r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Garey_Coleman • 8d ago

Where are the homeless supposed to go?

Cities have been cracking down on homeless people so they can’t have encampments or stay on sidewalks. At the same time usually the shelters are full. So those who are unable to get into a shelter, where are they supposed to go?

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u/BeardedDisc 8d ago

Part of the answer here is that those “encampments” make it more “comfortable” (I get that’s it’s still a shit hole). Many people feel this removes much of the incentive to pull oneself out of this situation one way or another.

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u/Witty_Replacement969 8d ago edited 8d ago

For some encampments are safer. A single homeless female is almost always a target for rape if her sleeping place is discovered. One friend had a brick thrown at her while sleeping. I am one of the 'working poor' and do not do drugs, alcohol, and am not a criminal, and I have seizures, but I do not make enough to qualify for a safe rental (currently min. income for a cheap studio is 3x rent, plus 3 -12 month deposit, key deposit, etc.). It would currently take 2 roommates plus myself to rent a studio unit (this is all across my country). No LL will accept that. By safe I mean not filled with bed bugs, cockroaches, or a LL after sex, with a proper water and heat supply and a locking door.  Sudsidized housing is a decade long wait here. I'm waiting for medically assisted death now (available in my country), because I was doing everything the legal and correct way, and am a hard worker, but why should I >want< to work to enrich other people who want me to freeze to death in the winter while paying me minimum wage? These are the same people who would prefer I go die out of sight. I was in 3rd year of a Microbiology degree before becoming homeless. COL forced me to drop out to work. I have no family. I have no wealthy friends. I'm sick of running in your rat race and becoming worse off when I have never had the opportunities most of you take for granted. Food banks are only open 1 - 2 hours (when I work) so that I can not access them. I paid taxes from the age of 15, but to this country I am a piece of trash. 

Edit: The country is Canada.  I am not considered disabled enough for the Disability Tax Credit and Benefit. I am too old to qualify for most student programs and too young to qualify for any seniors. I do not qualify for any scholarships because I am not racially profiled, do not have dependents, am not the first person to go to university in my family, am not a refugee or asylum claimant, new immigrant, etc. and while I am a good student, I'm not a genius. If I do not >qualify< to live, what else can I do but at least have some control over my exit? For those going on about mental health: Therapy needs to be done from a place of physical stability due to issues that come up during it. A person living in survival mode should not be doing therapy other than coping skills. Also, it can cost $170/hr for proper treatment. That is not covered by provincial health.

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u/External_Tart_ 8d ago

Why not become a criminal? If you see death as the only way out, embrace free will. I'm sorry about your situation.

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u/PaisleyLeopard 8d ago

This highlights a really good point. The situation we put people in causes crime, not the other way around as is generally assumed. Basically, we want to think that homeless people ‘deserve’ their situation because they’re all druggies and/or criminals—that way we don’t have to feel bad for the inhumane ways we deal with them. In reality, the majority of criminals and addicts started doing those things out of desperation, because they didn’t have better options. When we take care of people, they’re a helluva lot less likely to turn to crime or self medication.

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u/HeKis4 8d ago

The situation we put people in causes crime

Society is nothing but a set of rules we impose to live together in peace. If you give people no reason to live as a society (or worse, actively push them away), surprise, they stop following the rules. Insane, I know.

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u/Raptor_197 8d ago

That’s why banishment used to work so well back in the day.

It gave people that didn’t fit within the society a chance to find a new one, but if they couldn’t they simply got recycled back into the ecosystem.

Before the well that sounds cruel comments, should a society bend for an individual or should individual bend to fit in a society?

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u/HeKis4 8d ago

should a society bend for an individual or should individual bend to fit in a society?

Moral considerations aside, on the pragmatic side it depends on the damage the individual (or group of individuals) can make. There are many many cases where it costs less to do the "wrong" thing than the "right" thing. For homeless people, if you have a functional healthcare system, preventing them from becoming dangerous addicts that will take up police and hospital time is economically sound.

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u/Raptor_197 7d ago

Totally depends on the society’s values.

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u/Impressive_Ice6970 8d ago

This is way too intelligent for modern discourse! 😅😉🤗

Excellent point!

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u/HeKis4 7d ago

Nah, it's just too left-wing. It's based off the idea of social contract which the far right doesn't like because the right in general is very attached to the idea of unrestricted personal freedoms and preserving a more "organic" state closer to the law of nature, and the social contract is, well, saying we should do the opposite actually.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract

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u/MotherofBook 8d ago

Which gets to the core of it all.

Most people don’t want to actually solve homelessness, drug problems or crack down on crime. They just want it to go away.

In reality. The way we fix these issues is by fixing the system that makes it possible to begin with.

  • Universal Health Care: People won’t be going into debt because they got sick. People will have access to affordable pain relief, therapy and medication.

-Affordable Housing: Prevent companies from hoarding properties and jacking up prices. People should have to spend 2/3 of their monthly income of a roof over their head. One accident and they are on the streets.

-Cap Cost of living: Very simplified but for this point - CEOs shouldn’t be making Millions in a week and their lowest employees barely making a dime. I think CEOs shouldn’t be making more than 20-50% more than their lowest worker.

That would ensure people can afford to actually live

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u/clubby37 8d ago

I think CEOs shouldn’t be making more than 20-50% more than their lowest worker.

We need to find the Greedy Fuck Threshold.

If you set no limits, you have today's ever-decaying proto-hellscape.

If you set limits that are too tight, people will be too highly incentivized to work around them. Every system has weak points; the true art is balancing pressures such that the weak points never get stressed beyond capacity.

Greedy people are gonna get more. If the system doesn't allow it, they'll break the system. Based on nothing but my own stupid intuition, 1.5x won't cut it, and anything over 10x seems surplus to requirements. Not sure where the golden number is exactly, but if I found out that a pediatric oncologist made 10x as much as a carpenter, I'd probably tolerate it, and honestly, I'd be fine with 3x -- elegant coffee tables are great, but cancer-free children are better. If I were a greedy fuck, and I found out I could only make 10x as much as my janitors, I'd probably make a subreddit and bitch about it, but not do anything to jeopardize the 10x I'm already getting.

The Greedy Fuck Threshold is where the rich are just barely rich enough that it isn't worth risking what they already have to get more. We need to find it, and set taxes and minimum wages accordingly.

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u/Sheraby 8d ago

I think CEOs shouldn’t be making more than 20-50% more than their lowest worker.

Before CEO pay really took off, heads of companies were making somewhere around 20-25x (times, not percent) more than their lowest paid worker. And the lowest paid workers were paid better at that point. So I don't think your suggestion makes sense.

But leaving specifics out of it, the whole economic system in this country needs deep reform, with foremost attention to living wages and minimum standards of living, as well as reining in what is known as the ‘wealth pump’ that redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich, which has been in full swing since at least the late 1970s.

Edit: word

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u/MotherofBook 7d ago

I did mean to say times not percent.

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u/Professional-Tax-615 Down with Gambling ads 7d ago

Honestly the only thing the United States really needs is to get rid of this bs called lobbying, which is nothing more than bribery. Isn't bribery supposed to be f**** illegal? Whenever they allowed bribery AKA lobbying, that's when us Society really started to go downhill. When corporations " became people" we were f****d.

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u/--sheogorath-- 8d ago

Have to considered instead that we can just throw anyone that cant afford rent into either prison or an insane asylum, depending on which side of the aisle you ask?

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u/DirtyScrambelly 8d ago

And it can't be solved because there's no profit. Unless it's paid for by government in which case the incentive is to keep the money flowing.

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u/Unique_Statement7811 8d ago

This person has universal healthcare. They are in Canada.

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u/ArmchairFilosopher 8d ago

I think CEOs shouldn’t be making more than 20-50% more than their lowest worker.

Then one of two things happen: Nobody seeks out specific skills and there are no more brain surgeons, or every role and seniority level differentiates into its own separate company and you've just shifted the issue.

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u/MotherofBook 8d ago

And why would that happen?

What would be preventing people from seeking out specific skills?

What would be preventing or detouring people from going into medical school?

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u/ArmchairFilosopher 8d ago

Even with free education, the effort and hours are grueling for years on end, and there is no way you'll find enough altruistic people to satisfy the demand for such positions without additional motivation.

One cannot simply jump to a utopian vision of the future like you suggest. At least in Star Trek they had replicators.

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u/MotherofBook 7d ago

Is it utopian? Or is that simply the excuse we’ve been given for why it “can never work”? And we are just eating it up.

People will still be driven to work in science, people will still be driven to work in healthcare, people will still be driven to work in education.

Being able to afford the basics in life will actually help boost our productivity as a whole.

People won’t have to work grueling jobs that don’t bring any satisfaction. They can actually follow their passion.

If they don’t want to work, they don’t have to. Who cares.

People who are lazy are lazy regardless of having access to affordable things or not. It changes nothing.

People who have passions will be able to lean into those. People who simply want to work to have money will be able to do so.

Simply I think those that think it’s “utopian” to care for each other, to provide the basics simply aren’t creative enough, or don’t understand how the people actually work.

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u/Jalopnicycle 8d ago

So the person mopping floors makes $50k and the doctor who spent another decade studying and training that is working at the same hospital makes $75k? 

GTFO with your nonsense, you're beyond naive. Capping it at 250x or even 100x still limits the max income at 2.5 and 1 million. 

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u/Zealousideal_Way_788 8d ago

You had me until the CEO pay scale comment. That is ridiculous. So if the lowest paid worker makes $60K a CEO with 1000X more responsibility and pressure should max out at $90K? Laughable. Or socialism.

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u/MotherofBook 8d ago

Or… If the CEO wants to bring in more they should pay their employees more.

Why should 1 person make more in a month than their employee makes in a year?

Especially since we are not appropriately taxing those that are making 100x what there employees are making.

We aren’t making sure those people bringing in millions in a span of a month are also putting that money back into the community.

There is a no reason for an employee to be living paycheck to paycheck if their employer is making way more than they could reasonably use in 3 lifetimes.

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u/hsephela 8d ago

I feel like the more realistic option (and potentially better option) is to mandate some form of revenue sharing in addition to wages.

Or just kill all the ultra greedy people and threaten the wannabes with death. 

I like the second one more personally.

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u/Zealousideal_Way_788 8d ago

People can downvote me all they want. Anybody who is thinking that a CEO should be capped at 50% more than their lowest paid employee is just completely out of touch with logic and reality.

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u/Sheraby 8d ago

You're right. People might want to research a little before they confidently put forth their proposals. Sorry you're getting downvoted.

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u/clubby37 8d ago

This is such an important point. Desperation and crime are very closely correlated, because there's a causal relationship. I remember years ago, I was going through a very rough time, couldn't even afford a phone, and was behind on other bills. I was walking down a dark street in a questionable neighbourhood. I passed a well-dressed lady who was doing a piss poor job of protecting her purse. We were alone on that sidewalk. I really thought about it, man. For half a second, I thought I might actually do it. She was carrying at least a month's peace of mind in that undefended purse.

We like to punish people with discomfort for misbehaviour, but don't like to acknowledge that discomfort promotes misbehaviour. Meeting people's needs before they've done something to earn it can seem like rewarding people who don't deserve it, but I think it's crazy to see that as worse than creating criminals where there otherwise wouldn't be any.

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u/Plutonicuss 8d ago

In this world where there are trillionaires and where 1/3 of all food produced goes to landfills, it doesn’t make sense to not meet everyone’s basic needs.

It sometimes feels like they want people to live in fear and to have people to demonize for losing the imagined game of meritocracy, to tell middle class people “if you don’t get a good enough job, you’ll end up like this.” It feels so medieval that this is still a problem.

I can’t see a downside for some form of UBI. I don’t think everyone would suddenly become lazy freeloaders who sit around all day. Think about all those retired folks puttering around trying to stay busy 24/7 still.

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u/okhi2u 8d ago

It feels like it because it's true!

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u/Curious-Author-3140 8d ago

Being without secure housing and protection from violence and the elements is inevitably going to lead to mental and emotional instability. Throw in food insecurity, and the base of the human needs pyramid literally doesn’t exist. This is simple, biology. Human beings can’t function, much less effectively achieve their potential without it.

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u/willydillydoo 8d ago

This is a very roses and unicorns view of crime. The vast majority of criminal aren’t committing crime out of desperation. At least not in the west

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u/Upset-Management-879 8d ago

It's astounding how every third reddit post is about billionaires and CEOs having to have committed crimes against humanity to get that rich but also insisting that being poor is the root cause of crime.

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u/PaisleyLeopard 8d ago

Different kinds of crime. Billionaires tend to commit white collar crimes on a massive scale, poor people commit more violent crimes and small scale theft.

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u/Upset-Management-879 8d ago

EXACTLY! That's why billionaires commit the least crime.