How much do liberals want to keep homeless people down?

[bkholdem]

It utterly and completely amazes me how ignorant some people can be. The 'party of compassion' funds programs that reward and incentivise unproductive behavior, places like homeless shelters that place only minimal expectations of behavior on clients such as no fighting. The homeless people that show up at these places obviously lost their way in life and are 'taught' to stand in a line to get a meal and to stand in a line to get a bed to sleep in, etc.

Liberals talk about 'the safety net' and "are we doing enough". I had one say "yeah, but how many are going to die?" She was perplexed when I responded "all of them". She very much wanted to know "if there is hope". I explained to her that hope is an intervention that one does to oneself, it does not effect the life of homeless people one has never met. I explained "if my mother is on the operating table and I say.. let's hope she is ok... we are actually doing nothing to assit my mother.. our 'hoping' does not float through the air to put knowledge in the surgeon's brain and does not put strenghth in my mothers heart.

What hope does is turn our minds away from thinking about difficult realities. My mom might die on the operating table... hoping is a complete lack of intervention to in any way assist my mother...

and having 'hope' that homeless people will be ok is just turning a switch in your brain to not think about the reality of the situation.

I happen to be a formerly homelsss person who has lived in homeless shelters and eaten at soup kitchens. I know first hand what goes on inside the lives of homeless poeple as I was one. I know what it takes to move past that because I did it. I know that entitlement programs do not assist homeless people in improving their situation, it only keeps them down.

[bisonbison]

Liberals also fund literacy programs for the homeless, health care for homeless children and families, interview and job placement assistance for the homeless, mental health care for the estimated 1/4 of the homeless suffering from a persistent, severe mental disorder, halfway housing, substance and physical abuse outreach and treatment, and often, a hot or two and a cot.

If these programs provide disincentives for some homeless people, and plenty of opportunity to game the system for others, they also provide services that many homeless people are grateful for.

Some solutions are incomplete and flawed. That doesn't make them worthless.

[bkholdem]

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Some solutions are incomplete and flawed. That doesn't make them worthless.

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I think you have funny concept of 'solution'. If it is broken and produces bad results it is no 'solution' it is a 'problem'.

[iron81]

One result of homeless shelters and welfare is that they keep people fed and warm. While you are correct that this provides a disincentive to lift themselves by their bootstraps, someone so poor that they are homeless has a high time preference. This means that while it might be in their long term interest to get a job, it doesn't matter much if they don't have enough to eat tonight. We have to take care of their immediate needs and provide longer term help that Bison mentioned.

Dependant>Hungry

[bkholdem]

[ QUOTE ]
One result of homeless shelters and welfare is that they keep people fed and warm. While you are correct that this provides a disincentive to lift themselves by their bootstraps, someone so poor that they are homeless has a high time preference. This means that while it might be in their long term interest to get a job, it doesn't matter much if they don't have enough to eat tonight. We have to take care of their immediate needs and provide longer term help that Bison mentioned.

Dependant>Hungry

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not only do homeless people get food stamps but there are plety of places to get free hot meals. And the ones who have been homeless for a while collect SSI/social security so they have plenty of money to buy food. Homeless people are not busy trying to figure out how to get their next meal. They are busy standing in line doing nothing. That is the system.

[bruceypants]

[ QUOTE ]
I happen to be a formerly homelsss person who has lived in homeless shelters and eaten at soup kitchens. I know first hand what goes on inside the lives of homeless poeple as I was one. I know what it takes to move past that because I did it. I know that entitlement programs do not assist homeless people in improving their situation, it only keeps them down.

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In fact many homeless rights activists say the single most devastating thing Reagan did to create homelessness was when he cut the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by three-quarters, from $32 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion by 1988. The department was the main governmental supporter of subsidized housing for the poor. Add this to Reagan's overhaul of tax codes to reduce incentives for private developers to create low-income homes and you had a major crisis for low-income families and individuals. Under Reagan, the number of people living beneath the federal poverty line rose from 24.5 million in 1978 to 32.5 million in 1988.

And the number of homeless people went from something so little it wasn't even written about widely in the late 1970s to more than 2 million when Reagan left office.


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http://www.democracynow.org/article..../06/11/1431244

[bkholdem]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I happen to be a formerly homelsss person who has lived in homeless shelters and eaten at soup kitchens. I know first hand what goes on inside the lives of homeless poeple as I was one. I know what it takes to move past that because I did it. I know that entitlement programs do not assist homeless people in improving their situation, it only keeps them down.

[/ QUOTE ]



[ QUOTE ]
In fact many homeless rights activists say the single most devastating thing Reagan did to create homelessness was when he cut the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by three-quarters, from $32 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion by 1988. The department was the main governmental supporter of subsidized housing for the poor. Add this to Reagan's overhaul of tax codes to reduce incentives for private developers to create low-income homes and you had a major crisis for low-income families and individuals. Under Reagan, the number of people living beneath the federal poverty line rose from 24.5 million in 1978 to 32.5 million in 1988.

And the number of homeless people went from something so little it wasn't even written about widely in the late 1970s to more than 2 million when Reagan left office.


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http://www.democracynow.org/article..../06/11/1431244

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I didn't see anything here to refute what I am saying. Are you suggesting that the republicans are conspiring with the liberals to increase the numbers of homeless that the liberals keep down?

[bruceypants]

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I happen to be a formerly homelsss person who has lived in homeless shelters and eaten at soup kitchens. I know first hand what goes on inside the lives of homeless poeple as I was one. I know what it takes to move past that because I did it. I know that entitlement programs do not assist homeless people in improving their situation, it only keeps them down.



[/ QUOTE ]



In fact many homeless rights activists say the single most devastating thing Reagan did to create homelessness was when he cut the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by three-quarters, from $32 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion by 1988. The department was the main governmental supporter of subsidized housing for the poor. Add this to Reagan's overhaul of tax codes to reduce incentives for private developers to create low-income homes and you had a major crisis for low-income families and individuals. Under Reagan, the number of people living beneath the federal poverty line rose from 24.5 million in 1978 to 32.5 million in 1988.

And the number of homeless people went from something so little it wasn't even written about widely in the late 1970s to more than 2 million when Reagan left office.



[/ QUOTE ]
http://www.democracynow.org/article..../06/11/1431244



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I didn't see anything here to refute what I am saying. Are you suggesting that the republicans are conspiring with the liberals to increase the numbers of homeless that the liberals keep down?

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I think we have a different definition of "keeping a person down." I consider a person with a house to be in a better situation than a person without a house. To that end, subsidized housing that provides more poor people with houses improves the lot of poor people in general. You seem to view subsidized housing as a negative because ... those people with subsidized housing are less likely to attain Maslow's fifth level of self actualization?

[AlexM]

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Under Reagan, the number of people living beneath the federal poverty line rose from 24.5 million in 1978 to 32.5 million in 1988.

[/ QUOTE ]

Odd that the period of measurement begins two years before Reagan took office. Why is that do you think? And let's not mention how completely and totally arbitrary the "poverty line" is or the fact that for some reason they're using total numbers instead of making it a percentage of the population. Most of those "below" the poverty line in this country would be above it in most others.

Surprisingly enough, that actually IS a percentage increase in population btw. I find it amazing that they would choose to use the worthless statistic of total rather than using the percentage though. 9 times out of 10, that's a sure sign that the statistic's a lie.

[New001]

Those numbers sound quite menacing until you realize that the US population rose by more than 24M between 1978 and 1988. The actual increase in people living under an arbitrary poverty line increased from 11% to just over 13%.