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  #21  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 2:11 PM
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
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.
I don't think a hypothetical labour shortage is a very good reason to not at least minimally take care of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

I know it's a question of labour supply and demand to some degree, but we have no shortage of people to make everyone their custom frappuccino multiple times a day.

Plus there are technological innovations available to assist this work that did not exist at all in the 1980s.

And it's nowhere near 10-20% of the population that would need this type of institutionalization. The vast majority of people who have self-care issues are able to live on their own, often with just a little bit of assistance from others.
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  #22  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 2:24 PM
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One general observation about homelessness in Canada is that it has spread to many areas where you never used to see it before.

You now see homeless people and beggars deep into the suburbs of our main cities, and also in smaller cities and towns.

I've lived much of my life in suburban areas maybe 10 km from city cores, and up until about 5 years ago there were never any homeless people or people asking for money in these areas.

Now there are on occasion, at local strip malls and grocery stores. It's not an everyday thing everywhere but it's gone from "never" to "occasional".
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  #23  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 3:25 PM
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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
One general observation about homelessness in Canada is that it has spread to many areas where you never used to see it before.

You now see homeless people and beggars deep into the suburbs of our main cities, and also in smaller cities and towns.

I've lived much of my life in suburban areas maybe 10 km from city cores, and up until about 5 years ago there were never any homeless people or people asking for money in these areas.

Now there are on occasion, at local strip malls and grocery stores. It's not an everyday thing everywhere but it's gone from "never" to "occasional".
Exactly.

This is totally new (to us):

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/20...-de-lampleur-1

On a related note, I can name three people who are now homeless thanks to Justin Trudeau's incompetence (pretty directly though I'm sure some will contest the causal link)
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  #24  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 3:55 PM
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Exactly.

This is totally new (to us):

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/20...-de-lampleur-1

On a related note, I can name three people who are now homeless thanks to Justin Trudeau's incompetence (pretty directly though I'm sure some will contest the causal link)
For us too. We've had a small tent city on the fringes of downtown here for a couple of years and every summer it seems to get bigger.

You can see one of the tents through the trees in this shot:

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4348...7i16384!8i8192

Some are still there at the moment even. I believe people actually wintering in tents is a fairly new phenomenon here.

Note that tonight it will be around -30C here which is around -20F.
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  #25  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 4:27 PM
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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
One general observation about homelessness in Canada is that it has spread to many areas where you never used to see it before.

You now see homeless people and beggars deep into the suburbs of our main cities, and also in smaller cities and towns.

I've lived much of my life in suburban areas maybe 10 km from city cores, and up until about 5 years ago there were never any homeless people or people asking for money in these areas.

Now there are on occasion, at local strip malls and grocery stores. It's not an everyday thing everywhere but it's gone from "never" to "occasional".
Same thing happening in São Paulo. They've been traditionally very concentrated on Downtown, but now there are some clusters everywhere, including on upmarket districts.

Small/mid-sized cities are also experiencing an increase on numbers, but it's only in São Paulo that's becoming a real problem. Even in Rio de Janeiro we see way less homeless people.
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  #26  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 5:33 PM
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The trash has been taking out to the alley.
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  #27  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 7:09 PM
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One of the issues that we don't discuss in the US is that the section 8 housing subsidy system is so underfunded that it is broken. In Minnesota there is an 8 year waiting list to get section 8 subsidies and the wait list is currently closed. Every few years they reopen the wait list and have a lottery to be put on it. The last time tens of thousands of people applied for a few thousand slots on the list. This means that if you meet the requirements to get section 8 you are still probably looking at a decade or longer to receive benefits. Most states have different versions of the same problem.

I think a lot of people think that because section 8 exists that we have a system that allows poor people to rent with a government subsidy, when in reality most people who qualify for it are never able to get it. If you are in an emergency situation (like losing your job in a recession) it will do nothing for you because it takes too long. This is part of how the poor/non-crazy homeless end up homeless.
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  #28  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 8:50 PM
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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.
Interesting. Is it fair to say that favela residents have often been given some kind of rights to the contested land they occupy, or are they eventually forced out?
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  #29  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2022, 10:39 PM
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Interesting. Is it fair to say that favela residents have often been given some kind of rights to the contested land they occupy, or are they eventually forced out?
Not de jure, but de facto totally. As most of those occupations are decades old, legal processes regarding those areas are "prescript" (that's the Roman-German Law expression, I don't know how do you say on Common Law), the legal owners often lost on inheritance/bankruptcy processes. The occupation is so firmly established that people rent or even "sell" their houses, but of course, all informal negotiations.

The main problem then is favelas will be there forever, as it's hard for the government to build infrastructure or legally formalize those areas. Favelas don't grow anymore but they won't shrink either. I guess far on the future they might be similar to those old districts in Naples.

According to the last Brazilian Census (2010), over 6% of population live in such informal environments, that's 11.4 million people, mostly on the largest cities. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro metro areas have 2.2 million and 1.7 million people living in favelas respectively. And the highest share of people living on them are on the metro areas in Northeast and North Brazil, the poorest regions in the country.
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  #30  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2022, 4:42 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
One general observation about homelessness in Canada is that it has spread to many areas where you never used to see it before.

You now see homeless people and beggars deep into the suburbs of our main cities, and also in smaller cities and towns.

I've lived much of my life in suburban areas maybe 10 km from city cores, and up until about 5 years ago there were never any homeless people or people asking for money in these areas.

Now there are on occasion, at local strip malls and grocery stores. It's not an everyday thing everywhere but it's gone from "never" to "occasional".
Same in California. It used to be just in the big cities but now it has spread just about everywhere. I see it on I-80 in the towns of Fairfield, Vacaville, Dixon and Davis. I have also seen homeless people wandering around when driving up or down the 5 freeway in the Central Valley when stopping at some of those gas station/fast food places. I have even observed it in the desert with RV encampments off the 14 between Lancaster and Mohave in the Mohave desert. I tend to drive a lot between SF, LA and Tahoe.
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  #31  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2022, 5:24 AM
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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.
Sure, but that much is expected. Not that it doesn't contribute to burnout.
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Last edited by SIGSEGV; Jan 26, 2022 at 5:42 AM.
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  #32  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2022, 5:25 AM
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Originally Posted by Chef View Post
One of the issues that we don't discuss in the US is that the section 8 housing subsidy system is so underfunded that it is broken. In Minnesota there is an 8 year waiting list to get section 8 subsidies and the wait list is currently closed. Every few years they reopen the wait list and have a lottery to be put on it. The last time tens of thousands of people applied for a few thousand slots on the list. This means that if you meet the requirements to get section 8 you are still probably looking at a decade or longer to receive benefits. Most states have different versions of the same problem.

I think a lot of people think that because section 8 exists that we have a system that allows poor people to rent with a government subsidy, when in reality most people who qualify for it are never able to get it. If you are in an emergency situation (like losing your job in a recession) it will do nothing for you because it takes too long. This is part of how the poor/non-crazy homeless end up homeless.
Yeah, the only people who have a reasonable chance of getting housing relatively fast are veterans, and even then usually not.
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  #33  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2022, 2:03 PM
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The upside of this increased visibility, homeless everywhere instead of just central cities like it used to be, is that perhaps it will touch enough people's lives now that there'll be more pressure to find effective solutions.
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  #34  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2022, 4:23 PM
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I don't think a hypothetical labour shortage is a very good reason to not at least minimally take care of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
I made regular deliveries to about 8 medicaid-run nursing homes/rehab centers for several years where much of the staff was comprised of green card immigrants. These people were generally much better to deal with than the native-born Americans, who were usually the worst people you'd interact with in a month. They lied, exaggerated, stole, were shockingly lazy, etc., all of the time.

I could go on at length about those places but the fact is that there is no way to do perfect hiring for mental institutions any more than it's possible to do it for orphanages, schools, churches, police, military, etc. There will always be bad apples in the ranks and clever bad apples will always manage to rise through the ranks.

The thought that some sort of perfect place can be built and staffed perfectly for 100 years and that all we need to do is throw some money at it is a fallacy.
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  #35  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2022, 5:08 AM
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https://www.hpherald.com/news/local/...70158a404.html here is a very nice obituary for someone who sadly died in the cold earlier this year.
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  #36  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2022, 3:20 AM
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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.
Many people avoid shelters as they have to share it with mentally distressed people (and get little sleep). It's often the sane people who have to live on the streets. Of course it's also the insane ones too, so quite the mix, but at the end day people who avoid shelters are for a variety of reasons.

Homeless people gathering in spots are also a target for criminals and sociopaths, who can't turn up an opportunity to wheedle more pain into open vulnerability. I remember in the Mainland at the height of the Middle Eastern refugee crisis every capital's main train terminal was full of refugees sleeping on certain floors or areas (complete with heartbreaking message boards and missing posters of some of the 10,000 children lost on the way, many targeted by organised crime). I was in Brussels at dawn and there were random youths just hassling the entire sleeping area set out in the basement floors - yelling, waking people up and smashing bottles etc.

Took this pic in Vienna Hauptbahnhof, where there were several walls like this:


Last edited by muppet; Feb 8, 2022 at 3:43 AM.
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  #37  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2022, 6:48 PM
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Somewhat related. The serial killer that was targeting homeless people in New York and Washington was arrested:

Suspect arrested in string of shootings targeting homeless (BBC)
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  #38  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2022, 7:45 PM
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https://www.hpherald.com/news/local/...70158a404.html here is a very nice obituary for someone who sadly died in the cold earlier this year.
Does nobody see that all the shit people do to homeless people is abuse?
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  #39  
Old Posted Mar 24, 2022, 12:07 AM
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2 days ago, São Paulo's Cracolândia suddenly moved. It's now three blocks away from the original place. From here: https://www.google.com/maps/@-23.533...7i16384!8i8192 to here: https://www.google.com/maps/@-23.536...7i16384!8i8192

Video Link




So far, no one knows the reason, but police speculates that's due the drug dealers decision. The press interviewed some users and they confirmed this version, that they were ordered to leave. No one commented about it, but I found strange on how municipality workers were promptly doing some repairs on the street right on the next day.

It's a shame as the government has recently built a rather good social housing project right there in the original Cracolândia, but it's virtually impossible for the families to have a normal life. They leave home escorted by the police.
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  #40  
Old Posted Mar 24, 2022, 4:57 PM
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Homelessness is intractable. Its something to manage like a chronic disease, not solve. Some ppl will always fall thru the cracks. The crux is the managers. Liberal policy makers fundamentally think ppl are good, and the systems are corrupt, and therefore must change. Conservatives believe the opposite, that people are inherently flawed, but accept the flaws and realize for every improvement made, it still comes with a price, and we must accept a trade off. Americans in general have this insane reaction to the homeless tho. People in small towns think its a result of big city failures and people in the big city feel sorry for hobos and sometimes don't know how to be the tough parent.
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Last edited by pdxtex; Mar 24, 2022 at 5:21 PM.
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