I am Baffled

[Latimer]

About a decade ago, ten minutes away from my house in Los Angeles, along the western boundary of the vast Veteran's Administration complex, a homeless encampment arose and grew, first on the sidewalk and parkway but eventually spilling out onto the street, taking over the area reserved for parking. There were tents, umbrellas, tables and chairs, even butane fueled stoves. I would drive by as often as eight times in the course of the week, sometimes more, as I had projects under construction in the area--one of the richest in Los Angeles and therefore one of the richest in the world. Billionaires lived a few minutes from the encampment. The rich parents (heiress mother, politician father) of the mayor of Los Angeles lived very close to here, as did the Vice President of the United States and her husband. And as I would drive by--as the encampment grew, the trash mounted up, with weekly fires and two murders--I wondered how and why this was allowed to continue, and answered:

1. The Ninth District Court (the most liberal and overturned federal court in the nation) had ruled a decade ago that a person couldn't be removed from his chosen abode on the street unless another dwelling was provided nearby, meaning that a homeless person in West Los Angeles couldn't be forced to live in downtown Los Angeles;

2. California state court decisions in the 1970's held that a person couldn't be involuntarily held in a mental hospital for more than 72 hours;

3. The cost of building housing for the homeless was--inexplicable unless one takes into account the network of social service advocates, providers, architects and contractors who enjoy the largesse of the politicians and civil bureaucracy--now more than $800,000 per unit, and--despite bond issues having been passed in excess of a billion dolllars--little more than 1,000 units have been built.

https://ktla.com/news/los-angeles-is-spending-up-to-837000-to-house-a-single-homeless-person/

4. The lethargy, incompetence and corruption endemic to our local and state politics.

In late February of 2022, a friend of mine remarked that, because the LA Marathon course would pass by the encampment I have described above, it would be gone by the week before the race scheduled for March 20.
And it was, with the homeless forcibly removed to "little houses" put in place on the Veteran Administration grounds.

The same friend has predicted the same thing will happen before the Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games scheduled for 2028.

 

[cabinfever]

I've lived in places where there were people who preferred to sleep on the street outside the shelter. They said it was less noisy at night and they weren't bothered my the missionaries trying to save their souls.

I did know one of these guys who did prefer to live on the street after his van was confiscated. He liked it.

I think if I was in that position where missionaries were trying to "save me" I might prefer the street as well.

The problem here (and I suspect in alot of places) is the high rents - even for a room - have forced people to live in their cars and on the street - covid didn't help when alot of people didn't have income and lost their residence.

The line for the armory starts in the early afternoon and it doesn't open 'til maybe 6 or 8 but they stand there for hours waiting. I am assuming for them whatever is in there is better than the street and cold. I don't know if it is run by missionaries though - I thought maybe the National Guard or Reservists ran it.

 

[KaraBulut]

...The line for the armory starts in the early afternoon and it doesn't open 'til maybe 6 or 8 but they stand there for hours waiting. I am assuming for them whatever is in there is better than the street and cold. I don't know if it is run by missionaries though - I thought maybe the National Guard or Reservists ran it.

If it's the one in Santa Ana, it's operated by an NGO.

Homeless winter shelter program will return to armory in Santa Ana

The National Guard needed the facility for pandemic-related services last year.

www.ocregister.com

I had to think about that for a second. My first thought when I hear "Amory" is the San Francisco Armory which is now the home of Kink.com.

 

[rareboy]

If you have any doubts about the constituency of the "homeless," work a soup kitchen for a time. You'll see how many perfectly sane folks are out there, basically opting out. It's still right to feed them, but it's not right to portray all of them as victims or crazies.

Terming people who are hoarders or drifters as people we redefine as mentally ill, doesn't make them so in any way that makes them incapable or not responsible for their choices, their ongoing choices.

It isn't necessarily only the homeless that come to the community kitchens...there is a difference between those who need a meal and those who resist or refuse being housed. As I noted previously, for years I worked with an organization that supported the 'shopping bag ladies' until they mercifully changed the name and even now I am involved with community and mental health care providers of housing, actually in the process of adding another 66 units of independent housing for the hard to house.

I can guarantee, there are no people who are perfectly sane and just opting out...that may be the case in some states...but not our experience in Ontario communities.

Social housing is able to take in virtually anyone in need of shelter....the encampments like I mentioned in the OP are invariably occupied by people...many of them fragile souls that just can't function in any other housing situation but don't qualify for protective care in a mental health institution.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I've lived in the South, in New Mexico, and Alaska, and in each state I encountered many, not few, opting out. There were men in Alaska living in the woods in the middle of Anchorage in the winter, heating with propane heaters in tents. I've hosted and housed people of that ilk before. Some indeed were "fragile," but just as many were brilttle, unable to compromise or accept any authority or imposition of order. The last time I checked, stubborness was not a mental illness, nor pride, nor arrogance.

That said, I strongly support efforts like those in Albuquerque where they provided health care, food, apartments, and many shelters and food kitchens. But they also did not allow squatting as an invasive act. If you try to take over the streets, you will get rounded up and housed in a detention center until you are moved on to a shelter, an aparmtment, or wherever. Your disdain for commerce and a pleasant city atmosphere does not trump the taxpayer's right to build such a community. MANY of the tent people have an axe to grind against society, and they do it by invading and squatting. Cities like Seattle that encourage the imbalance of rights such as that, do so at the peril of their own futures.

The vast majority of the food kitchens where I volunteered served street people, at least 90%.

 

[rareboy]

Interesting. I suspect that there may be difference in the demo based on the climate difference between the south and the frigid north?

And a huge difference in the social safety nets available in many US states and in Canada. We just don't round up anyone because they make us uncomfortable or spoil the streetscape

And of course the issue of discharged vets who may have difficulties in re-integrating? Which we don't seem to experience as much....we do however struggle mightily with helping indigenous people with addiction problems who have migrated to the city in finding a proper place to shelter...although that is not the case with the woman I mention in the OP.

 

[KaraBulut]

I've lived in the South, in New Mexico, and Alaska, and in each state I encountered many, not few, opting out. There were men in Alaska living in the woods in the middle of Anchorage in the winter, heating with propane heaters in tents. I've hosted and housed people of that ilk before. Some indeed were "fragile," but just as many were brilttle, unable to compromise or accept any authority or imposition of order. The last time I checked, stubborness was not a mental illness, nor pride, nor arrogance.

Except what you described is very much like Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). That's in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Interesting. I suspect that there may be difference in the demo based on the climate difference between the south and the frigid north?

More likely, it's ethnicity. Percentage-wise, the homeless population across the US for African-Americans is about double the general population percentage. New Mexico also has a large population of homeless Native Americans who are also over-represented in the homeless population.

 

[NotHardUp1]

You can spit out an alphabet soup for almost every aberrational behavior in the world. The longer we live, the more alphabet maladies are promulgated and used to prevent society from keeping standards of basic norms across a range of things.

Just because there is a syndrome to describe a behavior does not make the behavior a justifiable reason for refusing to live indoors, or for working for a living to earn an income to pay for food, clothes, shelter, etc.

God knows the first thing a criminal does in court is to try to get some clinical diagnosis to remove accountability, regardless of whether said syndrome is actually incapacitating or merely exhibited behavior that hasn't been studied or diagnosed enough to even be solidly defined, much less branded as something uncontrollable.

To the point about Natives or blacks, they are over-represented statistically in a lot of categories, including murdering each other, raping each other, and lots of theft. It's always amazing that some whites freak out the murder rate when they are not the likely victims of minority violence.

Much of what the minorities are over-represented in is simply a product of poverty. Alcoholism, theft, single-parent homes, poor study skills, health issues, etc. I came from poor people and we had exactly the same problems, just no one stepping out to say we were being victimized.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Interesting. I suspect that there may be difference in the demo based on the climate difference between the south and the frigid north?

There is, and there is not. Anchorage indeed had a lot fewer street people than Albuquerque due to the climate, but not none. It also varies significantly based on the social attitudes of urbanites vs. rural people. If a panhandler were to stay at an intersection all day begging in a rural area, he wouldn't do nearly as well as in a city where his identity is hidden and more people are ready to give to panhandlers rather than helping them find work.

Albuquerque has generally mild winters, which attracts vagrants and hobos, so had to be more intentional in taking action to keep the city from becoming the shithole that several larger cities have become from creating imbalanced civic views of squatters. But, Albuquerque devised a caring and broad program to help them, but without surrendering the city to their whims.

 

[Vannie]

I did community service in lieu of going to jail for many speeding tickets in the late 1980s. For several days we broke down and cleaned up homeless encampments in the North Jersey Morristown and surrounding areas.

I didnt realize they even existed at the time. Surprisingly large encampments with so many personal effects. Sad.

 

[NotHardUp1]

A lot of people wind up transient through the simplest events. Hobos have existed in this country for over a century. There are 100 different reasons or avenues that lead them into it, but a certain percentage accept it then as a lifestyle, giving up on the prospect of work, of re-entering "normal" society, and the rat race.

They develop a type of community, much like and overlapping the drug subculture, and enjoy living against the mores of the surrounding culture(s).

Of course, that's not all, but even the mentally ill can adopt the community as a more liberal option than the confines of having to live with those who would medicate them or otherwise even have expectations of them.

It is one of the reasons why cities have to adopt such a multifaceted approach to the problem of ridding the city of the group, ostensibly through "helping" them. In a few cases, it does.

 

[KaraBulut]

A lot of people wind up transient through the simplest events. Hobos have existed in this country for over a century. There are 100 different reasons or avenues that lead them into it, but a certain percentage accept it then as a lifestyle, giving up on the prospect of work, of re-entering "normal" society, and the rat race.

I haven't heard the term "hobo" since Red Skelton's show back in the 60s. "Hobo" was a term for a migrant worker.

What you're describing would have been called a "freeloader", "tramp" or a "panhandler".

 

[NotHardUp1]

You probably have a regional definition of hobo. It is slang, so no dictionary is authoritative in how the slang is being used in common parlance. It's a bit like "Karen" today. Even though it began referring to a compaining entitled shrew, it's rapidly just becoming a racial slur like "Uncle Tom" did.

Oxford may make the fine distinctions between tramps and hoboes, but in middle America, there is no such division. Hoboes were/are homeless. They followed the rails originally. The lived in encampments. The term is still used in the heartland, as there is still more of the traditional expectation of a work ethic. It is still viewed with stigma to intentionally freeload, and homeless has been used to trump all other aspects of work ethic, thus a lot of Americans avoid it.

Younger Americans rarely used tramp, hobo, or panhandler either. So, the terms are again of a generation where work was still the default assumption, which is no longer the case with the younger generations.

 

[KaraBulut]

Hobo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man by Nels Anderson

Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by volunteers.

www.gutenberg.org

 

[NotHardUp1]

As I said, formal definitions are mere attempts at containing slang. I found multiple references to definitions exactly as I described, making it a synonym of tramp.

By definition, slang is democritized, and amorphous to some degree.

If you could take a survey of anyone even recognizing the word "hobo," they would just as often define them as transients, but by no means workers.

They were originally in the Great Depression when working was the societal expectation, but not today.

Hoboes were specifically known for begging, and people gave them food when they came around, not because they were workers, but because they weren't, and had nothing.

In the end, it's a moot point, as any terminology about homelessness being equated with sloth is verboten in the woke era. No one is lazy any more, especially the lazy.