• girlfreddy@mastodon.social
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    1 year ago

    @trias10 @Peruvian_Skies

    The real issue is that too many Americans have bought into the bootstrap theory and couldn’t give a shit about their neighbours who don’t have a place to live or food to eat.

    Take care of those 2 things first and there won’t be an issue of people hanging out where it’s warm/cool and food is being supplied.

    • tdgoodman@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      A solution requires more than just providing food and shelter. We have a class of people who are marginally mentally ill or barely literate. They do not function well enough to hold down a job or fill out a welfare form, but they function too well to require that they be locked up. These people need a semi-monitored place with enough oversight to keep them safe. The street can’t do that, but they have no other place to go.

    • trias10@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s not just an America problem. Have you been to Paris lately and seen the homelessness situation there, especially on the Metro?

      Or in Oslo, where homeless Roma people attack people in broad daylight at Nationalteatret station and steal their luggage?

      It’s a big problem everywhere, and attitudes like the type you describe aren’t relegated solely to Americans.

        • trias10@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’d love to mate, but I honestly don’t know how. One thing I have to come to realise is that simply throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. Norway, London, NYC, and California both spends billions each year on homelessness and the problem is only getting worse every year in all those places.

          Maybe a good place to start would be opening up free sanitariums again where homeless people with mental issues could be housed, as sadly the streets have become the new dumping ground for people with severe mental illness.

          Beyond that, am not sure, besides a total dismantling of capitalism.

          • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The answer is trivial.

            Stop spending billions on a “war on drugs” and make sure people have houses and healthcare (including mental health) unconditionally with no ridiculous hoops or welfare traps 10 years before they become a street junkie.

            Just because some places misused a bunch of money doing very stupid things with it doesn’t validate ignoring the solution.

            • trias10@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              It’s not nearly so trivial. Having lived in Norway for many years, a country which does have unconditional free healthcare (including mental health), and free access to housing, they still have a large homeless population and plenty of street crime.

              • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Norway has much much lower homeless proportion than more neoliberal countries. It is a prime example of this strategy working.

                • trias10@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Maybe, but even Norway has hardly stamped out homelessness completely. Far from it actually, there are some parts of Oslo which have immensely high levels of homelessness. Not as bad Skid Row in LA, but not far behind either.

                  • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Hahaha! Doing that thing you said (but still with some hoops for mental healthcare and housing) only makes it way better! Check-mate! Let’s double down on spending ten times as much pujishing the homeless for being homeless!

          • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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            1 year ago

            Beyond that, am not sure, besides a total dismantling of capitalism.

            You say that like it’s not the actual solution.

            • trias10@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              No one would be happier than me with this solution, but it will never realistically happen in our lifetimes. And even if it somehow came to happen eventually, given the entrenchment of current elites, it would only happen with an immense cost in human lives and violence, and a massive drop in living standards in the immediate aftermath before some utopia is created.

              Current day -> neo Soviet revolution -> Mad Max -> the last of us? -> ??? -> Bernie Sanders Utopia

              • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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                1 year ago

                All those things are basically guaranteed anyway thanks to climate change. I just hope the survivors aren’t stupid enough to try to go back to how things are now.

          • bluGill@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            The sanitoriums were closed for good reason. Bad as homelessness is, it is better than the abuse of sanitoriums.

            Not a sanitorium, but i know someone who was in an orphanage, they beat kids with a metal chimney brush if they put their head on the pillow when they slept. This earned them lots of awards for how nice all the kids beds were. Sanitoriums were reportable just as bad, but I don’t have such close accounts.

            • girlfreddy@mastodon.social
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              1 year ago

              @bluGill @TheTango @Peruvian_Skies @trias10

              The sanatoriums were horrendous and closed by both Canadian and American gov’ts in the late 60’s - early 70’s for good reason. The problem was the gov’ts didn’t put programs in place to help those people live outside the walls … essentially the same thing they do with prisoners now.

              Guaranteed incomes, stable housing and support networks would clear up many of the “issues”, but too many whine about their tax dollars being spent on people in need.