The Liberal Gun Club Forum

President Trump has directed multiple agencies to develop a solution for the growing homelessness problem in California, complaining about disease and other issues, according to government officials.

It is unclear what legal powers the federal government would use to move people against their will. White House officials are in California this week to discuss the matter with local leaders.

Breelyn Pete, an aide to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, told Politico that a “very large delegation” of Trump administration officials is in town to meet with the mayor’s office over the homelessness issue.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... acilities/

Is the delegation staying in a Trump hotel?

In many cases it is the lack of affordable housing for the working poor and in some areas the working middle class that creates the homeless.

See? The solution to all of America's problems is round up the undesirables and put them in camps.

Trump is wanting to round them up so when he and the Reptilians lose big time 2019 they will have a place to stay in the new order.

This idea is batshit insane for a number of reasons...

Oh look they found a class lever for the rich moderates who can’t quite be won over with racism. We’re fucked.

Marlene wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 4:49 pm Oh look they found a class lever for the rich moderates who can’t quite be won over with racism. We’re fucked.

LOL...but I have a dark sense of humor...

Marlene wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 4:49 pm Oh look they found a class lever for the rich moderates who can’t quite be won over with racism. We’re fucked.

Yes. Deny social services to the poor. Lock them up in private prisons at wage earner taxpayer expense. If the "liberal" voters OK this, we truly are screwed.

I'm with Marlene on this one. If they executed such a program well (doubtful), it would make a great wedge issue to draw back moderates. Basically, like a politically correct racism.

Chicago has its shootings, Baltimore its rats and LA its homeless. In CA it's a battle between state and local governments and local residents who want the homeless to disappear but don't want homeless facilities or low income housing in their cities - NIMBY.

And there is the debate between those wanting CA to have a "right to shelter" law and those arguing the solution is long term housing.

But New York City is actually a cautionary tale of a city spending billions and billions of dollars on shelter without reducing homelessness. New York City’s efforts to combat homelessness are only a “success” if you are observing from 3000 miles away (New York’s Governor Cuomo recently wrote that New York City’s homeless crisis is worse now than under former mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg). [Republican mayors of New York City]

But reducing homelessness also requires a lot of other measures that do not cost a dime. California legislators could expand tenant protections (AB 1482, reforming the Ellis Act) so people don’t become homeless. Many cities can do a lot more to protect rent-controlled housing. California legislators could also stop cities from preventing new housing, a practice that drives up rents and has put thousands of people on to the streets.

https://www.laprogressive.com/right-to-shelter/

Like good liberals, they'll keep debating solutions while the problem gets worse and worse.

Banning air b n b and taxing vacancy would help a lot.

There are a lot of issues that touch on homelessness in California. I doubt very much that the federal government will come up with the correct answer. In my area (northern Bay Area and I suspect many other areas), one of the big problems is the length of time and cost of getting a development proposal through planning and to construction. It can take a good 10 years. While I don't pity the developers (far from it, they make their own problems by being slimy), the municipalities aren't doing themselves any favors with this lengthy review process. It adds considerable costs to the development which the developer passes on to the buyer. This results in an overall lack of housing units which drives up the cost of all housing units, including rentals. Unless you're a non profit, developers can't afford to do low income development because they'll go broke. It doesn't pencil, so they won't do it.

Add to this the constant influx of new bodies and yeah, there's a housing market issue. It's too expensive and there are too few units available.

I'm somewhat hesitant to suggest that further renter rights/rent control are the correct solution either. There are a lot of middle classers who own (the mortgage on) one or two rentals as their retirement. Yeah, they've got more money than the poor and certainly more assets. But if we make it impossible to adjust rents or evict people who don't pay, they lose the house and go bankrupt, which doesn't help solve the problem because now they don't have an income or place to live either. The banks win, though, so there's that.

I see the solution more as a government issue in that space needs to be allocated and we all need to pony up for construction costs (through taxes) to get folk under roofs.

Then, there's the mental health and addiction element. Many of the chronically homeless are so because they aren't able to participate in society, at least not the way society works presently. There are precious few resources for these people because... we don't demand and fund them.

NIMBY is a bitch and it's not just limited to "I don't want the slums next door." People don't want to pay for it. There are also the CAVE (citizens against virtually everything) People to deal with. Homelessness is as much an infrastructure problem as anything. The solutions are not glorious, they are very expensive, and nobody wants to pay for them.

"Round up the Gypsies" is it?

I think he's talking through his hat with yet another distraction.

CDFingers

Well, the funny thing is that eventually the courts would then force the federal government to pickup the tab for their healthcare, which would be a pretty big bill.

senorgrand wrote: Wed Sep 11, 2019 11:38 am Well, the funny thing is that eventually the courts would then force the federal government to pickup the tab for their healthcare, which would be a pretty big bill.

I have a feeling that the "health care" they would receive would mirror private prison care or internment camp care. It would cost taxpayers a lot and private prisons would, somehow, profit.

The just want to highlight the problem, demonize the poor and the liberals, and make money off the whole thing. Sucks.

In CA, prison healthcare is better than Medicaid...a low bar I know.

In publicly owned prisons, maybe.

I'll go out on a limb here. I am no sociologist.

I live in city centers. In every city in which I abide, I am right downtown: Manhattan, San Francisco, Salt Lake City. All of those cities have a large number of homeless people nearby where I live. I will for a moment assume they are a decent sample of "homelessness".

I also have a fair number of friends who aren't really making it economically. Some have just been skilled out of the markets, some are PoC and lower skilled, some ex military with mental issues/social issues/drug issues. None of my friends is truly homeless. None of them has a cardboard sign looking for spare change. They have all managed to find a place to sleep indoors and a place to eat. Sure some of them are sleeping on a yoga mat in a friend's garage, but they have access to indoor plumbing, washing machines, etc. When I see them, they look pretty normal to me. Keeping up basic appearances is a fundamental human skill to stay integrated into society.

Of the truly homeless people I see in the cities where I live, I have not seen a "simply homeless" person in a long time. Both in NYC and in SLC, I live within a few blocks of a homeless mission. The people lined up and sitting outside these places are not "simply homeless". They seem to have major mental issues, or are so socially challenged they cannot hold down even part time work.

On the rare occasion when I do see a repeat visitor who is homeless, and they have the appearance of being "simply homeless", I always try to intervene - always. I start up a conversation, see if they seem stable enough, and then offer to help out. I take them into the manager at the local homeless fix-it center (and I really do know them), and I try to get this person to the "head of the line". Why? Are they more worthy as humans. Nope. But they look like escape candidates to me, and if a little help will get them back into a place to live, I will spend a few hours and a few dollars.

So, when was the last time I did this? 3 years ago in San Francisco. I saw a youngish girl living on the streets. I offered that "I have six daughters. I know what a tough girl looks like. No offense, but you don't really look like a tough girl." We got her into the local crisis center and she made the first few steps to get off the streets. I don't try to keep in touch. I just see if a kick start will help.

Why 3 years ago? Well, I have not met a homeless person in 3 years that had the basic look of anything other than mentally ill and deeply drug addicted. This is not a value judgement on my part; I just have nothing to offer such people. They are just as human as you and I. If we have souls, theirs has as much worth as mine for sure. But they look, act and smell like Santa's Severely Broken Toys. I saw a young man walking down the street this morning. His head was down. He was incredibly dirty. He had no shoes. His feet were dark brown, and he was a caucasian. To me, he is the typical homeless person.

I really do want Government help for these folks. Really. I want them to have a place to sleep; take a shower; eat real food. Just the very basics. But this homeless young man is only 5 blocks away from a Mission that I -KNOW- will give him a shower and shoes for free. There are free clothes available. There are showers and washing machines at the Mission. But these folks are in such a mental state that they will not go use these resources.

Do I think that Trump and Co are simply using the issue for political reasons? Hell yes.

But I see that very wealthy cities such as NYC and SF cannot seem to put even a dent into the problem.

I also note that Japan has a total care system for every human being. No person in Japan needs to be homeless or go without a meal. And yet, when you visit Shinkuku Station in Tokyo, the homeless in their cardboard dwellings are still squatting there. They won a court battle to keep their right to live in cardboard boxes instead of Government housing.

This is a really hard problem, and no offense to contrary opinions, I have not seen a "simply homeless" person in 3 years.

So why don't I see any "simply homeless" people? I believe most of them:
1) Live in a car and shower at work or similar
2) Make a lot of effort to not look homeless - they want to stay integrated
3) Have enough mental capacity and social capacity to be "invisibly homeless"

I would LOVE to be of more help to such folks - they are completely out to sight to me. (As they wish to be.)

The visibly homeless are not simply poor; they have issues far beyond having a place to sleep.

Max, your experience is very different from mine.

Marlene wrote: Wed Sep 11, 2019 12:25 pm In publicly owned prisons, maybe.

Of course!

Marlene said:

Max, your experience is very different from mine.

Marlene, you are not the only person to say so.

Perhaps it is the City Centers where I reside.

And my point is not that there is not a serious problem.

I believe we have two very serious patterns:

1) People who cannot cope - as Homeless.

2) Economic homeless.

Two problems, two separate solutions.

We're a different geography than the Bay Area proper with a couple of largish towns and a bunch of small ones dispersed throughout an agricultural/tourist economy. Around my area, homelessness comes in three basic forms. 1) mental health/addiction that are chronically homeless. 2) the very poor who generally live in cars, RVs or the bushes--it's really hard to get a job when you don't have an address. Many of these were financially flattened in 2008 or thereafter or from various natural disasters in the area. Mental health/addiction nips at their heals as well, in many cases. 3) migrant farm workers/laborers, usually undocumented, in and out of packed apartments/rentals/bushes and largely denied services/protections or afraid to seek them out due to undocumented status.

All three have their own complications and what solutions there are do not cross-pollinate very well.

featureless said:

...3) migrant farm workers/laborers, usually undocumented, in and out of packed apartments/rentals/bushes and largely denied services/protections or afraid to seek them out due to undocumented status.

All three have their own complications and what solutions there are do not cross-pollinate very well.

(3) Is a group I never see - farm workers and country laborers.

And I completely agree that the solutions for these types of homeless are all different with very limited overlap.


Here are the organizations I have worked with WRT homelessness:

NYC:
NYC Rescue Org
http://nycrescue.org

These are really good people. I donate to the Bowery location nearest where I stay in NYC.


SF:
Raphael House (focus on homeless families with children)
https://www.shelterlist.com/details/raphael-house

This is a fantastic place. I have done volunteer work at RH. It leaves one without words.


SLC:
https://saltlakehomelessmission.com

This is a new place to me, just a few blocks from where I live downtown. Really a busy place.

Some of us are literally one pay check away from being homeless. Don't trust the government to solve this problem. People working part time jobs are paying over 20% in taxes and benefits that wouldn't existing by the time they leave the work force. We are tired of protesting. Time for action. Time to fight Fascists States of AmeriKKKa.

Brownrasta said:

Some of us are literally one pay check away from being homeless.

If you expand "one paycheck" to "three paychecks" I think that covers almost half of the population.

We are living in very insecure times. Very.

The nature of work is changing faster than any retraining effort can cope. In data analytics, if someone leaves work for 3 years they need to be almost totally retrained. We did a semiotics scan project for an online job posting service. Entire job descriptions disappeared in less than 2 years.

Many new postings have 25% net new descriptive keywords in measured over the same 2 years.

The man (or his advisers) has an evil genius for asymmetric political attacks that bypass a normal political defense.