In many if not most states, the gov't (state or local) has a legal obligation regarding education & often specific to 'equal education / opportunity....

It's in the Washington State Constitution...


I haven't seen a similar obligation for gov't to provide housing, that potentially will make a huge difference in the LA & other locations legal-wise.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2372921,2372995#msg-2372995

"The California Welfare and Institutions Code provides as follows:Every county and every city and county shall relieve and support all incompetent, poor, indigent persons, and those incapacitated by age, disease, or accident, lawfully resident therein, when such persons are not supported and relieved by their relatives or friends, by their own means, or by state hospitals or other state or private institutions
Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code § 17000 (West 2020)"

Read the rest of the injunction posted there

I see your point, however:

to what extent will a judge, even in the best of cases / situations, impose a budget on the counties & cities?

I have a friend in Cali who's waited for months if not years for proper dental treatment, lives in sub-standard housing.


without skilled & effective intervention, poor folks have little recourse (note that the state dumped it on the counties & cities, how much taxing authority do they have?) It's strictly limited here in WA. Has any county been Forced to any specific course of action & upheld in appellate decisions?

Lower ('trial') courts are often overruled on such matters, trial courts don't establish precedence in most cases.

If I was a city or county council member who didn't have the taxing authority or taxpayer support, I'd certainly fight that, it's always Very Uncomfortable to be in the middle.

I would like to see that, Honest.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2021 10:47PM by GNPE.

It seems to me that the judge was just trying to interpret the law to the best of his ability. I'm not a lawyer, but "relieve and support," unless it has a strict legal meaning, sounds vague to me. It could simply mean providing shelters, soup kitchens, and free clinics.

I don't know what the answer is for the adults. It's not that adults aren't important too. But it's just a lot more complicated when it comes to the adults. But for the children, we have no excuse as a society to not support and educate them. That is typically why women and children have better access to public resources than single men do, and rightfully so. When the children go without and have no access to education, the society is headed for collapse.

Unfortunately, if we just raise taxes to fix the problem, too much of the money gets spent on other things. Churches and wealthy citizens need to step-up. And someone has to find a way to assure that any and all philanthropy is properly applied. Too many charities like the mormon church are not really charities. They only give money when they get something back. Even the Catholics are more generous. The society is broken because the institutions that traditionally taught morality are morally bankrupt themselves now. How many people could the mormon church help with just their $100B Ensign Peak fund alone? Instead, they buy land and shopping malls. With an example like this, why should anyone give their resources away if they don't get anything for themselves back in return? This attitude is the problem.

azsteve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
How many
> people could the mormon church help with just
> their $100B Ensign Peak fund alone?

You could build a secure tiny home, with solar and self contained toilet for $3,000.
you could build 33.3 million tiny homes with that $100B

This guy named Elvis is building them for $1,200 ea in LA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdJyUCR5qkk



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2021 01:34AM by schrodingerscat.

when the social workers latch onto a problem, resources ($) going to those in actual need plummets.

Social Workers are people too, they need $ for their lives & careers.

What's needed here is more housing which takes land, materials, labor, & utilities which aren't as cheap as they were 5 - 8 yrs ago , about when this problem began to be readily visible.

to substitute other uses is often tragic.

GNPE Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> when the social workers latch onto a problem,
> resources ($) going to those in actual need
> plummets.
>
> Social Workers are people too, they need $ for
> their lives & careers.
>
> What's needed here is more housing which takes
> land, materials, labor, & utilities which aren't
> as cheap as they were 5 - 8 yrs ago , about when
> this problem began to be readily visible.
>
> to substitute other uses is often tragic.

I agree. The land, materials, labor and utilities would traditionally be wrapped-up in to a thirty year mortgage, which mortgage might even be paid in many cases by the new home owner potentially making his living building even more houses or providing services to the workers who are building more houses. So the lack of resourcing seems to be from outside of this part of the economic system to some degree, perhaps due to government or Federal reserve policies. They have the most say-so about how the economy is managed. Right now, they're throttling the economy back, doing what they can to prevent America from being great again as family members lose their jobs and homes.

I think that the IRS has a lot to do with it too. It is one role of the IRS to tax activities that do not serve society and to reward activities that are good for society. For example, people get tax exemptions for their kids because those parents are growing future tax payers. I think that the profits from flipping houses should be taxed at eighty percent and a bunch of regulation thrown in on top of that, when it comes to house flipping. I see these ads talking about how you can become wealthy by flipping houses, people who go from working at McDonald's to making $50K/month in just a few months . But I don't see anywhere in that business how anyone but the house flipper benefits. It looks pretty parasitic to me. Then the economy collapses and people go homeless. If we put enough construction workers to work in the society, the average person who works construction will have skills to buy and fix-up that house that would otherwise have been flipped. The flippers then would be forced to go out and find honest work. For those who do not want to do their own fixing-up, there are always licensed contractors available to do the work. Incentives should be found to create and support their work. One problem is that not enough people in the society possess the skills for these trades. Too many people want a Universal Basic Income or to become a video game developer instead of a job.

My father raised his family working as a construction worker. He had no college, no degrees, no trade school. He was an amazing carpenter, a skilled worker in his trade. Even in my senior year of high-school, he was a lot stronger than I was when I worked with him part time in the summer. Americans will do these jobs if the work is there and the pay is enough for the worker to survive and support a family.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2021 12:58PM by azsteve.

House flipping is parasitic?

The only parasites are the usual suspects who cut corners and cheat in the process of ‘flipping’.

Flipping as a business model needs closer oversight, and the loopholes to cut corners are plentiful, but it is a sound business practice in it’s intent.

People want a freshened, updated house when they buy. Sellers aren’t motivated to update/freshen their house before they put in on the market because remodeling is very disruptive to do while living in the house.

A proper update/remodel is best done when the home is vacant. A flipper takes a huge risk. Purchase price vs current market price usually has a very thin margin for profit, so many flippers end up losing on the deal.

I gotta throw some water on the statement that homelessness wasn’t a problem until 5-8 years ago ‘when it became readily visible’?

Skid row has a long and storied history and has been a problem in Los Angeles for more than a hundred years.

The only change is the recent media attention. They found that it was a topic that was easily covered and got them higher ratings, thus more profit.

Whether its an old problem or a new problem, we're not solving it now. But at age 59 now, I've never seen the large sprawling homeless encampments at any other time in my life, up until just recently. And throttling the economy right now isn't helping the situation. We're not doing the right things right now, to create a better future five to eight years from now that is any better.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2021 01:04PM by azsteve.

I wonder if 'homelessness' has now been elevated to the status of a "Right!" and as such must be supported?

In other words, where in the past being homeless might have been seen as an 'outcome' with various negative adjectives attached, it has now become a Right, an achievement, with powers and privileges attached.

Since it is an activity involving human beings, the responses of fellow humans will run the gamut. Your view of 'homelessness' will have a plotline on that 'gamut' (continuum) of responses. Nobody will be wrong, but only "I" will be right. All of you are "I"...

Being human is the most fun you can have, except when it's not ... fun.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wonder if 'homelessness' has now been elevated
> to the status of a "Right!" and as such must be
> supported?

By whom?
>
> In other words, where in the past being homeless
> might have been seen as an 'outcome' with various
> negative adjectives attached, it has now become a
> Right, an achievement, with powers and privileges
> attached.

What “powers and privileges”! I wonder.
>
> Since it is an activity involving human beings,
> the responses of fellow humans will run the gamut.
> Your view of 'homelessness' will have a plotline
> on that 'gamut' (continuum) of responses. Nobody
> will be wrong, but only "I" will be right. All of
> you are "I"...

I’m busily needle pointing that statement to memorialize on my wall for future reference.
>
> Being human is the most fun you can have, except
> when it's not ... fun.

Can’t fathom how a person would be other than human in some form.

I remain very curious as to what you're trying to say here:

>> Being human is the most fun you can
>> have, except when it's not ... fun.

> Can’t fathom how a person would be
> other than human in some form.

So I wrote the >> part, and you, CSU Provo Grad (I've always loved your name; two of my sons are CSU grads, Long Beach and San Francisco; CSU Provo...I'm sure they wouldn't have enjoyed it!) then talk about not being able to fathom how a person would be other than human in some form...

I don't get how what I said about 'fun' became the provocation for what you wrote about human form...

I look at your sentence and I postulate the "I" at the start, to give us a noun subject, then the verb, 'can't fathom', and then the predicate phrase...

The best I can do is "I can't fathom humans having anything other than human form."

But that doesn't relate to what you say you're responding to, i.e., my sentence, which is one of my typical (and patent-pending) throw-away silly-shit lines, based on the well-known sybaritic warnings, "It's only fun until it stops being fun.'

Some fun, huh?

Perhaps a bit of research beyond your anecdotal observation would reveal the enormous population of homelessness that has occurred over the years. The old solutions don’t work, but no one seems willing or able to solve the myriad conditions that create a homeless population.

It is not a new or newly burgeoning burden...

Look it up.

azsteve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And throttling the economy right now isn't helping
> the situation.

Uh, what are you talking about? The US economy is growing explosively right now and the stockmarket has risen sharply since the Former Guy left office. Can you produce any evidence that someone is "throttling the economy right now?


---------------------------
> We're not doing the right things
> right now, to create a better future five to eight
> years from now that is any better.

The foundation for future growth is infrastructure investment, is it not? Who's fighting against that? Or are you endorsing Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan?

Just asking for some facts here, azsteve, some indication that the economy is being throttled and some precision about who is fighting the laying of the foundation for future growth.

Cutting oil production and printing up another two trillion dollars in fiat money is not what I call investment.

If your car is out of gas, would you rather possess a five dollar I-Owe-You from someone who is deeply in debt, or a gas can with five dollars worth of gas in it?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2021 09:32PM by azsteve.

I don't care either way, but just for kicks I asked Google, "is the US cutting oil production?"

The majority of Google's offerings were like this:

"Trump says US will cut oil production to secure global deal ...https://thehill.com › policy › energy-environment ›
Apr 10, 2020"


It all looked very complicated to me so I got out some ice cream and now I'm going to read the funny papers.


I wonder how much bullet-proof bike tires cost?

Back to GNPE's point, I think the cities should take some responsibility for helping the homeless, like offering showers and place to sleep and food. Phoenix Arizona has a lot of homeless people in the winter. People migrate here in the winter because it is easier to survive while homeless where the weather is warm. I think at one time they come close to eliminating homelessness here in Phoenix by building lots of shelters. The goal used to be 100% no homeless in the city. That goal became unobtainable though in recent years as the homeless count went way up.

https://www.phoenix.gov/humanservices/homelesshelp



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2021 09:57PM by azsteve.

And why did homelessness rise so markedly in the last several year?

I have zero confidence in my opinion, but I don't mind, because zero is what it's worth:

People who don't want to be "on the streets", hate being "on the streets" and can't wait to not be "on the streets" are the ones who can be helped by kind, generous people willing to reach out to them. Even when it's a paying job to be the one trying to help, the people who want off the streets will take advantage of the offers.

So if there are 'street people' who want to get off the streets, and there are programs to help them get off the streets, why are there so many people "on the streets"?

My worthless opinion is that there are a whole lot of people who for whatever reasons/motivations/mental disorders/failing/etc., steadfastly refuse to reach for help, or even 'worse' (from the do-gooder's perspective) REFUSE to take the offered help.

I have no solutions.


Many of you will remember a similar "problem" back about 30 years ago with "Welfare Mommas". Having babies just to get welfare checks. It was all the rage 'mongst the upper, more gentile, classes to bemoan the situation. What was going to happen to America due to all these kids growing up poor and fatherless!??!

I think that particular problem is still there, but as a society, we've apparently moved on from that now petty concern. Yay! America! We took care of that particular problem by simply switching the channel.

If Life were a casino, you wouldn't be allowed to bet on things staying the same because casinos aren't in business to lose money.

One of the great tragedies of American social history was the decision in the early 1970s to kick most of the mentally troubled out of institutions rather than reforming the institutions to make them more humane. The rhetorical justification was a hippie-ish belief that the ill would be embraced by their communities and everyone would live kumbaya ever after.

As you note, a lot of those people either permanently or, when acutely ill, do not want to live in houses or homes. It is part of their illness. Should those preferences be honored by society? I'm not entirely sure, but I venture that in many cases institutionalization is necessary to protect the homeless themselves and to protect the community as well.

The balance in the United States has been off for decades, and the upshot has been the dehumanization of the mentally ill--and in fact of the rest of us as we have learned to ignore the plight of so many who are not doing well on the street.

What happened to your long, and inapposite, post on energy economics? Those three--or was it four?--paragraphs are now reduced to two sentences?

Fine.


-------------------
> Cutting oil production and printing up another two
> trillion dollars in fiat money is not what I call
> investment.

There are two factual assertions in that sentence, neither of which is true. Regarding oil production, see EOD's post immediately above.

As for "fiat money," are you referring to the Federal Reserve? Because it is the Fed that manages the money supply, not the White House. Which raises the question, in turn, why you would conflate Biden and Powell, for Biden has no ability to create "fiat money?"

As for "investment," how exactly did the Former Guy do that? Did he invest in roads or highways or ports or railways, which the United States desperately needs? Did he invest in education? Broadband? No, he did not. He didn't even invest in energy: all he did was open up some new areas for private actors to exploit. That may or may not have been a good idea, but it was assuredly not investment.

Biden, by contrast, intends to invest extensively in virtually all those agenda. It's not clear that all of his ideas are wise, nor how much he can achieve politically. But you can hardly fault him for inadequate investment given the insouciance of his predecessor.


---------------
> If your car is out of gas, would you rather
> possess a five dollar I-Owe-You from someone who
> is deeply in debt, or a gas can with five dollars
> worth of gas in it?

Are you asserting that the Former Guy's $2 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy did not increase the national debt? Because that would be foolish. Again, Google is your friend.

As for the use of gasoline as a store of value, are you going to close your bank account and trade your dollars for gallons of gas in order to protect your wealth as your logic would suggest?

No? Then what's your point?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2021 10:08PM by Lot's Wife.

Wow ! This person talks like she understands the economy and doesn't understand the concept of fiat money.

Yes, the Congress turned the management of the money supply over to the Federal Reserve system quite some time ago. Very good. And yes, the Whitehouse does not issue money. Very good again. But the Federal government has an unlimited line of credit with no specific requirement to have it repaid by any certain date. But repayment is guaranteed by the Federal government. This is where the new guy comes in with his $2T plan. With the help of the legislature he can write checks for any amount which in this case is $2T. The Central banking system then creates the money from nothing, and issues the money to the US government.

The real question is how we can call this an investment. Real value would come from raw energy (real intrinsic value that drives people to work and moves machinery to build infrastructure) flowing in to the the country via a petroleum pipeline.

So okay, let's just say that everyone is on-board with the $2T loan and calling it an "investment". As we spend the $2T, do we want to fuel everything we do (from driving the kids to school to operating machinery to build bridges) with $2/gal gas or with $4/gal gas? Who gets the interest money on the extra $1T that we pay because we shut down the pipeline? I'll give you a hint: It's not the homeless. Another hint: GNPE mentioned increasing costs on everything needed to build homes, the raw materials. When we barrow money to buy these raw materials, who gets the interest money on those higher-priced materials? So when we use machinery to cut, process, and transport trees (for example), everything that literally 'fuels' these processes costs us double. And to top it off, that includes twice as much principal on which to pay compound interest on that extra $1T that we borrowed to fund the increased energy cost.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fiatmoney.asp

Logic dictates that we use incentives to create record employment rates and do what we can to reverse the debt, like re-negotiating prices with our suppliers who in our case now just happens to hold most of our debt. And, reducing our per-unit energy costs. A raising tide (or a raising economy in this case) raises all ships.



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2021 12:45PM by azsteve.

azsteve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Wow ! This person talks like she understands the
> economy and doesn't understand the concept of fiat
> money.
>
> Yes, the Congress turned the management of the
> money supply over to the Federal Reserve system
> quite some time ago. Very good. And yes, the
> Whitehouse does not issue money. Very good again.

So you concede that fiat money is controlled by the Federal Reserve. That's a good start. But if that is the case, why did you criticize Biden for creating $2 trillion in fiat money? You just acknowledged that he did not and could not.


-------------------
> But the Federal government has an unlimited line
> of credit with no specific requirement to have it
> repaid by any certain date.

azsteve, borrowing is not fiat money. If it were, then your borrowing money to buy a home or using a credit card to purchase a Big Mac would mean you have created fiat money, which would make you the Federal Reserve.

Are you the Federal Reserve, azsteve?


------------------
> But repayment is
> guaranteed by the Federal government. This is
> where the new guy comes in with his $2T plan. With
> the help of the legislature he can write checks
> for any amount which in this case is $2T. The
> Central banking system then creates the money from
> nothing, and issues the money to the US
> government.

Right. Except that when the US government uses what you just described as its "unlimited line of credit," it does so by issuing bonds. The Fed is not involved and fiat money--which is currency--is not created.

That's why when Biden borrows money for new programs or Trump cuts taxes to enrich the rich, the deficit swells and the national debt goes up. If the government or the fed were creating fiat money--creating it out of thin air--there would be no new debt and the national debt would not go up.

See where you get when you confuse borrowing with fiat money?


----------------
> The real question is how we can call this an
> investment. Real value would come from raw energy
> (real intrinsic value that drives people to work
> and moves machinery to build infrastructure)
> flowing in to the the country via a petroleum
> pipeline.

Again, you keep taking government investment--which traditionally has meant everything from education to tarmacs, from electricity grids to airports and hospitals and space technology--and reducing it to energy, which is a tiny fraction of total public spending. Why is that?


--------------
> So okay, let's just say that everyone is on-board
> with the $2T loan and calling it an "investment".

So now you are calling the $2 trillion a "loan?" I think you mean borrowing. But in either case it wouldn't be fiat money.


----------------
> As we spend the $2T, do we want to fuel everything
> we do (from driving the kids to school to
> operating machinery to build bridges) with $2/gal
> gas or with $4/gal gas?

But the Keystone Pipeline was not government investment. It was a proposed private-sector initiative that Trump wanted to permit, not to fund. You are confusing private with public investment.

Putting that aside, let's look at your price projections. You say that the pipeline would reduce the cost of gas from four dollars per gallon to two dollars. That's a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it? I mean, the Keystone pipeline would generate 600,000 barrels of oil per day--which is less than one percent of global daily consumption. So rather than reducing the price of gas at the pump from $4 to $2, the actual change would be more like $4.00 to $3.96.

That means your math is off by somewhere around 10,000%.


----------------
> Who gets the interest
> money on the extra $1T that we pay because we shut
> down the pipeline? I'll give you a hint: It's not
> the homeless. Another hint: GNPE mentioned
> increasing costs on everything needed to build
> homes, the raw materials.

Fascinating. Say that energy accounts for a third of the cost of those goods. Since cancelling keystone would have raised the price of gas by about 1%, the price of those raw materials would rise by about a third of a percent.

The sky isn't really falling.


----------------
> So when we
> use machinery to cut, process, and transport trees
> (for example), everything that literally 'fuels'
> these processes costs us double.

No, the costs don't double. They might, on average, increase by 1/3 of one percent.


-------------
> https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fiatmoney.asp

Read the first sentence, or the first summary point, of your own source. It says "fiat money is government-issued currency. . . paper currencies. . ." Currency, azsteve, is not credit. If you understood that, you would have avoided a lot of confusion.


-----------------
> Logic dictates that we use incentives to create
> record employment rates and do what we can to
> reverse the debt, like re-negotiating prices with
> our suppliers who in our case now just happens to
> hold most of our debt. And, reducing our per-unit
> energy costs. A raising tide (or a raising economy
> in this case) raises all ships.

That passage is garbled beyond sense.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2021 05:01PM by Lot's Wife.

csuprovograd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I gotta throw some water on the statement that
> homelessness wasn’t a problem until 5-8 years
> ago ‘when it became readily visible’?
>
> Skid row has a long and storied history and has
> been a problem in Los Angeles for more than a
> hundred years.
>
> The only change is the recent media attention.
> They found that it was a topic that was easily
> covered and got them higher ratings, thus more
> profit.

My first job was working for the City of Los Angeles, often at City Hall, but I also worked (as a part of my job) at Parker Center (Police Department Headquarters), and in several other downtown locations. The parking lot I used (which no longer exists) was across the street from City Hall, and I walked from that parking lot, or from my semi-regular City Hall office, to wherever I was supposed to work on any particular day.

There is absolutely no comparison between walking the downtown Los Angeles streets when I worked for the City and walking them now.

Same streets, same sidewalks--totally different realities...and media attention (which, compared to the actual problem, is paltry) has absolutely nothing to do with it.

It is a human-caused catastrophe, and there is no way to over-dramatize its severity, or the necessity of finding some kinds of appropriate solutions, both for those who "are" [right now] the problem, and for the public at large.

When you walked the streets of LA back then you were relatively safe because the police policy was to ‘roust the bums’ and send them packing to somewhere else. This was a solution that was cruel but clearly effective because you felt safe.

More compassionate policies have supplanted the old methods and does not incur punishment on people who are destitute for an untold variety of reasons. This new method is less cruel for the homeless and they can safely claim a piece of public property as their tiny domain. Unfortunately, it creates a less safe feeling environment for the rest of the population.

It is a problem with no clear solution. I applaud the attempts to remedy the situation, but so far, a good solution remains elusive.

ETA: The media’s coverage has much to do with fomenting the angst of the citizenry regarding the homeless’ plight. If there were NO media coverage, it would be a problem, but many people would be blissfully unaware.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2021 03:50PM by csuprovograd.

BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE
A government that can give you everything can also take everything away from you

merely rhetoric

What gets taxed, you get less of.
What gets subsidized, you get more of.

I'd agree with that, but a broader, 'good for society' context is just as valid.

I don't think any of us would choose to see our neighbors (remember Proverbs?) freeze or starve or go without appropriate health care, but that's what we're experiencing lately here in the U.S.

> I don't think any of us would
> choose to see our neighbors
> (remember Proverbs?) freeze or
> starve or go without appropriate
> health care, but that's what we
> are experiencing lately here in
> the U.S.


By ignoring the situation, we don't have to exercise our power to make choices. It is by far the easiest solution.

NIMBY is very powerful because 'out of sight, out of mind'.

Nobody here is losing sleep over the homeless, which is a simple truth. The same goes for most 'worldly' plights.

If only there was an equation that allowed for taxing the wealthy to 'solve' all our problems! Humans! You can't live with them and you can't live ... with them.

Another area for ready rationalization is the definition of "neighbor." In the 19th century--correct me if your memory differs--large parts of North America had an expansive vision of what "neighbor" meant and accordingly helped build homes and barns, even fight in the odd war to keep those damned Lamanites in their place.

Now we define "neighbor" much more narrowly, sometimes excluding even one's spouse and/or children. Loving thy neighbor then because a much easier, and less expensive, imperative. That's why I blanche whenever I hear anyone voice the word "neighbor" as opposed to the less pregnant term "thang down the street."

This LA Musician had a solution to LA’s Homeless problem.
https://youtu.be/n6h7fL22WCE
He crowdfunded tiny homes, which he built for $1,200 ea, with solar power, lights, 2 windows, a locking door and a toilet.
That worked out great, Until the NIMBYs can out and demanded the city confiscate and destroy these poor folks Tiny Homes, along with their possessions and medicine and throw them back out on the street.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2021 04:37PM by schrodingerscat.

Perish the thought the beautiful people would drive by tent encampments on their way to their self-congratulatory orgy, I mean, celebration, which had the worst ratings in history--down 58% from last year's ten-record low.

LOS ANGELES, CA—Hobo Hank is a friendly guy by all accounts, whether he's asking for change outside the 7-Eleven or debating philosophy with a parking meter. But Hank says his corner outside the Oscars is really starting to go downhill, as a bunch of shady drug addicts and alcoholics showed up this afternoon and apparently plan to be there all evening.

"This neighborhood is really going downhill," Hank said as another limousine arrived packed with people of the lowest moral caliber.

https://babylonbee.com/news/homeless-outside-oscars-getting-annoyed-at-all-the-shady-drug-addicts-suddenly-arriving-in-their-neighborhood

let's remember: all people need access to sanitation facilities, those don't come cheap, handwashing, tooth brushing, toileting & bathing - showers.

then there's electricity...


so: long range solutions don't / won't be easy or cheap; not all homeless ppl are drunks, addicted, criminal, or mentally pathological.

GNPE Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> not all homeless ppl are drunks, addicted,
> criminal, or mentally pathological.

Not only is that true, but many homeless are employed! Imagine that, working AND still not having a pot to piss in, literally!

The federal minimum wage in the US is criminal. And the current administration refuses to keep its pledge to raise it to $15, a figure still not enough to live normally in major US cities. Keeping it at $7.25 is...I don’t even know the word.

But of the homeless who are addicted and mentally ill, why would anyone be against them having a pot to piss in? They have a medical condition and they are suffering. No decent person would allow their pets to live in such conditions.

Everyone has to pee and poo when they wake up. Imagine waking up and having no place to do that, every day?

I was rather surprised, when I first started to make my way in the world, to find that the housing situation is strongly oriented towards couples and families. It is often impossible for lower-income single people to have a place of their own, no matter how small. I had roommates into my mid-30s, at which point I lived with family members for 12 years when I went back to school and got my teaching career established. I was in my 40s when I was first able to afford a rental on my own, and even then it was a stretch.

There are almost no boarding houses left, where the owner assumes liability if a tenant moves out with reasonable notice. Every apartment or house that I shared with roommates had a "joint and several liability" clause that meant you were on the hook if a roommate skipped out on rent, or left with little warning.

Finding suitable housing can be *very* difficult for lower-income single adults.

The same dearth of “right-sized” dwellings for young singles applies to the senior population of widows/widowers as well.

Yeah...

...down-sizing to a spot under a tree by the side of the road.

First come, first served!

If you snooze, you ... may dream. Ay, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause: there's the respect that makes calamity of so long life; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?

Wow, EOD. That's almost poetic!

In 7th grade we had to memorize 100 lines of poetry. Besides the third soliloquy, I memorized however many lines of Horatio at the Bridge it took to reach 100 lines. And that's where I stopped in my recital, only about a third of the way through.

When asked why I'd stopped, I responded, "Well, that's 100 lines!" I'm sure I made it sound like she was a crazy woman for asking me a question with such an obvious answer.

She rumbled and grumbled something about "kids these days..."

Not to be outgrabe, but I had to memorize Jabberwocky...

Shun the frumious Bandersnatch, my son! My kids when small loved that one, and Blake’s Tyger Tyger.

(To get out of a grounding, my kids had to memorize a poem.)

elderolddog Wrote:
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> In 7th grade we had to memorize 100 lines of
> poetry.

What is astounding is that you remember those lines at this distant remove!

You know very well that I barely remember the event, and none of the details.

Well, at least that's what you claim in court.

If I'm under oath, it must be true!

Further deponent prevaricateth not.

summer Wrote:
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> There are almost no boarding houses left, where
> the owner assumes liability if a tenant moves out
> with reasonable notice.

Yes, the great American boarding house. Good point, summer.

There are so many excellent images in American fiction of how these functioned, from Oliver Wendell Holmes’s The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table to Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel to Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and on and on. The film Brooklyn has a nice, sugary image of how a young Irish girl could come over and “board” with “good people” and live and work in America.

New York City used to have the Barbizon Hotel, which served as a boarding house for young women newly arrived in the city. I seem to recall that I looked into it when I came to NYC in the 80s, but sadly it was beyond my budget at the time.

It was definitely a contributor to what we might call proto-Feminism, when young women came to NYC in pursuit of fame, fortune--and independence.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-barbizon-phd-paulina-bren/1137252147?ean=9781982123895

summer Wrote:
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> New York City used to have the Barbizon Hotel,
> which served as a boarding house for young women
> newly arrived in the city. I seem to recall that I
> looked into it when I came to NYC in the 80s, but
> sadly it was beyond my budget at the time.


I hopped a freight train and hitch hiked to NYC in the 80s with a backpack and a portfolio at 18 and stayed at the Covenant House and YMCA. Ended up working at Macy’s and studying art, then kept going to Europe and Africa.

I used to give kids subway tokens to get to Covenant House.

Before I came to NYC I was working for a nice hotel chain, so my first ten days in the city were on the house, and rather luxurious. It was downhill from there, lol. My next stop was a rather horrific fleabag hotel in Chelsea, that I think was a favored stop for artists and musicians -- can't remember the name. From there I started a long hunt for affordable housing, landing in a shared apartment in Nowhere, Brooklyn. I don't have very fond memories of NYC, but it did allow me to mature a little bit, and to renew my relationship with my mom, who lived an hour and a half away.

Where did you study art? I took a few classes at the New York School of Interior Design, and worked in the industry.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2021 11:11AM by summer.

Cool. My Mom still donates to Covenant House every month because they took care of me 40yrs ago. I studied art on my own, just taking in as many art museums as possible and drawing what I saw, mainly African Art and Sculpture.