Posted on 05/22/2019 7:52:49 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — The lunch rush at St. Vincent de Paul Dining Hall is a snapshot of the changing character of American homelessness.
The first thing that strikes you is the sheer number of people the soup kitchen serves. The line outside starts forming two hours before the food is ready. Diners file in, eat quickly and get up as soon as they’re finished. They know someone is waiting outside for their seat.
Even more striking than the scale of need are the shifting demographics of who is eating here and why. The homeless population is getting younger, staffers say, and more likely to have children and full-time jobs. In one hour, over taco salad and Fanta, I meet fast-food employees, a former car salesman who lost his home in the financial crisis and a pregnant 31-year-old whose baby is due the same month her housing vouchers run out.
But the biggest surprise about St. Vincent’s may be the state in which it’s located. Just four years ago, Utah was the poster child for a new approach to homelessness, a solution so simple you could sum it up in five words: Just give homeless people homes.
In 2005, the state and its capital started providing no-strings-attached apartments to the “chronically” homeless — people who had lived on the streets for at least a year and suffered from mental illness, substance abuse or a physical disability. Over the next 10 years, Utah built hundreds of housing units, hired dozens of social workers ― and reduced chronic homelessness by 91 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at huffpost.com ...
We used to be able to confine mentally challenged people based on behavior and family referral. A series of court cases closed all state mental hospitals, leaving many on the streets and unable to cope.
Homelessness is a multi-faceted issue that doesnt have a one-solution-fits-all solution.
“The poor will always be with you”
I’ve thought about this over time, and it seems not to serve us well to think of homelessness as a “problem to be solved.”
First of all, that mindset invites government intervention, and all government does is make things worse while enriching itself with power and substance.
Secondly, the homeless present an opportunity for the citizen to demonstrate compassion apart from government.
Thirdly, contentment and a good life does not consist in the abundance of ones possessions. In fact, I would venture to say a good many homeless people have fewer worries than people who live in fabulous housing with many accouterments to make them “comfortable.”
Fine, but that’s six words.
Families used to take care of each other, without the need for government assistance.
But thanks to the “War on Families”, now government has assumed that role, with predictable results.
Amen.
Because it is not “homelessness,” it is vagrancy.
I'm thinking the same thing, that families take care of their relatives, and sometimes take in friends. The liberals/progressives have altered society by damaging family units.
When my wife's sister got burned out of her apartment complex, we took her in for a while. We took my wife's mom in for a couple years. We've had relatives stay with us while they traveled from across the country. This is what my dad did for others, and it is what we now do for others.
Why are so many people on the streets without family or friends to help them? I know, disfunctional families, which has become the norm in new America.
If you build it, they will come.
There’s big business in homelessness.
The sterilization process would probably make the food prohibitively expensive.
“Moore wlfar!@”
More welfare = leess workers.
“” “” Because it is not “homelessness,” it is vagrancy.”” “”
There are two working solutions. First is to stop rewarding such a behavior and the second work camps.
At the very least regular mandatory drug and alcohol tests should be a must as a condition of any aid to such a person.
We have millions of illegals pouring in and they don’t seem to show up sleeping in tents by the freeway.
This article is the exact opposite of the Seattle story where a vast majority of the homeless are drug addicted. ???
Free lunch and free housing usually means “Wow, I can buy more booze!”
What do you do with the ones who refuse to comply?
A good many of those homeless without family or friends to take them are addicts who have burned all their bridges with them through lies, thievery and general chicanery to support their habit.
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