No, because having to see those homeless 'bums' in our local parks every day is an annoying reminder that, with merely a small twist of fate, we could be one of them. Why in the world would we want to see such disruptive, ugly, smelly evidence of how fragile our own existance is? Particularly in what is supposed to be a peaceful, tranquil place where we should be able to continue our denial of the suffering of humanity?

/sarcasm off

Stormie

I ask them.

I interview homeless people on an almost daily basis. I do not see the happy, motivated, successful kinds of homeless people that are trying to improve their circumstances.

I'm not surprised. You don't seem the sort of person that hangs around homeless shelters.

Prostitution is actually illegal in the Las Vegas City Limits. That's a common misconception. A friend of mine's brother is a cop with LVPD. Until he got known he used to work hooker detail because he looked like an accountant and had a Philadelphia accent.

Cops looking the other way and legal are not the same thing.

The word hungry is completely misleading. That they are "hungry" implies that if they do not eat this food served in this park, they will not eat. This is totally false. They have food available to them, in shelters and soup kitchens and a variety of places. No one is denying them food. They are denying them a place to sit while they eat their food.

In this case, that's true. But if more people felt as Maggie does
and got their way, the situation would be very different.

And "this case" is the case under discussion.

But when your maneuver was to insist that if I supported people who wanted to exclude soup kitchens from their park that it became my responsibility to solve "the problem" as you cast it, and I explained that I didn't agree with that.

In my experience, *most* people believe it's not the function of the government to provide everybody's basic needs...although there certainly are constituencies that disagree: primarily the "needy", and also the social welfare apparatchiks that derrive a middleman income from administering the "wealth transfer". (The latter tend to be more politically effective.)

Of course, if you spend your time hanging out in Blue space (either online, in the media, or by living in an urban center where such stuff tends to concentrate) you begin to beleve everybody (or at least all the right-thinking people, the one who aren't "mean-spirited") think the way you do.

Then an election happens, and obviously there must have been massive fraud...after all, doesn't everybody think Blue?

In your capacity as intake at a mental institution?

Yes.

I have also, as the result of volunteer work, directly interacted with shelter residents, and I have contacts at two of the city programs I described above ... Horizon House, which I linked to, and one of the large scale Philadelphia shelters.

So your primary interaction is pretty self selecting.

How do you discern those who are just "playing the system" from those who are mentally ill? Could "playing the system" not be considered a result of mental illness? After all, you've got to be crazy to live on the streets with little or no possessions, no self-respect, uncertain about your next meal, or living from fix to fix, don't you? That's not what mentally healthy, mainstream folks do, is it? Could it be that they are, actually, mentally ill, and want you to think they're normal, just playing the system to get food and shelter?

The ultimate "insanity defense". Puh-leeze.

This is really what it comes down to.
This, and that it is a reminder that they are unwilling to do enought to stop the homeless problem.

I know you are addressing wolf here, and I appreciate that--however, I've worked with homeless as well. I worked with them from the standpoint of admission to hospital interviews and then while they were on the ward (mental health/substance abuse ward). 99% of the homeless I saw preferred to remain homeless because: they valued the freedom to live their life they way they wanted to. Rules and regs at homeless shelters or halfway houses (and even the rules of the hosp. ward) were too much for them. They wanted to do what they wanted, when they wanted. They didn't like the fact that meals and snacktimes and cigarette breaks were scheduled--if they wanted a snack at 2:30 in the morning (not a 'snack time' via hosp. rules) they WANTED IT! NOW! If they wanted a cigarette the moment they woke up--they expected to have it, regardless of ward rules. If they wanted 15X the amount of medicine they were prescribed they wanted it--NOW! And, so on. They would intimidate, threaten, and even one that I witnessed became violent and broke a tech's thumb over a cigarette. Homeless shelters do not have to put up with this sort of behavior and they simply kick them out, which, is fine with them, now they can smoke/drink/use to their hearts content. We've tent cities in Dayton (well hidden, in woods by the Miami river) and social worker outreach people go into them to try to assess the human need and see if anybody wants to get help--like mental health help, help with getting on their feet, subs. abuse help---routinely, these workers are run out of the tent city. The homeless KNOW who they are, so they are not threatened by these (ususally) female workers, they just don't want to have anything to do with mainstream society.

I have seen motivated homeless on Oprah. And, for the most part, homeless teens are motivated to improve their situations.

As for playing the system-no one, NO ONE is better at it than substance abusers and the mentally ill. Mentally ill does not equal stupid.

Sure it is. But since you're concerned about this ... how many homeless people did you have half-hour conversations with last week?

There always was and will be, homeless, vagrants, bums, drifters, con-men, destitutes, poor, nuts, rugged individualists and wackos.
It's really hard to sort out individuals and their unique circumstances when you're in the unenviable position of making policy/rules to cover the non-mainstream crowd.

We (notice: we, meaning the general consensus from which you may opt out), want a safety net to catch the people who are in need. But we don't want the net to become a comfy hammock.
We don't want to be played for a sucker by people using the safety net as an entitlement, just another resource to supplement their income, or a reason not to try help themselves.
We perceived so much abuse of the welfare system, at least anecdotally, we're skeptical of everyone claiming to need help.

Logically, the best place to make individual assessments is on the local level, one on one, if you will. So they tried that, and found giving that money and power to some people, created petty power brokers that abused the system and the people it was supposed to help.

Then the pendulum swung back to making hard and fast rules at the state or federal level. That doesn't work either....every case is different and any time there are strict rules, there's a back-alley lawyer figuring out how to play the rules for their benefit.... beat the system. Of course, these cheats are the ones that make the papers, rather than the ones that are truly helped.

Brianna and Wolf described a group/behavior pattern that will always be a problem. There's another problem group, that they'll never see (professionally), because it avoids any contact with any institutions if it can.

In a democracy, you can't help people unless they want to be helped.
The trick is to provide help to those that want and need it, without being conned..... or enabling failure.
No. I don't have a solution.... just trying to clarify the problem.

Food in the park or food at the shelter?
There will always be some individualists that will go hungry and some that will never go hungry, either way.

It appears Vegas is being petty with a specific rule to thwart one samaritan, but this woman is throwing a monkey wrench in their program. Whether their program is sound or has a hidden agenda is beside the point. It's their plan to handle their problem and she doesn't have the right to screw it up. If she wants to change it, there are avenues for change, but if she wants to buck the system she has to be willing to pay a price, as all protesters have done. :2cents: