Posted on 12/28/2013 4:35:06 AM PST by listenhillary
Speaking of our coming congressional debates about food stamps and waste, I've been looking for a reason to share Kerry Drake's column about Utah's Housing First initiative. Eight years ago, under Gov. Jon Huntsman, Utah started an experiment in which chronically homeless people—first 17, then 2,000—were given apartments and full-time caseworkers. The goal: Instead of shrugging and cursing when the homeless showed up half-dead at emergency rooms, they'd try to get them into shelter and, hopefully, independent living. If that didn't work, they'd still keep the apartments.
Data from other cities made the bureaucrats' argument for them. From the 10-year Housing First plan:
A San Francisco study found that placing homeless people in permanent supportive housing reduced their emergency room visits by more than half. In 2006, the Denver Housing First Collaborative published a study of chronically homeless individuals, comparing the costs of services for two years before and after placement in permanent supportive housing. The group found a 34 percent reduction in ER costs and inpatient nights declined 80 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Have a nineteen year old staying with me. He was headed to college on a 21st century scholarship. No mom in the picture. Dad got sick with cancer. They lost the house he’d helped his dad build. Moved into the camper eventually dropped out of school to care for his dad He now has his deploma and has started a good job. He’s been working at sawmills, found arises (they didn’t know he wasn’t 18) and scrapping to get by
He’s extremely mechanical and the dream of college training is alive again!
He’s repaired my pickup. Cut and split wood and been here with dad when I’ve needed to run errands and drives me to church in bad weather
I’ve known him since he was a toddler and yes he had some rough years and alot to learn those teen years but he’s gonna make it!
There is some degree of sense here, but only if they embrace the idea from the position of cost savings to taxpayers.
To start with the dregs. Severe, chronic, homeless alcoholics are stupidly expensive to taxpayers, and despite endless efforts to break them out of alcoholism, it seldom works. But Seattle tried an experiment which worked.
Instead of trying to reform alcoholics, it put them in a refurbished old motel. They had a nurse there for any medical needs, and I believe they even got a social agency to provide them with food. And just by being off the street, it saved millions of dollars in ER, paramedic and police costs in the first year alone.
Totally unexpectedly, the alcoholics started drinking less, which I guess was an added bonus. It was even suggested that this system could be improved by letting them self-serve free grain alcohol and mixers, so they wouldn’t have to beg at all, but that was seen as too much.
The “high-end” homeless are families who are just temporarily homeless, and who get maximum public sympathy and support. The biggest help to them is having a “public boarding school for the poor” for their kids, which helps the parents find work, and earn enough money to get a deposit on an apartment, pay off some debts, etc., while not having to monitor, feed and care for their children. This can halve the time they spend being homeless.
The “less sympathetic adult homeless” are the majority that remain. They are often a combination of problems, drug and alcohol, psychiatric, and just general failure. This is probably the hardest group to help, because they generally don’t want help.
Finally there are the “young homeless”, often runaways, who are terrified of government, which they see in an even worse light than do conservatives. Oddly enough, some have severe claustrophobia, and find it intensely difficult to sleep indoors. Others have a “traveler” mindset, and migrate either with the weather, or to where they can find their peers.
Many of these are what are called “blanks”, who reject any form of identification, and do not want to belong to any system at all, for fear of control and persecution by the police and government. They try to live within the black economy, where everything is done for cash or trade. They are usually voluntary homeless, and only a perhaps 20% or less of them remain that way into adulthood.
The most effective means of approaching young homeless is done by churches, who are much more effective in helping them than is government. Especially very young runaways from extremely abusive families who know that if they are captured by the police, they will be returned to their families, where they face brutality, rape and even death.
Some of these children are effectively raised by a congregation as unofficial foster parents, who lavish loving care on them, give them a good education, even eventually sending them to college. No real name for this, but heaven must surely approve.
Maine. Also Minnesota.
Maine. Also Minnesota.
Well put.
Keep in mind that back then you always had to work. If you didn’t have a home/job and you wanted a family, you moved to the woods and worked the land (hunted, farmed, trapped...) just enough to eke out a living for your family. If you weren’t married you’d tramp around the country looking for work and board.
It was a rugged lifestyle but it was dignified work.
Now we’ve turned them into straight up bums.
Back in the olden days when cities had VAGRANCY LAWS, there were no homeless in town.
They could reduce their ambulance bills if they just gave everyone a free car and gas.
Probably one of the most common deceptions among the homeless is the claim of being a veteran. That’s not to say that there aren’t any homeless veterans, but rather that a great many homeless “veterans” never served a day in their lives. I’ve tried to get “veterans” their DD214s to apply for VA assistance and they suddenly forget when they enlisted, when they were discharged, and various other details of their service.
I walked 2 kilometers to school up a mountain in the snow in 3rd grade, for real, on a cobblestone step street with switchbacks. It was easier going back down sliding on flattened cardboard boxes.
Why not just require hotels to give them rooms free of charge, like they require ERs to treat any moocher who shows up?
My f-i-l was born into a family of white “share croppers”. The whole family picked cotton. When he was 18 and with an 8th grade education, he came to Houston. He eventually started a small business and ended up a very successful man. The perfect rags to riches story.
I never implied all homeless were the same. Just that many have drug and alcohol problems. Anyone can end up homeless for many reasons. And you don’t need to tell me to read my Bible.
Looking for excuses and reasons why we should give them free housing also
Since their meds were being paid for thru the VA it was more then claiming to be a veteran.
Since their meds were being paid for thru the VA it was more then claiming to be a veteran.
I wouldn’t want to own the apartment complex where they were being put if I wasn’t allowed to evict for any reason.
What a stupid, wasteful idea.
Free Houses, Free Cars, Free Food, Free Phones, Free everything!!!!
Woo Hoo...
There is no home ownership when the taxpayers are paying your rent
I was commenting to the idea the article said, about less emerg rm visits, etc.
In that, the perceived notion that they "owned" contributed to a lesser sense of victimhood ... or something.
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