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nouseforaname
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Location: Toronto, Canada
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 Posted: Sat, 13th Jan 2007 01:51 Post subject: |
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| gtspm10000 wrote: | | I thought the evidence he presented was fairly persuasive that for the majority of homeless people, limited assistance does work. Perhaps even a level of assistance that many consider underfunded. People use that small help to get back up on their feet and avoid entering a cycle of dependance. If you eliminate the chronic hard cases like Murray who use a level of resources totally out of proportion to their numbers, the demands on the homeless welfare system would be significantly, if not overwhelmingly, relieved. |
I couldn't agree more. I hate the assertation that spending money on the homeless is a waste, and that they will only want more if start giving them something, or that somehow this encourages people not to work. I think it's pretty safe to say that life below the poverty line is pretty miserable, and no reasonable person should believe that somehow anyone would want to live this way for a few handouts.
| gtspm10000 wrote: | | A strict libertarian might argue that the goal should just be to avoid the negative external effects of homelessness that harm other citizens. |
For me the negative effects are basically how shitty I feel when I see all sorts of porsche's/hummers/etc. driving down the same streets where a someone is huddled up in a freezing mass, trying to sleep on a park bench/sidewalk. It's sad that a country with so much wealth concentrates it in to the hands of so few.
| gtspm10000 wrote: | | I would agree that with 20/20 hindsight, quite a few of the long term homeless could have been helped along the way at far lesser expense if the appropriate support or nudge in the right direction had been provided at the right moment in their lives; though the same could be said of almost anyone. The real trick is of course to figure out a practical way to identify likely early causes of homelessness and ameliorate those effects without becoming "Big Brother" in the process. |
There are some excellent plans for alleviating homeless in my country/city. Unfortunately politicians don't seem to want to do anything about it.
one such plan: http://wellesleyinstitute.com/theblueprint/
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nouseforaname
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Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Sat, 13th Jan 2007 01:54 Post subject: |
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also, this article might make the homeless situation in canada more clear:
| Quote: | The Tragedy of Homelessness and Poverty
” all Canadians have the right to decent housing, in decent surroundings, at affordable prices. There is currently a vacuum in federal policy and direction. Only the national government has the financial resources to address the full dimensions of the needs of this country.”
Take a guess at who wrote these words and when. You might be excused for thinking that these are the words of an anti-poverty campaigner, such as might be found in the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) or coming from the pen or keyboard of a determined lefty like me. You might be excused for thinking that these words were spoken recently, by someone in opposition to the social housing policies of the current government. But you would be wrong.
Paul Martin Jr., now a former Prime Minister of Canada, wrote these words in 1991, when he was the finance critic for the Liberal Party of Canada. This little passage shows that even poster-boys for neo-liberal economics recognized that a dramatic problem of homelessness and poverty plagues Canada, and that only the federal government has the resources to do something about it. Yet somehow, this realization was lost upon the Liberal Party once it entered government in 1993. The Liberals continued the cold-hearted and cruel policies of the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. The Liberals continued to allow the so-called free market to fail the people of this country. And now the Conservatives will do the same.
Canada is among the richest countries in the world. We are the only G-8 country that enjoys a structural surplus in the federal budget. And yet we continue to allow people to die on the streets of Canada because we are too miserly to build the affordable, supported, housing that would allow so many people to escape from the cycle of destitution and poverty. We claim the mantle of a caring and just society, but we continue to allow the most vulnerable members of our society to die because they do not have a place to live and are too poor to function in our capitalist economy.
Many people in Canada would like to blame the victims. It was said of the three homeless men that froze to death on the streets of Toronto in 1996 that it was their own fault because there were a few shelter beds available in the city that they could have gone to; that they made a conscious personal choice to sleep outside in the killer cold and freeze to death. The same aspersions have been cast on other unfortunate people, killed by the unforgivable policies of the Government of Canada since 1984, for example a pregnant first-nations teenager who froze to death under an overpass in Ottawa or a man who froze to death in the town of Wood Buffalo in northern Alberta.
Those who would deny the responsibility of government for these deaths would have us believe that people choose to be homeless, as Ontario premier Mike Harris said 1996. But it is not the case that people choose to be homeless. Prior to the mid-1980s, homelessness was a very minor problem. Prior to then, the only great epidemic of homelessness experienced by Canada had been during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But upon the advent of neo-liberal political economy in the mid-1980s, homelessness began to drastically escalate. Now in downtown Toronto one can spot dozens of homeless people simply by going on a short walk. These poor people are reduced to huddling in doorways and sleeping on heating grates in the effort to stay alive. It is a great shame for a country as rich as Canada that we should continue to allow this kind of poverty to exist. |
http://enmasse.ca/?p=67
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| Posted: Tue, 16th Jan 2007 02:53 Post subject: |
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I always respect the groups and foundations who actually sit down and think these problems through; unlike the politicians who suddenly jump on a bandwagon once every two or four years in order to lock up a "key demographic". But there's a history of unintended consequences that plagues most of these efforts.
I think the main problem is free will. If you accept the Gladwell article at face value, then the system is working for, let's say, 80% of the homeless population. That is, the non-chronically homeless who eventually leave that population. For the remaining 20%, the conclusion is drawn that the level of support (both tangible and in terms of structural assistance) is insufficient. As the Denver test case in the article shows, many of this 20% can overcome their problems given sufficient structure. But what if the level of structure a person requires is more than they are willing to tolerate? Do you force it upon them? Do you try to provide additional incentives? As I mentioned before, the national cultures in the U.S. and Canada may be different, but I must believe that even without the "don't tread on me" culture, a man can only be supervised so far before he begins to view even the most good-natured assistance as intrusive. Personally, that is my biggest philisophical concern. Some people may not act in their best interests, but I would abhor a government that tells any citizen what is best for them.
The second most important sticking point is how these programs interact with the economy at large where they overlap with other issues concerning the socio-economically disadvantaged. Could you really count on the support of a working class family working two or three minimum wage jobs just to put food on the table? Where is the incentive for working within the system? I am a firm believer that most humans are capable of incredibly unselfish acts of kindness and giving. But I also believe that you can not expect a man to act against his own best interests when the system "rewards" behavior that society otherwise says is undesireable (I use the term "rewards" in the loosest sense since most of the homeless in this position certainly didn't chose their fate; but from the outside looking in, a working class family could certainly be forgiven their despair at struggling for something gifted to another). If each "hard case" among that 20% is given the equivalent in housing and benefits of (just to put a number on it) a worker making $25,000 a year, then anyone making less than or equal to that amount is immediately disincentivized from working. As many people there are who would balk at accepting those benefits in exchange for intrusive supervision, there are an equal number who would jump at the chance to stop working 10 hour shifts of back-breaking manual labor. In the past, social stigmas served to increase the boundary between these two areas. But I would argue that the social climate has shifted significantly. In years past, it was a great shame to declare personal bankruptcy. Nowadays, people are "stupid" or "naive" if they don't declare bankruptcy and clear their debts. And in a certain way, I agree that it's foolish to work against the system. In the current lending climate, you can get a loan as soon as 6 months after declaring bankruptcy, while a person who diligently attempts to pay back their debts in full is denied that opportunity because of their current credit history. Obviously the parallels are not completely in sync, but I fear many efforts at helping the homeless will be targets for rampant abuse. You made that point that living in poverty is miserable- and it is. But there are quite a few people already in that situation who could be forgiven for not wanting to bust their butts trying unsuccessfully to make ends meet when others are being given a free domicile and resources.
All of this is not to say that we shouldn't try, just to say that I am endlessly skeptical of spending money on plans before these economic and philisophical issues are academically and intellectually wrangled with and conquered. There is obviously a question of what to do in the interim since these problems may never be solved. And to that, I- along with, dare I say, quite a few others- have no idea.
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deelix
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Location: Norway
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| Posted: Tue, 16th Jan 2007 08:02 Post subject: |
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Sivil snuten kunne jeg klart meg for uten
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nouseforaname
Über-VIP Member
Posts: 21306
Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Tue, 16th Jan 2007 21:43 Post subject: |
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| gtspm10000 wrote: | I think the main problem is free will. If you accept the Gladwell article at face value, then the system is working for, let's say, 80% of the homeless population. That is, the non-chronically homeless who eventually leave that population. For the remaining 20%, the conclusion is drawn that the level of support (both tangible and in terms of structural assistance) is insufficient. As the Denver test case in the article shows, many of this 20% can overcome their problems given sufficient structure. But what if the level of structure a person requires is more than they are willing to tolerate? Do you force it upon them? Do you try to provide additional incentives? As I mentioned before, the national cultures in the U.S. and Canada may be different, but I must believe that even without the "don't tread on me" culture, a man can only be supervised so far before he begins to view even the most good-natured assistance as intrusive. Personally, that is my biggest philisophical concern. Some people may not act in their best interests, but I would abhor a government that tells any citizen what is best for them.
The second most important sticking point is how these programs interact with the economy at large where they overlap with other issues concerning the socio-economically disadvantaged. Could you really count on the support of a working class family working two or three minimum wage jobs just to put food on the table? Where is the incentive for working within the system? I am a firm believer that most humans are capable of incredibly unselfish acts of kindness and giving. But I also believe that you can not expect a man to act against his own best interests when the system "rewards" behavior that society otherwise says is undesireable (I use the term "rewards" in the loosest sense since most of the homeless in this position certainly didn't chose their fate; but from the outside looking in, a working class family could certainly be forgiven their despair at struggling for something gifted to another). If each "hard case" among that 20% is given the equivalent in housing and benefits of (just to put a number on it) a worker making $25,000 a year, then anyone making less than or equal to that amount is immediately disincentivized from working. As many people there are who would balk at accepting those benefits in exchange for intrusive supervision, there are an equal number who would jump at the chance to stop working 10 hour shifts of back-breaking manual labor. In the past, social stigmas served to increase the boundary between these two areas. But I would argue that the social climate has shifted significantly. In years past, it was a great shame to declare personal bankruptcy. Nowadays, people are "stupid" or "naive" if they don't declare bankruptcy and clear their debts. And in a certain way, I agree that it's foolish to work against the system. In the current lending climate, you can get a loan as soon as 6 months after declaring bankruptcy, while a person who diligently attempts to pay back their debts in full is denied that opportunity because of their current credit history. Obviously the parallels are not completely in sync, but I fear many efforts at helping the homeless will be targets for rampant abuse. You made that point that living in poverty is miserable- and it is. But there are quite a few people already in that situation who could be forgiven for not wanting to bust their butts trying unsuccessfully to make ends meet when others are being given a free domicile and resources.
All of this is not to say that we shouldn't try, just to say that I am endlessly skeptical of spending money on plans before these economic and philisophical issues are academically and intellectually wrangled with and conquered. There is obviously a question of what to do in the interim since these problems may never be solved. And to that, I- along with, dare I say, quite a few others- have no idea. |
1) Canada and the USA are probably fairly similar in the effect that people don't want the government to actually control what they do. I'm sure that there is a point they differ, but in terms of things like physically stopping someone from drinking/doing drugs/etc, well, the only way that is going to happen here is if it is on a person's bail order. Now if you were giving that person a place to live, I'm sure you could make some demands on their person freedoms.
2) I disagree that the system is working for 80% of homeless people (I'm aware that this was an arbitrary split point). In fact I'd say the system barely works for both homeless and those in poverty.
3) You're right .. I don't see how someone who works 40 hours a week for minimum wage only to barely get by would stand by and not want to get access to the increased benefits as well. The only way to address this would be to alliviate the problem in the working-poor before you can try to fix the problem of the chronically homeless.
I know I link to a lot of articles, but this story was on the front page of the weekend paper ...
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/170794
It details the multitude of problems faced by the working-poor.
... And from the same paper, an article discussing the idea of making housing an enforcible right. Although this mainly talks about France, it seems a few US cities are doing the same thing.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/168588
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