Quantifying Suffering
Eclectics Anonymous has a great post up (fixed link) about a major, yet often ignored problem: homelessness. It’s a very interesting read, I’ll give you the first couple of paragraphs, after that, please go over to Eclectics Anonymous to read the entire post:
It was a warm, summer evening in August 2006 as authorities in Denver attempted to finally get a grasp on a problem that is almost impossible to measure – homelessness.
One of the biggest problems, both in helping the homeless and in combating the effects of homelessness (the militancy of language often determined by the effect of homelessness on personal economic security or worldview of the author) is in determining whether any measure actually helps or hurts in the long run.
Any ‘project’ to help the homeless usually has at least one of three objectives. The first aim is purely individual, an attempt to get that person or family off the streets and ideally into a situation where they will neither be homeless nor threatened by it. The second goal is at a community level. Not even the most dedicated social worker can truthfully deny the negative effects that homelessness has on the areas where it is concentrated. Finally the economic consequences, not only the direct impact on city budgets, but the indirect effects on health care systems, law enforcement efforts and tax bases, are usually targeted for improvement.
But one of the biggest problems with homelessness is merely getting a handle on the numbers…
My father always says “for most homeless people, it’s not a choice. They’re addicts. They’ve fallen from grace. They’ve got mental problems. They need our help.”
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13 Responses to “Quantifying Suffering”
MVG…I would disagree that “for most homeless people, it’s not a choice.”
Often the decision to be on the street, as opposed to in a shelter, is a highly rational choice. Shelters are often notoriously violent and insecure environments. One can go to sleep, and not know if one will still have one’s stuff in the morning, even if one is sleeping on top of it.
This is a big reason many homeless resist shelter existence. One can hide on the street…especially in parks. Often this is dangerous…but one is not exposed and visible as in a shelter.
Another reason is agency. We all want to be in control of our lives…yes, even the homeless feel the desire for dignity and independence. In the city in which I currently live, a small shantytown developed near a downtown expressway…on land that was owned by a big box company that did not choose to develop it for some years. The homeless people had built shacks, and had various forms of homes and communal arrangements. There they were free. No welfare or social worker coming by semi-daily to make sure one didn’t have a partner living with one (against the rules).
Eventually, the big box store decided to develop, and the police moved in with tractors and bulldozed the community…”for their own good” in the view of the inspecting social workers. Most took their dogs and the stuff they could carry, and found a place in parks, or in an alley.
Our societies can do much better. The question of “why they don’t” is an interesting one. Why don’t shelters have lockers to place valuables? This would be inexpensive. Is there a view that the homeless do not have valuables?
So I would disagree. There is a choice…and between homelessness and the “help” offered by society, many rationally choose homelessness.
One of the biggest reasons for homelessness is the deinstitutionalization of mental institutions in the ’80′s. Many of those with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder fail to have anyone willing to take them in and make sure that they take all of their medications. For this population, there is little hope of permanently getting them off the street.
Another factor to keep in mind is mental illness. Many people living in the streets have mental illnesses, and many develop them on the streets. Again, many would much rather have the rough life of the streets than the life of a state mental institution. At least on the streets they dont tie you to the bed and fill you with drugs, at least on the streets you can fight back at abusers, unlike cruel orderlies (and we all know they are out there).
Another factor is addiction, which can combine with the mental illness.
It’s not enough to give beds and hot food. No one who has their head about them wants to live in the streets, but while institutions are the hellholes they are, people will escape to the streets.
Hmmmm kritter, great minds think alike eh?
When I worked for an agency in this field, I saw how tough this problem is to grapple with.
Marlowecan makes some excellent points.
No matter how well-intentioned, any facility for the homeless will have an institutional framework. As we were also trying to provide services to facilitate these people’s reintegration into society, regimentation becomes necessary to reach them. Then regimentation itself becomes a problem.
It’s a really tough balancing act.
But one thing is for sure.
We can’t just ignore them.
How can we be the rich country that we boast of being and not pay attention to his problem?
KR and Lynx-
While what you say about the mentally ill is true, a surprising number are perfectly ordinary people who have been living the paycheck to paycheck life, and now that paycheck is no longer coming. Illness can ruin them in a nanosecond.
They are quite likely to develop depression or addiction after that point, not necessarily before.
The experience of becoming homeless can in itself be devastating enough to interfere with a person’s ability to pick himself up and start over.
The homeless are a very varied group and need different services.
Take the worst cases off the street and put them in mental institutions.
Put those who still can function in halfway houses with support services to allow them to transition back to the real world. The shelter system is only a bandaid.
Lynx- yes they do!
KR-
Would that finances allowed a free range of options.
In my neck of the woods, families and women don’t stay in shelterrs long, but the next step up, rooms or apartments in subsidiized housing are often pretty dismal. Landlords love the city money, but they don’t love fixing broken windows.
Then, too, as they disperse, providing the services to get them up and running become harder.
All that notwithstanding, we just have to keep plugging away.
And we have to do better.
Doma -Maybe get the Gateses or the Buffets of the world involved. Look at how quickly Bush 41 and Clinton raised money for Katrina and the tsunami.
I’m quite sure something could be done if the will was there. The problem has been that today’s prevailing wisdom has been the “Horatio Alger” philosophy, with private charitable organizations taking up the load, while too many fall through the cracks. The culture of corporate greed and tabloid exhibitionism doesn’t say too much about us as a society, now does it?
I wanted to echo domajot’s points about the great variety of causes of homelessness. When I live on the mainland (USA), my impression was always that most of the homeless people I met were there for illness or addiction reasons. I didn’t know which came first – homelessness or the illness. However, I’ve been in Hawaii now for several years and homelessness is quite different here. A classic case of homelessness is a single mother with children. She works full-time in a low-paying job and it simply isn’t enough to cover rent. The person lives with family or friends for some time, but there’s only so long a friend in a two bedroom apartment can additionally support 3, 4, 5 more people, in addition to their own family, and so they end up on the street or in a shelter, all the time still working a full-time job.
Here’s a link to a recent story of a real estate developer giving away homes to some homeless family in Hawaii. Genshiro Kawamoto gift. The article is most interesting, however, as a description of typical homeless families in Hawaii.
The point is simply that people end up in the streets for a lot of different reasons.
Is there anyone who now believes that it is wrong to institutionalize those whose mental illness has resulted in them living on the streets?
For those who don’t require that kind of care would it be possible to investigate a way to build a new kind of shelter that would resemble college dorms as much as anything else with larger rooms for families? Something that could hopefully be built in a cost effective manner but still be quality construction to not degenerate quickly into a ruin? Or is that too much to hope for?
I’d like to make a couple of points here.
First, while the study in Colorado did confirm the findings that about half the homeless do have some form of disability, including mental illness, substance addiction or physical problems that is only a portion of the problem. Low wages coupled with a precarious economic situation (Do I pay fix my car and keep my job? Or do I pay the rent and hope for a new job?) Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed describes this situation perfectly.
But the first realisation that the problems involved with homelessness aren’t as easy to solve a simply setting up soup kitchens came in the late 1980’s when a graduate student realised than many homeless aren’t the chronic substance abusers most people see on the street but people who lose jobs or have domestic problems. Most are very short term shelter users and are only homeless once in their life. A dramatic example of an intelligent well educated woman living in her car because events outran her ability to cope can be found here.
One of the problems with approaching homelessness has been to use a water can approach to funding, placing money in shelters and feeding programs without really looking at whether those approaches worked. Recent research has shown that almost all the costs incurred in homelessness are caused by the chronically homeless – only 10 percent of the people on the streets.
That is why cities like Denver and New York are looking at programs giving apartments, for free – forever, no strings attached to those with problems. The idea seems to be working. Although there are problems, apartments getting trashed, the people moving on anyway, the idea seems to be working. It is far easier to help keep people medicated and into substance abuse programs once they are settled then the other way around.
I wrote a much longer post about this a few weeks ago.
Unfortunately giving away housing for free has a tendency to really irritate the right wing – “Why are these people getting something for nothing� policy makers. The answer is simple. It’s cheaper.
Jim S
asks some thoughtful questions, for which I have no easy answers.
IMO a one-size-fits all approach is doomed to faiil. It is very good that states and local communities are trying out different approaches.
To take advantage of experiments, though, there must be sharing of information and ongoing evaluations.
Unfortunatley, when something seems to be working, everyone turns their backs and assumes it will always work and will work in every situation. In the meantime, the homeless demographics change, the administrators become complacent, and people start yelling about wasted money and effort.
Most politicians just give lip service. When has any current candidate addressed our rising crime rates for example?
Crime rates, poverty levels, homelessness, lack of health care – all get swept under the rug.
As an amateur prophet, I see our society rotting from within, much in the manner of the USSR.
Nobody sees investing in people as a profitable undertaking. Yet, the return in savings and productiviy is immense.
There are children among the homeless. We can choose to invest in their futures now and reap the benefits of having them as productive citizens or we can save pennies now by ignoring them and pay big bucks for new prisons, more police, more mental health and rehab facilities later.