I hope this isn't coming to UK . . . . or anywhere else soon!

notanon · September 2023

I think I have come across a few posts in different locations about homelessness in America and other countries increasing.

Is this just sensationalist journalism?
Has anybody encountered this degradation first hand?
Is it getting worse fast?
In your opinion the causes?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tFXZWeIbz_Q

and

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Rv4keVEskfE

Sad

notanon · September 2023

I don't think YouTube likes people to embed the short videos. Didn't work anyway. Need to use the links sorry!

Brio · September 2023

Just take out shorts/ and the video will embed.

notanon · September 2023

Brio said:

Just take out shorts/ and the video will embed.

Thanks will try tomorrow.

Petepassion · September 2023

It’s been going on for a long time in certain areas in the US, I remember a few years back a friend visited and said about homeless ‘villages’ under freeway flyovers.
A bit sensationalist, although the problem seems to be getting worse.
There are more businesses closing down, therefore more doorways to sleep in which brings the situation more to the fore.

Cause? In the UK there are quite a few ex services on the street, plus structural violence…the natural systemic side effect of an ever increasing crony Capitalism.

RobDavies · September 2023

It’s definitely getting worse in the U.K. - even in relatively ’posh’ places like Winchester, if you walk around the city in the morning there are lots of people sleeping rough in doorways.

stickyfiddle · September 2023

It's a bigger problem in the US because most states have fuck all in terms of social safety net, and they seem to have far bigger drug problems. Every US city I've been to in recent years has a considerable community of people living in these tented areas - Washington DC, Charleston, Portland ME, Portland OR. Seattle, NYC, Asheville, Nashville, Atlanta.

Portland OR is particularly bad as - like San Fran - they have very liberal policies on decriminalising drug users, but that has led to a lot of addicts moving there because it gives them an easier life. And some other cities have policies of giving people one-way bus tickets to Portland to centralise the problem there rather than deal with it themselves. Central Portland is now a pretty horrible place to visit.

But that isn't to say the UK doesn't have problems with homelessness and addiction.

Stratavarious · September 2023

Massive cuts to social/welfare services, closing of institutions for those with mental issues (sometimes rightly), people needing to work 5 jobs at minimum wage to afford a typical rent in San Fran making the very idea of a having a home pretty much impossible for hundreds of thousands.

There are also plenty of places giving one way tickets to the coast to their homeless and mentally ill to burden other places rather than dealing with the issue locally.

Here too: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10221475/Seaside-towns-have-become-dumping-grounds-for-poor-says-think-tank.html

Yep. I’ve seen it worsen (or become more visible) the last couple of decades working in both San Fran and Seattle and other places like Atlanta. They feel more unsafe cities now. It’s even more evident once you get to places like Sao Paulo in Brazil and the cardboard cities within a city.

Homelessness and poverty is always here too. It is just less visible by the nature of our climate & landscape. There is little undeveloped land in SF making the homeless much more visible under bridges or on street. Street homeless is only the tip of an iceberg… many more sofa surf or live in dangerous places, open to exploitation.

My son sorts housing for those who have fallen through all the increasingly poor social safety nets here and he has a client list of hundreds. Drugs and mental health issues, family breakup, abuse, lots of veterans with PTSD… all cyclic… What we lack as people is the basic kindness to invest in the systems and services that are needed. Jailing them has become a way for some some states to hide their mentally ill from public view too. Around a third of inmates have significant mental health issues. This is becoming a norm. Incarcerate rather than treat.

I think both clips reflect the callous sense of entitlement and lack of social responsibility and empathy that is eroding the USA’s soul and the root of the issue. You can judge a country and it’s people by how they treat their most vulnerable. The guy in the second clip might ask for them to be ‘taken away somewhere’ but the ‘accountability’ he asks for will, I expect, not include him paying more taxes for it. He is just blaming others while being part of the problem itself.

Moving responsiblity for providing mental health services from the state to federal has been a right wing strategy to pass the buck on this for the past few decades too. Don’t look after your neighbours and you can then blame ‘the man’ and big government for it. It is easy politics, but not responsible politics. People do vote for this and they don’t want to contribute to helping either.

Always Freedom,, but always at someone else’s cost.

elstoof · September 2023

I go to the US regularly for work, every major city has a homeless issue, west coast cities generally have the highest concentrations of it so California, particularly SF, has historically had it particularly bad because the warm, dry climate all year round means the weather won’t kill you. it looks even worse when you see the huge divide between obscenely rich and desperately poor in LA/SF and how it just overlaps without the usual good part of town, place to avoid etc. You can be recommended a hot new restaurant in the Tenderloin and literally have to step over a homeless person to get in the front door, you’ll be avoiding stepping in human shit on your way to Gucci on Union Square.

There’s a massive fentanyl problem in North America so the homeless there aren’t like the homeless in the U.K., the people forced to live in these tent cities have had their brain chemistry completely scrambled by extremely potent opioids with only the generosity of some volunteers and charities for any sort of support. The “system” turns a blind eye to it in the USA but it’s also a big issue in Vancouver and Toronto where support is a little better.

Petepassion · September 2023

elstoof said:

I go to the US regularly for work, every major city has a homeless issue, west coast cities generally have the highest concentrations of it so California, particularly SF, has historically had it particularly bad because the warm, dry climate all year round means the weather won’t kill you. it looks even worse when you see the huge divide between obscenely rich and desperately poor in LA/SF and how it just overlaps without the usual good part of town, place to avoid etc. You can be recommended a hot new restaurant in the Tenderloin and literally have to step over a homeless person to get in the front door, you’ll be avoiding stepping in human shit on your way to Gucci on Union Square.

There’s a massive fentanyl problem in North America so the homeless there aren’t like the homeless in the U.K., the people forced to live in these tent cities have had their brain chemistry completely scrambled by extremely potent opioids with only the generosity of some volunteers and charities for any sort of support. The “system” turns a blind eye to it in the USA but it’s also a big issue in Vancouver and Toronto where support is a little better.

A very powerful example of the price we pay for 'wealth'

elstoof · September 2023

I’ll never forget coming out of the D.C. train station just after covid restrictions lifted and seeing the huge new tent village on the green just in front. All these people who were just laid off for 2 years had their lives snatched from them. D.C. usually looks like a film set, very artificially clean and heavily policed with the “wrong” element shoved outside the city, so it was even more shocking to see that sort of poverty right there next to the Capitol

Devil#20 · September 2023

I think society is well and truly broken now. This is just the start of it. According to anthropologist Yuval Noah Harari, in his book Sapiens, we will be extinct in 1000 years and he is by no means alone in his thinking. As a species we will have been a lot less successful than Neanderthal man who survived 2 million years. We, as a lone homo species for the last 70,000 years, are now on the way out. Contrary to what was once considered the case, we are NOT the decendants of monkeys, homo Neanderthalensis or Homo Erectus or Homo Habilis etc (as the T shirts would suggest). We co-existed at the same time with others of the homo genus (at least 6 other human species at one point). We are the last surviving human (homo) species, and making a complete balls up of everything now. Nearly everything we are doing is hastening our extinction.

FelineGuitars · September 2023

Some states like Utah rounded up their homeless and gave them Greyhound Bus tickets to San Diego and other West Coast destinations - with the view that a warn sunny climate will be better than one that has cold and wet weather. Consequently California has far more homeless than it would otherwise have .

My girlfriend lives in San Diego and the issue there is huge.

I watched a short video suggesting that if they gave 1% of the budget for the military to solving the homeless situation it could be largely fixed.

It doesn't help in USA or here in UK when new build properties are sold at property fairs to foreign investors looking to land-bank their cash to keep it out of the clutches of their tax system or government, but so many properties either left empty or simply priced outside of what anyone can afford

stickyfiddle · September 2023

elstoof said:

I’ll never forget coming out of the D.C. train station just after covid restrictions lifted and seeing the huge new tent village on the green just in front. All these people who were just laid off for 2 years had their lives snatched from them. D.C. usually looks like a film set, very artificially clean and heavily policed with the “wrong” element shoved outside the city, so it was even more shocking to see that sort of poverty right there next to the Capitol

Yeah, it's really sad. I've been to DC a few times since 2018 as it's the easiest place to fly into from Abu Dhabi. In 2018 there were a few groups of people that you'd see but it wasn't that prevalant. On our last couple of trips since 2021 it's felt like there are people in tents on pretty much every bit of green space now.

Interestingly Savannah and Bend OR were the two cities I can think of that didn't have noticeable problems when we were there (though admittedly only a handful of days each). I don't know what they're doing differently policy-wise, but both are pretty liberal in terms of leadership.

guyinlyon · September 2023

notanon said:

I think I have come across a few posts in different locations about homelessness in America and other countries increasing.
Is this just sensationalist journalism?
In your opinion the causes?

It IS sensationalist. It is NOT journalism.

The cause is too many people on things like ThickTock trying to make money as "influencers" instead of getting real jobs.

stickyfiddle · September 2023

guyinlyon said:

notanon said:

I think I have come across a few posts in different locations about homelessness in America and other countries increasing.
Is this just sensationalist journalism?
In your opinion the causes?
It IS sensationalist. It is NOT journalism.

The cause is too many people on things like ThickTock trying to make money as "influencers" instead of getting real jobs.

Are you sure the homeless are entirely comprised of Tiktokers...?

Tannin · September 2023

Seen it here in Oz quite a bit lately. Rents have gone ballistic - way, way higher than ever before - and even if you can afford $500 a week for a crappy flat in an outer suburb, actually getting one isn't easy. We have people in good jobs like nurses and schoolteachers homeless.

The four main causes are (a) rapidly expanding gaps between rich and poor - the rich are getting very rich, the poor, don't ask - (b) relentless and unsustainable population growth (much much faster than the UK, more than double), (c) massive expansion in short-term rentals (e.g., Air BnB) and empty houses owned by rich people because sometimes they like to stay at the place near the beach, and (d) simple greed: landlords have realised that they can ask way over the odds and no longer hold back out of decency.

(Not posting out of envy here: Mrs Tannin and I own our houses - and I'm working towards selling mine on the other island when I get everything organised (eventually!) - so count me as one of those bastards owning an empty house).

Teetonetal · September 2023

FelineGuitars said:

Some states like Utah rounded up their homeless and gave them Greyhound Bus tickets to San Diego and other West Coast destinations - with the view that a warn sunny climate will be better than one that has cold and wet weather. Consequently California has far more homeless than it would otherwise have .
My girlfriend lives in San Diego and the issue there is huge.

I watched a short video suggesting that if they gave 1% of the budget for the military to solving the homeless situation it could be largely fixed.
It doesn't help in USA or here in UK when new build properties are sold at property fairs to foreign investors looking to land-bank their cash to keep it out of the clutches of their tax system or government, but so many properties either left empty or simply priced outside of what anyone can afford

I dont think that we as a species will be extinct any time soon (1000 years is soon)....

Even if we fuck the world up, we would regress and survive so that we can fuck it up again...

Stratavarious · September 2023

All the great civilisations fell… we will too & sooner than the many that came before.

merlin · September 2023

I was in San Francisco in March. Parts of it, the Mission District in particular are appalling and shocking.

The UK seems hungry to always copy the US. This is coming here too.

Timcito · September 2023

Stratavarious said:

Yep. I’ve seen it worsen (or become more visible) the last couple of decades working in both San Fran and Seattle and other places like Atlanta. They feel more unsafe cities now. It’s even more evident once you get to places like Sao Paulo in Brazil and the cardboard cities within a city.

That may be a direction that richer countries are heading towards. I lived in Lima, Peru, in the mid-late 90s, and it was common for poor people on the outskirts of cities to build 'pueblos nuevos' (shanty towns) out of whatever materials they could lay their hands on. There would be strings of makeshift-looking dwellings made of sheet metal, frames of wood, synthetic boards, whatever, often in lurid colours. Some of these 'towns' became quite established with running water and electricity, but they were outside of the conventional system of house ownership we all know, where people pay huge sums of money for housing. In Peru, the authorities left the inhabitants to get on with it; they couldn't get anywhere near paying for a property in the conventional way, and there would probably have been riots if the authorities had tried to corral them into 'the system' with all its attendant fees, taxes, and jiggery pokery.

DavidR · September 2023

Homelessness/Rough Sleeping is and has always been a genuine problem. Anywhere, it requires outreach services to meet and help the homeless. The UK has those in spades. In the US it seems more patchy and haphazard.

Political and structural healthcare changes influence homelessness rates. The biggest one in the UK in my lifetime was when the large Victorian mental hospitals were closed in the 1980's/90's and patients were moved into the community under the care of Community Psychiatric Nurses. Except they weren't. Many patients became lost within the new system and ended up homeless. At the time many London parks and Squares had little communities of psychiatric patients. The Care Programme Approach was introduced in 1991 to find them again and get them not only treated but rehomed. It is still ongoing.

I have struggled to understand why anyone is homeless in the UK. That is not to denigrate it and there are some known reasons. The homeless population includes disproportionate numbers of people with mental health problems, Ex- Service personnel and, especially, those with drug related problems including alcohol. The issues conflate since many/most addicts and alcoholics have mental health issues as a result. Specific residential facilities for the homeless attract drug dealers and so some homeless people will avoid them.

Don't ever give rough sleepers money. They will spend it on drugs and alcohol. Bring them food. Try to point them to agencies that will help them such as the Salvation Army and local Social Services and local government care. (The Police in the UK do a surprising amount of social work with the homeless too). Give your money in a structured way to the organisations and charities trying to help. Giving money directly to the homeless does harm and is no more than a temporary salve to your conscience. And don't be too naive. There are professional beggars too. They are not homeless.

And don't get it wrong. Rough sleeping is only the visible tip of the Homelessness problem. The charity Crisis estimate that there were 3,069 people sleeping rough in 2022 on a single night in Autumn across England. But as of 11th Jan 2023 at least 271,000 people were recorded as homeless in England, including 123,000 children, according to the charity Shelter. Analysis of official homelessness figures shows that one in 208 people in England are without a home.

To be legally defined as homeless in the UK you must either lack a secure place in which you are entitled to live or not reasonably be able to stay. It has worsenned in the UK of late owing to the Cost of Living issue and changes in the housing and rental markets.

Although people play politics with the issue, it's a constant part of society and always needs work.

Statutory homelessness England 2022 Statista

Statutory homelessness England 2022 Statista

Some Gov.UK stats -

Statutory homelessness in England January to March 2023 - GOVUK

Emp_Fab · September 2023

Who else read the title and had a 'Wuhan moment' ?

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I hope this isn't coming to UK . . . . or anywhere else soon!

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