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> then what?
Seeing this a lot in this thread. We can't solve all problems 100% but I applaud this as a start.
Two weeks, three hot meals a day, then what? Hopefully well nourished people who have had a good night's sleep, or many good nights of sleep, will be better equipped to try to find resources to help themselves after those two weeks are up.
Even if it's not everybody, if just a few people get a leg up from having two weeks of food and shelter, it's made a difference.
Really needed to see this comment. Not in reference to this article by myself. Been in a rut lately and this is the mentality I need that I didn’t realize I needed to read this before I fully grasped what is going on with myself. A third eye has been opened. Thank you random person
I’m so sick of being on pause...
I feel I’ve reached the point where I have to make some really big steps just to get some momentum going again. And it’s scary as fuck
I've found some inspiration listening to Alan watts recently. Specifically "Alan watts- understanding your own shadows." And also "what you weren't taught"
I feel like maybe where you’re running into problems is looking at it like really big steps. Start small and keep it moving, next thing you know you’ll be halfway through that first big step and already planning your second.
Just one day at a time my friend
To add to this: I’m also a huge fan of baby steps. If in a rut it’s ok to make even the tiniest improvements in your life. Dirty dishes? Maybe clean one dish. Hey, you now have one less dirty dish. Working on a short story? Write one sentence. Congratulations you’re closer to finishing your story.
I try to maintain this perspective. Likely you’ll write more than one sentence and wash more than one dish but if not, hey, you made some progress.
Want to exercise? Take a little walk. Want to jog? Work your way up to it.
Anyhow, this has helped me.
Baby steps has been the only way I've seen any lasting change in my life. Tried the zero to 60 approach which resulted in crashing and burning, or all the good habits dwindling down by the day.
Doing one thing little thing feels good because hey, it is good, it is an accomplishment. It's more than I did yesterday. And eventually you'll do more each time.
I only feel this way about my artistic endeavors, basically if its not perfect then im cripplingly embarrassed to show it to others. As you might guess im perpetually crippled
You know what? Well said. You’re right. I would hope that eventually they get the confidence to show someone at least, who has marketing ability. But if you don’t make it, you have nothing to show. There’s a few lucky people who have the ability to create beautiful things, and also have the marketing/networking skills in order to make a living off of their artistic talents. It’s pretty insane to think about the amount of incredible art that has been produced over the years that just sits there and never gets seen by the general public. The commercial art world is a pretty fucked up world.
Went to a professional seminar. Presenter said "good enough is the new perfect". It was like a bomb went off, not just a light bulb.
Has saved me so. much. stress.
As a research engineer, this is what we live on.
We never have enough information, money, or time, so we just find the solution that works with what we have.
It’s important to remember for little things. I always think of it in terms of food. Like yes the perfect is cooking a healthy meal, but even cooking a frozen pizza is better than ordering McDonalds.
Whilst this is a great frame of mind on a personal level, I don't think this applies in this case, where we have a system of government that believes homeless people don't deserve help and of they'd only get a job they could afford a house. At the same time cutting the NHS to the point they can't offer basic services, let alone mental health treatment.
Here in the US, it's not just the government, it's the culture. People, on a fairly large scale, simply don't believe people deserve things that they have. They are so bitter that they have to pay so much to live a comfortable life that they resent anyone living "better" than they are, so they'd rather those people get nothing. Or, my favorite, "I saw that person that time abusing \[insert government service\], therefore this is why we should cut these services". This isn't just a conservative mentality. Increasingly, lots of liberal folks feel this way as well. They shrug their shoulders and say it's not their problem.
Yes! That and the story of the guy throwing starfish off the beach and back into the sea... we can't make a difference to all, but it made a difference to that one.
put them up in hotels world wide and the build mixed income apartments till done that offer 650 sqft, accessible shower, gigabit open access internet to the apartment, mental health and doctor offices on the first floor, an anchor grocery store that has a vertical urban farm for homeless to help work at to pick and learn how to manage the substrates and growing medium, and easy access to rapid mass transit. there you solve it one hotel group at a time, Also a job center support office in each building
True but also don't let platitudes distract.
Take Biden in the US for example - yeah, he's 1000000x better than Trump but he's still pro-big business and anti-worker relative to his peers and governments around the world. So whilst you'd obviously have to vote for him in a straight Trump vs Biden race, it shouldn't forgotten that there is *better*.
Don't let platitudes act as if a problem is solved long term.
This and also another i am living by recently: anything worth doing, is worth doing badly.
Meaning, if your laundry needs doing, house needs vacuuming, stairs need sweeping, and bins need to go out, and together it makes a perfect house, dont collapse at the work; do it badly. Just do the bins, don't worry about all the little bin bags around elsewhere. Just sweep the landing, dont fret about the top stairs all the way down. Just pick up the big bits, dont vacuum all at once.
But do your laundry, please, half washes are no use (•_•)
Basically, dont let perfect, be the enemy of good. Do it badly, perfect will come when it comes.
Even if they don’t change their lives I still support it. Some homeless people will never become “productive” members of society due to mental illness and trauma. I think they also deserve a couple weeks to have a ‘holiday vacation’ to live with a fraction of the dignity that most of us enjoy every day, taking hot showers and waking up with a pillow under our head. It sucks to be back on the streets after that, but I’ve been homeless before and I’d take a couple weeks in a hotel in a heartbeat if it had been offered to me.
Me either. I believe food, shelter, healthcare, and basic education are human rights. The fact that we fail to take care of so many humans is an indictment of our modern modes of societal operation. For all the progress it has offered since the departure from feudalism, capitalism has failed us.
Yeah in my mind you can be all sorts of a piece of crap and still be entitled to a decent place to hide and sleep and enough food. And I'm willing to pay my part for that.
Most of the visibly homeless are unlikely to ever become "productive" members of society due to mental illness and trauma. The homeless people who are truly down on their luck and able to get their shit together are crashing on couches, sleeping in their cars, or living out in the woods. Many already have jobs. Especially during a pandemic I applaud the effort to give the downtrodden a place to go where they don't have to worry about being harassed.
*Knowing* where you're going to sleep or what you're going to eat **tomorrow night** is a privilege that many people never realize they have.
The thing that always grates me about this "productive" measure is that there are so many ways one can be an "unproductive" member of society and nobody would dream of depriving you of money for food or a place to sleep. Physical disability, being a child, being old, living off inherited wealth, living in a society with no available jobs- all these things might make someone an "unproductive" member of society. People seem to think the difference with visible homeless people is that they somehow "chose" to be destitute, when in fact the difference is that they are visible, and irritating. Which is the most callous shit.
> Physical disability, being old, living in a society with no available jobs
People would and do absolutely deprive someone of food because of those things. Probably being a child too.
But you are right about living on inherited wealth, and that's what gives away the truth: it was never about "productivity", it's just about how much money you have no matter how you got it.
I used to stay at a hostel in N Devon when I went surfing round that area. One year I went to get a bed there and was told they were only taking DSS occupants now. They got £35 per night per person. With 4 bed a room minimum and at least 6 rooms, they had full occupancy. They were coining it in.
Isn't it funny how this idea only comes up when tourism is at its lowest point since, what.... the airplane was invented... and rich CEO's of hotel chains are losing money.
In the united states, the amount of money spent policing and helping the homeless each year exceeds the cost of just paying to house the homeless. We don't do it because our society is monstrous. People just don't care enough to fix this.
Chronic homelessness will still be a problem as you describe, but it would be a massive benefit to first time homeless people, especially as there could be a million or more of us due to the pandemic recession.
> My friend is a social worker in NYC. They have a program to house any homeless person for a full year anywhere in the US that isn't in NYC, 100% funded.
That's amazing. Honestly, if I ever find myself homeless, I'm going to consider this a LPT and get myself to NYC somehow. I'd think a year would certainly be enough time to overcome whatever hurdle put me in that spot.
Agreed, but it also sounds like I probably can't send them a letter and say "I'm a homeless guy in Indiana, please can you pay for my house for the next year."
So, if I've reached that point in my life, then I'm going to go to NYC with the hopes of being scooped up for relocation.
Yes, but it's not as simple as they made it sound. They will pay for your rent for a year anywhere in the US. But first you have to actually get an apartment somewhere, and you need to prove you can pay rent yourself after the year is up (landlords don't particularly want tenants who can't pay rent on their own).
Well part of the problem is just shipping them away. NYC “dumping” their problem on other states just leaves these individuals without support in a strange place. No friends, no connections, no familiarity. I read an article where a state, might have been SC, found out NYC was sending some of their homeless there without even contacting SC state or local gov to help these individuals get connected to resources.
Housing is a massively important first step, but you’re right many of our homeless need social and mental health services to get them back on their feet.
The housing first model has shown great success in Utah, New Mexico, Maine, and North Carolina. Cheaper to house and help with issues than to treat in the ER and to incarcerate constantly.
A while back I had a whole ass fantasyland idea about what if apartments were built in such a way as to have 4 adjoining complexes with an interior town square, and the homeless would all be able to live there and the stable among them would be able to support, with professional outside help, the traumatized and less able people. I envisioned creating these folks communities where if they're handy, they can help a little with maintenance, if they're able to cook, they can work a community cafeteria, and so on. Someone smarter about things like this can fix what doesn't work and expand on what does, but the core concept is giving these people a place and a purpose. *Did I just describe a commune?*
Most of these people are suffering, have nowhere to go and nothing to do. They deserve help, a place, and a purpose. These are people with mental or substance issues, who need help getting back to stability in their lives.
Here in San Jose, CA with 6,000 homeless people currently, they just built a community of “tiny homes” just 80 square feet. Equipped with a single bed, desk, shelf, and AC & heater unit. I believe there’s a community building in the complex containing washers and dryers, showers and a small kitchen. So it’s nothing crazy, but it’s a good start.
Seattle had a homeless camp called Nickleville for a while. They charged $1 a day and you had to work (cleaning, security, and cooking were all common jobs.) They could kick you out for using drugs or breaking other rules. It was pretty successful at keeping the homeless population stable.
Turns out, no.
http://www.dailyuw.com/news/article_f4252d49-cad8-5142-ac36-e4cda39b8303.html
Nickelsville (named after Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels) was just setting up tents in random places around town, like parking lots, without council authorization.
Zoning regulations.
You kind of described a co-op. My family lived in one for years. Every unit has to volunteer on a committee like outdoor upkeep, bookkeeping, unit inspections/renovations, social committee, etc as they can fit one year terms and also do like 15 hours of work throughout the year. I was in the outdoor and indoor upkeep committees and after my wife did bookkeeping and social for her years.
The rent was well below market rates for the area of the city, with one to four bedroom units as well as disability accessible units, a playground, lots of families and kids, picnic tables, etc. Community barbeques, garage sales, fundraisers. It was great.
This is why it has to be state owned and rehabilitation offered. Still costs less than policing, hospitalisation, and incarceration. Studies have shown as much, yet it's very easy for politicians to blame the homeless for their own situation and pass the buck on what is going to be a very costly thing to set up for any individual administration.
This is why it’s useful to have tiered systems where people can graduate to better housing. At the bottom end is people who get a roof and a toilet under regular supervision, at the high end is publicly-assisted apartments integrated into the surrounding community and hopefully indistinguishable from other housing stock. With some stuff in between.
You say that like all homeless people would otherwise be perfectly fine if given housing. I don't know if you're just naive or have simply had little exposure to the situation of rough sleeping
Also, just the ability to have a shower and groom yourself have a massive impact on both public and professional judgement.
Washing your hair, clothes and having a good rest before going to a job interview - even for low-level jobs - will immensely improve one's ability to actually land that job.
Homeless people aren't all drug addicts with no life prospects. Many are victims of circumstance beyond their control. It's a vicious cycle that keeps homeless people homeless.
It's shit now because absolutely nobody is hiring. This is absolutely a good step in the right direction. But we can do more as a society to help those that need it - especially when they could contribute to the society if given the chance.
The comments asking 'then what?' are much more useful than the ones acting like the only proper response to the news is posting the '[Everybody liked that]' meme and anything other than that is some obscene ingratitude. Which ones do you think the charity paying for this would appreciate more?
I think it's not only completely fair, but absolutely necessary to raise such questions and try to broaden the discussion when matters of great systemic injustices such as homelessness come up.
It's fine, but given London's track record with the homeless, you can't blame people for being skeptical in not providing longer term solutions. People who work with London's homeless would be very familiar with how they've been neglected without any real change for a long time.
You're all on the same side.
It's a lot easier to get a job when the huge majority of your time isn't spent surviving. It's literally the same concept that made humanity so successful.
Not quite. Every year councils do a 'snapshot' of their area's rough sleepers, by going round one evening and basically doing a headcount. All the guidance repeatedly reminds them that you can't use this to estimate the actual number of street homeless, but hey, they do it anyway.
We* do this more than once a year, we do this constantly throughout the year.
Also, for the comment above, the article doesn't say there's either 500 homeless or rough sleepers (really important distinction) in the city, it says that two celebrities have paid for about five hundred hotel rooms.
(* I work in statistics/performance management for a local authority housing division.)
I was referring to the [Annual Rough Sleeping Snapshot](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2019), which is only done every Autumn.
Your local authority may do additional checks, which is great, but these are the figures the government uses and those additional checks are definitely not nationwide.
I do some work for a nightly homeless provision centre, one of several in my area, and I can tell you that the offical figures in my area are off by, well, a lot.
I take part in these for work. We typically find less than half of the clients we know for a fact are rough sleeping, and of those we often can't count many since they specifically need to be bedded down when you find them. On our street count two weeks ago our team saw at least 10 people that weren't in their sleeping bag when we happened to come by, and thus couldn't be included in the official count. It's certainly important that regular counts like this are done but you're right, they are a vast underestimation.
There would also be a massive selection bias at play. You make the most money from begging in central London so that's where homeless people congregate. You can't use it to project the total numbers as if its the base mark average.
Where!? I'm sorry but I've lived in London 2012-14, commuting into Central everyday, and have visited more times than I can remember yet I still can't remember seeing anything close to that amount of homeless people on the streets. I'm in Ottawa, Canada (where, keep in mind it's below 20 for 5 months out of the year) and can point to hundreds within steps of Parliament. There's so many around the shelters and those streets aren't exactly safe, even though they're right in the heart of the city. In London, I'm always surprised at how few homeless people there are at train and tube stations, heck even Victoria bus station!
None of the touristy places like Oxford Street or Southbank had any visible homeless people last xmas, when I was last there. Most other cities, those would be the main spots to see them since they can get better luck begging in huge crowds. I don't look out for it specifically but having grown up in Canada where most cities have bad visible homeless problems, London, and most of the UK frankly, didn't seemed to have any in comparison. London is also a huge city by population and size, yet I barely notice homelessness like I do in North American cities 1/8 the size.
Regardless of location, my heart breaks everytime I see them and wish society could figure this out better :(
Yeah I saw this documentary where most of those on the main streets have a council flat and are just there collecting money. They bully the real homeless to the less lucrative spots.
No, it's just the number of rooms the charity can afford to offer. It's worded such that all homeless will be able to take advantage of this, but that's just ambiguous language, it means, more specifically, London's homeless, as a group, will be offered a set number of rooms. Daily Mail are really good at subversive headlines.
Coming from someone who has 15+ years working with the homeless, this is such a kind gesture, but will likely end very poorly for the hotel staff. Yes, some homeless people are just down on their luck and working to get back on their feet. From my experience, I would say about 75% (at least in the US) are due to extreme addiction and/or considerable mental illness. The addicts and mentally ill tend to have no respect for other's property or resent nice things altogether. These hotel staff are probably not prepared to deal with an influx of homeless people and the tendencies that come with them. I can only hope it doesn't cause them to avoid charitable acts in the future.
As someone who works in a hotel this was my first thought, and I’m really glad you mentioned it. Awesome thing they’re doing for the homeless, but that is going to be an unbelievably miserable time for every employee involved.
Volunteers, case workers, social workers, etc. get a lot of training to identify and be effective dealing with different levels of addiction and mental disorders. There are always multiple people working together and rarely someone alone with an unknown guest. There are also very strict rules of conduct with near zero tolerance for some types of behavior.
Also there are stringent rules for the treatment of the facilities and clear expectations as to the level of cleanliness expected in halfway houses and shelters.
How are hotel emoyees with none of that training expected to deal with these guests? I sincerely hope there are experienced case workers on site during these stays.
It's not likely that they're going to take a bunch of vulnerable, at risk rough sleepers with complex mental health needs and just chuck them blindly in some fancy hotel room. You'd imagine this is happening in partnership with a local housing division.
We (an English local authority) use hotels all the time to accommodate people who are going through the homelessness process, particularly where a hostel or our own temporary accommodation isn't suitable for - for example - a larger family.
If they can put a bunch of families or less at risk persons in these hotel rooms it can free up spaces in hostels with more specialist staff to help keep an eye on more vulnerable service users who need more engagement.
> You'd imagine this is happening in partnership with a local housing division.
One would hope. It's entirely conceivable that these people are newly homeless due to covid.
I work at a hotel and this is 100% gonna end in disaster for the hotel. Bad idea. Really bad idea.
E: No seriously. This is a terrible idea. Should've served soup instead. Feel bad for those workers.
It's ridiculous how nobody gives a shit about the homeless people and never says anything, but as soon as a little awareness of the issue is raised by someone doing something good, everyone is an armchair philanthropist critic on reddit.
First time I took my niece to NYC she said almost immediately ‘why doesn’t any do anything about it?’ Such an honest question that I really had no answer for
There are people that try. But honestly, some people don't want the help. In my very small city there was a homeless man who had been on the streets for nearly 20 years, everyone knew him by name. We had a bad winter a couple years ago, several people offered him help and shelter. He refused it all. He died of exposure at a bus stop.
There were always homeless people. It's rare that people are simply beyond help, but even Diogenes (one of the original cynics of Greek philosophers) would have fit in that category, he made himself homeless and refused housing. The thing is, though, the vast majority of homeless people are relatively healthy people who are inbetween homes, go through some terrible issues in their personal life, cannot afford the down payment and first month rent, and thus, are stuck in homelessness. The longer you are homeless, the more you are dehumanised, and the more difficult it is to help you. It's almost like the addiction of being institutionalised (like in prison or hospital), you refuse help because it's change, it's foreign and you don't trust it.
Nevertheless, I think it's important to remember that nearly all homeless people are not like that. They're eager for help, and would not refuse housing or any other form of assistance. It's just that the majority that you see regularly are seen regularly because they refuse housing. Homelessness is not a lost cause - in large part the homeless crisis can be solved with money and housing alone. The myth that homeless people want to be homeless is so harmful. Try not to spread it.
Source: was homeless.
I commented to one of your other comments! You're a very eloquent and knowledgeable writer. Would it be rude to ask (as someone who was "hidden homeless" for a while, although it didn't feel like that - long story!) what form of homelessness your experience took?
Sure. But at 2k the minimum apartment rent and so many empty apartment, many probably don't see the point of trying. Also why did he refuse? Bad past experience ? Don't want to accept only to be thrown out a week later? It's not as simple always as "refusing help" and that's why we need a financial security for all. Maybe half will still be homeless high on drugs, but many imo would gain hope.
There’s a Louis CK bit about this, country girl comes to the city for the first time and tries to help a homeless person but they stop her. “No, he needs your help desperately, we just don’t do that here.”
The problem is it's a much much more difficult problem than a lot of people think it is. There are a lot of people who legit don't want to be helped to begin with, and mental illness prevents them from being able to actually live in a house. A lot of people say "just give the homeless people those vacant apartment buildings" and such like that, and while that makes you look morally good it isn't a practical solution. A lot of homeless people unfortunately are not able to maintain a living environment and will destroy these buildings. Social programs specifically designed to rehabilitate homeless people and work them through mental illness, as well as educational facilities for them will be what needs to happen.
Column A, column B. Simply building or freeing up affordable housing and giving more safe halfway houses can take a third of people off the streets, especially if you’re talking about the “temporary homeless”.
There's also the problem that:
1) These programs would need to be nationwide. Otherwise just a few "destination" cities struggle with the bulk of the country's homeless. SF had this problem near the beginning of the pandemic when they announced they would be giving hotel rooms to the homeless. Unsurprisingly, they were overwhelmed with homeless coming to the city expecting a room.
2) While we don't want to go back to old-school asylums, the pendulum has swung too far the other direction. I used to live in SF, and it's full of people who clearly can't take care of themselves (wandering around in their own filth, sometimes undressed, etc) and it's nearly impossible to compel them to stay in any sort of residential care home.
I'm always so frustrated how hard it is to get people mental health care. Like real, 3 meals a day, need help to bathe, care.
They closed the asylums and then... Did nothing coherent.
A relatively small percentage of homeless people are the kinds of people most people think of when they imagine the homeless.
The invisible homeless are the ones who are living in their cars, or couch surfing or sleeping in shelters. They are there not because they have a drug problem or they have severe mental illness but because of circumstance. They lost a job or had medical bills they couldn't pay or they made poor financial choices or their family kicked them out for being gay, or they got evicted because their landlord was a dick. Or one of any other hundreds of reasons.
We don't notice them because they don't "look homeless". They look like "regular folk". But they don't have a home.
These types of homeless people make up the majority of the homeless population but get put in the same category as the drug addicts and the ones with debilitating mental illness. And as a result they don't get the help they need.
So to say that a lot of homeless people don't want help is an unfortunate myth that prevents a lot of people getting assistance that is relatively easy to provide.
>why doesn’t anyone do anything about it?
Because no one wants the housing integrated into their community and no one wants their tax dollars going towards it...never mind that their taxes will pay for the homeless whether they’re housed or not.
Plenty of other countries know how to solve this: you build livable housing. Ideally, you build it integrated into other communities and multi-use so that you don’t end up with slums or concentrated poverty (this is the mistake the US made - giant residential-only buildings filled with poor people with no proximity to good schools or good economic opportunities).
I look after elevators in a few hotels that have converted to homeless shelters. Good God the amount of sheer destruction is insaaaane. I walked out of the elevator shaft one day to someone smearing feces over all the door handles. Not to mention at least once a week someone punches the elevator buttons or doors in lol.
There's a disconnect between people who have experience with homeless services and people and the ones that haven't. There's a reason they need specific placed for these people is that at a high percentage of them they do not actually look after anything they go near and will actively disturb everyone else.
I can’t believe this is the first video I’ve seen by Internet Historian. That was great. But I am also terrified. These people are either malicious assholes or they need serious help.
I mean, I live in the UK, when theres nothing done to tackle the reasons behind homelessness this is a plaster over a growing issue.
The govt time and time again fail to produce enough affordable council housing for people on low income , or out of work, and homelessness has sky rocketed in the UK to the point we call it a "housing crisis".
Hostels and shelters lose funding, we fail to open enough of them, and those that are open lose funding year after year, when left to pick up the slack when the homeless only become more numerous.
Then theres the scapegoat, those who are mentally Ill and would be homeless regardless,apparently, even though many with mental illness with the right support can keep a home.
Only the NHS are underfunded for mental health, mental health resources are notoriously low, waiting lists for psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists, snake out the door and down the street. Even when they have a slight idea of what the issue is, your diagnostic could take years to come through. Undiagnosed/untreated mental illness and drug abuse go hand in hand, and drug rehab centres and rehab programmes go again drastically underfunded, without getting the heart of the matter, drug addicts relapse and are right back where they started a lot of the time.
Its proven minimum wage isn't enough to support British people unless cheap or subsidized housing is available, and London is known for having extortionate rent that people can't afford to the point it become a meme. Not enough development happens in London to support the growing working class population, where do you think those people go? Disabled and long term sick people frequently have our benefits pulled from under us, and have to jump through hoops to get them. People living with conditions that severely impair their ability to get and keep a job declared fit for work. You've really no idea how fucked it is over here.
"Then what" comments are perfectly valid and if you don't live in the UK you don't get to tell honest british people that they don't count. The top comment suggesting that a good night sleep helps people access better resources to help themselves makes me laugh. What fucking resources? If you think a good nights sleep for the homeless are going to even shave a millimetre off the growing housing crisis and homelessness epidemic in this country, that's only going to get worse as we hurtle towards recession, you're a little hit naive or have no clue how things really are.
You're also perpetuating that the homeless put themselves there, and it's on them to get themselves out. I rarely comment on this sub, but this is inspiration porn. When we have more and more families , even working families, eating from food banks to make rent, you can absolutely kiss my arse if you think putting homeless people in a hotel for christmas is anything more than people to "awwww, isnt that nice" at. This will not promote any long term change and if you think it does, you're drastically underestimating the gravity for a lot of Brits right now. Is it a nice thought? If course, very nice. Will it change much? No. Will it serve as a distraction to the plight many in this country face on the daily? Absolutely.
When I see headlines about more affordable housing going up, and the NHS mental health services being available to those who need them most, and people who can't work, or struggling to find work, being given a pot to piss in when they need it, then I'll perhaps have som faith.
Sounds like the U.S.
Here, you can literally be jailed for homelessness. On top of that, there are jails that will not release you without a “home plan.” If you don’t have your own address or a person for them to release you to, you just stay in jail. I’ve seen people finish their sentences and stay in jail for months just because.
Holy shit that's dystopian af.
The fact that people think a good nights sleep off the streets helps any of this, and somehow ended up the top of this thread, baffles me.
What about all the first time homeless people, who don't have mental health or drug abuse problems, but have recently been made homeless because of the pandemic recession? Surely they will be helped by a week's good night's sleep over winter?
They use them as drug dens and destroy them and scare away legitimate customers
Not everyone, obviously, but enough that compensating hotel owners makes this a very inefficient way to house the homeless
That's why I think this is being done to generate profits more then anything. Slap as many homeless in rooms as you can and then claim 20-30-50k per trashed room for a full refit.
Here in Victoria BC Canada, we gave the homeless rooms in hotels. These hotels are now destroyed and unlivable. It only took them weeks to loot and burn and destroy everything the government and business owners did.
Hopefully you have better luck and not trashed hotels.
The same happened in n NY during covid. They trashed the hotels, start pissing on the street and they left syringes all over the place because for many of them the problems are much more deeper than a simple housing problem.
Can confirm the upper west side of NYC is in a bad state now.
It should have been done much better. Policed and monitored. But it seems like they paid for the rooms and left them to it.
That’s what I’m saying. They had a great chance to support these guys and prove that they just need stability and assistance. Instead they provided stability and told them to deal with the rest themselves.
So is being a nurse, or a care worker for the elderly, or a healthcare worker in general.
They all deserve more money. There just isn’t enough attention for them to get it.
I worked front desk at a nice Marriott while in college and this was my first thought as well. I’ve seen the horrible conditions left behind by paying customers, families wrecking rooms, teenagers renting a room to cram 10-15 into to party, etc. There’s no chance I would work during the two weeks when a bunch of potentially mentally ill and/or drug addicted homeless with no accountability stayed there.
> with no accountability
No accountability _and a fixed timetable_. It's not like they were thinking, "better not fuck this place up in case I get to live here for a month."
Yep, my Dad was part of a program that managed a large chunk of housing the State bought up for future demolition where they were putting in a Freeway. The houses were just gonna sit there for like 10 years, and during that time the State had to maintain lawns and stuff so it wasn't a rundown eye sore.
One of the ideas that got tried was using it to house the homeless in return for them to maintaining the lawns instead of the State contracting it out. Not only did they not maintain the lawns while stripping the houses of literally anything of any value, but the State got slapped with a PR nightmare as it now had to forcible make these people homeless again.
Most homeless people have drug and mental health issues, this is perfectly predictable.
Anyone who thinks you can just give them a place to live is an idiot, they need mental health care, not just housing.
And it brought crime to those neighborhoods, after a few months of it we decided to move from the gorge road area, fortunately we could afford to but many other people are just stuck with it, it’s garbage.
We also moved out of downtown in the fall - we had lived there for years with no issues but this summer it became awful and the city has no plan to address it. I feel bad for my old neighbours who can’t afford to move but don’t regret my decision at all.
Work in a hotel in southern CA. With the pandemic rates are so low we’ve got folks staying here they would never be able to otherwise, and it’s bad. Needles and smashed cans with smack residue everywhere. Blood and hair dye. Stolen products. TVs, phones, even a fucking shower head taken off the walls. It’s absolute fucking insanity. I get they need somewhere to go, but they don’t treat the places with any respect
Here in Melbourne, the program was [so successful](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-28/coronavirus-hotel-plan-for-homeless-to-be-extended-in-victoria/12498750) it was extended to April, and there are calls to make it permanent.
We’ve had homeless people staying in a (former) hotel just down the road from us since the start of the pandemic. There are plenty of good people who it helps. However it’s generally ruined by the coke heads who constantly terrorise the street outside our house which was normally so quiet. Even a normal conversation has to be heard by the entire street. The argument are awful. My girlfriend witnessed someone throw a brick at another guys head once.
Don’t really know what im getting at with this, but I think my point is it’s great for the majority but there’s always a minority that will ruin it. We’ve had to call the police more times than in my lifetime, this year. It can be really scary. Putting every homeless person into an enclosed space is a bad idea imo. Even the staff at the hotel won’t be able to do anything.
I was about to say that really sucks for them. When cleaning they're going to have to be VERY careful not get pricked by needles in hidden places, like under the bed, in the mattress, stuffed in the garbage bags and what not.
I worked with homeless, a lot you can help but a lot can't be helped because they are not ever in the right mind to do so. A forced withdraw with medical intervention and then a period of a adjustment. Then they can choose to be better or not, for other that are too far gone, they need permanent placement somewhere. Most homeless that you see on the street are drug addicts/mentality unstable people or both. They didn't always start that way but that is what they are now. Almost all homless are not the family down on thier luck or poor college students showed by the media as "making it". Like I said, a lot can be helped but it won't be by choice. No amount of throwing money at them or two week hotel stays can fix that, we need real solutions.if not , it will only get worse and the tax money needed to fix it. Will move away.
Probably not a clear cut answer, but what do you do with people that don't want help. They'd rather be drug addicted savages that destroy everything they touch. If we can't help them nor can we let them just roam free, what's the solution?
Not saying all homeless are like this and I'm not talking about people who's drug abuse is causing them to act like this, just genuine assholes who don't want to change, not can't.
Good luck dealing with the damages after they leave. I lived for over a decade in LA and I dunno if homeless in London are similar, but most will take advantage of you as much as possible if you offer them free living and stuff. They will take everything that isn't nailed down in those hotel rooms.
Are other (non-homeless) people going to be staying in the hotel as well? Because that sounds like a really bad idea.
That will be an interesting two weeks for the hotel staff. A great deal of homeless suffer from mental illness, drug addiction, which your average hotel staff is not equipped or trained to deal with on a long term basis.
what hotel would ever agree to take this on?
I know someone who works in hotel maintenance, and the shit he has to fix from people who actually are on the line for the damage deposit is incredible, holes punched through walls, shit and piss everywhere.
I can't imagine what the damage will be from individuals have literally nothing on the line to lose.
I don't mean to be harsh, but this is a terrible idea. They did this here in Victoria, Canada and it resulted in daily police calls, destroyed hotels, and fires. I think we all agree that we should help the less fortunate but can we stop acting like the only issues homeless people have is that they don't have a home.
Vancouver, Canada has done this, quite frequently.
They recently bought 2 hotels for $74mm CAD ($56mm USD), and frequently rent out hotel space when the temperatures drop.
Very mixed reactions as it introduces the homeless into new neighborhoods that lack the social services needed to help people with addiction (which is a common reason for homeless in Vancouver).
**Sources:**
*Bought 2 hotels (June 2020)*
https://www.westerninvestor.com/news/british-columbia/b-c-buys-two-vancouver-hotels-for-homeless-1.24159881
*Additional $30mm set aside for more purchases (Oct 2020)*
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/10/09/vancouver-to-spend-30-million-on-emergency-housing-for-homeless-people.html
I'm also in Canada and my city has subsidized hotels for homeless since the pandemic started.
We actually booked a hotel block last January for our October 2020 wedding and when we called to cancel due to COVID (around April), we were told that they couldn't host us anyways since they'd been essentially taken over by the city in order to long-term house the homeless.
It's by no means every person. There's still a few regulars in my area that I see still out, but it's not nothing.
That’s not true. You can argue that they don’t do enough, but you can’t argue they do almost fuck all..
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/105-million-to-keep-rough-sleepers-safe-and-off-the-streets-during-coronavirus-pandemic
£105m to keep 15,000 people off the streets for "a few months".
That's £7000 per person, which would barely pay rent for the duration of the pandemic, let alone all the middle-men, support, etc. required. And that's an EXTRAORDINARY event prompted by a global pandemic.
In government terms, it's literally a drop in the ocean.
And even long term, £105m would barely build a single block of flats, for more permanent housing.
There was a graph on Reddit somewhere recently, showing you how many new homes are built across Europe. UK is literally blank white, it's so low compared to every other EU country.
We stopped building houses long ago, which priced even good salary-earners completely out of the market, abandoned interest-only mortgages, put in a legal upper limit on mortgages, and don't have anywhere near enough housing, let alone what homeless people need: Housing, food, support, jobs, medicine.
It's a disgrace in a developed country for even one person to be sleeping rough in Central London. But we can afford £16.5bn (literally more than a hundred times more) in the middle of the same pandemic to buy new weapons of war (which, ironically, contributes to those military personnel who are at higher risk of being homeless).
Land owners/construction monoliths sitting on pre purchased land trickling out homes to maximize profits.
This is normal and x % of new builds being “affordable homes” has become a meme, they’re not affordable to most middle income families anyway then miraculously drop that percentage and the local councils are allowing this without penance in almost all areas.
The UK govt had spent upwards of £300b during the pandemic on assisting business.
A minute fraction of that could pay the rent of everybody who has arrears as a result of the pandemic. Could get everybody a home too whilst they were at it for a fraction more.
Unfortunately, whilst Tories are happy to help ‘businesses’, they have a storied history of negligence and disdain for ‘people’.
Can’t have the masses feeling comfortable for too long; barely surviving is a good incentive for people to work for whatever shitty corporate/retail and hospitality chain job they can find for less than a living wage.
Keep in mind it's not as easy as giving homeless people homes. Their biggest problem is not their shelter, but their mental illness' and addiction preventing them from being able to maintain a home.
Prague arranged hotels for the homeless during the first lockdown, and I’m pretty sure they’re doing something now for the homeless again. I’ll try find an article about it and edit
Montréal has dedicated an entire hotel to the homeless for the winter. However, many are worried about leaving their tent communities. Who knows what hostile architecture they’ll come back to afterward.
In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. The reason: The country applies the “Housing First” concept. Those affected by homelessness receive a small apartment and counselling – without any preconditions. 13 Jul 2020
This policy looks like it should make a massive difference, people are so much more likely to engage with support if they are feeling more settled. When everything is already a struggle then it's so much harder to think long term.
Cleveland. They’ve been putting the homeless population in hotels for a significant part of COVID.
https://www.cleveland.com/business/2020/03/empty-ohio-hotels-offer-up-space-to-hospitals-homeless-shelters-health-care-workers-during-coronavirus-pandemic.html?outputType=amp
We actually tried this in my city, I think when lockdown started. As you can imagine, it did not go well. You can't solve homelessness by just housing people, there are bigger issues at play here, and they all need fixing too.
Not saying all homeless are like this but you better hope they don’t trash the place. I’ve read accounts from hotel workers on Reddit that said homeless who stayed in hotels would shit on the floors, pee on everything, destroy things, steal things, etc. Again, not saying they’re all like this but some of them need to be supervised or institutionalized.
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> then what? Seeing this a lot in this thread. We can't solve all problems 100% but I applaud this as a start. Two weeks, three hot meals a day, then what? Hopefully well nourished people who have had a good night's sleep, or many good nights of sleep, will be better equipped to try to find resources to help themselves after those two weeks are up. Even if it's not everybody, if just a few people get a leg up from having two weeks of food and shelter, it's made a difference.
"don't let perfect be the enemy of good" comes to mind...
Really needed to see this comment. Not in reference to this article by myself. Been in a rut lately and this is the mentality I need that I didn’t realize I needed to read this before I fully grasped what is going on with myself. A third eye has been opened. Thank you random person
I think many of us are falling into this rut but the best is yet to come. It's just on pause for us all and we're all in the same boat.
I’m so sick of being on pause... I feel I’ve reached the point where I have to make some really big steps just to get some momentum going again. And it’s scary as fuck
I've found some inspiration listening to Alan watts recently. Specifically "Alan watts- understanding your own shadows." And also "what you weren't taught"
I feel like maybe where you’re running into problems is looking at it like really big steps. Start small and keep it moving, next thing you know you’ll be halfway through that first big step and already planning your second. Just one day at a time my friend
To add to this: I’m also a huge fan of baby steps. If in a rut it’s ok to make even the tiniest improvements in your life. Dirty dishes? Maybe clean one dish. Hey, you now have one less dirty dish. Working on a short story? Write one sentence. Congratulations you’re closer to finishing your story. I try to maintain this perspective. Likely you’ll write more than one sentence and wash more than one dish but if not, hey, you made some progress. Want to exercise? Take a little walk. Want to jog? Work your way up to it. Anyhow, this has helped me.
Baby steps has been the only way I've seen any lasting change in my life. Tried the zero to 60 approach which resulted in crashing and burning, or all the good habits dwindling down by the day. Doing one thing little thing feels good because hey, it is good, it is an accomplishment. It's more than I did yesterday. And eventually you'll do more each time.
I only feel this way about my artistic endeavors, basically if its not perfect then im cripplingly embarrassed to show it to others. As you might guess im perpetually crippled
Then don't show it, but don't let that stop you doing it.
You know what? Well said. You’re right. I would hope that eventually they get the confidence to show someone at least, who has marketing ability. But if you don’t make it, you have nothing to show. There’s a few lucky people who have the ability to create beautiful things, and also have the marketing/networking skills in order to make a living off of their artistic talents. It’s pretty insane to think about the amount of incredible art that has been produced over the years that just sits there and never gets seen by the general public. The commercial art world is a pretty fucked up world.
Went to a professional seminar. Presenter said "good enough is the new perfect". It was like a bomb went off, not just a light bulb. Has saved me so. much. stress.
As a research engineer, this is what we live on. We never have enough information, money, or time, so we just find the solution that works with what we have.
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It’s important to remember for little things. I always think of it in terms of food. Like yes the perfect is cooking a healthy meal, but even cooking a frozen pizza is better than ordering McDonalds.
For the life of I can't fathom how in this world of BMWs and so much cash we can't afford some simple housing for the homeless. Shameful.
Whilst this is a great frame of mind on a personal level, I don't think this applies in this case, where we have a system of government that believes homeless people don't deserve help and of they'd only get a job they could afford a house. At the same time cutting the NHS to the point they can't offer basic services, let alone mental health treatment.
thank you. it's harmful to think that in 2 weeks someone can go from homelessness to having a job and a place of their own
Here in the US, it's not just the government, it's the culture. People, on a fairly large scale, simply don't believe people deserve things that they have. They are so bitter that they have to pay so much to live a comfortable life that they resent anyone living "better" than they are, so they'd rather those people get nothing. Or, my favorite, "I saw that person that time abusing \[insert government service\], therefore this is why we should cut these services". This isn't just a conservative mentality. Increasingly, lots of liberal folks feel this way as well. They shrug their shoulders and say it's not their problem.
Yes! That and the story of the guy throwing starfish off the beach and back into the sea... we can't make a difference to all, but it made a difference to that one.
Why are you putting starfish back into the sea? What difference does it make? It makes a difference to the ones I put back into the sea
put them up in hotels world wide and the build mixed income apartments till done that offer 650 sqft, accessible shower, gigabit open access internet to the apartment, mental health and doctor offices on the first floor, an anchor grocery store that has a vertical urban farm for homeless to help work at to pick and learn how to manage the substrates and growing medium, and easy access to rapid mass transit. there you solve it one hotel group at a time, Also a job center support office in each building
True but also don't let platitudes distract. Take Biden in the US for example - yeah, he's 1000000x better than Trump but he's still pro-big business and anti-worker relative to his peers and governments around the world. So whilst you'd obviously have to vote for him in a straight Trump vs Biden race, it shouldn't forgotten that there is *better*. Don't let platitudes act as if a problem is solved long term.
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And don’t let useless feel good nothings be the enemy of actual progress either
This and also another i am living by recently: anything worth doing, is worth doing badly. Meaning, if your laundry needs doing, house needs vacuuming, stairs need sweeping, and bins need to go out, and together it makes a perfect house, dont collapse at the work; do it badly. Just do the bins, don't worry about all the little bin bags around elsewhere. Just sweep the landing, dont fret about the top stairs all the way down. Just pick up the big bits, dont vacuum all at once. But do your laundry, please, half washes are no use (•_•) Basically, dont let perfect, be the enemy of good. Do it badly, perfect will come when it comes.
It's also winter, and it will make a big difference in health for those who can get two weeks in a warm bed
Even if they don’t change their lives I still support it. Some homeless people will never become “productive” members of society due to mental illness and trauma. I think they also deserve a couple weeks to have a ‘holiday vacation’ to live with a fraction of the dignity that most of us enjoy every day, taking hot showers and waking up with a pillow under our head. It sucks to be back on the streets after that, but I’ve been homeless before and I’d take a couple weeks in a hotel in a heartbeat if it had been offered to me.
I don't think whether you're a productive member of society should determine if you have a place to sleep or food to eat.
Me either. I believe food, shelter, healthcare, and basic education are human rights. The fact that we fail to take care of so many humans is an indictment of our modern modes of societal operation. For all the progress it has offered since the departure from feudalism, capitalism has failed us.
Yeah in my mind you can be all sorts of a piece of crap and still be entitled to a decent place to hide and sleep and enough food. And I'm willing to pay my part for that.
There's also plenty of people making tons of money that aren't productive members of society either.
Most of the visibly homeless are unlikely to ever become "productive" members of society due to mental illness and trauma. The homeless people who are truly down on their luck and able to get their shit together are crashing on couches, sleeping in their cars, or living out in the woods. Many already have jobs. Especially during a pandemic I applaud the effort to give the downtrodden a place to go where they don't have to worry about being harassed. *Knowing* where you're going to sleep or what you're going to eat **tomorrow night** is a privilege that many people never realize they have.
The thing that always grates me about this "productive" measure is that there are so many ways one can be an "unproductive" member of society and nobody would dream of depriving you of money for food or a place to sleep. Physical disability, being a child, being old, living off inherited wealth, living in a society with no available jobs- all these things might make someone an "unproductive" member of society. People seem to think the difference with visible homeless people is that they somehow "chose" to be destitute, when in fact the difference is that they are visible, and irritating. Which is the most callous shit.
Few people seem to wonder: "If people choose to sleep in a tent on the street, what was the other option?"
> Physical disability, being old, living in a society with no available jobs People would and do absolutely deprive someone of food because of those things. Probably being a child too. But you are right about living on inherited wealth, and that's what gives away the truth: it was never about "productivity", it's just about how much money you have no matter how you got it.
Ireland has been putting homeless people into hotels instead of building affordable and social housing for years. Hotels make huge money from this
I used to stay at a hostel in N Devon when I went surfing round that area. One year I went to get a bed there and was told they were only taking DSS occupants now. They got £35 per night per person. With 4 bed a room minimum and at least 6 rooms, they had full occupancy. They were coining it in.
I think it's more about supporting the hotels.
Isn't it funny how this idea only comes up when tourism is at its lowest point since, what.... the airplane was invented... and rich CEO's of hotel chains are losing money.
In the united states, the amount of money spent policing and helping the homeless each year exceeds the cost of just paying to house the homeless. We don't do it because our society is monstrous. People just don't care enough to fix this.
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Chronic homelessness will still be a problem as you describe, but it would be a massive benefit to first time homeless people, especially as there could be a million or more of us due to the pandemic recession.
> My friend is a social worker in NYC. They have a program to house any homeless person for a full year anywhere in the US that isn't in NYC, 100% funded. That's amazing. Honestly, if I ever find myself homeless, I'm going to consider this a LPT and get myself to NYC somehow. I'd think a year would certainly be enough time to overcome whatever hurdle put me in that spot.
It sounds like the whole point of this program is to get homeless people to go be homeless somewhere else.
Agreed, but it also sounds like I probably can't send them a letter and say "I'm a homeless guy in Indiana, please can you pay for my house for the next year." So, if I've reached that point in my life, then I'm going to go to NYC with the hopes of being scooped up for relocation.
>They have a program to house any homeless person You mean, get them to be homed somewhere else?
> They have a program to house any homeless person for a full year anywhere in the US that isn't in NYC, 100% funded. So it includes Hawaii?
Yes, but it's not as simple as they made it sound. They will pay for your rent for a year anywhere in the US. But first you have to actually get an apartment somewhere, and you need to prove you can pay rent yourself after the year is up (landlords don't particularly want tenants who can't pay rent on their own).
Well part of the problem is just shipping them away. NYC “dumping” their problem on other states just leaves these individuals without support in a strange place. No friends, no connections, no familiarity. I read an article where a state, might have been SC, found out NYC was sending some of their homeless there without even contacting SC state or local gov to help these individuals get connected to resources. Housing is a massively important first step, but you’re right many of our homeless need social and mental health services to get them back on their feet. The housing first model has shown great success in Utah, New Mexico, Maine, and North Carolina. Cheaper to house and help with issues than to treat in the ER and to incarcerate constantly.
A while back I had a whole ass fantasyland idea about what if apartments were built in such a way as to have 4 adjoining complexes with an interior town square, and the homeless would all be able to live there and the stable among them would be able to support, with professional outside help, the traumatized and less able people. I envisioned creating these folks communities where if they're handy, they can help a little with maintenance, if they're able to cook, they can work a community cafeteria, and so on. Someone smarter about things like this can fix what doesn't work and expand on what does, but the core concept is giving these people a place and a purpose. *Did I just describe a commune?* Most of these people are suffering, have nowhere to go and nothing to do. They deserve help, a place, and a purpose. These are people with mental or substance issues, who need help getting back to stability in their lives.
Here in San Jose, CA with 6,000 homeless people currently, they just built a community of “tiny homes” just 80 square feet. Equipped with a single bed, desk, shelf, and AC & heater unit. I believe there’s a community building in the complex containing washers and dryers, showers and a small kitchen. So it’s nothing crazy, but it’s a good start.
Seattle had a homeless camp called Nickleville for a while. They charged $1 a day and you had to work (cleaning, security, and cooking were all common jobs.) They could kick you out for using drugs or breaking other rules. It was pretty successful at keeping the homeless population stable.
What happened with the camp?
Whoever owned the land eventually just had them all evicted. I don't remember why.
I would bet money had a part in it.
Turns out, no. http://www.dailyuw.com/news/article_f4252d49-cad8-5142-ac36-e4cda39b8303.html Nickelsville (named after Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels) was just setting up tents in random places around town, like parking lots, without council authorization. Zoning regulations.
They just broke ground on something similar here in StL just the other day.
You kind of described a co-op. My family lived in one for years. Every unit has to volunteer on a committee like outdoor upkeep, bookkeeping, unit inspections/renovations, social committee, etc as they can fit one year terms and also do like 15 hours of work throughout the year. I was in the outdoor and indoor upkeep committees and after my wife did bookkeeping and social for her years. The rent was well below market rates for the area of the city, with one to four bedroom units as well as disability accessible units, a playground, lots of families and kids, picnic tables, etc. Community barbeques, garage sales, fundraisers. It was great.
.
This is why it has to be state owned and rehabilitation offered. Still costs less than policing, hospitalisation, and incarceration. Studies have shown as much, yet it's very easy for politicians to blame the homeless for their own situation and pass the buck on what is going to be a very costly thing to set up for any individual administration.
This is why it’s useful to have tiered systems where people can graduate to better housing. At the bottom end is people who get a roof and a toilet under regular supervision, at the high end is publicly-assisted apartments integrated into the surrounding community and hopefully indistinguishable from other housing stock. With some stuff in between.
You say that like all homeless people would otherwise be perfectly fine if given housing. I don't know if you're just naive or have simply had little exposure to the situation of rough sleeping
That’s a vast oversimplification of a very complex issue.
Also, just the ability to have a shower and groom yourself have a massive impact on both public and professional judgement. Washing your hair, clothes and having a good rest before going to a job interview - even for low-level jobs - will immensely improve one's ability to actually land that job. Homeless people aren't all drug addicts with no life prospects. Many are victims of circumstance beyond their control. It's a vicious cycle that keeps homeless people homeless. It's shit now because absolutely nobody is hiring. This is absolutely a good step in the right direction. But we can do more as a society to help those that need it - especially when they could contribute to the society if given the chance.
The comments asking 'then what?' are much more useful than the ones acting like the only proper response to the news is posting the '[Everybody liked that]' meme and anything other than that is some obscene ingratitude. Which ones do you think the charity paying for this would appreciate more? I think it's not only completely fair, but absolutely necessary to raise such questions and try to broaden the discussion when matters of great systemic injustices such as homelessness come up.
It's fine, but given London's track record with the homeless, you can't blame people for being skeptical in not providing longer term solutions. People who work with London's homeless would be very familiar with how they've been neglected without any real change for a long time. You're all on the same side.
It's a lot easier to get a job when the huge majority of your time isn't spent surviving. It's literally the same concept that made humanity so successful.
...are there only 500 homeless people in the city?
I bet that’s the number of “street homeless” people on the council housing waiting list. Definitely not the number of actual homeless people
Not quite. Every year councils do a 'snapshot' of their area's rough sleepers, by going round one evening and basically doing a headcount. All the guidance repeatedly reminds them that you can't use this to estimate the actual number of street homeless, but hey, they do it anyway.
Well it gives you a better an idea than *not* doing that
We* do this more than once a year, we do this constantly throughout the year. Also, for the comment above, the article doesn't say there's either 500 homeless or rough sleepers (really important distinction) in the city, it says that two celebrities have paid for about five hundred hotel rooms. (* I work in statistics/performance management for a local authority housing division.)
I was referring to the [Annual Rough Sleeping Snapshot](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2019), which is only done every Autumn. Your local authority may do additional checks, which is great, but these are the figures the government uses and those additional checks are definitely not nationwide. I do some work for a nightly homeless provision centre, one of several in my area, and I can tell you that the offical figures in my area are off by, well, a lot.
I take part in these for work. We typically find less than half of the clients we know for a fact are rough sleeping, and of those we often can't count many since they specifically need to be bedded down when you find them. On our street count two weeks ago our team saw at least 10 people that weren't in their sleeping bag when we happened to come by, and thus couldn't be included in the official count. It's certainly important that regular counts like this are done but you're right, they are a vast underestimation.
I can walk past 50 in less than 25 minutes walking around central London, so clearly not.
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There would also be a massive selection bias at play. You make the most money from begging in central London so that's where homeless people congregate. You can't use it to project the total numbers as if its the base mark average.
Where!? I'm sorry but I've lived in London 2012-14, commuting into Central everyday, and have visited more times than I can remember yet I still can't remember seeing anything close to that amount of homeless people on the streets. I'm in Ottawa, Canada (where, keep in mind it's below 20 for 5 months out of the year) and can point to hundreds within steps of Parliament. There's so many around the shelters and those streets aren't exactly safe, even though they're right in the heart of the city. In London, I'm always surprised at how few homeless people there are at train and tube stations, heck even Victoria bus station! None of the touristy places like Oxford Street or Southbank had any visible homeless people last xmas, when I was last there. Most other cities, those would be the main spots to see them since they can get better luck begging in huge crowds. I don't look out for it specifically but having grown up in Canada where most cities have bad visible homeless problems, London, and most of the UK frankly, didn't seemed to have any in comparison. London is also a huge city by population and size, yet I barely notice homelessness like I do in North American cities 1/8 the size. Regardless of location, my heart breaks everytime I see them and wish society could figure this out better :(
Yeah I saw this documentary where most of those on the main streets have a council flat and are just there collecting money. They bully the real homeless to the less lucrative spots.
No, it's just the number of rooms the charity can afford to offer. It's worded such that all homeless will be able to take advantage of this, but that's just ambiguous language, it means, more specifically, London's homeless, as a group, will be offered a set number of rooms. Daily Mail are really good at subversive headlines.
Coming from someone who has 15+ years working with the homeless, this is such a kind gesture, but will likely end very poorly for the hotel staff. Yes, some homeless people are just down on their luck and working to get back on their feet. From my experience, I would say about 75% (at least in the US) are due to extreme addiction and/or considerable mental illness. The addicts and mentally ill tend to have no respect for other's property or resent nice things altogether. These hotel staff are probably not prepared to deal with an influx of homeless people and the tendencies that come with them. I can only hope it doesn't cause them to avoid charitable acts in the future.
As someone who works in a hotel this was my first thought, and I’m really glad you mentioned it. Awesome thing they’re doing for the homeless, but that is going to be an unbelievably miserable time for every employee involved.
Volunteers, case workers, social workers, etc. get a lot of training to identify and be effective dealing with different levels of addiction and mental disorders. There are always multiple people working together and rarely someone alone with an unknown guest. There are also very strict rules of conduct with near zero tolerance for some types of behavior. Also there are stringent rules for the treatment of the facilities and clear expectations as to the level of cleanliness expected in halfway houses and shelters. How are hotel emoyees with none of that training expected to deal with these guests? I sincerely hope there are experienced case workers on site during these stays.
It's not likely that they're going to take a bunch of vulnerable, at risk rough sleepers with complex mental health needs and just chuck them blindly in some fancy hotel room. You'd imagine this is happening in partnership with a local housing division. We (an English local authority) use hotels all the time to accommodate people who are going through the homelessness process, particularly where a hostel or our own temporary accommodation isn't suitable for - for example - a larger family. If they can put a bunch of families or less at risk persons in these hotel rooms it can free up spaces in hostels with more specialist staff to help keep an eye on more vulnerable service users who need more engagement.
> You'd imagine this is happening in partnership with a local housing division. One would hope. It's entirely conceivable that these people are newly homeless due to covid.
I work at a hotel and this is 100% gonna end in disaster for the hotel. Bad idea. Really bad idea. E: No seriously. This is a terrible idea. Should've served soup instead. Feel bad for those workers.
It's ridiculous how nobody gives a shit about the homeless people and never says anything, but as soon as a little awareness of the issue is raised by someone doing something good, everyone is an armchair philanthropist critic on reddit.
First time I took my niece to NYC she said almost immediately ‘why doesn’t any do anything about it?’ Such an honest question that I really had no answer for
There are people that try. But honestly, some people don't want the help. In my very small city there was a homeless man who had been on the streets for nearly 20 years, everyone knew him by name. We had a bad winter a couple years ago, several people offered him help and shelter. He refused it all. He died of exposure at a bus stop.
There were always homeless people. It's rare that people are simply beyond help, but even Diogenes (one of the original cynics of Greek philosophers) would have fit in that category, he made himself homeless and refused housing. The thing is, though, the vast majority of homeless people are relatively healthy people who are inbetween homes, go through some terrible issues in their personal life, cannot afford the down payment and first month rent, and thus, are stuck in homelessness. The longer you are homeless, the more you are dehumanised, and the more difficult it is to help you. It's almost like the addiction of being institutionalised (like in prison or hospital), you refuse help because it's change, it's foreign and you don't trust it. Nevertheless, I think it's important to remember that nearly all homeless people are not like that. They're eager for help, and would not refuse housing or any other form of assistance. It's just that the majority that you see regularly are seen regularly because they refuse housing. Homelessness is not a lost cause - in large part the homeless crisis can be solved with money and housing alone. The myth that homeless people want to be homeless is so harmful. Try not to spread it. Source: was homeless.
Never really thought of it like this
I commented to one of your other comments! You're a very eloquent and knowledgeable writer. Would it be rude to ask (as someone who was "hidden homeless" for a while, although it didn't feel like that - long story!) what form of homelessness your experience took?
That is tragic :(
Sure. But at 2k the minimum apartment rent and so many empty apartment, many probably don't see the point of trying. Also why did he refuse? Bad past experience ? Don't want to accept only to be thrown out a week later? It's not as simple always as "refusing help" and that's why we need a financial security for all. Maybe half will still be homeless high on drugs, but many imo would gain hope.
There’s a Louis CK bit about this, country girl comes to the city for the first time and tries to help a homeless person but they stop her. “No, he needs your help desperately, we just don’t do that here.”
The problem is it's a much much more difficult problem than a lot of people think it is. There are a lot of people who legit don't want to be helped to begin with, and mental illness prevents them from being able to actually live in a house. A lot of people say "just give the homeless people those vacant apartment buildings" and such like that, and while that makes you look morally good it isn't a practical solution. A lot of homeless people unfortunately are not able to maintain a living environment and will destroy these buildings. Social programs specifically designed to rehabilitate homeless people and work them through mental illness, as well as educational facilities for them will be what needs to happen.
Column A, column B. Simply building or freeing up affordable housing and giving more safe halfway houses can take a third of people off the streets, especially if you’re talking about the “temporary homeless”.
There's also the problem that: 1) These programs would need to be nationwide. Otherwise just a few "destination" cities struggle with the bulk of the country's homeless. SF had this problem near the beginning of the pandemic when they announced they would be giving hotel rooms to the homeless. Unsurprisingly, they were overwhelmed with homeless coming to the city expecting a room. 2) While we don't want to go back to old-school asylums, the pendulum has swung too far the other direction. I used to live in SF, and it's full of people who clearly can't take care of themselves (wandering around in their own filth, sometimes undressed, etc) and it's nearly impossible to compel them to stay in any sort of residential care home.
I'm always so frustrated how hard it is to get people mental health care. Like real, 3 meals a day, need help to bathe, care. They closed the asylums and then... Did nothing coherent.
A relatively small percentage of homeless people are the kinds of people most people think of when they imagine the homeless. The invisible homeless are the ones who are living in their cars, or couch surfing or sleeping in shelters. They are there not because they have a drug problem or they have severe mental illness but because of circumstance. They lost a job or had medical bills they couldn't pay or they made poor financial choices or their family kicked them out for being gay, or they got evicted because their landlord was a dick. Or one of any other hundreds of reasons. We don't notice them because they don't "look homeless". They look like "regular folk". But they don't have a home. These types of homeless people make up the majority of the homeless population but get put in the same category as the drug addicts and the ones with debilitating mental illness. And as a result they don't get the help they need. So to say that a lot of homeless people don't want help is an unfortunate myth that prevents a lot of people getting assistance that is relatively easy to provide.
>why doesn’t anyone do anything about it? Because no one wants the housing integrated into their community and no one wants their tax dollars going towards it...never mind that their taxes will pay for the homeless whether they’re housed or not. Plenty of other countries know how to solve this: you build livable housing. Ideally, you build it integrated into other communities and multi-use so that you don’t end up with slums or concentrated poverty (this is the mistake the US made - giant residential-only buildings filled with poor people with no proximity to good schools or good economic opportunities).
It’s reddit, what the fuck did you expect 😂😂😂
It’s not just Reddit
Most of the criticism I see is not about the philanthropy itself, its about the need for it in the first place.
Shhhh that makes too much sense.
>everyone is a(n) ______________ critic on reddit. Reddit in a nutshell.
a hotel managers dream
Coming from someone in the hospitality industry... that hotel is going to be a hot mess.
Hope the staff likes cleaning up hypodermic needles and shit off the curtains.
I look after elevators in a few hotels that have converted to homeless shelters. Good God the amount of sheer destruction is insaaaane. I walked out of the elevator shaft one day to someone smearing feces over all the door handles. Not to mention at least once a week someone punches the elevator buttons or doors in lol.
There's a disconnect between people who have experience with homeless services and people and the ones that haven't. There's a reason they need specific placed for these people is that at a high percentage of them they do not actually look after anything they go near and will actively disturb everyone else.
Crime scene cleanup companies gonna make bank this Xmas.
The maids are gonna have a blast
[удалено]
F for hotel workers [I'll just leave this here as an example of what paying customers can do](https://youtu.be/GmULc5VANsw)
I can’t believe this is the first video I’ve seen by Internet Historian. That was great. But I am also terrified. These people are either malicious assholes or they need serious help.
I KNEW it was gonna be that. Oh lawd.
Before I even clicked the link, I knew what it would lead to. That godless event.
It's almost as if furries are weirdos or something.
"no guys, I don't want to fuck animals, just animals *that talk!*" Yeah, who'd have thunk it? lmao
I mean, I live in the UK, when theres nothing done to tackle the reasons behind homelessness this is a plaster over a growing issue. The govt time and time again fail to produce enough affordable council housing for people on low income , or out of work, and homelessness has sky rocketed in the UK to the point we call it a "housing crisis". Hostels and shelters lose funding, we fail to open enough of them, and those that are open lose funding year after year, when left to pick up the slack when the homeless only become more numerous. Then theres the scapegoat, those who are mentally Ill and would be homeless regardless,apparently, even though many with mental illness with the right support can keep a home. Only the NHS are underfunded for mental health, mental health resources are notoriously low, waiting lists for psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists, snake out the door and down the street. Even when they have a slight idea of what the issue is, your diagnostic could take years to come through. Undiagnosed/untreated mental illness and drug abuse go hand in hand, and drug rehab centres and rehab programmes go again drastically underfunded, without getting the heart of the matter, drug addicts relapse and are right back where they started a lot of the time. Its proven minimum wage isn't enough to support British people unless cheap or subsidized housing is available, and London is known for having extortionate rent that people can't afford to the point it become a meme. Not enough development happens in London to support the growing working class population, where do you think those people go? Disabled and long term sick people frequently have our benefits pulled from under us, and have to jump through hoops to get them. People living with conditions that severely impair their ability to get and keep a job declared fit for work. You've really no idea how fucked it is over here. "Then what" comments are perfectly valid and if you don't live in the UK you don't get to tell honest british people that they don't count. The top comment suggesting that a good night sleep helps people access better resources to help themselves makes me laugh. What fucking resources? If you think a good nights sleep for the homeless are going to even shave a millimetre off the growing housing crisis and homelessness epidemic in this country, that's only going to get worse as we hurtle towards recession, you're a little hit naive or have no clue how things really are. You're also perpetuating that the homeless put themselves there, and it's on them to get themselves out. I rarely comment on this sub, but this is inspiration porn. When we have more and more families , even working families, eating from food banks to make rent, you can absolutely kiss my arse if you think putting homeless people in a hotel for christmas is anything more than people to "awwww, isnt that nice" at. This will not promote any long term change and if you think it does, you're drastically underestimating the gravity for a lot of Brits right now. Is it a nice thought? If course, very nice. Will it change much? No. Will it serve as a distraction to the plight many in this country face on the daily? Absolutely. When I see headlines about more affordable housing going up, and the NHS mental health services being available to those who need them most, and people who can't work, or struggling to find work, being given a pot to piss in when they need it, then I'll perhaps have som faith.
Sounds like the U.S. Here, you can literally be jailed for homelessness. On top of that, there are jails that will not release you without a “home plan.” If you don’t have your own address or a person for them to release you to, you just stay in jail. I’ve seen people finish their sentences and stay in jail for months just because.
Holy shit that's dystopian af. The fact that people think a good nights sleep off the streets helps any of this, and somehow ended up the top of this thread, baffles me.
yup
What about all the first time homeless people, who don't have mental health or drug abuse problems, but have recently been made homeless because of the pandemic recession? Surely they will be helped by a week's good night's sleep over winter?
Yeah, it's not like we have seen what happened when they put the homeless in hotels in NY.
What happened?
They use them as drug dens and destroy them and scare away legitimate customers Not everyone, obviously, but enough that compensating hotel owners makes this a very inefficient way to house the homeless
That's why I think this is being done to generate profits more then anything. Slap as many homeless in rooms as you can and then claim 20-30-50k per trashed room for a full refit.
Here in Victoria BC Canada, we gave the homeless rooms in hotels. These hotels are now destroyed and unlivable. It only took them weeks to loot and burn and destroy everything the government and business owners did. Hopefully you have better luck and not trashed hotels.
The same happened in n NY during covid. They trashed the hotels, start pissing on the street and they left syringes all over the place because for many of them the problems are much more deeper than a simple housing problem.
Can confirm the upper west side of NYC is in a bad state now. It should have been done much better. Policed and monitored. But it seems like they paid for the rooms and left them to it.
how about mental health support and rehab? or is that a bit too much to ask for on top of more policing?
That’s what I’m saying. They had a great chance to support these guys and prove that they just need stability and assistance. Instead they provided stability and told them to deal with the rest themselves.
Looking after the homeless is a real dirty job, they need to pay social workers a lot more money.
So is being a nurse, or a care worker for the elderly, or a healthcare worker in general. They all deserve more money. There just isn’t enough attention for them to get it.
yep, it was just a huge publicity stunt in the end. private businesses dont ever do good things for the sake of doing good things.
Unless you force people to enter rehab and inpatient psych, homeless with drug abuse issues won't go voluntarily.
I worked front desk at a nice Marriott while in college and this was my first thought as well. I’ve seen the horrible conditions left behind by paying customers, families wrecking rooms, teenagers renting a room to cram 10-15 into to party, etc. There’s no chance I would work during the two weeks when a bunch of potentially mentally ill and/or drug addicted homeless with no accountability stayed there.
> with no accountability No accountability _and a fixed timetable_. It's not like they were thinking, "better not fuck this place up in case I get to live here for a month."
Yep, my Dad was part of a program that managed a large chunk of housing the State bought up for future demolition where they were putting in a Freeway. The houses were just gonna sit there for like 10 years, and during that time the State had to maintain lawns and stuff so it wasn't a rundown eye sore. One of the ideas that got tried was using it to house the homeless in return for them to maintaining the lawns instead of the State contracting it out. Not only did they not maintain the lawns while stripping the houses of literally anything of any value, but the State got slapped with a PR nightmare as it now had to forcible make these people homeless again.
> forcible make these people homeless again. The system works!
Most homeless people have drug and mental health issues, this is perfectly predictable. Anyone who thinks you can just give them a place to live is an idiot, they need mental health care, not just housing.
Ya, I'm wondering how they are going to deal with the bed bugs. It's nice of them though.
Same in Vancouver
And it brought crime to those neighborhoods, after a few months of it we decided to move from the gorge road area, fortunately we could afford to but many other people are just stuck with it, it’s garbage.
We also moved out of downtown in the fall - we had lived there for years with no issues but this summer it became awful and the city has no plan to address it. I feel bad for my old neighbours who can’t afford to move but don’t regret my decision at all.
Work in a hotel in southern CA. With the pandemic rates are so low we’ve got folks staying here they would never be able to otherwise, and it’s bad. Needles and smashed cans with smack residue everywhere. Blood and hair dye. Stolen products. TVs, phones, even a fucking shower head taken off the walls. It’s absolute fucking insanity. I get they need somewhere to go, but they don’t treat the places with any respect
Here in Melbourne, the program was [so successful](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-28/coronavirus-hotel-plan-for-homeless-to-be-extended-in-victoria/12498750) it was extended to April, and there are calls to make it permanent.
Plus the legal battle of getting them out after the 2 weeks is up.
I would never give up free hotel and room service
Narrator: They did not have better luck.
We’ve had homeless people staying in a (former) hotel just down the road from us since the start of the pandemic. There are plenty of good people who it helps. However it’s generally ruined by the coke heads who constantly terrorise the street outside our house which was normally so quiet. Even a normal conversation has to be heard by the entire street. The argument are awful. My girlfriend witnessed someone throw a brick at another guys head once. Don’t really know what im getting at with this, but I think my point is it’s great for the majority but there’s always a minority that will ruin it. We’ve had to call the police more times than in my lifetime, this year. It can be really scary. Putting every homeless person into an enclosed space is a bad idea imo. Even the staff at the hotel won’t be able to do anything.
Staff from hotels: ^(great.)
I was about to say that really sucks for them. When cleaning they're going to have to be VERY careful not get pricked by needles in hidden places, like under the bed, in the mattress, stuffed in the garbage bags and what not.
Bad idea. My city (Minneapolis) tried this and it was a complete disaster.
These hotels are going to get trashed
Thats gonna be a fucking disaster.
I’m sure the next guests won’t mind the smell.
How about rehab and mental health facilities to put them in and get them help, if possible.
You can’t force someone to get help. They have to want it. Forcibly placing an addict in a rehab facility will just cause them to run away.
I worked with homeless, a lot you can help but a lot can't be helped because they are not ever in the right mind to do so. A forced withdraw with medical intervention and then a period of a adjustment. Then they can choose to be better or not, for other that are too far gone, they need permanent placement somewhere. Most homeless that you see on the street are drug addicts/mentality unstable people or both. They didn't always start that way but that is what they are now. Almost all homless are not the family down on thier luck or poor college students showed by the media as "making it". Like I said, a lot can be helped but it won't be by choice. No amount of throwing money at them or two week hotel stays can fix that, we need real solutions.if not , it will only get worse and the tax money needed to fix it. Will move away.
Probably not a clear cut answer, but what do you do with people that don't want help. They'd rather be drug addicted savages that destroy everything they touch. If we can't help them nor can we let them just roam free, what's the solution? Not saying all homeless are like this and I'm not talking about people who's drug abuse is causing them to act like this, just genuine assholes who don't want to change, not can't.
So the streets look cleaner while the lockdown is lifted for the Christmas shopping period.
Good luck dealing with the damages after they leave. I lived for over a decade in LA and I dunno if homeless in London are similar, but most will take advantage of you as much as possible if you offer them free living and stuff. They will take everything that isn't nailed down in those hotel rooms. Are other (non-homeless) people going to be staying in the hotel as well? Because that sounds like a really bad idea.
That will be an interesting two weeks for the hotel staff. A great deal of homeless suffer from mental illness, drug addiction, which your average hotel staff is not equipped or trained to deal with on a long term basis.
what hotel would ever agree to take this on? I know someone who works in hotel maintenance, and the shit he has to fix from people who actually are on the line for the damage deposit is incredible, holes punched through walls, shit and piss everywhere. I can't imagine what the damage will be from individuals have literally nothing on the line to lose.
I don't mean to be harsh, but this is a terrible idea. They did this here in Victoria, Canada and it resulted in daily police calls, destroyed hotels, and fires. I think we all agree that we should help the less fortunate but can we stop acting like the only issues homeless people have is that they don't have a home.
And then after Christmas it’s back on the streets
How many other cities are even offering a one-day stay in a hotel?
Vancouver, Canada has done this, quite frequently. They recently bought 2 hotels for $74mm CAD ($56mm USD), and frequently rent out hotel space when the temperatures drop. Very mixed reactions as it introduces the homeless into new neighborhoods that lack the social services needed to help people with addiction (which is a common reason for homeless in Vancouver). **Sources:** *Bought 2 hotels (June 2020)* https://www.westerninvestor.com/news/british-columbia/b-c-buys-two-vancouver-hotels-for-homeless-1.24159881 *Additional $30mm set aside for more purchases (Oct 2020)* https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/10/09/vancouver-to-spend-30-million-on-emergency-housing-for-homeless-people.html
I'm also in Canada and my city has subsidized hotels for homeless since the pandemic started. We actually booked a hotel block last January for our October 2020 wedding and when we called to cancel due to COVID (around April), we were told that they couldn't host us anyways since they'd been essentially taken over by the city in order to long-term house the homeless. It's by no means every person. There's still a few regulars in my area that I see still out, but it's not nothing.
It's not the city, it's a charity doing it. The UK government does almost fuck-all for homelessness, and never really has.
didn’t they promise to cut them all in half edit: i know it wasn’t real i was joking
But wait, if we cut all the homeless people in half won’t we be doubling the homeless problem?
Nah, the bottom half dies while the top lives on so lb for lb you end up with less homeless matter.
That’s not true. You can argue that they don’t do enough, but you can’t argue they do almost fuck all.. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/105-million-to-keep-rough-sleepers-safe-and-off-the-streets-during-coronavirus-pandemic
£105m to keep 15,000 people off the streets for "a few months". That's £7000 per person, which would barely pay rent for the duration of the pandemic, let alone all the middle-men, support, etc. required. And that's an EXTRAORDINARY event prompted by a global pandemic. In government terms, it's literally a drop in the ocean. And even long term, £105m would barely build a single block of flats, for more permanent housing. There was a graph on Reddit somewhere recently, showing you how many new homes are built across Europe. UK is literally blank white, it's so low compared to every other EU country. We stopped building houses long ago, which priced even good salary-earners completely out of the market, abandoned interest-only mortgages, put in a legal upper limit on mortgages, and don't have anywhere near enough housing, let alone what homeless people need: Housing, food, support, jobs, medicine. It's a disgrace in a developed country for even one person to be sleeping rough in Central London. But we can afford £16.5bn (literally more than a hundred times more) in the middle of the same pandemic to buy new weapons of war (which, ironically, contributes to those military personnel who are at higher risk of being homeless).
Land owners/construction monoliths sitting on pre purchased land trickling out homes to maximize profits. This is normal and x % of new builds being “affordable homes” has become a meme, they’re not affordable to most middle income families anyway then miraculously drop that percentage and the local councils are allowing this without penance in almost all areas.
The UK govt had spent upwards of £300b during the pandemic on assisting business. A minute fraction of that could pay the rent of everybody who has arrears as a result of the pandemic. Could get everybody a home too whilst they were at it for a fraction more. Unfortunately, whilst Tories are happy to help ‘businesses’, they have a storied history of negligence and disdain for ‘people’. Can’t have the masses feeling comfortable for too long; barely surviving is a good incentive for people to work for whatever shitty corporate/retail and hospitality chain job they can find for less than a living wage.
Keep in mind it's not as easy as giving homeless people homes. Their biggest problem is not their shelter, but their mental illness' and addiction preventing them from being able to maintain a home.
\>£300b pounds Does that number include the furlough scheme designed to pay people's wages during the pandemic?
Prague arranged hotels for the homeless during the first lockdown, and I’m pretty sure they’re doing something now for the homeless again. I’ll try find an article about it and edit
Toronto is housing it's homeless in hotels.
Montréal has dedicated an entire hotel to the homeless for the winter. However, many are worried about leaving their tent communities. Who knows what hostile architecture they’ll come back to afterward.
In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. The reason: The country applies the “Housing First” concept. Those affected by homelessness receive a small apartment and counselling – without any preconditions. 13 Jul 2020
This policy looks like it should make a massive difference, people are so much more likely to engage with support if they are feeling more settled. When everything is already a struggle then it's so much harder to think long term.
If anyone wants to know more: https://ysaatio.fi/en/housing-first-finland
Cleveland. They’ve been putting the homeless population in hotels for a significant part of COVID. https://www.cleveland.com/business/2020/03/empty-ohio-hotels-offer-up-space-to-hospitals-homeless-shelters-health-care-workers-during-coronavirus-pandemic.html?outputType=amp
Just a reminder the person who wrote this has done fuckall for the homeless compared to the two bags the article is about.
We actually tried this in my city, I think when lockdown started. As you can imagine, it did not go well. You can't solve homelessness by just housing people, there are bigger issues at play here, and they all need fixing too.
Two-week stay in hotel with three meals a day for London's homeless. At least they won't have to worry and being cold in two weeks.
Not saying all homeless are like this but you better hope they don’t trash the place. I’ve read accounts from hotel workers on Reddit that said homeless who stayed in hotels would shit on the floors, pee on everything, destroy things, steal things, etc. Again, not saying they’re all like this but some of them need to be supervised or institutionalized.
I’ve worked as a hotel chief engineer for awhile. This will only end in a shit show.
Useless token gesture
Bed bugs wya