Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuepee
Ya, you and I have very different views on this and i understand that there are competing views on this.
I believe in a well funded ground level support system to help the people seeking it a way to identify the resources available to them to escape, but i do not support much of what is called 'harm mitigation' and do not think it achieves that goal.
I have a very cynical view towards bureaucracies and the ones that support Homeless Initiatives do not escape that view in that I think those at the top are not looking to do themselves out of jobs and to end their industry and instead are looking for ways to manage it and grow the bureaucracy and keep the govt money flowing (ever expanding budgets) which I believe many of the "harm mitigation" strategies do.
I was thinking that maybe i should start a new thread for that but I think this thread has run its course so I am fine with "Govt" expanding in this discussion to include NGO's and all "Bureaucracies" in general since I believe they all share the same underlying grift motivation of Managing problems and maximizing department growth and govt yearly cash, and not ending the need for their bureaucracy.
Very different than the people working with them on the streets who would gladly end their own jobs if they fix the problem tomorrow.
I'm now thinking of another comedian that something to the effect of "I don't like charity. Charity is a failure of government policy".
This is one of those issues where I think local and government policy are so varying that it's hard to talk about it from our positions across borders. I know someone on the front lines as a social worker for a homeless charity and from what he's said to me there's a window of opportunity where help is available but it's not easily accessed and you need to know where to turn and how to apply etc. Once people cross that line into sleeping on the streets they've already lost most of their access to supportive people, lost their ability to get to the right places, contact the right people, and it's all that much harder.
It's small things that they can do that make a big difference that I never really thought about. Having an address that you can receive letters at, a place you can receive phone calls at, how do you apply for any government assistance without those? How do you apply for a job without those? How do you get through an interview without a shower first? How are you getting paid if you don't have a bank account? And then if you have any kind of disability, lack of education, or mental health issue that makes filling out complicated forms difficult those things are quickly beyond you.
At the same time, those are all things that someone with a bit of know-how at a charity can easily help with a bit of funding. I take that position in the first line that charities like this are indicative of policy failures. The institutions we've set up are supposed to do these jobs, but this is where we are.
I don't buy into the idea that people are trying to preserve an industry with the homeless. I do buy into the idea that a lot of people are reflexively opposed to any kind of policy that sounds like either free money or the government doing something people should do for themselves. It's the usual "they can haul themselves up by the bootstraps" thinking that misses the obvious reality that some people clearly can't, and people are far more worried that money might go to someone who didn't
really need it than that some people will be destitute because the help wasn't there. Better to put studs on the pavement so homeless people will sleep somewhere out of sight and out of mind.