#61
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This has been an interesting thread.
This thread, and Twigg's own plight have re-opened some pretty awful memories for me. I was homeless myself in 1991 for several months. I've been reluctant to comment about it but I'm hoping it might help some of our community see homelessness from maybe another perspective. I'm going to simplify things for the sake of brevity. I am not nor have I ever been a substance abuser. I was 22 years old, just out of college, with no job and no "Plan B", after my "Plan A" for a career was ruined by a severe injury I had sustained. I had earned a degree that was worth nothing in an of itself, toward having any employable skill. I had no direction, no purpose, and no money. I was frightened of the future and depressed about my lack of a plan for it. I was ignorant about a great many things. Staying with family was not an option. My family was (and still is) highly dysfunctional, and being on my own was safer that being at home, emotionally speaking. Home was a frightening and dangerous place. It was made clear that I was not welcome at home, and my leaving was a violent and regrettable event. I stayed with friends, and their families, as long as they could tolerate. I lived out of my car. I stayed in a vacant house under auspicious circumstances (I wasn't supposed to be there). I only had $37 in my pocket when I left home, and I picked up a part time job waiting tables. Eventually I got a one-bedroom apartment for $195/month in a neighborhood infested with heroin addicts and prostitutes. I barely scraped by for the next year, hopping from low-paying job to low-paying job, mostly part-time, and often 2 to 3 at a time. I was only homeless for 3 or 4 months. That doesn't seem like a long time, but when you are going through it, and don't see the end of the story, it feels desperate and endless. I had a very hard time during that span imagining how things were going to work out for the good. I can't speak to anyone else's story. I can't claim to understand homelessness in general, as each story is unique. Mine ended up being the perfect storm of circumstances versus my own vulnerabilities. It was the hardest period I've lived through. It took years to recover from, and in some ways, healthy or not, I'm not sure I fully have. Last edited by berserk87; 04-16-2019 at 11:47 AM. |
#62
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I commented at the time though that I thought the article side-stepped an important set of other institutions in Canadian society that were already functioning/funded/available so that once the problems of individuals were identified, there were these other things available--like universal health care--that made the climb out of poverty easier, and Americans have not agreed that those programs are necessary, which made the whole thing harder to implement in the US. The telling response to my comment by another reader was the things I was talking about--universal health care, public funded quality university education etc--were "SOCIALISM" pure and simple, that the US should not go down that road, and maybe we should use Canada rather than Venezuela as the exemplar of how wrong things get under said socialism... The comment both made me laugh (because it was so predictable) and sad at the same time. The missing empathy is at the root of these failures to admit that the highest virtue is 'caritas'--charity or love depending on how you translate it--and it is sadly lacking in the US today. Last edited by paredown; 04-16-2019 at 11:51 AM. |
#63
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__________________
Member? Oh, I member. |
#64
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#65
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My personal experience of being a US Marine is going to have to say the similarities are not even close to the same. By a million miles.
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#66
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#67
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--- One of the first jobs I had out of college was inspecting bridges. As you can imagine often times homeless people find a place to live under a bridge. It almost sounds like an old joke but it's true. I never met a homeless person living under a bridge that I didn't like and I met a lot of them. I'm sure some were drug users, doesn't make them bad people, but a lot of them most certainly were not. |
#68
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I think something that needs to be touched on is nurturing. It doesn't sound like Ms Twigg had any. A decade ago my ex and I took in a teenage niece who had be expelled from school in SC and basically had no adult supervision. We moved her to the PNW and put her back in school and evaluated her situation. She was a blank sheet of paper. She had no idea how things worked all the way down to a bed normally has two sheets, fitted and flat. She had poor hygiene, no manners, didn't know how to behave in public, etc, but she didn't have an evil bone in her body, she was just never "raised". She had been on her own since she was around 13. She lived with her mom but she was "done parenting". We tough loved her, stayed on her about school, gave her a chores list along with teaching her how, and forced responsibility upon her. She has since graduated from IU and is a kindergarten teacher. But without intervention in her teenage years, I could easily see her homeless. The fact that Ms Twigg was put out at 14 to be on her own is telling. |
#69
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Almost 11,000 start to enter the homeless system every month in Los Angeles County.
Eleven thousand. https://laist.com/2019/03/21/%20targ...os_angeles.php Must all be lazy bums that have their hands out. Has to be it. Right? |
#70
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Stick to whatever it is you actually know and understand about the world and leave this conversation to the big kids. |
#71
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I'm about 1/3 through it, about where they're speaking of the problem not as a homeless problem but a drug problem. Affordable housing will not address what is depicted in the documentary. |
#72
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No, but Permanent Supportive Housing, will. https://www.nhchc.org/policy-advocac...rtive-housing/ |
#73
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bordering on the political: Someone explain how universal healthcare would help the destitute who don't pay for their care anyways You and I do... M |
#74
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Spent a week in the summer of 2008 living on the American River building a skin on frame kayak using hand tools and local materials, tent poles... with several homeless who I paid to help with this project. I'm around and work with the homeless every week as I help my mom who has been feeding the homeless since the early sixties. https://www.newsreview.com/sacrament...ent?oid=555071 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um7am5YTuxo What I see is debilitating health issues, heartbreaking loss, laid offs, bad luck, and the most vulnerable and hardest to reach the mentally ill. A big part of this problem is drug use and refusing to take on responsibility. Last edited by Tony; 04-16-2019 at 01:06 PM. |
#75
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Okay, this sounds awesome...do you have video of a huge format 3-D printer at work?
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it's the economy |
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