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It’s almost like they’re just regular people who simply experienced some bad luck.
For those interested in this topic: The Winston Rhea Scholarship is an amazing organization. For some context on how serious of an issue this is, here are some stats from their site:
400,000+ children are currently in the foster care system in the United States. Less than 3% of those will obtain a college degree, less than 1% will obtain an advanced degree. One in five will be homeless within 6 months of exiting care. One in five of the females will end up pregnant before age 21. One in four of the males will have been arrested at some point before age 25.
This group helps young adults coming out of foster care - which btw at 18 you’re basically kicked out and on your own - and helps them improve their odds.
I am not a part of the non-profit, but I know people working on it, and let me tell you what they’re doing is so fucking important. Consider donating or at the very least learning more about this issue: https://www.winstonrhea.org/
My mom died when I was 20 and the old man sold the house and took off with anything of value while I was just out of electrical engineering and there was a big economic downturn in the early 90s … I crashed on people’s couches in crack house neighborhoods and sometimes slept under bridges or highway overpasses… Had no car - no job and lucked into a job at Sears selling PC’s back when windows 3.11 was king. I earned enough to buy a bike and bike my way to work from wherever I was crashing and bought a damned pink barbie backpack from a tag sale for 2 bucks so I could bring my suit jacket and tie required in those days and I took a damned ribbing until I could get a better situation. People that have a fallback are lucky as hell and should consider themselves so.
I’ve been homeless twice. Thankfully I had a car and I could live out of it temporarily while I found some family to save my ass while I got back on my feet.
If I hadn’t had family keep me from rock bottom it’s hard to say if I would have pulled out of those situations on my own.
Unfortunately for many people they have little to no empathy for homeless because they have been lied to or attacked by homeless and they then view all homeless that way.
I remember once in my teens I skateboarded over to a sandwich place to get lunch for myself and my brother. On the way there I passed a homeless guy with a sign asking for “anything”. I decided to get him a sandwich while I was there. Just a basic turkey sandwich or something as plain as I could think of. When I tried to give him the sandwich he threw it back at me and told me I should have just given him the money so he could get drunk.
That experience really tainted my view of the homeless from that day onwards. Then later in life I would have two different girlfriends get grabbed by homeless people over the years.
I have a buddy that lived downtown and the homeless people there were always breaking their windows and stealing their stuff. One of them set fire to the side of their house out of boredom. When the police came they just escorted him to the street and then left. He didn’t get tried for arson or anything. The cops don’t care. They have no system in place to deal with those people.
Its easy for people to have empathy for a group that they have never interacted with. Anyone who lives near homeless or regularly interacts with homeless people will tell you that not all of them are good people who just got abandoned by society. Some of them are evil bad people who have refused help or just don’t want it. Most of them need mental support.
It’s a very complicated issue and I dont think it has any easy or cheap solutions.
Same here on a few bad experiences trying to help
- a guy asked for money to get a meal combo from McDonalds. I bought him the meal combo, so he keyed my car for not giving him cash
- I suppose I can see this being taken the wrong way, but I tried emptying my pockets a few times, only for them to throw the counts on the ground. After that I started noticing homeless with coins on the ground around them
Realistically, it doesn’t matter anymore since I almost never have cash. They seem to know that world has gone too, as I’m rarely solicited anymore
Yeah I haven’t carried any cash for years and most of the time I offer to buy them food they decline. Once in awhile they take me up on the offer and are thankful but I am still always a little worried they are gonna throw it in my face after that experience I had as a kid.
It’s a shit situation all around.
Homelessness is not only living on the street either. There are lots of housing insecurities. Some people may move back in with family but the location isn’t safe or welcoming.
I’ve seen many young mothers face this exact situation, often even when that same family pressured her to carry the pregnancy to term.
For real. And I don’t. I always feel humbled when I see a homeless person because I’m just a hop and a skip away from being in their predicament. All it would take is an unfortunate event or two.
My parents wouldn’t even have the fucking space to let me stay.
And then we have people like musk, who grew up with a golden spoon and view those on social security as parasites.
Yep, anyone can be homeless.
If you sell your house and are between houses now, technically you are homeless but you’re privileged you can live in a hotel or rent a storage unit and couch surf or if you have a friend or family member to stay with. If you have a job, you can still afford shelter and not lose everything. This was my family when my brother was a baby and we just stay with a friend for 2 months until we moved into our new house. Both of my parents had jobs. We were privileged.
If you’re evicted because you lost your job or got sick so you were unable to afford to pay your rent. Not all landlords give you a grace period to get behind in rent when something out of your control happened. These people also lose everything if they had no friends or family to help out. If they live paycheck to paycheck, they couldn’t save money. Many Americans are one paycheck away from homelessness. It just means if they get sick or get into an accident or lose their job, they’re screwed.
Forced Homelessness is the policy of many Governments and the DOJ in the United States as a means of punishing those they are after without any due process. Your ability to work or even have ID can be taken from you if they choose to do it. Your money can be taken. Your bank accounts can be frozen.
City, State and Federal Governments have been creating these zones where large numbers of homeless and poor people are forced into with a kind of virtual redlining. Usually, these are downtown areas in major cities, and then the system creates the ability to target them with systemic drug usage, even to the point of the government supplying pipes and needles for people to use. They are given just enough food to stay alive while forced into this position. No employers are going to hire anyone and it isn’t like it used to be where someone can just walk into a factory and make enough money in cash to live for a week.
In many ways it is a public execution system that just operates very slowly and you’ll only occasionally notice the dead body— which even are often not recorded as a death correctly, and it’s nothing you will see in the obituary sections of your newspapers. Imagine a system that lets tons of your former neighbors die slowly on the street while everyone walks by inside their little tech bubbles of safety, confident in the belief that it could never be them.
At some point, it’s really about your view of a human life versus your value of money. At some point along the way, it was decided that the amount of money someone has at that point in time determines their value as a person to even keep existing, or to have basic rights…
If Governments wanted to solve the problem, they could find a building to put people in, they could force drug rehab on some, others probably should be in jail. The ones willing and able to work should be given the opportunity, with a path out of the state imposed public execution systems, and back to a life where they are capable of taking care of themselves.
“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.”
Well said!
No one should judge homeless people. It’s easy to judge being in a privileged position, but without having experienced bad shit yourself you should just shut the fuck up. Maybe help the less privileged, otherwise you will be judged by my.
I don’t think people judge them specifically, around me are a lot of scammers,asking it very difficult to know who needs “help”
Yeah, there’s that too. A decade or more ago, our local paper ran an expose on the scammers, but they kept it reasonably constructive, giving equal space to strategies for identifying those in actual need.
For my teens, I kept it simple
- someone actively soliciting you in a high traffic area is likely a scammer
- someone sitting quietly, trying to “shrink” away from attention, whether they have their hand out or not, is more likely in need
That shouldn’t be a reason to ensure more money to go to the ultra rich while making the lives of the poor even more miserable.
But you can’t tell if they really need help. Look up the fake violin beggars. It’s very similar, panhandle all day, then go home.
What does that have to do with ultra rich?
Who said we’re making their lives more miserable?
The western world is heading towards the right, destroying social structures in governments. Increasing taxes for the poor, grocery costs, rent and house prices, stripping health care and education systems. While at the same time we ensure the ultra rich get more power and money and can continue not paying any taxes.
But your argument is also wrong. Just because you can’t tell who really needs help you don’t help anyone? Just because a car can have an accident you don’t drive at all? Do you think the street violin players are rich? In my city there’s an east European gang dropping off beggers at certain spots, forcing them to beg. It’s very clear who’s part of this organization and who’s a local homeless person. I always give our local homeless money or food. I volunteer at a venue where the homeless can get free coffee or tea and twice a week a free meal. I vote left, I live in a left city and I speak out for social structures and against nazis. Friends who are struggling financially I financially support, like my past holiday to Cambodia, 2 of my friends and I payed for the entire holiday of one of our friend so he could join us. Every bit helps, even the smaller ones.
I’m struggling in life as well, just not financially (PTSD). I get support from friends and the government. It helps me to live from day to day. There are people judging me, telling me “just have a different mindset”. These are people who never had a struggle in their life. They are completely lost when they ever hit an obstacle in life, but until then they don’t care about others who struggle and they judge them for “not making different choices” etc. “Why don’t you get a job and buy a house”, while this homeless person lives in a constant psychosis and can’t do anything else then play air guitar on the streets. Or because this guy won boxing championships back in the days which got him extreme brain damage, ending his career and putting him on the streets drowning him in alcohol and drugs. These are our most famous homeless persons, who have died in the past 3 years. But everyone has their own story and reasons for why they ended up in the fucked up position no one wants to be in. Even the beggers who are forced to work for this criminal organization. I feel sorry for them, I just don’t know how to help them because everything goes to the criminals who control them and keep their passports.
my view of homeless people changed forever when I learned that more than half of them were foster kids who aged out of the system and were left with no family or resources.
Jesus, that’s dark.
Sure, it may sound bad when children become homeless. But have you ever thought about how much money it saves? Just think of all the good things we can afford with all that money!
Like anti-homeless park benches. Or those little speakers that emit ultra-high-pitched sounds so that young people don’t … enjoy … existing somewhere or something, idk.
And just because I’m unable to actually satirize reality at the moment, yes, /s
Yep… there’s also a massive overlap with vulnerable groups like LGBT and disabled
LGBT
X to doubt
You doubt that people put their kids on the street when they come out as gay? Lol.
I don’t doubt that, I just forgot that lemmy is like 80% american and you guys don’t have any social security over there lmao.
I’m gonna need a source on that second claim cause it doesn’t sound right
I think the second guy had it backwards.
Wikipedia (If you don’t like it, use it’s sources):
Nearly half of foster children in the US become homeless when they reach the age of 18
Backwards as in “less than half” vs “more than half”.
Yeah that’s just the telephone chain effect (or whatever they call it).
1: Source says 45%
2: Guy reads source and says “nearly half”
3: Chap listens to Guy and says “half”
4: Dude listens to Chap and says “more than half”
5: Uni-Grad hears Dude and says “a significant amount of”
6: Media hears Uni-Grad and says “almost all”between 2 and 3 there is a step that goes from “nearly half” to “roughly half” and that is what makes that jump easier you would also likely see that between 3 and 4.
however 2-4 are not needed because 45% is by most metrics a “significant amount”
Backwards as in half of foster kids, not half of homeless people.
Ahh right. I didn’t notice that part.
Guess I should have read the image as carefully as your text.
That’s still really bad though
That’s honestly worse.
Even worse a ward of the state loses ALL benifits permanently if they are convicted of any offense, guess how motivated social workers are to find an excuse? For anyone that’s never been through these systems when you spend a lot of time with a social worker, I’ve never been more clearly threatened more credibily by anyone my entire life. I told one that I needed help with child care and they said ‘‘you don’t want to tell ME that, if you’re having such a hard time watching your kids, maybe you need them removed by CPS, I can have an office over there before you get home if you’d like, or can you manage without talking to be about it?’’ Imagine being 18, right out of foster care, trying to get enployment or training through health and human services, and they know all they have to do is get you on any technicality and case closed. I know they’d get you a job with a van picking you up, and let police have a look at your ID and run it to find any lapse. Had a cop pull over a van with 8 people, never even talked to the driver, just demanded everyone in the van give over ID and, clearly targeting, went right for one guy and ‘‘found out’’ he had failed to report the job we all started that day to his case worker who set up the job assignment, and got him charged right there. The business we were hired by was furious, because apparently they’ve lost vital numbers of workers this way, and the social workers did this fairly regularly, also the amount of times they send you paperwork that gets to you on the 9th, and had to be turned in by the 8th was VERY precise and consistant. The welfare state isn’t about helping anyone, it’s about reducing the burden on the tax prayer by any means necessary. They do not care about getting you kicked out permanently. They want your case closed.
It’s because those orgs have been captured by their enemies, people that don’t want to help. They blame the people that need the services as being leeches, but they are the ones getting paid to fail at their jobs. They don’t want to see it succeed, they want it to fail so they can say how bad the system is.
Sounds psychotic, which is also what I come to expect.
When you have decades of Republicans putting poison pills into every law and passing bills that create as much disfunction as possible this is the end result.
Point taken… also ouch…
Two time boomeranging failson here.
I tried Lord how I tried. I fell flat on my face trying to make it on my own. Actually did wind up homeless for a stint. If I didn’t have the option to crawl back home to lick my wounds, I’m not sure I would have made it.
