Major homelessness crisis on the West Coast

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Of course I know they are PEOPLE. I sometimes talk to them on the train. If a person is able to have a rational, decent conversation with me, without yelling and cursing, then I'll talk to anybody.

Many homeless people actually speak very well, and act well. Many have intractable problems: like a criminal record obtained when they were young, and which cannot be expunged in New York State (unlike other states). Many have been thrown out of their apartments because the neighborhood is "gentrifying." Many, in the Great Recession, lost jobs which they had had for years.

I used to live maybe 1 1/2 blocks from a homeless shelter for families. I lived there 20 years--then moved into a larger apartment for my wife and I. There's been no problems in the neighborhood from that homeless shelter.

They do that sometimes, Ezra-----but it's not really enough. There are at least 50,000 homeless people in NYC. Maybe a few thousand might get those sorts of apartments.

Right, that's happening here too. Used to be a year long wait to get into a building that had controlled rent. Now it's probably just simply not available any longer.

A friend of my dad had his rent raised some huge amount all at once on some tiny old apartment and he had to get a tiny room in an old cheap hotel that works as an apartment building. He says it's not much bigger than a jail cell and the only thing it has is a little sink. And he considers himself lucky under the circumstances.

Here in the Denver area they like to build super expensive fancy apartments in areas where most people couldn't afford the rent in those places. Something tells me this housing is not meant for people who actually live here...

I mostly meant the media. When I read articles about homelessness that don't ever actually use the word people, and do that consistently, it's kind of heartbreaking and a little bit terrifying. And it seems to carry over into the rest of the population. And the way that homeless people are treated seems to follow the same trend. The less they are referred to as people, the more often they're referred to as "the homeless problem", the worse it gets.
I'm currently homeless. I lost my place to live two years ago and slowly crashed and burned from there. I lived in that house for seven years. I've been in this town for ten years, but I don't know anyone. I have no friends beyond a few acquaintances. I've been homeless off and on since I was 13. Mostly off. The amount of hostility is terrifying, and the level of acceptance of that hostility is equally terrifying. Someone threatened to beat me up one day because I don't have a job. I stood up to him. Then he pulled a gun on me. When the cop came around he didn't seem phased at all until I said he had a gun. Actually said I should just expect that. The gun changed the situation and he showed concern. But what kind of society do we live in that it's deemed acceptable to beat up homeless people, and why?
About a month and a half ago a homeless guy got set on fire while he was sleeping at a church. Didn't even make the papers.
If the majority of the potential solutions being put forward basically consist of "just get rid of them", and they aren't considered people, then the potential is really terrifying.
Dehumanization is one of the stages of genocide. So is persecution. Both the dehumanization and persecution of homeless people happens pretty regularly, and a lot of people just accept that as a fact of life, and it's terrifying.

Yes just shipping homeless people off to another town, is clearly the best way to deal with homelessness...rather than actually addressing homelessness in communities. Especially sending them Pueblo of all places, may as well send them to the middle of nowhere.

That's a start to what exactly?

You expect someone to set these people up in nice homes? Is that the solution?

Soon millions of poor people will be flocking to your area for the freebies.

Every police jurisdiction would be shipping their homeless to your area.


To living within your means.

Last edited by LoveNotHate on 08 Nov 2017, 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Where did I say I expect them to be set up in nice homes, I implied I disagree with just shipping them off somewhere else...not that they should just be handed everything on a silver platter.

Also what freebies in my area are you referring to? I am not really aware of any...so I have a feeling if anyone came here in search of freebies they'd be pretty disappointed.

Yeah because pueblo is just full of jobs and opportunities and resources for poor and homeless people...

The free one-way bus voucher is just a way to push the problem somewhere else without actually having to address it. It is a non-solution....it is my final opinion regardless of anything anyone says about it.

Also I doubt every police jurisdiction is going to ship the homeless to Arvada, Colorado....though they certainly would be better off here than in Pueblo perhaps.

Sure. If they did , then millions of people would come for them.

That's my point. The solution is to move these people to lower cost areas.

Like the couple that only makes $17,000 per year in disability.

Get them out of their super-pricey area, and move them to Pueblo or Detroit.

The thing is that here up until a year ago there were plenty of botom rung housing that people were living in that was within their means until payments doubled or tripled overnight. Not in a beverly hills town, but a town that has the nickname of Tweakervill. The extreme low end is now charging what the high end used to charge a year ago.

I don't think anyone ever expected 50 year old 600 sq foot 1 bedroom apartments in this town to suddenly cost 1200 to 1500. This town is where people moved to because they couldn't afford anywhere else. Now they can't afford to live here either.

More likely that the problem is that peoples with the money for it are playing monopoly in real life; thus the price of homes rising through unchecked speculation.

it’s a federal problem to be solved on a federal level... the answer is setting these people up in places they can succeed at starting anew. that’s not shipping them off to a ghost town, but it’s also not trapping them in a place with such high costs of living that they’ve no chance to get back upon their feet. it seems they could be provided government jobs in states/towns with low costs of living, pardons from trashed credit scores, any police records for being alive without a home, and any income requirements overlooked(one typically needs to have a monthly income that’s three times the monthly rent, along with good credit and references to apply and qualify for a place... which is impossible for most homeless people.) to be able to be provided basic small studio apartments covered within whatever salary they make in their government job. that’d allow them to start anew, get back into the routine of things, save up, dream, go to college, and kick that popsicle stand for something better.

Or they could quit trying to gentrify every single f*cking area to the point the already present residents can't afford their housing costs anymore.

Speculation is certainly a factor- no doubt about it.
But (at least here in the US) governmental regulations and bureaucracy are far and away the largest impediment to building affordable housing. This is something I've had quite a bit of personal experience with not only while making a living but going through the nightmare of trying to legally build my own off-grid home.
(After spending more than 2 years and several thousand dollars trying to do it 'by the book' I finally said F^^^ it and went ahead and built my house sans official approval.)
Sadly, my experience is not unique- and the problem just keeps on getting worse.
There are a lot of truly great and innovative ideas out there ranging from tiny homes to flat pack prefabs- and none of them will do a damn bit of good unless a significant percentage of the population decides to raise their middle fingers to the bureaucracy by refusing to beg their permission and pay their bribes.

Government is truly a skidmark on the underwear of humanity.

About rent control, Portland tried to pass that but they got sued by some landlords.