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What you're seeing in this thread about how is a person by themselves supposed to be clean for an interview, have an address for a check, get housing on minimum wage in San Francisco, etc. is missing the point. 70%+ of people who are homeless climb out it, proving that it is possible (despite the aforementioned resource challenges -- that's almost tautological to what being poor is). Those who don't and remain chronically homeless have some combination of reduced functional ability, reduced physical or mental health (including stress from poverty contributing to drug use and vice versa), or other more fundamental issues. These people also exist in other countries. What's more unique to the U.S. is that for large swathes of people, their family has totally washed their hands of their responsibility. Compared to poor authoritarian countries that's probably because in those countries, families know their loved ones will die if they are left out on their own with no help. Compared to Europe, it's because large segments of the population have broken family units (e.g. 72% of black babies are born to unmarried mothers, who by nature have much more difficulty providing resources / shelter to an adult child who moved away to another city and is homeless there. And this is definitely impacted by historic racism, and even modern-day racism, but is independently now a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and broken families and crime). I'm going to be downvoted but I've worked in homeless shelters, for public outreach, for jobs programs, and the problem is incredibly challenging. The idea that society can replace family is inane. What you see on HN is some white liberal dude who grew up in an upper-middle-class family, makes $300K a year waving their fingers over a keyboard but thinks they're financially oppressed so votes for Bernie Sanders, and just repeats some stuff they read on reddit or some shitty NPR story, but who has never bothered to truly spend time doing public health outreach, has never truly interacted with the homeless for an entry-level job, has never really assessed their ability to complete even basic tasks. They think it should be an easy problem to solve with just a few more resources, which they vote for (obviously without getting themselves dirty in the process), and then see it as evidence of an unjust society while wondering why SF is getting shittier every year. |
Or, if I take your comments to their invalid conclusion, other countries let their homeless die--thus solving their homeless problem.
And why should somebody's drug addled parent be the responsibility of the child? The child didn't make those choices--and probably has their own damage from the parent to boot.
Finally, if someone has dementia, God help you if you don't have money because no one else will. People with dementia often require 24/7 care--how are you supposed to go to your job if you are doing that?
How about instead of just shuffling the problem onto "family" that is horribly ill-equipped for dealing with most of these situations, we start as a society helping people to deal with these things.