What would you do with or for homeless people?

Fine, what would you do to each? Start with the girl.

 

I wanted everybody to assume he/she were king/queen with absolute power. Very few have dared to say what they'd actually do, given absolute power.

Surely you're not saying you'd just let them continue to live, defecate, beg, and copulate in their tents, till kingdom come, right there on the San Francisco sidewalks[?]

 

If it happened to be you or one of your family members, would that make it ok?

 

Fine. We'll give drugs to that group. What about those who do not so suffer?

 

Okay, but the rest of the citizenry want them and their excretions off the streets. Do you ignore those voices. You're king under my scenario, remember.

 

This issue has been around for thousands of years and still hasn't been solved. We have tried everything under the sun, even in the most socialist states, there are still people that starve to death (the USSR and North Korea have had the 2 biggest famines in history).

So I don't think this is something we as a society can solve. This has to be solved by the family, and the individuals helping each other out.

 

Okay, so that's your solution. "Do not deport them"? So they continue to live on the streets indefinitely even though you have absolute power?

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The family? Your family or theirs? I think you can safely assume none of these folks have relatives with the money to do anything specific. You, on the other hand, have absolute power. So what would you do?

 

You don't like Mircea's solution but offer none of your own?

 

take all the money earmarked for refugees and aid and give it to them first.

 

well I read all the messages in this thread, it appears nobody is interested in an actual discussion or offering solutions other than "give them homes" without explaining how they would do it or what the scope and realities of that would require... but to be fair, you kind of did have a generic open-ended question... lets try to refine this to a more specific set of circumstances... give me a city size that we're working with (as size will change likely existing services I can piggyback off in my solutions), then give me the estimated homeless population I need to address, then give me the budget I have to work with so I can take that money and determine what I can afford per estimated homeless person to best decide the most effective use per dollar...

 

While I was contemplating long-rang solutions. I would have an adequate number of porta-potty stations set up to cover areas where my homeless were hanging out. I would also initiate a distribution system of very basic necessities such as individual rolls of toilet paper, large bottles of hand cleanser, rolls of paper towels, large bottles of drinking water, basic antiseptics like peroxide, bug repellent, and gummy vitamins. Homeless individuals would need to accept an ID wristlet with their name, etc on it to participate in the basic necessity program.

I would also get voluntary agency/ies to set up a permanent kiosk soup kitchen in the area, where a free rudimentary but nutritious hot meal could be obtained once or twice a day.

I would have a public toilet/shower/laundromat facility constructed nearby where the homeless could shower for free and also wash their clothes. Connected to that would be a Goodwill or Salvation Army shop where people with their homeless id bracelets could obtain free used clothing. Additionally, inexpensive tents (free for the penniless) and used quilts would be available at this location. The entire facility would be inconspicuously patrolled by security personnel.

A health truck provided by a local hospital would visit the area one day a week to provide immunizations, checkups, and treatment of any physical health problems, with obvious dangerously contagious cases transported to local hospitals for treatment, involuntarily if necessary. Wristleted homeless with obvious mental health problems would be provided with free case management services by MHMR if they willingly signed information releases to allow these referrals.

I would see that a Vocational Rehabilitation specialist staffed the "food" kiosk after meals at least once weekly to offer job services to those interested in them. Candidates for these services would cooperate with background checks and health evaluations, and would, initially, be provided with pick-up jobs staffed by local job search companies.

A waiting list would be established for cooperative, noncriminal, non addicted, non-contagious homeless that wished to obtain a rented room, and matched with one for homeowners that wished to rent out rooms. Obviously disabled would be helped to apply for SSI, which could be used to pay for rent and future meals, and other support systems would be fashioned for those not totally disabled.

People not suitable for private housing because of their issues or conditions would be placed on a waiting list for publicly funded rooming houses, where each person could have their own small room and share other facilities with a number of others. Families with children would be given referrals to shelters which specialize in services for families.

I would see that the area/s were also provided with public transportation to basic shopping facilities, such as super Walmarts, that also had groceries.

As we gained familiarity with the homeless at hand, informal positions of trust would be created with those reliable enough to handle them, such as necessity distribution, safety checks, food distribution, etc etc and small cash stipends would be provided to those participating. For those who wished to bank their earnings, a bank representative would be convinced to come out one afternoon a week, again at the food kiosk after mealtime.

 

Excellent. Thanks.

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You'd give them cash? Do you think that would get them off the street?

 

I would abolish my position and let these wonderful people live without my interference.

 

Everyone has a family, whether it's your immediate family or your relatives, everyone can help each other out. if I had absolute power, I would instil personal responsibility into each and every person, this way those who lead themselves into that situation, can find the solution to their problems. Secondly I would cut taxes to zero, sack every politican in the world, and then sack myself, so that everone is trulely equal.

Money doesn't buy you happiness. If you don't know how to use money wisely then, money itself won't solve poverty. What will solve the problem is education about responsibilities of the individual.

 

ideally id use it to buy them a home and longer lasting stuff but if it has to be cash then why not? If were going to burn money anyway might as well do it on something that feeds into the local economy.

 

Solutions:

1) Funding for mental health services. Re-institutionalization for homeless people that are not competent to survive on their own.
2) Funding for addiction/alcohol services. Institutionalize and treat homeless addicts.
3) Regain control of public spaces. Establish the principle that no one has a "right" to live in a public space.
4) Build secure transient facilities for the homeless. Homeless families need accommodations separate from homeless individuals.
5) Creation of jobs on a massive scale.

This will not eliminate the problem of homelessness, but it will certainly reduce it to a manageable level.

 

Damn, you got me all teary eyed for some Bonanza reruns.

There are shelters in every city. Maybe we could use more, I don't know, but they do exist. The addictions that accompany mental illness are difficult to break, but the facilities do promote drug and alcohol treatment, especially the church sponsored shelters. That is about all we can do, outside of institutionalization, which isn't going to happen.

 

I forget the exact amount, but the federal government controls about 25% of the land in the country. It just sits there doing nothing. It seems to me that if you're trying to figure out a way to combat homelessness, opening up some of that land for homesteading might be one solution.

As I said, the science isn't there yet. What drug and alcohol treatment programs typically rely upon is the 12 step program that is more like a religious indoctrination program with all of that "higher power" nonsense.

 

I would put them on the bus to Los Angeles.

 

We give them land and then what? Tell them to go play cowboy and farmer? I don't know what you're talking about belch. If these people were able to homestead, they wouldn't be homeless. We're talking about troubled people, not families with horses, wagons and dreams.

The science may never be there. Sheltering and treatment, however nonsensical it may seem, seems the most humane solution at the moment. We've done fairly well here. The Gospel Mission, Catholic Charities, Salvation Army and local government have all provided ample services for our homeless. It has gotten much better over time.

 

Then there's nothing that can be done. Homelessness isn't some incredibly difficult concept to understand. You've got somebody that doesn't have anywhere to live. The only way to combat that is to give them somewhere to live.

If that doesn't work, then nothing will work.

 

Where is the Constitutional provision for stripping a natural born citizen of their citizenship?

 

Somebody has to build the shelters and operate them and then provide the treatment. I got two questions about this:

1) who is going to build the shelters? I confess that I am not. So how do they get built?

Harder question:

2) What if the homeless say "no, I don't want to stay in the shelter or take drugs or go to counseling. I like it out here." (Make no mistake, there are some who will resist treatment and government-operated or church-operated shelter, mostly because of zero tolerance of needles, drugs and promiscuity.)

Do you use physical force to evict them from the street and force them into a shelter?


I will come clean at last and say, yes, I would use force if they could not be reasoned into leaving the street, and I think the majority would be behind my draconian measures, though obviously the Left and the press would howl about my insensitivity (while doing nothing themselves, of course.)

 

The first task is to separate the mentally ill from the other homeless population. Take the mentally ill off the streets and put them into homes. The remainder can then work for a living under some form of government corps. Get them out into the wild building trails or clearing brush.

 

The solution is housing first. There should be no requirement to abstain from alcohol and drugs, get treatment, get counseling or take psych meds. Our system is backwards. When you put all these restrictions on housing you drive away the people that need it the most. Give them housing first. Once they become stable many THEN may choose treatment and even if they don't if they are crazy or drunk INSIDE their own apartment why should we care? People have a right to be who they are if they are not hurting anyone