[aedocw]

Some strings:

Many/most shelters will not let you bring in a pet. If you've never had any hard times in your life and had a dog companion at the same time you might not understand, but for many people having that pet is the only thing sustaining their will to live day to day.

Many/most shelters will not let you sleep with your companion, even if you're married. The comfort of another human is an easy thing to get used to, and can be devastating to go without. Generally though if you're running a shelter and taking in people with MH issues or other challenges this one makes some sense, you are always at risk bringing of in folks who can't respect boundaries and will want to have inappropriate intimacy in the open (for instance).

All shelters have a strict limit on how many personal belongings you can bring in. If you have no house, but you do have a shopping cart full of possessions, what are you supposed to do with them?

[bumby]

I think these are good examples and there are probably viable solutions to them. I’ve heard of the purple leash program that is looking to expand the number of shelters that allow pets for example. Thanks for elaborating!

[40yearoldman]

I can go see the the homeless. Pets are not keeping the masses of homeless out of shelters.

Not being able to take drugs when ever the hell they feel like it is what keeps them out.

The only thing that will fix this is if we change the laws. And those laws are going to feel weird at first. But we need to classify people who are homeless for more than 6 weeks as mentally ill. And at that point we force them into rehab facilities.

[vidarh]

This kind of authoritarian bullshit is why a lot of homeless are wary of seeking help.

[bumby]

We haven’t been able to involuntarily house the mentally ill for decades in the US, though. I fear this approach would just exacerbated a stigma around mental illness

[NoZebra120vClip]

The asylum/institution model was abandoned largely because there appeared to be widespread abuse, neglect, and poor outcomes, which were typified by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The trouble is that people apparently decided that the abuse, neglect, and poor outcomes were due to inpatient status and not anything inherent to the treatments themselves, so in the 40+ years since asylums all closed, we've basically reinvented invisible asylums with a massive apparatus of voluntary, inefficient outpatient programs which are rife with abuse, neglect, and poor outcomes.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Case in point: there's a huge Medicaid scandal in Arizona right now regarding Native Americans. What happened is that there were dudes in vans going to New Mexico, and basically kidnapping natives (mostly Navajo who were off the reservation) and promising them addiction recovery services, mental health treatment, and stuff, if they would only get in the van and cross state lines.

The homes they took them to were unlicensed, mismanaged, and committing fraud, and often dumped the natives out on the street with no resources or way home.

Talk about abusing a doubly-vulnerable population; it's appalling. And to think that there is little stopping someone like me from being caught in that.