New Campaign Shows Progress for Homeless

The New York Times ^ | 6/7/2006 | Eric Eckholm

[ccmay]

DENVER — Arthur Sena spent years living in a hole that he had dug near the railroad tracks. He would probably still be there, defying offers of help from social workers and using cardboard to ward off the chill, if Denver had not adopted a radical strategy of putting homeless people into apartments of their own, no strings attached.

[ccmay]

Here's an interesting article about a Bush administration success story. Finally the bureaucrats have realized that there are far fewer long-term homeless than the professional poverty pimps and the yellow journalists of the archaic media would have us believe.

Most homelessness is temporary and there are only a few chronically homeless people even in big cities-- so few that it is now shown to be more efficient to give them free apartments than to maintain a system of shelters. These sad sacks are typically the ones with serious mental illnesses and drug or alcohol dependencies.

It's just like they said when wheelchair accessible buses were mandated-- it would have been cheaper to hire each wheelchair bound person a personal limousine and driver.

Of course, this throws armies of otherwise unemployable social-science graduates off the gravy train, and boy are they squealing for their rice bowl.

Mr. Mangano "is great at spin," said Bob Erlenbusch, chairman of the National Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group based in Washington. But Mr. Mangano is glossing over the broader trend, Mr. Erlenbusch said, because federal programs for low-income housing, which can prevent homelessness, have languished in the Bush years or been cut.

Or in other words, "Give us more money."

These poverty farmers would rather have people sleeping and defecating in the streets and thus be able to keep their jobs, than actually do anything concrete to solve the problem of homelessness.

-ccm

[umgud]

I thought there was at least 45 million homeless. Or was that uninsured? Maybe that's the number of teens killed by guns or fat people dying from big macs. I don't know, it's just hard to keep track of all the number the left puts out.

[Darkwolf377]

Most homelessness is temporary and there are only a few chronically homeless people even in big cities-- so few that it is now shown to be more efficient to give them free apartments than to maintain a system of shelters. These sad sacks are typically the ones with serious mental illnesses and drug or alcohol dependencies.

I used to work at a shelter in a city and can attest to the truth of this. Those who were down on their luck are motivated by one thing--embarassment. They don't want to be there, and they are open to any kind of employment so they can move on with their lives.

The longterm homeless are addicts or have mental problems, and most of them get SSI benefits. In fact, most of them were making more than I was earning working for them.

[Hong Kong Expat]

Malcom Gladwell wrote an article about this in the New Yorker a few months ago, he brought up an interesting question: If doing the wrong thing morally is better for the population as a whole and cheaper in the long run, should we do it? We are rewarding bad behavior.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

When Clinton came into office the homeless disappeared, don't you know? (Cue the Disney music playing in the background with animated cartoon characters dancing)

[driftless]

"45 million homeless"

Every year in my old hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin, students and professors at our local universities organize "homeless nights". They get a bunch of well-fed, upper-middle class to rich students to spend a night outside in cold weather to demonstrate the plight of the hungry and/or homeless. Naturally our local lib paper puts the story on the front page. There are End-The-Hunger campaigns as well.

The implication, shoved down our throats, is that we are a nation of countless millions of hungry and/or homeless people on the brink of starvation. No one ever bothers to ask the question as to whether it's all a lot of hooey. Because it is.

[reformedliberal]

Actually, we laugh at them.

These stunts are part of the inculcation being perpetuated by various members of the Sociology department. One of them has as much as bragged to us about this. He is quite proud that he "turns out activists".

I think on those stunt nights there are more students out on the street for their winter camping event than there are actual homeless is La Crosse. I can think of one guy usually seen sleeping on a bench near the riverfront park. Otherwise, they are invisible. There is a mini-industry in group homes and a few of the higher-functioning ones have their own apartments and intermittent supervision.

A few years ago, the social services organizations were running announcements on radio to increase the number of food stamp clients because they had a deficit of target population to insure their jobs. The Postal workers hold a semiannual food drive and if you people-watch, lack of food does not seem to be a major problem.

The annual demonstration is a farce and so is The Daily Mistake (aka: La Crosse Tribune).

[driftless]

"lack of food"

I've always suspected that there were Freepers from the Coulee Region on board. Velkommen! Yes, it's difficult for me to keep from laughing when I read about "food for the hungry" or similarly named programs when you and I know how large a great percentage of the area residents are. A better health program would be one that went around taking food, or at least junk food, away from the locals...myself included.

[driftless]

"daily mistake"

I'd call the Tribune the worst paper in the country, but it's even worse than that. It's an embarrassment. Any area resident who only reads the Trombone for their news supply is woefully lacking in vital info. And of course many of them are. Which might explain why La Crosse usually tilts left in elections.

[reformedliberal]

Lee Enterprises owns all the papers, including the weeklies and the shoppers, in the entire region and points west.

It is a total rag. I blame the fact that La Crosse is a union town, the university is Marxist, according to professors I know who are conservatives stuck in departments where they have to keep their politics quite and some retired ones, and, of course, the so-called *news*paper.

During the run-up to the 2004 election, my DH, who works in La Crosse (we live in the country), overheard 2 students during lunch discussing double registration (and presumably double voting). I am convinced the school bond passed because of the student vote fraud, as we cannot find any La Crosse residents who were in favor of it.