itsmee
6 Answers
Tommyh
I can't see how it will effect you at all Itsmee.Just what do they expect these homeless folks to do when they break uo their camps? They have to live somewhere.Don't they?
| 10 years ago. Rating: 9 | |
FISH-O
I have been homeless when I was a teenager. I still went to school and worked, I just didn't have a roof over my head or anyone who cared. No one knew, not one single 'friend'.
People don't understand unless you walk that path.
| 10 years ago. Rating: 8 | |
jhharlan
Leave them alone as long as they have "clean" camps and aren't bothering anybody. I was homeless for two years and no one knew it for sure. Behavior is the secret........
| 10 years ago. Rating: 7 | |
How was your experience at living homeless? I knew a woman who wrote a book about her experiences. She got kinda rich!
The politicians and community leaders are always telling us,on TV, not to give the street people money. They say “Give it to us. We’ll build them an apartment.” That makes me sooo mad when they say that. What are they supposed to do - wait a couple of years to get the $$ for a hamburger and a cup of coffee.
Bob/PKB
I live in the same town as itsmee, and I'm sure the "problem" is much worse elsewhere, but it IS a problem when people don't have a safe place to call home. Some of the misfortune is due to circumstances beyond one's control, and, with others, it is a conscious choice.
There ARE a few places where homeless people can get a meal and place to sleep, but not enough. Personally, I don't give money to people asking for help. If you are hungry, I will bring you a meal. That is putting a stipulation on my gift, but I've watched people take money I've given them and hand it over to somebody 50 yards away who, in turn, hands them a little plastic bag. That made me distrustful and cynical of giving money.
When I worked at the courthouse park downtown, there was (and still is) a huge group of people who set up camp every morning and monopolized a beautiful park with shopping carts filled with plastic bottles and aluminum cans, and slept on benches 4 people could have sat upon during a break.
Many people are discreet and self-sufficient, and I have the utmost respect for them and how they are handling their situation. There is also help available for those who take the time to seek out the resources. What I don't appreciate are those who stand on the same street corner day after day with cardboard signs and expect passers by to fund their lives.
Take the Fresno Street entrance to 99N sometime, and you'll find a huge encampment right across the street from a neighborhood. Now, picture yourself in that neighborhood. What you don't see doesn't bother you. Go for a walk and check out empty houses. (every neighborhood has them) ..more often than not, there's a homeless person sneaking in at night.
As for building accommodations, I don't know where the saying came from, but, "If you build them, they will come" may have a ring of truth. Migrate to Fresno if you have no home or income source; they'll give you a place to live. I'd rather be known as the city that has jobs and opportunities for people to support themselves. That is a tough act to perform anywhere in this miserable state, and especially Fresno.
As for the current encampments, if the folks are trespassing, it's not OK. I know it sounds hard and cold, but let me ask....who among you is ok with opening your back yard to a group of people you don't know and allowing them to live there, coming and going as needed?
Do I have a better solution? Yes, but that's for another question some other time.
| 10 years ago. Rating: 6 | |
Vinny
They will move on. Funny---> A few years ago in San Francisco they opened city shelters for the homeless, they still stayed on the streets. News team interviewed a few of them, they all said about the same thing. "Are you kidding?? Me stay in that nasty place? It's full of diseases, dirt, filth, it's dangerous being with all those loons in one building, I prefer the street."
| 10 years ago. Rating: 5 | |
I can’t imagine women staying safe on the street ... or kids! Or small men, Or old people. The guys that were interviewed did that group of people injustice.
robertgrist
Homelessness increases 5% per year. Looks like the problem isn’t going away without some sort of miracle fix. Detroit going bankrupt and their efforts to shape-up by demolishing vacant buildings sounds Orwellian to me. The dumps are all closed so that you can’t go for junk to keep your camp fire lit or pick-up someones old-but-working-maybe appliances. Our middle class has been destroyed by an obviously concerted effort by politicians and industrial leaders who axed our working systems of American middle-class support. Our jobs have been eliminated by planned obsolessence in industry, shifting employment opportunities to increase homelessness and increasing our reliance on cheaper factory labor in other countries that treat workers with less dignity than dogs. We have ways to completely eliminate our need for any fuel system for energy and heat. Our government would not ever release that technical secret from it’s vast guarded warehouses of endless possibilities without many more years and perhaps centuries of our on-going cultural nightmare in scarcity and hopelessness, under the oppression of secret pride. So hail, hail the gloom is here….and you thought it was global warming.
| 10 years ago. Rating: 3 | |
Your post was more than interesting. That last sentence. Wow!
Stockton, CA is bankrupt now. That town is a close neighbor - maybe three hours. I’d almost be afraid to drive through that town - the town of my birth.
“The times they are a-changin’ “ Dylan got that right.
The poor and homeless do not benefit from this because vacant buildings are a resource to the poor that if unrestricted would provide a palace to reside freely or very cheaply, Low cost or no cost materials to burn for heat, to improve their decrepit living conditions by stripping out materials for use in their own homes, and as space to grow gardens and raise livestock as the poor do in some communities. The poor in many communities are able to do work that is no longer available because “progress” has made their work unnecessary, wasteful, unprofitable and thus un-taxable. Neither banks or government benefits from this in any other way than progress in construction. "Orwellian" is an adjective describing the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past, including the "unperson" — a person whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practiced by modern repressive governments. Anyone living a life where they cannot talk about their accomplishments or benefit from their own work are in George Orwell’s world.
bring information that I wouldn’t otherwise think about. Thank you. My next research: George Orwell.
I’m kinda scared. Sure. The homeless need homes. I want to move to OZ and I’m not making that up. I won’t and can’t but I want to.