I think we can be too cynical.
To me, “unsheltered” sounded like a subset of “homeless”, so your comment interested me and I looked it up. Apparently the word “unsheltered” applies to people who “sleep outside, in vehicles or somewhere else not meant for human habitation”, whereas “homeless” is broader. There are probably other definitions too.
From my quick search, it also seems that some people dislike the word “homeless” for other reasons too.
This is how the problem of homelessness is being dealt with in Britain:
Anti-homeless architecture that makes public spaces hostile to rough sleepers. I suppose the thinking is that, if wealthy people can’t see the problem, it’s easier for them to pretend it doesn’t exist.
I once heard someone casually and sincerely suggest forcibly drafting anyone who could be shown to have been continuously homeless for 6 months or more. When I expressed surprise, he looked at me and said, “What? I thought you just said you were in favor of Housing First?”
as mil/Nav historian, I can say that drafting homeless people is damaging to the US overall military strenght, and put considerable burden on US armed services: many homeless are not precisely in military age, and albeit not few can have knowledge & skills useful to military, training and physically reconditioning people ~30-40 years old and just endured an half-year of hardship is very difficult and time-consuming, without much prospective of getting a capable Sailor/Soldier/airman.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Oh, agreed it was a terrible idea. Just relaying one of those conversations where, "Adults say the Darnedest Things!"™️
Yes, we definitely can be too cynical. My reaction comes from recognizing a pattern of political speak used to dull the senses. It’s not innocents being killed, it’s causalities… now it’s not causalities, it’s collateral damage… and so on. Once a term carries too much emotional connection, a new one is thrust into the media vernacular and it bothers me.
Am I cynical about this? A little… because there is a bit of truth to it.
My best friend from high school got schizophrenia, became addicted to crack in an attempt to self-medicate, and became homeless in his early 20s, and it was literally impossible to help him. Dozens of family and friends spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars over many years trying to help him, and he would not be helped. He remains homeless to this day, 30 years later. The number of people willing to help has dwindled, but there are a lot of us who still try every time he contacts one of us. He is an extreme case, and the kind of person people like to point at and say “Homelessness is a choice.” This makes me crazy, because it’s using his extreme (although not unusual) case to warp the lens through which we see unhoused people.
Dozens of times over my life, I’ve seen the norm in becoming homeless, which is a confluence of problems that could easily be prevented with a different social attitude than the one we have. All people make bad choices, and many times those choices don’t look bad beforehand, like moving to another state for what seems like a great job. We tend to think of bad choices as vices-- like getting addicted to substances. And I personally don’t know anyone who is not addicted to some substance to some degree, legal like alcohol or a Xanax prescription, or illegal like heroin. But the truth is that most bad choices are only bad in hindsight, and getting free of them depends on your safety net. Some people have a big one; others have none.
And the second biggest problem to our general attitude (homeless people are Others who have made bad choices) is that it’s very, extremely hard to reverse the situation. After battling the system with my aforementioned friend many times, I have come to the conclusion that the system wants to keep people homeless. Bureaucracy does literally everything in its power to put roadblocks in the way of becoming housed. Like, if I sat down and made a list of all the things we could do to deliberately stop people from finding homes, I could not do a better job than what we have in place, at least in Texas. Maybe other places in the US do better (which is usually the case when we’re talking about Texas), but if so, I haven’t heard about it.
Anyway, there aren’t types of homeless people. There is one type: people who have problems. Which is everybody in the world. Give the right set of problems the right set of circumstances, and it can happen to anyone.
Hey, I thought I got off the soapbox, but it seems to be stalking me.
This is true, but not in the way that guy was probably thinking about it. Homelessness isn’t an intractable problem. It, like most problems involving Americans not having their basic needs met, is not the result of a lack of resources. It is rather because we, collectively, have been investing all our wealth into making very rich people even richer. It is more or less literally all we have, in aggregate, done with the economic growth of the past half century.
If you just went down a list of every homeless person in America and paid for housing them by taking the funds from whoever the person with the highest net worth is…you would end up with everyone housed and everyone who is currently a billionaire would still be a billionaire.
The predominant reason why people have basic needs that go unmet is not because of a lack of resources but rather because we, as a society, apparently prefer adding extra zeros to the bank accounts of plutocratically wealthly people than we do to solving problems like homelessness.
Thanks to both of you, Amanda and Jbg !
In truth, the part about “aurea mediocritas” is in truth very partial, because I can’t figure how to tactifully & diplomatically point to the two core points on US culture: the winners/losers mindset and the extreme consequence of unrestrained capitalism (as in “maximising the profits”); the first, I think, obvious in this context: the homeless are “losers” in that mindset, so is “their” fault that they don’t manage to be “winners”. and the US system (albeit I think that Texas is a nut-case on welfare & social rights) is, broadly, geared toward rewarding the “winners” and marginalising the “losers”. (let’s put aside the social control aspects of that divide)
jbg, strangely you nail down the core aspect of the global people: the huge bias in American establishment in favour of the few plutocrats instead ot The People (as in “We, The People…”) whose is the very same core of Marxian philosophy a (very different animal from marxism !) and indeed is a serious issue. As indirectly noted earlier, things are moving (sliding ?) quickly toward the limits of the social control, beyond which things explodes (a line whose is where Revolutions & civil wars actually ignites) and in a world where WMD are around, is a really dangerous state of affairs. And as a Naval and military historian with a degree in political science I’m seriously concerned of this.
In the end rest assured that both (and others) of you have strenghtened my absolute faith in American people, whose has shown an unique capability in reckoning the right and wrong course.
The US establishment and the “american” plutocrates have squandered the immense greatness and prestige of the United States, built with the literal blood of three great generation of Americans: the Doughboys of the Great war, the G.I. of the WWII, and the 'Nam and Civil Rights generation, whose built the deserved Respect and admiration of the world, now exploited in what look like global domination, that is, one of the most un-american values, as I understand.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
In my country we have “allowances” for almost everything: Healt insurance allowance to help people pay their health insurance. Rent allowance to help people pay their rent. Daycare allowance to help people pay for their child daycare. This can add up to thousands of euros per year.
The amounts are based on the income, lower income → higher allowance.
The failure in the system is that it does not encourage people to work, because it considers the total yearly income, regardless of how much an individual works.
Suppose someone works 4 days and want s to work an extra day, they can actually end up with less money because they lose their allowances.
I know someone who went from working 4 days to 3 days per week, because it “only cost him 50 euros per month” moneywise because of the higher allowances he’d got.
It seems like people are not so much against working, but against working to no benefit. I suspect this is why when things like UBIs are discussed, means testing is avoided and everyone gets the same flat amount, regardless of income and wealth.
Giving a flat amount to everyone regardless of income ? please look up Italy’s “reddito di cittadinanza”…
Long story short, net of the bewildering array of diverging partisan opinions on the introduction, outcome and termination: the flat money for everyone was actually field-tested in the theoretical most favoreable condition (one of the most laidback and carefree people in the world…) on a voluntary basis, and the results was surprising: few, ~10% of Italians has actually requested those 500€ monthly, and the experiment was terminated “for budget reasons”…
Best regard from, indeed, Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
EDIT: Ops… that embarassing thing actually entered the en.wikipedia:
I wasn’t taking a position. Just pointing out that proponents of UBIs typically also argue that such payments shouldn’t be means tested.
Also, I was under the impression that reddito di cittadinanza was means tested.
For something that isn’t supposed to be flame war, there sure is a lot of controversial statements made.
Ever heard of Digital Nomad? Sell the house and travel around the world? Hard to be addicted to something if, for example, you’re halfway around the world, trying to make a better world. Ever heard of Peace Corps?
I think US has something similar regarding Native Americans, and Alaskans. Not quite the same, but close enough?
Harry, I agree that not all unhoused are dispossessed and disenfranchised. I also agree that many of these lifestyles benefit society in a myriad of ways. With that said, would it be safe to suggest that folks here, perhaps somewhat ambiguously, were referring to those individuals who become unhoused against their will?
Also, I reread the entire topic just now, but perhaps I’m just not reading carefully enough. Respectfully, to whom or to what statement are you directly responding to? Or is this a general response to the absence of acknowledgement of voluntary nomadic lifestyles? I want to make sure I understand correctly.
Thank you.
This article also says that the money can only be used for food and medicine and you lose any money not used by the end of the month, which, if true, would make the program very similar to the US’s food stamps program (SNAP) and thus not terribly experimental. I haven’t found confirmation of the limitations on use elsewhere, but this article also confirms that the money doesn’t roll over.
The CIA World Factbook says that 20% of Italians are below the poverty line, which lends context to the “10% of the total population” figure. That number also squares with the second article linked above saying that 56% of households below the poverty line weren’t receiving the citizens’ income for various reasons—largely not because they didn’t want to, but because they didn’t meet the other requirements or because they weren’t aware of it/didn’t know how to access it.
Basically, this seems pretty similar to existing welfare programs in other countries, with similar limitations on access and usage, so I don’t think it says much about what would happen with UBI.
Yes. This.
Reading through the thread, I see people look at thing as absolute Black/White thing. But it’s not. I said this before, and I say it again: “Life is not black and white. Life is shades of grey.”
So, there are two extremes, one with home and one with involuntary homeless. But that’s not all. There’s also voluntary homelessness.
Maybe sleeping in movie theaters? Busses? Possible with monthly pass.
But wait! There’s more. How about living in a cage? I don’t mean jail. I mean actual cage housing (in Hong Kong). A step up from that is either sleep capsules, or reading rooms in Japan. In some ways, these are worse than jail where you are at least fed regularly.
How about cruise lines as retirement home? It happens. I was homeless for about a year and a half. Long-haul Trucking lifestyle means that I can just sleep in the truck, checking into a hotel whenever needed. There were instances where people sleep under the trailers. I certainly did proper pretrip every time after finding that out!
Is a small house better? Rent so outrageous that you live in a closet? How about an RV? How about tiny house on wheel?
These are the things I picked up along the way. They are all true, yet so outrageous that most people don’t believe it’s true. Yet, they’re all true.
So many problems, so little answers. But that’s because being homeless isn’t a problem, but merely the symptom. Only after you answer the question “Why be homeless?”, can you begin to solve the problem. The actual problem that needs answering. That is something I feel missing in the thread.
Thank you for asking that question. So many people just jumped to conclusion, at least in my experience.
Personal note:
It has been said that a shopping cart is gold when it comes to dystopian living/travel. But I disagree. A rolling duffle, a paired personal bag, and a carryon backpack is better. The two most helpful thing to have when traveling are portable water boiler, and mini rice cooker, since I don’t trust coffee maker and microwave in common rooms.
Flag any specific examples. I’ve said I’ll close this thread if it causes any trouble.
gradually back IT 
my summer “uniform” is a sturdy, 20+ year old (i buyed it in Lire… 7000, for the record, that is, ~3,5 euros) jacket with, uh, nine pockets, basically a RL holdall, reinforced by an heaversack (italian ladies’s holdall is their bag: the quantity of assorted things inside an italian lady’s bag is unbelevable…) and indeed the quantity of things in the pocket of that jacket is on par with Italian ladies’s bags…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
