TempestOfTempo
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As I just mentioned.... nothing productive seems to come of your interactions here, so I think I should disengage......
Homeless epidemic
- Thread starter Vixy
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Lisa
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Well, you could change your mind and start agreeing with me
Lisa
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City authorities claim their key problem is the high cost of housing combined with past failures to build enough properties. But many blame something simpler to solve: the lack of law enforcement.
‘When you tell vagrants that anything goes, it leads to the anarchy you see on these streets,’ says Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute think-tank and a conservative essayist.
She believes we are witnessing a ‘real-life experiment’ into what happens if society stops enforcing bourgeois norms out of sensitivity to vulnerable people.
MacDonald argues that the city authorities are culpable, fuelling drug addiction by doling out 4.5 million needles a year when there is nothing compassionate about giving addicts and mentally ill people the freedom to ‘decompose’ on the streets.
Much of what she says is backed by Thomas Wolf, 49, who lost his job and family after becoming addicted to opioid painkillers following foot surgery, then moving on to cheaper heroin and ending up homeless in his native city.
‘It is a cycle of despair,’ he says. ‘I was heartbroken at losing my wife and kids but all I cared about was drugs. I hated being on the streets but I loved the easy access to drugs.
‘Yet there’s such denial that if you’d have asked me if I had a problem, I’d have said no.’
Wolf, who now works for the Salvation Army helping homeless people rebuild lives and has just been appointed to a specialist civic taskforce, sees untreated addiction as the root cause of the city’s problem. He says most people living on the streets are hooked on either drugs or drink.
‘If you see someone shouting at the wall, it is crystal meth, not mental illness – although meth might have destroyed their mind.’
Wolf claims that while the city distributes drug paraphernalia, he was never asked to quit or offered help. He says many users sell their monthly welfare $190 food stamps on receipt to go on a binge. And he wants to see generous welfare benefits – almost $600 a month in return for 12 hours of voluntary work – slashed.
www.dailymail.co.uk
‘When you tell vagrants that anything goes, it leads to the anarchy you see on these streets,’ says Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute think-tank and a conservative essayist.
She believes we are witnessing a ‘real-life experiment’ into what happens if society stops enforcing bourgeois norms out of sensitivity to vulnerable people.
MacDonald argues that the city authorities are culpable, fuelling drug addiction by doling out 4.5 million needles a year when there is nothing compassionate about giving addicts and mentally ill people the freedom to ‘decompose’ on the streets.
Much of what she says is backed by Thomas Wolf, 49, who lost his job and family after becoming addicted to opioid painkillers following foot surgery, then moving on to cheaper heroin and ending up homeless in his native city.
‘It is a cycle of despair,’ he says. ‘I was heartbroken at losing my wife and kids but all I cared about was drugs. I hated being on the streets but I loved the easy access to drugs.
‘Yet there’s such denial that if you’d have asked me if I had a problem, I’d have said no.’
Wolf, who now works for the Salvation Army helping homeless people rebuild lives and has just been appointed to a specialist civic taskforce, sees untreated addiction as the root cause of the city’s problem. He says most people living on the streets are hooked on either drugs or drink.
‘If you see someone shouting at the wall, it is crystal meth, not mental illness – although meth might have destroyed their mind.’
Wolf claims that while the city distributes drug paraphernalia, he was never asked to quit or offered help. He says many users sell their monthly welfare $190 food stamps on receipt to go on a binge. And he wants to see generous welfare benefits – almost $600 a month in return for 12 hours of voluntary work – slashed.
IAN BIRRELL on how tech giants turned San Francisco into a nightmare
IAN BIRRELL: One fed-up resident showed me Hondurans handing out socks filled with wraps of drugs in front of a building being turned into an upmarket Whole Foods store.
Corvus Metus
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There's something ironic about people saying homeless people are freeloaders that just need real jobs like John Stossel is doing there... Yet also opposing pretty much anything that empowers the worker. It's almost like a dude with a Princeton education might not actually care about poor people.
Lisa
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Did you watch the video?
Corvus Metus
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Yes. I also know John Stossel has said "increased minimum wage is bad" and has genuinely pushed right-wing libertarian views and spoken against unions... I don't think he's really a friend of the working class.
Lisa
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The increase in minimum wage is bad because to counter that companies decrease your hours.
Unions can be bad for business, though they start out protecting workers..they themselves become bad for business by needing more and more for workers that sometimes comes at the expense of business. It’s a fine line that often gets crossed.
According to Stossel, when he was in favor of government intervention and skeptical of business, he was deluged with awards, but in 2006, he stated, "They like me less... Once I started applying the same skepticism to government, I stopped winning awards."
Lisa
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Addiction...drugs, alcohol and some just don’t want to work. Some people believe lack of housing is to blame but I think it’s addiction that is mostly to blame.
Tidal
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In 2002 I was just out of jail (3 month vigilante rap), homeless, jobless, girfriendless, near-penniless and living rough in a tent in a remote wood near Cheltenham (England) shivering with near-hypothermia with a wonky underactive thyroid, but not once did I feel downhearted because I was too busy laughing at myself- "Oh great" I thought, "I've ended up as Bigfoot"
But I soon got out and up, so if I can do it anybody with half a brain can..
Lisa
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SAN FRAN: Homeless man sits with decaying raccoon inside McDonald’s
www.theamericanmirror.com
SAN FRAN: Homeless man sits with decaying raccoon inside McDonald's – The American Mirror
What is happening in San Francisco? New video shows a man sitting with a dead, decaying raccoon inside a San Francisco McDonald's. Warning, language:
rainerann
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What is the point of an article like this? You do realize that something like this demonstrates some kind of mental health issue and that people with mental health issues are dependent on other people to take care of them. So this person that you are using to support your argument that homeless people don't need handouts or however you want to summarize what you have been going on about in this thread, is actually a perfect example of what happens when you neglect people who really need help.SAN FRAN: Homeless man sits with decaying raccoon inside McDonald’s
SAN FRAN: Homeless man sits with decaying raccoon inside McDonald's – The American Mirror
What is happening in San Francisco? New video shows a man sitting with a dead, decaying raccoon inside a San Francisco McDonald's. Warning, language:
This is a perfect example of someone who should be helped and what helping someone looks like in this case will never be helping them to be a functioning member of society. It will probably mean supervising them in a house and making sure they take their medications daily. Helping a person like this will probably never mean helping them to become independent. So you can try to say they should help themselves if they don't want to be homeless, but people like this legitimately can't help themselves.
Lisa
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My argument has always been that handouts don’t help the homeless... has this man been helped? He might have food and a concrete bed..but he’s not really been helped by that. That is my contention...those things don’t help the homeless they just perpetuate the homeless problem. That man is still homeless and he could be mentally ill..or he could be an addict on drugs feeding him hasn’t helped him with either.
rainerann
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That's what I thought you meant by posting that article. I will repeat myself and say that this man is more than likely mentally ill. He might also be using drugs, but that is more than likely because he is self-medicating. Being an addict and having a mental illness is called a dual diagnosis and it is very difficult to treat.
Even if you treat the addiction, this man will need handouts for the rest of his life. He will never be able to be independent. He should probably be living in some kind of home where he is provided for, fed, clothed, and given medication when it is due. So giving him food will never be enough. He isn't going to be helped with food alone. He needs many other things given to him because he will never be able to work to acquire these things for himself.
However, even though giving him food is not enough, giving him food is NOT perpetuating the problem of homelessness. Not giving him more help is what is keeping someone like this on the streets.
Lisa
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We don’t actually know the problem with the guy...but It’s clear that just giving him food is not helping his problem or his homelessness....which has been my point all along.
Lisa
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You want to do more things that won’t work?
Would you rather we just shoot him?
Lisa
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And put him out of his misery you mean? Or to get someone to take him to the hospital...maybe detox?