no guarantee it will be successful. The only way to successfully navigate this process is to have access to mail. Which as you can imagine might be difficult if you do not have a physical address, our local homeless center does provide mail, but they charge 5 dollars a month for the service and that can be hard to come by. Also, the mail is so overrun with unclaimed letters that it is very easy to lose important paperwork in the mess. And checking your mail can become an issue, there is a four-block no camping zone around the center and all homeless are forced to leave the area after the center is closed. This is rigorously enforced by nightly police patrols. Many who need to eat and claim mail at the center are camped rather far away from it, if all you have is your own to feet it can become an exhausting trek to check your mail regularly. Getting anywhere around town for services and resources can become a challenge. There is a bus, but it runs pretty infrequently, and no one provides bus passes. Gathering all the required paperwork and information for your disability claim is pretty laborious as well. The whole process involves flurries of rushed info gathering and weeks of sitting and waiting for a response. If you miss a form or an appointment you'll get pushed back, miss too many and you must start all over. You're going to get denied right off the bat and because the social security administration has been denying everyone that applies the first time the appeal courts are backed up for over eight years last I heard. And if you get granted and receive back pay there's no guarantee that you will even be able to find a place that will rent to you or that you can afford on a fixed income. Many with disability benefits end up splitting a motel room with others on disability. At the cheapest motel in town, it is about 1400 a month for the room, it's probably more since the fire, and you have to leave for 24 hours every 28 days so there's no guarantee that you would still have a room when you returned. Many homeless are driven out of motels by ever-increasing room rates, thanks to things like the transient occupancy tax, the 28-day rule, and police raids.
As for drugs and criminal records here's some food for thought. Being homeless is miserable and when there is no clear end in sight, you'll turn to anything that provides any modicum of relief. And it's hard to quit drugs when you're a normal person with a roof over your head and access to treatment; ask anyone in recovery, you need lots of support and stability. You have none of that when you are on the streets. I have no idea how people honestly expect a person at the most difficult point in their life to just stop doing drugs or drinking overnight and pull their life together. There are many in the position that if they had to go cold turkey it would actually be lethal. Addiction is no joke it is a serious affliction that is very difficult to overcome, it is not a lack of character or a sign of weakness when someone with no support is expected to just get clean and fails. I do not understand the logic behind expecting someone to get sober on the streets before you make any attempt to help them get stable.
Now on to criminality. Yes, many homeless people have criminal records. Many are themselves arrested for what they refer to as quality of life crimes, such as trespassing, illegal camping, open container, or shoplifting food. Small infractions that start to add up over time. When you're living on the streets contact with law enforcement is only a matter of time, no matter how hard you try eventually you're going to do something that breaks the law. With no access to a proper address or method of communication keeping on top of court dates becomes impossible. Many can't even get to court when they are aware of it. So, the warrants for failure to appear start to accumulate to the point where any kind of police contact is a direct ticket to jail. Once on probation, the charges really start to add up. Any violation affects your probation and it starts a vicious cycle that is hard to get out of. Its hard to not break the law when they keep making laws that make what you are doing just trying to survive a crime. Also, many homeless are felons. Once out of jail they have very few options for any kind of return to a normal life. You can't find a job; you can't rent an apartment. Many social services disqualify you once you are a felon. You may have done your time but that mark on your record will haunt you for life no matter how much you've changed. I don't understand how punishing someone for the rest of their lives for a mistake is doing any good at all. All it does is show them that they will never be a part of society so why bother to try to be, this lack of opportunity and resources is why so many end up reoffending as criminal acts are the only way they can find to support themselves.
Here's another joy of being out of jail and back on the streets. In my county, if you are homeless at the time of release they will fit you with an ankle monitor because you have no fixed address and they need to be able to keep track of you, I see the logic in this, but this is where it becomes unfair. The monitors require charging for several hours every day so if you don't have a friend that will let charge at their home, I'm not really sure where and how they expect you to keep the damn thing charged. No businesses are going to let you do it there, and we have no public outlets in my town. The library had to stop people from doing it there because there were arguments over access to plugs. And you better keep it charged because if it does dead every cop in the area is going to come pay you a visit. Yes, let's give people with very limited access to electricity a device that needs to be kept charged and then punish the hell out of them when they can't do it. And my favorite way they have invented of criminalizing the homeless is to apply a sex offender charge if caught urinating or defecating in public, as if their lives were not hard enough as it is slapping them with a charge that will make it impossible for them to ever rejoin society and pretty much ensure denial of any useful resources for life just takes the cake.
