I am with you there. A year ago my soon to be ex literally kicked me out after 25 years and put a hotel lock on the door (which is illegal) and left me in the parking lot of our apartment building. Thanx in part to my "cloud if witnesses" I never had to spend a night outside ( sometimes the system works) nor at the unsafe Rescue Mission.
I have worked with the Salvation Army and helped run both a Homeless Shelter and an elder group home. I also empathize with the person in the back pew on Sunday morning waiting for a hoped for coffee hour where they might get something to eat.
You have spelt out the meaning of the little-known (for us down under) term "hostile architecture".
Although it's probably not a buzz-word in my town I have heard of the concept of designing public benches to make homeless users too uncomfortable to linger.
The homeless are mostly not mentally-ill but have lost first their job and then their home (and possibly their family in the process). These dominoes fall one after the other in an inevitable fashion. Some of them are youngsters who're running away from home or state child care.
In the first case people have no option (having already temporarily imposed on friends/family) whilst in the second "hostile emotional architecture" at home has made the person abscond.
However people become homeless police make their lives even more disagreeable than they already are by harassing them and moving then on all the time. We know that benefits are not payable without a permanent address, so no benefit.
Emergency Housing is under attack by the right/libertarian/populist government with thousands of places no longer supported. So, it's the streets and then the deprivation, stigma and threats to health.
We don't like seeing them - they offend us. But if we can possibly, a kind word or a bob in the hat can make a homeless person's day.
A much better government would have full employment by growing the public sector and giving the economy a boost whilst creating more consumers so the money goes round. But it would also have balls and heart.
An increasing number of the elderly are now homeless. Elderly. Mentally unstable. We have no solutions because we refuse to redefine enough. Because we’ve lost the value in sharing what we do have with others. But we can re-learn, if we choose to. Sadly, I fear that until more of us lose what we think belongs to us, until more of us have to suffer as the elderly and the unstable do, we will avoid the lesson. So look around. Give thanks for the roof over your head, the food on your table, the ability to go buy it. To pay for heat or cooling. To live without bedbugs or lice or violence. And every time you give thanks, ask for the grace to see what one thing you can do today to share the bounty you have with someone else.
Reading your article Sam I was reminded of a webcomic I read set in a dystopian future time where success and status in a large city (perhaps the only city) was everything and the only measure of a citizen's worth. Flying guardian robots patrolled the city and if any homeless people were sighted they were snatched up and taken many miles out into the surrounding and probably hostile wastelands and dumped off. I'm sure that many conservative politicians would love to have such loyal and tireless mechanical servants as these to solve the homeless problem for them.
This kind of insidious thinking has reached my own country where our utterly useless conservative coalition government shutdown almost all emergency housing and put it about that they'd solved the housing crisis by lying their faces off that everyone who had been using emergency housing now had access to good safe housing. It's simply not so as city streets and parks are now filled with more rough sleepers than ever before.
Making neighbourhoods hostile to the homeless also makes it hostile to seniors who need a rest stop, to children who need shade or a bathroom. This describes my neighbourhood.
The western world is fast becoming a scary dystopian future novel. Where the haves live in gated enclaves and the rest forage off of what's left outside. We've all heard of or watched movies and TV shows about these science fiction scenarios but we are rapidly making this fiction a reality.
There is a little hope on the horizon if the momentum from June 14th's protests take a hold on American society. I hope this all doesn't fizzle out like the Black Lives Matter protests did.
Until the U.S. and Europe (to include Canada and the U.K.) get their act together to address the disparities between the haves and have nots, things will continue to brew until the pot boils over at some point in the not to distant future. Bad things tend to happen to people when pots boil over during civil unrest. The U.S. is starting to see some of that now with lunatics killing politicians and peaceful protestors. I think these incidents are just a sign of what's to come.
As for the homeless, they're are just in the way, according to a lot of people. No one has the money to take care of them anymore. Most certainly with Trump in charge. With money now gone for food banks and shelters, the poverty issue is getting worse, and more people will become homeless. I will be talking a little about this in my last travel blog from my trip across America and back.
"Having nowhere to go is a crime".
I am with you there. A year ago my soon to be ex literally kicked me out after 25 years and put a hotel lock on the door (which is illegal) and left me in the parking lot of our apartment building. Thanx in part to my "cloud if witnesses" I never had to spend a night outside ( sometimes the system works) nor at the unsafe Rescue Mission.
I have worked with the Salvation Army and helped run both a Homeless Shelter and an elder group home. I also empathize with the person in the back pew on Sunday morning waiting for a hoped for coffee hour where they might get something to eat.
"Having nowhere to go is a crime"
You have spelt out the meaning of the little-known (for us down under) term "hostile architecture".
Although it's probably not a buzz-word in my town I have heard of the concept of designing public benches to make homeless users too uncomfortable to linger.
The homeless are mostly not mentally-ill but have lost first their job and then their home (and possibly their family in the process). These dominoes fall one after the other in an inevitable fashion. Some of them are youngsters who're running away from home or state child care.
In the first case people have no option (having already temporarily imposed on friends/family) whilst in the second "hostile emotional architecture" at home has made the person abscond.
However people become homeless police make their lives even more disagreeable than they already are by harassing them and moving then on all the time. We know that benefits are not payable without a permanent address, so no benefit.
Emergency Housing is under attack by the right/libertarian/populist government with thousands of places no longer supported. So, it's the streets and then the deprivation, stigma and threats to health.
We don't like seeing them - they offend us. But if we can possibly, a kind word or a bob in the hat can make a homeless person's day.
A much better government would have full employment by growing the public sector and giving the economy a boost whilst creating more consumers so the money goes round. But it would also have balls and heart.
An increasing number of the elderly are now homeless. Elderly. Mentally unstable. We have no solutions because we refuse to redefine enough. Because we’ve lost the value in sharing what we do have with others. But we can re-learn, if we choose to. Sadly, I fear that until more of us lose what we think belongs to us, until more of us have to suffer as the elderly and the unstable do, we will avoid the lesson. So look around. Give thanks for the roof over your head, the food on your table, the ability to go buy it. To pay for heat or cooling. To live without bedbugs or lice or violence. And every time you give thanks, ask for the grace to see what one thing you can do today to share the bounty you have with someone else.
Reading your article Sam I was reminded of a webcomic I read set in a dystopian future time where success and status in a large city (perhaps the only city) was everything and the only measure of a citizen's worth. Flying guardian robots patrolled the city and if any homeless people were sighted they were snatched up and taken many miles out into the surrounding and probably hostile wastelands and dumped off. I'm sure that many conservative politicians would love to have such loyal and tireless mechanical servants as these to solve the homeless problem for them.
This kind of insidious thinking has reached my own country where our utterly useless conservative coalition government shutdown almost all emergency housing and put it about that they'd solved the housing crisis by lying their faces off that everyone who had been using emergency housing now had access to good safe housing. It's simply not so as city streets and parks are now filled with more rough sleepers than ever before.
Making neighbourhoods hostile to the homeless also makes it hostile to seniors who need a rest stop, to children who need shade or a bathroom. This describes my neighbourhood.
This is such a great point!
The western world is fast becoming a scary dystopian future novel. Where the haves live in gated enclaves and the rest forage off of what's left outside. We've all heard of or watched movies and TV shows about these science fiction scenarios but we are rapidly making this fiction a reality.
There is a little hope on the horizon if the momentum from June 14th's protests take a hold on American society. I hope this all doesn't fizzle out like the Black Lives Matter protests did.
Until the U.S. and Europe (to include Canada and the U.K.) get their act together to address the disparities between the haves and have nots, things will continue to brew until the pot boils over at some point in the not to distant future. Bad things tend to happen to people when pots boil over during civil unrest. The U.S. is starting to see some of that now with lunatics killing politicians and peaceful protestors. I think these incidents are just a sign of what's to come.
As for the homeless, they're are just in the way, according to a lot of people. No one has the money to take care of them anymore. Most certainly with Trump in charge. With money now gone for food banks and shelters, the poverty issue is getting worse, and more people will become homeless. I will be talking a little about this in my last travel blog from my trip across America and back.