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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 12:42 PM
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Homelessness

São Paulo just finished its 2021 Homelessness Census (they conduct them every year) and as it's a problem on rise pretty much everywhere, I decided to open this thread where we can discuss this issue.

Anyway, as happening elsewhere, São Paulo homeless population is growing very fast, 31% since the beginning of the pandemia and doubled since 2015:

2015: 15,905
2019: 24,344
2021: 31,884

There also other interesting data:

- The number that prefer to live in the streets over the shelters increased from 52% (2019) to 60% (2021);

- In 2019, 20% lived with another person; in 2021, this number increased to 28%;

- 39% are originally from the city, 20% from other cities in São Paulo state and 41% from other states;

- 35% are on streets due family problems, 29% for alcohol/drugs, 28% because lost a job/ income;

- The number of tents on streets increased a lot: from 2,051 (2019) to 6,778 (2021);

Source: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidi...ao-paulo.shtml
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 12:50 PM
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I think this stat nails it

Quote:
The number that prefer to live in the streets over the shelters increased from 52% (2019) to 60% (2021);
A solution would be to take care of those who are incapable of handling our society, but that is very expensive. Social l workers aren't paid much, but Mental and Drug problems take a lot of time and labor to mitigate, it adds up quickly.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 2:40 PM
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Originally Posted by harryc View Post
I think this stat nails it

A solution would be to take care of those who are incapable of handling our society, but that is very expensive. Social l workers aren't paid much, but Mental and Drug problems take a lot of time and labor to mitigate, it adds up quickly.
The articles mentions that the city is planning to build tiny houses (18m², about 190 sqft) aimed to part of this public.

As homeless population has skyrocketed, according to city officials this measure is urgent as people that just hit the streets are easier to be "rehabilitated".
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 3:59 PM
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Originally Posted by Yuri View Post
The articles mentions that the city is planning to build tiny houses (18m², about 190 sqft) aimed to part of this public.

As homeless population has skyrocketed, according to city officials this measure is urgent as people that just hit the streets are easier to be "rehabilitated".
And there is the denial - people need to be "rehabilitated" not "treated" - Rehabilitated makes is sound like this is the undeserving poor, the able bodied who are not working through moral failures of their own ( think Cromwell ).

Treating the mental illness and substance abuse at the core of the problem is just too expensive. Easier to find a place to let them rot out of sight of the rest of us.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 4:25 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by harryc View Post
And there is the denial - people need to be "rehabilitated" not "treated" - Rehabilitated makes is sound like this is the undeserving poor, the able bodied who are not working through moral failures of their own ( think Cromwell ).

Treating the mental illness and substance abuse at the core of the problem is just too expensive. Easier to find a place to let them rot out of sight of the rest of us.
Sad but true. We say we can't afford to help them, meanwhile the federal govt happily spends $2 billion a day on the military. That's what I call a moral failure.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 5:32 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by harryc View Post
And there is the denial - people need to be "rehabilitated" not "treated" - Rehabilitated makes is sound like this is the undeserving poor, the able bodied who are not working through moral failures of their own ( think Cromwell ).

Treating the mental illness and substance abuse at the core of the problem is just too expensive. Easier to find a place to let them rot out of sight of the rest of us.
In Brazil's case, the economic downturn (Brazilian 2021 GDP is at 2012 levels; the economy peaked in 2014) after the 2000's golden age seems to have an impact: more people are homeless due economic reasons, directly and indirectly. People that say they are on the streets due "family problems" might be due economic reasons as tensions usually rise when people lose jobs and income. The government also cut public spending, including on social ones, which makes things even worse.

And specifically about São Paulo, it used to be very common smaller cities, even from other states, to ship homeless people to here so numbers are proportionally much higher here in the city, specially Downtown.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 5:57 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dimondpark View Post
Sad but true. We say we can't afford to help them, meanwhile the federal govt happily spends $2 billion a day on the military. That's what I call a moral failure.
You can't just throw money at the homeless. My mom is a social worker and has a soft spot for the homeless population and she's directed them to programs and services to help them get established and they're not interested. She'd buy them Burger King and they just wanted money or alcohol. Many are profoundly mentally ill that they probably should be in long term facilities but money is not the issue but the stigma of institutionalizing people. Which is why so many psych centers were shut down years ago.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 6:01 PM
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Everyone could just move somewhere cold like Pittsburgh, I rarely see homeless people here. Theyre def here, but not at all like when I lived in Houston or New Orleans.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 6:14 PM
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Part of the problem with discussions of homelessness in the US is that the stereotype of the homeless as out of control addicts and the mentally ill is not necessarily accurate. Some of the homeless are those people but at the same time a lot of regular low income workers become homeless. For example 14% of Kroger supermarket employees in Colorado, southern California and the Seattle area report being homeless last year:

https://www.newsweek.com/homeless-sk...itions-1669137

The stereotype of the homeless as a bunch of crazy addicts just serves as an excuse to do nothing about it.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 6:18 PM
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About mental institutions, I remember that's a very old complain from the US right. Ann Coulter talked about that since the 2000's.

However, we shouldn't ignore the fact those institutions had a horrible horrible record. Read about any of them, go to YouTube and you see how disturbing things were. Without any overstating, they were basically concentration camps.

We might feel unconfortable because we have to see them on streets. I agree it's bad. But what about their discomfort? They already live on streets and the alternative offered it's to be locked and tortured on a facility?

And as Chef mentioned above, there are good chunk of economic homelessness.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 8:27 PM
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Homelessness seems to be the ever rapidly increasing problem without a solution no matter how much money is thrown at it.

Referring to the chronically homeless I believe we should be looking at what is better for society and having endless homeless encampments popping up everywhere certainly isn't good to have in a functioning community, city or overall society. A lot of these people need to be institutionalized and we need to bring that back in a big way IMO. If there were issues with these institutions (and I am sure there were) we need to focus on changing that. Additionally, shelters should be geared more towards offering a little bit of privacy for the inhabitants rather than a huge open floor plan. People stay in tents for their privacy. Shelters should be reimagined with that in mind. Then of course there is the drug issue with fentanyl and opioids that are far more addictive and causing more severe mental illness.

We also need to find a way to where if you have any job and work full time there should be at least a studio apartment in every city big and small that even those in the lowest income bracket can afford. Didn't it work this way 40 years ago?
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 9:18 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chef View Post
Part of the problem with discussions of homelessness in the US is that the stereotype of the homeless as out of control addicts and the mentally ill is not necessarily accurate. Some of the homeless are those people but at the same time a lot of regular low income workers become homeless. For example 14% of Kroger supermarket employees in Colorado, southern California and the Seattle area report being homeless last year:

https://www.newsweek.com/homeless-sk...itions-1669137

The stereotype of the homeless as a bunch of crazy addicts just serves as an excuse to do nothing about it.
To make any kind of meaningful headway in discussing this topic, it's probably best to stop speaking of "the homeless" as a monolithic group.

There are street people (aka the visible homeless) and they are the ones most often dealing with the most severe mental illness/addiction issues.

Then there are the working poor homeless (aka the invisible homeless) and they tend to have the wherewithall and limited resources/social contacts to sleep in cars and/or couch surf when they find themselves in periods of not having permanent shelter of their own.

Now, any given individual can certainly slide down from the latter to the former, or claw their way back in the other direction, but it's still helpful to have the general dichotomy noted because street people are the group of homeless that the vast majority of people have casual and regular contact with, but they are FAR from the whole story, as you pointed out.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 11:11 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chef View Post
Part of the problem with discussions of homelessness in the US is that the stereotype of the homeless as out of control addicts and the mentally ill is not necessarily accurate. Some of the homeless are those people but at the same time a lot of regular low income workers become homeless. For example 14% of Kroger supermarket employees in Colorado, southern California and the Seattle area report being homeless last year:

https://www.newsweek.com/homeless-sk...itions-1669137

The stereotype of the homeless as a bunch of crazy addicts just serves as an excuse to do nothing about it.
Of the ones living in the streets in tents and encampments, a much much higher percentage are mentally ill and drug addicted. The homeless you are mentioning most probably live in shelters or other temp housing.
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Old Posted Jan 24, 2022, 11:19 PM
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My wife started a homeless shelter in undergrad and was a homeless services social worker (sometimes doing street outreach, sometimes as a housing case manager) for a while until she burned out. It's a shitty shitty field to work in (low pay, terrible work conditions, huge amount of disrespect from e.g. section 8 landlords, hospitals, police) that not many people can last very long in. Huge amounts of time are spent on filling out paper work so that the agency gets "credit" for helping people. Ultimately, it seems to take months for people to get housing and many people give up a long the way, especially since many aren't able to keep track of basic details like their own social security numbers.
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Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 12:18 AM
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Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan View Post
The homeless you are mentioning most probably live in shelters or other temp housing.
Their situation is probably even better than that: they likely live with a friend or a relative.

A guy I know had problems and had to temporarily move into his grandma's place (roomy enough for that to be a viable solution for at least a while). Technically, he's currently homeless. But he's not in the streets, he's able to work, and he's sane. He's not a problem for society. (And counting people like him in the stats messes them up, IMO. Huge difference between someone who lives on the street / in a tent, and someone who merely currently does not have a lease nor own a home.)
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Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 2:25 AM
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Their situation is probably even better than that: they likely live with a friend or a relative.

A guy I know had problems and had to temporarily move into his grandma's place (roomy enough for that to be a viable solution for at least a while). Technically, he's currently homeless. But he's not in the streets, he's able to work, and he's sane. He's not a problem for society. (And counting people like him in the stats messes them up, IMO. Huge difference between someone who lives on the street / in a tent, and someone who merely currently does not have a lease nor own a home.)
Yeah, but what if he didn't have any living family he got along with? Not everyone does.
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Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 1:07 PM
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Originally Posted by Yuri View Post
In Brazil's case, the economic downturn (Brazilian 2021 GDP is at 2012 levels; the economy peaked in 2014) after the 2000's golden age seems to have an impact: more people are homeless due economic reasons, directly and indirectly. People that say they are on the streets due "family problems" might be due economic reasons as tensions usually rise when people lose jobs and income. The government also cut public spending, including on social ones, which makes things even worse.

And specifically about São Paulo, it used to be very common smaller cities, even from other states, to ship homeless people to here so numbers are proportionally much higher here in the city, specially Downtown.
I'm curious: in past generations would Brazil's homeless have just housed themselves in informal settlements? Has government action to formalize or clear favelas contributed to homelessness by impeding people's ability to arrange housing that they can actually afford?
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Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 1:26 PM
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I'm curious: in past generations would Brazil's homeless have just housed themselves in informal settlements? Has government action to formalize or clear favelas contributed to homelessness by impeding people's ability to arrange housing that they can actually afford?
Informal settlements (known as favelas in Brazil) did indeed provided housing for people.

Favelas are tricky to formalize because they are built over contested areas, usually complicated inheritance judicial disputes or bankrupted companies. That's why favelas usually improve over time (99% of electricity, 90% of running water) but due its own dwellers.

Historically (between the 1960's-1990's) governments were very active building projects, and in Brazil, detached houses are by far the most common form of them. Today population growth is much smaller and rural exodus is ended for decades now, so it's easier to manage. For a middle income country, Brazil has always had a very robust social protection network.

I believe homelessness became a bigger problem in São Paulo in the past 10 years due the ongoing economic crisis. Brazilian society is a bit more family oriented than American, so families watch for themselves, sheltering their "problematic" relatives. With the economic downturn, however, tensions are more common, complicating family relationships and those people are evicted or leave home. But that's a guess of mine. I haven't read any study confirming it.
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Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 1:40 PM
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It was arguably a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There is no reason why the management of these institutions couldn't have been improved and safeguards to prevent abuses put in place.

Lots of aspects of human society have been fertile ground for abusers over the course of history. For the most part we didn't abolish them - we reformed them.

But not in this case, because...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=low6Coqrw9Y

I have no faith that such places can be well-run on a large scale because there simply aren't enough good people. Orphanages
were largely phased-out for a similar reason.

I have a fair amount of experience delivering food to Medicaid-funded nursing homes and they are all horribly run. The rank-and-file workers (most of whom are women) are some of the nastiest people I've ever had to deal with. They were always trying to scam us and I have no doubt were stealing from the patients.

People want to believe that there are enough people out there to deal with the 10-20% of the population who is mentally ill or otherwise can't take care of themselves. There aren't.
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Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 2:06 PM
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My wife started a homeless shelter in undergrad and was a homeless services social worker (sometimes doing street outreach, sometimes as a housing case manager) for a while until she burned out. It's a shitty shitty field to work in (low pay, terrible work conditions, huge amount of disrespect from e.g. section 8 landlords, hospitals, police) that not many people can last very long in. .
Let's be honest - they also get a huge amount of disrespect from a lot of their "clients".

Either because these clients simply aren't there mentally, or they're just assholes in some cases.
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