You don't live in CA it's been home for 60 some yrs and I've seen it all, NEVER as it is NOW....I can still walk outside my door and get some FREE SUN, if it's up there...
Solutions for the "Homeless Problem" always involve changes that make it easier to be homeless. California is the worst of these enablers but there are many others. I remember in my childhood when a homeless person was in town, they were allowed to spend one night in the city jail (space permitting), and then they were escorted to the city limits and told not to return. No homeless problem. In cities now, homeless folks are invited to free dinner with no strings. They can even be high or drunk and still get free food. Anchorage here has bought several old hotels in order to house the homeless. During Covid, they put them in a sports arena. The solutions only make it easier to be homeless. They can always afford drugs and alcohol, cell phones and (sometimes iPads) but nothing for food housing or health maintenance. If allowed to "run wild", they devastate neighborhoods and vandalize property. For a while there, the cops had to respond first to any 911 call, as the homeless people were attacking the EMTs and Paramedics when they responded to an emergency among the homeless. I suspect they were trying to get drugs from the ambulances, but I don't know for sure why they were doing it. If you cut away the government benefits and leave the charity to the churches and charities, things will improve IMO.
Churches and charities could also better determine who needed help, at least at that time, but probably not so much today. Even when welfare was handled at the county level, it often worked better because counties often required recipients to earn it by performing a task, such as cleaning up litter. This made poverty less attractive as a way of life. It would be a hard task today, given that everyone has been conditioned to demand everything for nothing.
Joy, I think that can be said for most places now. The world I grew up in has disappeared... it is gone forever.
Leave the Huge Mess to churches and charites???????????? Good Grief, so the churches can turn it all to their Gods...If only there is a god, none of this would be going on would it??? Would a good all knowing god let all this happen?
Beth, the population will not Give Up, as tough as t hings have gotten, thanks to Hard Libs, generations want their home. Speaking of their home, the news here this morning if report the home of Mayor Bass was broken into yesterday...people are Irrate.....all many try to do is "get back"....
it means what I said....living here about 60 yrs, Never was like it is NOW....the homeless stuff started as I remember, after Viet Nam..... Churches and charaties have helped the less thans, long before homeless world.
Joy, we are firm believers in God and his son Jesus, but things will, and do, happen. I'm not going to turn this thread into a religious one, but, I think, way to many people depend on God to make everything right. That has never happened, but God is still "good".
I guess you figure the government has done a wonderful job, so enjoy living in California where the government takes care of the homeless problem. If you pay sales taxes, income taxes, and property taxes, you are being assessed for the care of the homeless. I assume you love it and won't complain since the job is now being done so well.
Newsom and the California voters have done such a good job with the homeless that the other 49 states should immediately ship all their homeless west so they can be helped too.
Oh god, talked to a friend back East the other day and she said s he just spent 1 day short of a month in the hospital. She had a stroke, she's 86 and I was kinda jealous of her great health. I said "Vee" why hasn't Jevoah, or God, or Buddha done their work???? We both kinda chuckled as she is so into to JW.... works on me a little but she knows my feelings....I'm not totally CLOSED to anything, BUT...............
Bring em on, we have a LOT of desert and if we could ship them all there, that would be sand well used...
I wonder why God allows bad things to happen. Why bad people can do bad things. We all do bad things to some degree. Do we see poor and suffering and yet keep our money (preps) instead of just one coat? Do we lose our tempers? He allows us because he gave us fee will. We will find out for good or ill. My friend suffered from people most of her life. She told me her parents would only let her and her syblings into the house to eat and sleep. In winter, they made snow shelters to stay in,not for fun, but to keep from freezing...She asked tearfully why? I said we are given the choice of our life. I thought maybe she, being such a compassionate person, chose her parents in a pre-existence because she thought she might be able to save them. Another friend is a loooooooonnng story of suffering. She wondered why. I thought maybe she would feel the joy of no longer suffering much more than someone who had it easy, like me, after she died. It doesn't help lessen what we face here but there is a reason, I think.
It's not just homeless people. During the 1980s. we would leave the ambulance running and unlocked while at a scene. I don't recall anyone locally having a problem with that. In the mid-1990s, people began stealing our medkits, probably thinking we carried a wealth of abusable drugs. Other than Valium and, in the case of one company I worked with, Nitrous Oxide, we didn't carry much stuff in great demand on the street. Nevertheless, we had to start locking the ambulance up unless there were cops around to keep an eye on it.