Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I live in a city with many homeless people.

I was pondering this as I walked past several of them asking me for money on my way to getting some groceries this morning.

We constantly hear about how there are record numbers of homelessness and that the rate of homelessness keeps on increasing. This is all true. There were virtually zero homeless people in my country in the 70s, certainly zero rough sleepers anyway.

Usually the causes are put down to the exponential increases in cost of living vs wages which have only increased at a fraction of cost of living increases. Also drugs and alcohol of course.

However I started to think about wider societal causes. I think maybe it could come down to the increasing focus on specialisation in society, narrowing down the range of skills people have. In older times. say 1970s and beforehand, I think poor people would live in remote suburbs or rurally and live in their own run down homes (maybe shacks they built themselves or homes bought cheaply), growing food in the garden and making moonshine. The term hillbillies comes to mind. Whereas now society seems to focus everyone on performing a specific skill which draws them to work into the city and if they fall out from that skill whatsoever it may be, that leaves them totally incompetent as they have no skills to do anything else.

Obviously cost of living is an issue. But I think the cost of living might also be increasing due to the increasing specialisation drawing people to live in the main big cities to perfom their specialised skill, where it is harder to get a job doing in the smaller cities and towns because the skill range is so narrow which requires a bigger population to perform it, so that they are becoming crowded with everyone competing for space, making rent and housing costs expensive.

Becoming homeless has been one of my biggest fears in life. Although its extremely unlikely to occur, it has been one fear causing me to be conservative in life choice on a number of occasions. As my ERE skills increase that fear diminishes. Although its definitely still present. I have been meaning to try living "homeless" for a while at the same time as holding down a high paying job to help destroy that fear further. Such as by living in a van. So that I can experience the fear and realise things cant get as bad as it may seem.

Anyway those are some musings I have had this morning. Interested in any other thoughts on homelessness.

brute has heard that, at least in the US, Reagan (?) tried to save money by putting patients from mental facilities out on the streets. a lot of the homeless humans brute sees on a day to day basis clearly need medical attention and probably 24/7 care, and should live in a mental facility. brute is talking humans standing in the middle of the road, apparently unaware where they are, shouting to themselves or invisible other humans, often with twitches, scratching themselves constantly, or other OCD type behavior.

there also appears to be a certain migration of homeless humans, because in many parts of the country, humans outside at night will simply die for some part of the year. so they migrate towards where humans don't die outside in the winter. possibly, cities/municipalities differ in how pleasant it is to live in them as a homeless human, so maybe that contributes to the migratory patterns.

if brute calls the humans that wouldn't be homeless if rent wasn't so high "marginal homeless", brute would intuitively say that most of the homeless humans he sees are not "marginally homeless", they'd be homeless no matter what rent was. it's possible that the "marginally homeless", i.e. humans that are very capable of living integrated into society, don't walk onto the street yelling, which is why brute isn't seeing them. so there might be some observation bias.

brute is definitely for helping the non-marginally homeless humans, but is unsure what the best way of doing so is. in brute's opinion and political view, good intentions do not automatically lead to positive results, and federal programs rarely do. is this a case for "churches and communities", for cities, states, or the federal government?

brute believes that a society that thinks of itself as prosperous and civilized should find some way to help its helpless humans. brute is unsure how to go from A to B.

@brute - yes agree the change in the approach to dealing with mental health is another factor.

That seems to have been somewhat of a societal shift towards closing down mental health facilities and placing people with mental illnesses into the community - in some countries anyway. Problem is that some of them are not capable of functioning in society, even if the rent is paid by government. I have lived in apartment complexes with such people living in neighbouring apartments. The result is often that their behaviours are so extreme and anti social that they get evicted and end up on the streets.

Two packs of cigarettes =$14/day=$420/month. SSDI check = maybe $600/month.

OTOH, the bare functionality of a home for humans requires ability to stay dry and warm, ability to cook food, ability to dispose of waste and keep skin clean of vermin/protection from predators. IOW, water/fire/walls/roof. Population density determines means or methods by which a human can make a home without endangering other humans. A much higher level of technology is necessary to safely cook food, dispose of waste, and reduce possibility of spread of infectious diseases in high population density situation, therefore the cost of a home is much higher. This is why the notion of cities being more "green" because each resident has a smaller carbon footprint are not all that valid; the underlying expense of the much more developed infrastructure is not taken into account in individual or household spending on direct energy sources, but it is accounted for when high rent and taxes are included in the equation. Obviously, high population density situations in which codes requiring high technology use in infrastructure are not required are not very pleasant places to live and are often subject to complete eradication if they are close to wealthier areas to which disease and crime may spread.

2 acres per human. That's the current ratio.

thrifty++ wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 10, 2018 3:52 pm

In older times. say 1970s and beforehand, I think poor people would live in remote suburbs or rurally and live in their own run down homes (maybe shacks they built themselves or homes bought cheaply), growing food in the garden and making moonshine.

Actually, the remote suburban poor is a more recent phenomenon, at least in the US. Homelessness in the 1970's was portrayed as an urban problem. If you look at the transformation of NYC in the Giuliani period, cleaning up the city (Broken window policy) included removing the homelessness, who migrated to poorer suburban areas.

You can actually trace the phenomenon to network TV. 50's-80's sitcoms - "Leave it To Beaver" "The Brady Bunch" "The Cosby Show" portraying the idealized American life in Suburbs (Cosby was in Brooklyn Brownstone, outside of urban area). Urban shows were limited to gritty cop show or were ethnic oriented. In the 90's you started to see "Seinfeld" "Friends" "Sex in The City" that were urban based as the cities cleaned themselves up and became the aspirational place for safe, contemporary, living.