News Dec 16, 2015 at 4:00 pm

Talk to the Mayors of Other West Coast Cities.

Comments

1
The mayors will find, if they are serious about finding out why so many men and women (unaccompanied by children) are sleeping on the streets or in shelters, what many of us who have assessed hundreds of literally homeless individuals, have been trying to tell people for years, or decades. Mental health issues, especially depression, "self-medicated" by alcohol and/or other drugs are rampant among these troubled men and women. One does not have to be struggling with paranoid schizophrenia, or bi-polar disorder (manic-depression), or clinical depression (which looks just like laziness) to have a mental illness or mental health issue. Untreated anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), borderline personality disorder, ADD, ADHD, and traumatic brain injuries can contribute to poor performance in school that leads to school dropouts, and low educational levels that leave too many people behind. Frankly, the number of homeless individuals would be even higher if so many people with mental illness weren't in the jails and prisons of America. We can, and must, address these issues if we ever expect to break the cycle of homelessness.
2
To experience homelessness is a terrible reality whether or not the numbers of folx experiencing it in once place are larger than in others.What the fuck is the point of comparing? This is such a "feel good about our liberal politics" bullshit piece. It's cowardly.

Also, fuck you Charlie Hales.
3
So, while we throw all kinds of money at the problem, supposedly have so very much empathy, etc etc, build Bud Clark Commons, have 'Dignity Village' , R2D2, and how many other homeless camps -- all this, and somehow elsewhere homelessness drops 2% throughout the nation, except here and other west coast cities....? wtf??
And our own rate has jumped the highest of the west coast cities?

I would think we should be listening to east coast mayors to see how they have managed to do it, not the west coast mayors, who obviously haven't figured it out.

I still tend to think Build It And They Will Come, as well as all this supposed empathy just drives them here where people will feel sorry for them and give them handouts.
4
As jobs become harder and harder to find, more and more people who were living close to the edge have been pushed off into homelessness. The middle class is shrinking and the majority of us cannot afford to live at the income level we're stuck in.
5
According to cultural anthropologist, Corwin McAllister, the solution to homelessness is not housing. There are other issues of priority which must be addressed before obtaining a home address. Mayors are basically, materialistic, money grubbing, greedy, back stabbing, two timing, connivers, so naturally, they aren't interested in individual concerns, which keep people from what the need the most. Portland State University pretends to be so social conscious, while it's graduate school of social work fails to send interns for meals at the soup kitchens, in order for them to network with the great unwashed, to see what they need, and connect them with social services which they might not be aware of, or unable to access due to aversion of prohibitive bureaucracy, which few people living on the streets can tolerate, let alone, deal with.

http://welfarehotel.blogspot.com

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