A few years ago I ran into a girl I went on a few dates with on the corner panhandling. She was now homeless. But because she knew me she wouldn't take anything from me.
I told her she could stay with me for a bit and she said no, I offered to put her up in a hotel and she said no, I offered money and she said no. She did let me buy her lunch. I saw her at different corners around town and she would never take money. But I would sometimes swing by some place and pick up a breakfast biscuit for her.
I haven't seen her in a while now. I hope she got help.
Did someone downvote this, because it's a perfectly valid question. It's maddening that this problem is so hard to solve or even manage to provide conditions slightly better than third world, and here we have a newly homeless girl speaking to a "former" I guess peer, and she won't take any help? Why?
As someone who's been homeless I'll try and answer from my own perspective. It is very difficult to accept help sometimes, especially from people you know. It's partly pride and, maybe, a fear that they'll always hold it against you somehow?
For example, I have friends and family who would have helped me out if I had asked but that's the last thing I would ever do, still wouldn't even though I know it's a sure fire road to ruin.
I got lucky and took help from a stranger at the first opportunity.
Not sure that explains anything other than saying human beings don't always act rationally?
A) It is problematic to accept help of that sort from someone in your social circle. It makes you "a charity case" and that term is quite insulting. Once you are marked as "a charity case," good luck getting any actual respect ever again. So, many people resist that because they don't want to be your bitch and would rather go hungry.
B) Women face special safety challenges above and beyond that. The vast majority of men offering a woman a few bucks in charity will, sooner or later, conclude she "owes" them and want her to pay them back on her back, so to speak. So perhaps she had already been badly burned by that once, learned her lesson and was unwilling to risk it again.
No. The times I talked to her she didn't seem drunk or high. I do know that she had mental health issues. When we went out a few times I could tell something was a little off because sometimes she would have a lot of energy and sometimes it was hard for her to talk.
She told me about her mental health problems (I won't go into them here), we went out a few more times and we stopped seeing each other.
Thanks for sharing. It's hard to imagine how difficult that life would be, and also sad to realize how many people will be losing access to mental health services as Obamacare is repealed.
Hm, wouldn’t addicts take money because then they can afford the next high / scratch that itch?
I wonder if she panhandled as a job. (Apparently very proficient ones can make $200 a day. The less homeless you look, the more people tend to believe your stories and are willing to give.) If she did it as a job on the side, maybe she didn’t want to swindle jhwhite.
A more positive outlook: She was in need and to proud to take money from (former) friends. Today, she doesn’t live on the streets anymore.
There's something subtle behind this that I think is more powerful than the details of the housing. It's someone taking time to interact and treat them like a person. I believe that interaction and showing others we value them as people is one of the most important things for those living in isolation from society like many homeless people do.
There's no easy way to do this. It's hardly ever convenient. It isn't a foolproof means of turning situations around. It is, however, extremely powerful and desperately needed.
It is excellent work and meets my gold standard for the site. * I would like to see it become a standard part of staff training at homeless services. I plan to write about it on the site, when I can figure out the right framing.
Thanks. FWIW, GoG was not intended to be a trailing film. The target audience is people who have never interacted with homeless people beyond saying, "Sorry, can't help you." That obviously doesn't include anyone working at a homeless service.
While I was filming a number of my subjects did talk about what they called the "homeless industrial complex", and how it doesn't really care about getting people off the streets because that would put it out of business. I never found out how much truth there was to that, but if I were ever to take this subject back up again that is were I would probably start.
Yeah, training tends to be sucktastic anyway. I used to have long discussions with people on homeschooling lists about the difference between training and education and how much of public school and college these days is training rather than education.
But your film makes a critical and surprising point that I strongly agree with: These are, first and foremost, people. We aren't some separate population. We come from the rest of the population, but our lives have fallen apart and one of the most problematic things is the way social ties get cut.
People with more normal lives tend to be oblivious to the social fabric that defines so much of their life and which buffers them against simply going off the rails when something negative happens. They don't see this difference between themselves and homeless individuals, yet the reinforce the isolation by the way they interact with the homeless (or don't interact at all -- effectively shunning them).
I was pleasantly surprised by the film. I think more people should see it.
It is just me or is anyone else reading the comments getting the feeling that mental health issues are rampant today probably the most neglected space of health care or at least public awareness?
Shouldn't society and/or the government do more to increase awareness of these mental Heath issues and make information and treatments more widely available?
We're running out of problems to solve and it's a good thing.
Nobody cares much about mental health problems when the primary issue most people face every day is finding something to eat. As a corollary, I'd bet there are really significant causal forces at work in many mental health issues coming from exactly this – the lack of simple problems like food and shelter at the front in center of life combined with having the basic skills and environment to tackle those problems daily – drives many mental health problems.
Lots of people are depressed but almost nobody is starving, almost nobody is getting murdered or fighting in a war or dying of the common cold. Just about every baby survives, very few have to defend their home or their families from attack.... on and on and on. Human life used to be very rough and was not very long ago. We live in the most peaceful prosperous time in human history (and almost nobody seems to realize we're living in a paradise compared to a few hundred years ago).
Well yes, but man, homeless people live in terrible conditions, but I think even worse than that would be watching everyone go about their lives in seeming prosperity, knowing you used to be one of them and you can't ever get back, and no one cares. To me, that would hurt.
On the one hand, I don't psychological services industry has really demonstrated an ability to treat psychological problems in a consistent, effective fashion.
On the other hand, I would claim one can see a strong correlation between declining incomes and increased psychological distress in this society - the suicide rate approximately doubling in the last twenty years - not this is a direct casual effect.
Which is to say that easily available, acceptable housing - hotel rooms rather than shelters as suggested in the article - is better solution for people, psychologically distressed or not, than more psychological services or better psychological services. And also, if someone's on the streets, no amount of counseling (or drugs or whatever) is going to solve much if they stay on the streets.
"The author of this site has about six years of college, including an incomplete Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Resource Management...After the class was over, she continued to volunteer at the shelter for several more months. Years later, while homeless herself, she started the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide and also this site."
It's a shame the idea of helping the homeless via a night in a hotel is such a manually intensive effort. The article mentions paying in cash, I assume to avoid liability. Would be nice if there was a way to buy vouchers online that you could hand out.
While you could, I doubt hotels would want the reputation of being "The Homeless Hotel". Then there are other issues like drug use, untreated mental illness, etc that the homeless are more prone to.
Vouchers also don't do anything for the possible damage/theft. I used to work hotels, mostly 3rd shift, and none would ever have gone for that. They also all always require ID cash (photocopied if cash) or not; even in the ghetto.
Let me possibly shatter an illusion though. Staying at a "nicer" more expensive hotel in not-the-ghetto doesn't make it safe or secure or have any less problems than the cheap ghetto ones. It just means the room might be cleaner and you might be compensated something for bitching instead of told to fuck off. I worked both.
I saw a lot of shit and basically if you go in and they look like they're cutting corners on things like, and I shit you not and am quoting an Indian manager fresh off the boat "We're not required to have coffee creamer", run the fuck away fast. I saw similar places not wash sheets to save soap money (different hotel, same mind set). I saw meth labs in "nice" hotels. It goes on.
But you're right they wouldn't do it just for the "reputation of being a homeless shelter" alone.
> Staying at a "nicer" more expensive hotel in not-the-ghetto doesn't make it safe or secure or have any less problems than the cheap ghetto ones.
I've stayed in many hotels over the years at all different price points and in general there has been an almost perfect correlation between price and the quality of cleaning/rooms/service.
We lived in hotels for 6 weeks a couple years ago doing a cross country trip. My experience is the difference between a $25/night motel and a $90/night hotel isn't (much) the accommodations but rather the class of your neighbors for the night. Screaming fights / loud parties / yelling down the hall at 3 am occurred on the low end, not the high.
This seems to imply that you haven't experienced the full gamut of motels in operation in USA. The percentage of innkeepers who are Indian is higher than that of pretty much any other occupation.
It would also be just about the shittiest "value to your fellow man":"dollars spent" ratio you could arrive, even with conscious effort.
You would be far better off pooling money to buy a foreclosed hotel, and offering it at cost to the homeless via donated rooms. Hotels with solid occupancy metrics are very profitable absent constant capex for room improvements, designer toiletries, etc. Giving a hotel room would be effectively splitting the cost of the room, and just giving the homeless person 50% of the cash and the hotel 50%, at best.
As others have noted, advocating for improvements to the mental healthcare system would do far more good to domestic homeless populations. As would reforming drug laws (penal and rehabilitory), donating gently used work clothes for interviews, personally hiring them, or a million other things.
This blog is thoroughly emblematic of an "edgy idea" that is inexplicably engaging otherwise intelligent and well meaning people. There are people who have devoted their lives and run foundations to aid the homeless who are much better sources than the linked site.
ps - if you would like to actually help people, look at Haiti, South Sudan/west Africa, or Syria where poverty, war, and drought are causing far worse suffering. Consider donating to help orphans in areas of poverty. Consider donating to help preventable death from disease (dysentery/cholera, malaria, AIDS, chagas). Consider donating to help preventable suffering (dental/split palate, fistula, cataracts)... time is the only thing that prevents me from continuing.
You would be far better off pooling money to buy a foreclosed hotel, and offering it at cost to the homeless via donated rooms
One of the problems with the shelter system is that it is a horrifying concentration of poor, sick people. I am advocating that we treat homeless people like human beings and stop trying to simply warehouse them, as if having a physical roof over your head is the single most important thing, and never mind the horrifying social and health aspects that merely compound your existing problems, creating a downward spiral you cannot escape. So I strongly disagree with your idea and I hope no one acts on it.
This blog is thoroughly emblematic of an "edgy idea" that is inexplicably engaging otherwise intelligent and well meaning people.
I strongly suspect that my writing on the subject of homelessness engages many of the members of HN precisely because I have been a member here for a number of years, they knew me when I had a corporate job, and some people respect the fact that I am also the top ranked openly female member of this overwhelmingly male forum.
I've tended to reply less frequently here lately, but I almost preemptively apologized for my tone in this case. Thank you for replying and giving me this additional chance. I'm sorry I replied to you so rudely. I have some prior experience/knowledge such that the linked article rubbed me wrong.
The world is certainly not suffering from an overabundance of human kindness lately, and anything that increases that amount is laudable.
It seems like the article is long way around of saying that people want or need nicer accommodations than today's shelters. The difference between a "shelter" and a "hotel" is (a) of/how you pay (minor detail), and (b) the quality of the accommodation (privacy, security, comfort).
I think there's something being missed here by a lot of commenters. The title of the blog isn't "What Solves Homelessness", it's "What Helps the Homeless". As in, right here, right now.
It doesn't take systemic or policy level changes to make someone's day/week better.
Idea that the homeless have nowhere to go is a stretch (really, ask them, don't take my word for it) - and if the author's advice is followed, your basically spending in a single night (few hundred) what it would cost to feed them for a whole month.
> Idea that the homeless have nowhere to go is a stretch (really, ask them, don't take my word for it)
Everything I've read says that while shelters are available, they typically have very strict schedules and policies, and staying there opens you up to theft and assault.
And, depending on the area, there are more far homeless then there are shelter beds. Maybe this isn't the case in San Francisco, but sure as hell is the case in Vancouver, and Kelowna (Which has just passed a bylaw against sleeping in public spaces.)
Much like hotels, shelters are not responsible for the security of your things and I assure you that hotels have more thefts than shelters.
As for assaults, no shelter is going to allow an assult to happen and if an assault does happen, the police would be called. If you believe assaults are common at shelters, which they are not, call a shelter or the related police station and ask how many assaults they have had reported in the past year.
Everywhere has rules and polices, including hotels. Shelters are free and they have reasons for the rules.
>>Much like hotels, shelters are not responsible for the security of your things and I assure you that hotels have more thefts than shelters.
Hotels are at least partially liable for theft. If the theft occurs due to an employee's negligence (e.g. cleaning staff forget to close the door properly), then the hotel is fully liable.
I've witnessed either the act or aftermath of several assaults on people living in homeless shelters, usually by other tenants, not to mention plenty of theft (one guy even took my CD wallet). Much of it was reported to staff but not one incident was reported to the police - it endangers the shelter's funding and upsets the residents. Homeless people are typically quite wary of law enforcement (if not due to prior harassment, then because "don't snitch" is firmly reinforced by their peers).
I wouldn't trust any police stat relating to homeless people - the notion that police even care about these people when they more often than not see them as the problem is.. odd at best. I'm really not sure where you're getting this idea that shelters are such wonderful, warm, safe places.
>> call a shelter or the related police station and ask how many assaults they have had reported in the past year.
• If assaults happened in shelters, why would the shelters ever tell you?
• Why would anyone ever tell the police? I can't imagine the homeless victims would want the police MORE involved in their lives.
• Even if someone told the police about an assault at a shelter, would they bother to investigate, or keep records? Police have incentives to reduce crime stats, which isn't the same as reducing crime.
> would they bother to investigate, or keep records
They absolutely would[1] here (central/east Europe). Is it different in the US?
[1] I run a local news site and we get these kind of stories all the time. Not just press releases from state or municipal police, but messages from the people themselves.
I've stayed in hotels hundreds of times and never once had anything stolen. I've thankfully never had to stay in a homeless shelter, but it doesn't seem reasonable to suggest that thefts are more likely at a hotel than a shelter.
In all seriousness though, I talk to the cleaning staff at hotels, hotel management, and law enforcement - and theft is the number one problem at hotels; next is prostitution, third is public disturbance.
My understanding is the average hotel has one theft a day; not including towels.
There's a USA TODAY report on hotel theft if you look for it.
Most homeless people don't have anything worth stealing; ask them.
Off topic, but too good not to mention: Even Mickey Mouse steals hotel towels. Really. Disneyland has the Mickey's House and Mickey's Movie Studio. I forget which one, but in one of those, you find (or at least used to find) towels from the Disneyland Hotel.
I've known some homeless people, and for them, it was mental illness that kept them on the streets. They thought everyone was out to get them or control their life. It's a shame that they all want the handouts, but they don't want to follow any rules that come with it.
What I realized is a lot of these people don't want any responsibilities. They're not willing, or able to accept that life sucks for everyone. The governments need to start offering better mental health care that doesn't involve locking people up in hospitals (something an old friend of mine had happen to him, and it caused him to lose trust in everyone).
I don't think giving people hotel rooms is going to solve any problems - if anything it's just enabling it. A better solution is to expand affordable housing and job programs so people start to get back on their feet while ultimately leaving the decisions up to them. Ultimately if they want to live under a bridge that a choice they've made and there's nothing we can really do about it.
You hit the nail on the head, and then turned it into a condemnation and missed the point and problem entirely.
It's mental illness. The reason they won't "follow any rules" is because they're mentally ill. There's no easy answer, and saying "there's an easy answer, but it won't work for them" isn't actually an easy answer.
Many of them are very mentally ill, and living under a bridge is not a choice they've made willingly.
If someone's too mentally incapable of holding a job, or reading, or clothing themselves, then is it right that we force them under a bridge?
Note: I am responding to your comment, not to the practicality of the article's proposed solution.
I think we should all be very careful about extrapolating from our limited experiences with the chronically homeless (if you have a particularly rich experience, for instance as someone who works full-time in advocacy or intervention with them, say so!) and, in particular, with anything that suggests the problems of homelessness can be effectively summarized in a short Hacker News comment.
The issue of homelessness is a particularly nutrient-rich substrate for germinations of the Just World Fallacy, particularly among nerds like us, with our affinity for pat narratives.
Nerd logic usually takes the form of conclusions reached by starting from a set of first principles simple and small enough to be captured in a short message board comment, and restricting itself to a series short, plausible extrapolations from those first principles, stopping when a suitably grand and straightforward explanation for complex phenomenon is reached.
We're all in the business of breaking things into their simplest constituent parts. We all react strongly to this Moog Synthesizer logic: all we need is a couple oscillators, plugged together just so, and we can generate any conclusion we need.
If there is a set of people who want handouts, but aren't willing to follow rules, how likely is it for that set of people to hold down jobs, pay rent, etc?
I would wager that there is another set of people, that doesn't intersect with that first set very much, that are just down on their luck, for whom a place to shower and receive mail and handle phone interviews for some stable amount of time would help quite a bit.
It should be remembered that not every mental illness can be readily treated in a manner friendly to outpatient care. Not everyone can be treated in a way that turns them into a "normal", functional, employable adult.
And not everyone wants to be or do any of those things. Ability and willingness are different, and homeless can be neither, either, or both. It is a complicated problem and I think pretty much everyone agrees that we aren't doing enough to help.
> The current shelter system very often warehouses people in conditions that would not be acceptable for any kind of paid accommodations, whether it be temporary accommodations (like a hotel) or permanent (like an apartment or house).
I'm curious how homeless shelters compare to (paid) hostels, which are far more economical than hotels. They're (I assume) both in a dormitory setting.
Hotels are obviously not economically feasible as a long-term solution. I think the risk of this proposal is that they are not a reasonable on-ramp to society, as even if you can get a stable job you almost certainly cannot afford to live in a hotel full-time. On the other hand, some sort of hostel-style accommodation would be reasonable.
I think we should shine the spotlight on the number of homeless. Instead of the weather/temperature and the rise and fall of some key stocks at the end of a news broadcast, we should also report the number of homeless by region and whether it has gone up or down. It certainly feels like it should be more important.
That's a number that's both hard to accurately count just because of the population you're trying to measure and unlikely to change very often because of the cost and difficulty of measuring it so I'm not really sure it'd really have the effect you're looking for.
Interesting idea. Do you know of any case where it has worked? From the way the article was written I was sort of expecting to hear a case study.
Speculation roundup:
There are two economic values of a homeless person, actually any person, but I digress. P is the cost, to the state, of keeping that person alive and medically stable, which includes police and health services, as well as shelter costs, soup kitchens, etc. V is the value generated by the homeless person through their labor, which varies much more than some people expect. Many homeless people have jobs. But for many homeless people it's zero.
Ways of decreasing P include a number of creative policies designed recently as well as "short-term" tolerance of outdoor living. Ways of increasing V by contrast are generally limited to:
* standard inpatient mental health "treatment", has a slim chance of success and a large chance of backfiring and setting V to zero for a long time, also sends P through the roof
* outpatient medication, has a similarly tiny chance of success but a smaller chance of backfiring and is much cheaper
* prison labor, effective but brings to mind immediately The Road to Serfdom and other dystopian fictions (heh)
* ???
Creative ways of increasing V ought to depend on economic fundamentals, i.e. finding out what a homeless person is good for and exploiting that, to wit: homeless people tend to beat normal people at dealing with homeless people. They might also be able to help out with e.g. trash pickup or road maintenance. The typical road-map people envision for increasing V looks like this:
homeless -> [treatment] -> normal
but in reality looks more like this:
very low V -> [treatment] -> low V -> [more treatment] -> slightly low V -> [more treatment] -> mediocre V -> [more treatment] -> with luck normal V
The typical way of dealing with the intermediate stages currently consists of either locking them in a small compound with shitty beds and twelve other crazy people or giving them a bottle of pills and hoping Jesus can handle the rest. This, really, is the problem. Halfway housing for homeless people might look like a situation where housing is provided in return for part-time labor.
I'd also like to point out that while in "treatment" for homelessness it might not be reasonable to demand complete sobriety when you consider that you're preparing them for eventual release into a world where they'll be allowed to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes and probably marijuana and their drug use will not be so heavily monitored. Supporting the development of self-control means that people have to be able to have a little control in the first place, and the ability to make small mistakes before making big ones
If you want to look at it from a purely numbers perspective I suggest we re-label some of your variables.
Net value (delta, etc) being the summation of all Costs (you call this P for some reason) and all Benefits (You call this V, which is why I'm calling the result 'net').
We will presume humane solutions only. We are unwilling to leave people to die of sickness, mal-nutrition, exposure to the elements or lack of social safety mechanisms. To allow any of those preventable deaths is to admit that our society is morally and/or financially bankrupt.
In short, letting them die or killing them isn't a solution.
So, as a society, we must make them human again.
Survival: We must ensure that they are able to fulfill their daily physical needs. They also require shelter, and medical care; just as everyone else does.
Belonging: It is in society's best interest to identify what types and how much work needs, or is desirable to be, fulfilled. It is also in society's best interests to identify potential workers that can meet these needs and offer them training in that type of work. This can't really help with relationships, but forming a stable life and a community that can include the worker is a good foundation for that to happen within.
Empowerment: Belonging, and being 'useful' and desirable to have around are likely the underpinnings of esteem and a sense of having worth. Without these building blocks there is little hope of becoming more than a slave animal or worse.
Fixing these issues would help everyone, not just the most disadvantaged.
I told her she could stay with me for a bit and she said no, I offered to put her up in a hotel and she said no, I offered money and she said no. She did let me buy her lunch. I saw her at different corners around town and she would never take money. But I would sometimes swing by some place and pick up a breakfast biscuit for her.
I haven't seen her in a while now. I hope she got help.