Markk wrote:
Where did a say "full effect"...you are a liar. I said they had all the programs you listed, which they do. they aren't working.
In context, your argument is incoherent if "they already have these programs and they don't work" is intended to communicate, "they have small versions of these programs that are woefully underfunded to the task, so clearly they don't work." The latter would be so dumb as to be unbelievable, so I did assume that you were saying the former.
Once again you move the goal posts. You told me to google "soglin and homeless" and I did, and that was my first hit, and now you are saying it is not what you meant...?
I asked you to google Soglin and the homeless, if you want, to read stories on how the mayor is fairly hostile to the homeless in the city. I said so. Here is the quote:
I know Madison has a reputation for being liberal, but its Bernie Sanders-esque mayor, Paul Soglin, long has had a hardened view of the homeless. When he's been in power it's a constant struggle between him and city alders on his attempts to crack down on the homeless. I'm sure if you google "Soglin" and "homeless" you'll get links as far as the eye can see.The phrase "links as far as the eye can see" is clearly in reference to Soglin's power struggles over the homeless with city alders. It's hard not to read you has not having the ability to follow a conversation on a basic level. If you want examples of homeless people laying on the street, defecating in public, having tents that block store fronts, etc. that you said probably does not exist in the city, you probably should look that up specifically. In any case, you're just wrong about that. Why you would choose to be stridently wrong about something you could've cleared up with ease is a mystery to me. Even in the link of on Soglin you showed, there are numerous pictures of homeless people and their things strewn about the streets, which you specifically said isn't happening. To quote you, "I bet most of the homeless you talk, are in homes and shelters of sorts or in cars... and not literally laying on the streets."
To be fair I googled tent cities Madison Wisconsin and came up with mostly pics of "occupy Madison" and occupy Wakersville" tents...also everything is so clean, porta potties in the backdrop....that is a huge difference, and refreshing.
Occupy Madison evolved into a homeless tent camp of about 50-100 people in a vacant lot not too far from the Capitol on E. Washington Street. This was a big feature in the city for a period of time, so it doesn't surprise me you'd get a lot of hits specifically on that story. How clean it was varied form day to day. Getting a lot of homeless in one concentrated spot did make it easier to provide services and keep things organized, but also magnified problems associated with homelessness by concentrating it. It was eventually pushed out by legal action. The lots where it was are now the sites of new high rises with
upper-middle class luxury apartments. If that's not a metaphor for something, I don't know what is.
I have yet to see you answer my question yet, how can one manage thousands of thousand of homeless, over hundreds of square miles that need daily med's and help. Your assertion that started this was that they would be better off in the streets or home care that institutions.
I've tried to answer you generally multiple times. Is it that you want me to solve each individual homeless person's problem in your city with a specific program tailored to them? In general, for people with pervasive mental illness causing disability it is quite possible to focus public-private resources - with the bulk coming from MA/SSDI - on hiring people who deliver resources specific to people's problems. I gave general lists of what those resources might look like, because it's different for people because people's needs are different. I focused primarily on my area, pervasive mental illness and disability, because that's what I know a lot about. But I also know that there are people out there doing the same for victims of domestic violence who have been displaced from housing, people with AODA issues, veterans with treatable mental illness, etc. That said, since these problems overlap, our little social service fiefdoms end up overlapping too and I have a little bit experience in those areas as well.
You are very focused on the issue of square footage, but I don't see why this is a problem at all. There's a much larger population to deliver services too.
I don't want institutions, but in regards to the problem...who can you manage the day to day needs of people on the streets?
By hiring people who are professionally trained to do that? Is it that you want me to train you on how the dozens of jobs related to this task work? Because this normally takes months of on the job training for people who have a college degree in a relevant field before they feel confident that they have a good handle on how providing care to people at risk for homelessness / institutionalization truly works.
First, I'd like you to teach me how to build a house. How does that even work?
You seem to be unaware of the millions - yes millions - of people in the country who function as caregivers, either paid or family, for people who are at risk without them.
Are you going to lock them up in these homes? Who is going to provide security for these people managing them. Will there be a doctor in every home? How will bath these folks or make sure they bath...?
Oh my god.
1) Very few people need to be "locked in" to their home. That's an exotic problem. That only happens if they have a placement with a specific kind of court order and have restrictive measures approved through a robust process for demonstrating a specific risk of harm to themselves or others. Most people aren't eloping from their own home in a risky way when you provide them one. People generally like having a home. Happily, or unhappily as it were, I am a person who has a fair amount of experience with the small subset of the population who has this specific need. Do you want me to explain how perimeter locking systems and protocols for their use work to you?
The short version is that a person will have a set of defined criteria when they are behaving in an unsafe way that might cause them to elope, in a way that is a danger to themselves or others, into the community. When that criteria is met, and only when it is met, caregivers will have a electronic means of engaging magnetic locks on the available exists until the criteria for releasing the locks is met, usually defined by a cool-down period of time. The locking systems themselves are cleverly designed to not be defeated (though they sometimes get defeated anyway). They are wired to fire detectors to release in case of emergency.
More commonly, people might be an elopement risk, but it is manageable through other, less restrictive means.
But, again, this is a quite exotic problem that does not describe most people who need on-going services and it is weird that this is the first thing that pops into your mind. It's as though you think people are homeless because an intense need to not live in a home.
2) No, you don't need a doctor in every home. You just need community providers like everyone else. Some people need to see the doctor much more frequently than the average person because of their specific medical needs, but that's what transportation is for. Most ordinary high-needs medical care (g-tubes, hoyers, cathing, etc.) can be replicated in a person's home with adequately nurse-trained staffing if such needs exist. If someone's medical needs are so high that they can't exist outside of a hospital environment or skilled nursing facility, then they should be in a hospital or skilled nursing facility. But for the population we are talking about, that's rare, not common. It certainly does not describe the homeless population in general.
3) Ignoring the fact that most people will be fine with hygiene when given dignified access, if there is a problem, this its own specific programming problem that can be tailored to the individual. I don't know how to encapsulate what might be done to help encourage people to maintain basic hygiene because it is so varied and person-specific, but I can say that the trick is to figure out what the function of that behavior is (avoidance of bathing in this case) and meet that need through a less harmful means. For some people it is an issue of lacking learned skill. For others it is a sensory thing. For others, usually those on the autism spectrum, it is deficit in understanding the social fabric. For others it is related to trauma they experienced around bathing. The solutions depend on the cause of the problem. Poor hygiene among
the homeless is usually just an issue of ease of access. For cognitively disabled people, this is an area where power and control issues often arise, but you'll just have to take my word that we normally figure it out
even when it is a problem in the vast majority of cases. And when you don't, I think you need to sit back and think about what the actual risks of poor hygiene really are and whether increasingly intrusive interventions designed to rectify it are actually worth it. It's not the end of the world if someone smells bad, Markk.
As much as Doc may seem extreme, his Colony idea in the desert might be the only real solution at this point, and the more I think about, the more it makes sense...even if unthinkable by the standards we used to hold dear.
Jesus.
