In Los Angeles among the vastly expanded homeless population death has become common. The dead Homeless are becoming so common a sight as to be a health hazard. Some are not found till they start to decompose.
In NYC it's the change in climate that keeps the fatalities among homeless down.
Our winters are now much warmer.
Only a few days below freezing. Last year there was no real snow at all. In the 80's the bodies of dead homeless in winter was a near common sight. They would be found in snow drifts, frozen in doorways, dead on park benches.
The homeless are people who were once like everyone else.
They went shopping went to the movies the beach drove their cars mowed lawns had friends had regular lives.
We all walked with, and amongst each other. Then the economies being what they are that, and personal tragic events put them outside. They then became non-people.
A decade ago I was out there for a year.
I recall when those I knew found out they began to avoid me as if I had a contagious disease.
They feared it like Ebola because they knew they could be next.
I don't have links but I've seen items saying that in many towns whenever there's a proposal to build a homeless shelter in the community, well-to-do homeowners have been packing town hall meetings and shouting down such proposals. Apparently well-off Americans are happy to see their fellow citizens die of want and exposure so long as it benefits their property values.
ReplyDeleteIndeed this is as common as putting Waste Treatment facilities in poor areas. As I said here or another page. Well off Americans would put up with Death Camps if it were spun the right way. It's okay we're just gassing terrorist,...and their families. That, and if it were tied to tax cuts for the ownership class.
ReplyDeleteThis is our country,...or part of it now.
I was just watching #45's stream of his Dallas Bund Rally.
So many rightfully angry older white people. All betrayed by the new economies.
However they wave Klan, and Nazi flags as they support #45 for racial, and assorted culture war reasons. That #45 has 'openly said' he's going to cut their Social Security if they re-elect him has no effect.
As long as he kicks out the Brown people puts the Niggahs back in their box, and kills Queers they're fine with him.
New Zealand never looked so good.
I think I mentioned something like this before, but I didn't really get a full understanding of your take on it. I want to know what you think about Gregory Kloehn's work. He's an artist from Oakland who builds little houses for homeless people whom he knows. Here's a well known example that he made from a dumpster in Brooklyn:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us1gaJSy9ro
On the one hand, his structures look like appalling little dog houses, unfit for human habitation. On the other hand, I can imagine circumstances where they might save someone's life. They're made of hard materials, in this case steel, so they might provide a measure of security (but would it be enough?). How discreet would this have to be to keep the cops from seizing these things?
Homeless people in NorCal have been forming little tent communities, presumably for security reasons. But that might not work for everyone; perhaps not everyone has the social connections that make that feasible.
This issue ought to be dealt with as a national emergency, funded at the federal level, with coherent plans to house and feed people, provide them with psychiatric care, and as much as possible reintegrate them back into society.
But we know that's not going to happen. There aren't going to be any rational political solutions. Homeless people and those who want to help them are on their own. Are there some practical workarounds that could be done on a local or individual basis to make the situation less miserable and less dangerous for thousands of people? If so, what are they? In my case, as with Kloehn, building stuff is what I happen to be able to do. Is there a point in attempting it?
True for now there are no federal plans no Emergency plans for the Homeless. If the UN were allowed to enter this problem they would set up tent cities in more isolated places.
ReplyDeleteThis with medical, and social support facilities built in.
This as they have done in failing nations around the world. Also these encampments being somewhat remote. They would be safer for the residents. No politically motived hostile police actions, and no gang attacks or acts of insanity by disturbed homeless.
The Army could do this immediately if we didn't want the humiliation of UN help. However it will never happen.
Not under a deranged administration like now or a future conservative or liberal governments in the future. Basically no one cares enough.
The Homeless are what Black people were in 1900, but without a ghetto to hide them in. In the 119 years since the attitude towards Black people is basically unchanged. So too with the homeless into the future.
There will be a vast homeless presence at the edges of 22nd, and 23rd century cities in America. They are a new social group,...like Gypsies. Despised and unwanted. Unlike being Black or a Gypsy one doesn't have to be born one to become one.
This is the new normal.
Look guys, we are in the end days. It's over. The last person who had a comprehensive plan to save our asses on a global level was R. Buckminster Fuller.
ReplyDeleteAmen
We're just chatting to pass the time till the Ocean washes us out,...close call here a few years back. Next time it's for keeps.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone said we were trying to save our civilization here. But I don't see anything wrong with trying to ameliorate human suffering in some small way on the way down.
ReplyDeleteUpon reflection, I think Kloehn's experience shows that the sort of thing he does can only work on a small personal scale, under the radar. Otherwise the supersimian selfishness of the property class will shut you down.
As we discussed, nothing rational will be done at the societal level. I've lately been told by one who knows that in NorCal they're planning to make shantytowns that will essentially be open air prisons where they'll tell you when you're allowed (and required) to shower, brush your teeth and take a shit.
It gets worse. Down in SoCal they're mulling a policy where they'll allow people to sleep in their cars in parking lots. But not for free - for $1000 a month. That's four times what it used to cost to rent a room in a nice house. America is handling its decline so gracefully, with such compassion and rationality.
P.S. - I should have written "subsimian."
ReplyDeleteA thousand bucks for the right to sleep in your car. I imagine maybe $300. to sleep in an alley only $200. to sleep in a gutter.
ReplyDeleteIt's no wonder the very poor commit petty crimes to go to jail for 90 days. Three months off the street in a relatively clean cell with food three times a day a shower every week, and a bunk to sleep in.
Other than the danger of getting killed or raped it's the Club Med for the American destitute.