We need only look at the treatment of such other topics as crime, terrorism, and warfare to see examples of the same sort of misplaced sentimentality and willful ignorance. Tolerance of criminality leads to more crime; tolerance of terrorism leads to more terrorism; efforts to appear defenseless lead to war, subsidies for homelessness produce more homeless people.
Tuesday, August 29, 2023
Things these days …
… (12) Bears, Boston and the Gods of the Copybook Headings.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I immediately knew this was going to be illogical when I read this, "subsidies for homelessness produce more homeless people." So I read the article and got no logic.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest subsidy we have for homelessness is rent coupons, whether section 88 or otherwise. And here in Lowell, the complexes with the most rent coupons are clean and in good repair, as they must be for the owners to have their apartments qualify.
Here's the math that makes these coupons necessary. Apartments for an elderly person to live alone run around the mid-teens per month. A single mother of 3 will need to pay about $2,000, maybe more. Yet, social security for the elderly person may be only $900 or so. But what if it's a fair sized check, over $2,000 say? How can anyone live on $600-or-so per month, after Medicare, after health care expenses, after utilities, after clothes, and don't forget food? Therefore, SNAP or food stamps.
Here in Lowell MA, every so many years, the city goes on a river-clearing spree, getting social workers together, police, and so forth, to place all the homeless people, hooking them up with whatever housing and drug programs are available.
The article notes how "Boston is even refurbishing an island into a 'recovery campus'". It's actually bringing back a shelter, The Long Island Shelter, which still has the 12-step poster on a wall. (For some reason, the article made it sound like a spin off of Escape From New York with Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken.) Who will Boston put there, except addicts? The shelter is not going to create addicts. Of course, there is still some debate among old-time friends of Bill, whether medication helps alcoholics, instead of having them go through the often deadly DTs while sobering up. Thus, the drunks don't mind the sobering up process, and the system becomes part of the problem, not killing the wild bears so to speak. Other than that, I don't know the logic.
Addiction, a huge problem with the homeless. It's led lately to the Housing First movement, because a drunk cannot bring a bottle into a shelter without getting kicked back onto the streets. And isn't the best place to be if you need a drug fix, out on the streets?
But we have more than a million individual stories about why someone is on the streets, what he or she has to do to cope with the situation, how to beg and survive, or why someone calls the streets home.
I know or used to know a disabled guy, an alcoholic, who could sleep in his brother's family shed if he wanted, but would rather be down river than put up with the stress of that household. He's a fairly meek guy, a sort of misfit, unfortunately an easy mark whenever a violent prisoner is placed out on parole. It'd be hard to see him working dependably anywhere, but we cannot call him lazy, because he would go canning for money, the "borrowed" shopping cart acting like a rollator to help him get around on his weak legs. I helped him get into a treatment program, but he went back to drinking, not for the first time either. The last I knew he was in a program again, and possibly succeeding. He talked about qualifying for an apartment and a lawyer helping him to get social security, which he had been denied in the past because drinking seemed to be the reason for his not keeping a job. His brother, however, a different brother moved into his encampment by the river, and died during the next winter, maybe froze, maybe murdered, no one checked, but streets talk.
Here's an editorial from the Lowell Sun: Lowell replaces homeless talk with action plan.
-- Rus Bowden
ReplyDelete