There's a number of other studies that show that, overall, letting people go unhoused is far, far more costly than just fucking housing them. It's not just paying for the cops and demo teams to chase them around, you're also paying for excess use of medical services that wouldn't be taking place otherwise, lost revenue because of people wanting to avoid the homeless, and a bunch of other things that all just pile up. It doesn't help that some startups have entered this space and you've got cities like San Francisco paying them something like 40 or 80 thousand a year to keep the homeless in a fenced off area in a tent grid. It doesn't really fix anything, it's just another shitty, expensive band-aid whose funding could have gone to fixing the problem but didn't.
Yes. They should do it like NYC, where it's basically illegal to live on the street. The city is required by law to offer free housing at a certain quality level for anyone who needs it. It's not amazing but you get a door that locks and a security team, plus a bathroom.
If you don't want to sleep inside, you literally have to leave the city. It's not cheap but it works much better than letting people live in tents.
Why the illegal part, though? People don’t really need an incentive to have shelter. It just punishes people who are struggling with even deeper issues.
Technically it's not illegal to sleep on the street, but there are sanitation rules regarding it. NYC has 8 million people. Any problem you can think of is magnified. It's literally a sanitary issue if you allow thousands of people to camp outside.
In New York City, there are many rules on the books that have been used to restrict sleeping rough.
One is a piece of sanitation code that makes it unlawful to leave “any box, barrel, bale or merchandise or other movable property” or to erect “any shed, building or other obstruction” on “any public place.”
In city parks, it is illegal to “engage in camping, or erect or maintain a tent, shelter or camp” without a permit, or to be in a park at all between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. unless posted rules state otherwise.
And on the property of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, both underground and in outdoor elevated subway stations, it is a form of banned disorderly conduct to “sleep or doze” in any manner that “may interfere” with the comfort of passengers. Nor may subway riders “lie down or place feet on the seat of a train, bus or platform bench or occupy more than one seat” or “place bags or personal items on seats” in ways that “impede the comfort of other passengers.”
Note that these rules also restrict people who have homes too. No one can have a party in the park after hours or take up a ton of space on the subway. Note also that you can sleep outside if you don't get in the way.
someone who did not violate any of those rules — say, someone who set a sleeping bag in an out-of-the-way spot under a highway overpass and did not put up any kind of shelter — was legally in the clear, at least in theory.
Note that these rules also restrict people who have homes too. No one can have a party in the park after hours or take up a ton of space on the subway. Note also that you can sleep outside if you don’t get in the way.
This doesn't apply because the law doesn't forbid anyone from sleeping under bridges. Also, you can get housing for free. That's my point. It's the opposite of that quote. Unless you're pro-theft or something.
I am not sure what the housing situation is actually like for homeless in NYC because I've never spoken to anyone there who experienced it. I don't take your word for it that it's good or ethical.
There are a ton of articles on it. The system is huge and has been around for decades. Look it up if you like. If you don't care, don't.
No one said it was good at all. It's a necessary service in a big city. Obviously some shelters are very different from others. None of them are at nice hotels, but you can get your own room and a place for some of your stuff.
The major complaints are usually "it's too small" or "they don't let me have pets". Guess what? There are actual apartments people pay for that are too small and don't allow pets. It's NYC.
I'm talking about reality in this century. You're quoting an 1800s writer from another country. The system is a complicated solution to a complicated problem. So there's not going to be any simple answer, and definitely not from online quotes.
It's a glowed up version of "The law binds both rich and poor equally". A transparently untrue statement that's meant to draw attention to laws that are a mere inconvenience for the rich but seriously hurt the poor.
Obviously they restrict people who have homes but that isn’t really relevant here, is it? Those people have choices, they get to choose to stay late in a park and the alternative for them is go home.
Exactly. These are necessary rules for a large city. No one can camp without a permit because then parks would be unusable. The same permit is for weddings, parties, whatever. It's pretty easy to get one for a few hours, but they will reject it if you ask to use the park every day and night.
People living outside in public parks and on streets is a really bad use of urban space. It takes public space and makes it private. That's why the city gives out free room in old hotels and shelters. It's a good thing people can't sleep wherever.
Right but that’s a choice the shelter can make and not a point against the idea that people, ultimately, won’t really refuse a place to sleep. It’s a more complex issue that takes more time than an evening so rules like “no being drunk” which sound fine don’t really help anyone.
and if you want to use public money on it, then the goal has to be to help them get back to society, to which dealing with problematic behavioral patterns, like substance abuse, is a necessity...
no. shut the fuck up with this authoritarian garbage. when the "shelter" offered comes with a slew of dehumanizing draconian traditions, forces them to abandon other resources (including pets, which are also functional when you're homeless) and wildly precarious, you would have to be fucking stupid to take the deal. cut this shit out, or let me impose those conditions on YOUR shelter.
Hey, just to get it off my chest since you attacked me for no reason other than some preconception you brought with you, fuck you too!
Now that I've dealt with that, back to the topic. Some people don't want structure, or shelter, or society, or any of it. It doesn't matter if there's no conditions applied, they just don't want it.
I remember years ago reading about this guy who was the director of a huge hospital. He was worth millions of dollars. He could do anything he wanted to do. Guess what he wanted to do? He wanted to live on the streets and drink alcohol until he died. He left his mansion, and his family, and went and drank himself to death on the streets. Was he mentally ill? Probably, man! But if anyone had access to every available option for help that existed, it was him. He didn't want it. He wanted to be a drunk homeless person.
So my point stands. You can offer whatever catch-all, condition-free solution you want, and some people are still going to reject it. That's just reality, regardless of what we wish.
Are you talking about Todd Waters? Otherwise link source. It's pretty rare for someone to want that lifestyle unless they've already involuntarily experienced it previously. Todd had started trainhopping when he was in high school.
I know of one other individual who is a millionaire and has a mansion he sleeps in, but during the day appears to be homeless and pushes a cart around cleaning up cans and trash. He's beloved by his local community (very nice man and generous tipper). He also experienced living on the street involuntarily previously and got an inheritance.
Waters was a “hobo” who proudly noted in 2012 that he’s been arrested about 70 times jumping railroad cars out of St. Paul for parts unknown and known. He was also a millionaire.
“My life went south after my wife ran off with a bartender to Arizona. I sold everything I owned and hit the ‘first thing smokin’, running away, then after a year or so, drifting where ever I damned well pleased. I got off ‘the road’ after a few years to settle down,” he wrote on Hobo Times. “That lasted about three weeks. I was homesick for ‘the road’. I returned to ‘the road’. That lasted a few months until I got homesick for settled society. That lasted until I got homesick for the road again.”
Somewhere along the line, he got in the advertising business, made a lot of money, and lived in a million-dollar home on Lake Minnetonka.
Todd’s childhood friend, Bill Martin, once asked him why he would leave the comfort and security of his family and his Lake Minnetonka home every summer for 40 years to live the hobo life, with no money and no phone, exposing himself to danger, dodging the law and sleeping out in the elements. He replied, “It’s the freedom I feel.” The more risks he took, and the less he had in his pack, the more he was free to experience.
While Todd rubbed shoulders with the wealthy, prominent and powerful, the people he probably respected most for their guts and straightforwardness were hobos. So before hiring account executives for his agencies Waters Advertising, Waters & Company and WatersMolitor, Inc. he sometimes asked candidates to hit the streets and panhandle. He insisted that the people he worked with be brave, and know how to close a sale.
No, not him. I can't find a source. I read about it in a newspaper, or magazine like 15-20 years ago. If I remember correctly, he was the director of St. Agnes hospital in Fresno, CA.
WHY do these people not want structure, or shelter, or society?
have you considered that? have you fucking asked that? why someone might want to see the world burn? or do you just accept when you're told they do, and assume they're a magical evil monster?
I used to do a lot of work with unhoused populations. I tended to get those people, because nobody else could deal with them. I could, because the structure I offered wasn't coercive, the shelter I offered was clearly defined (when I could offer any) and no-strings-attached, and the society I was working for was one that would include them and give them a voice and treat them like fucking human beings.
okay. so someone wanted to drink on the streets. there's a reason. maybe a dumb reason, maybe a crazy reason, but a reason. I've been pretty close to taking this option before, once after seeing some shit that an emergency room kicked out, once after dealing with police victims. if I had been complicit and tied into existing systems, if I hadn't read all the theory and committed myself to working against oppression, I would have done something an awful lot like that.
seems like you just really enjoy throwing people away, and don't want to put any effort into understanding awful shit that they've experienced and how it motivates them to do the things they do, which you sometimes find odd.
why do the sociopaths who declare noncompliant unhoused people ontologically evil want us to understand them, when they won't even try to understand the people who make THEM uncomfortable?
San Francisco infuriates me. There are activist groups that are made of actual literal unhoused people telling the city what they need and what they want. And the city could just give people the money they need for a fraction of the administrative costs it spins on its non-profits and its government agencies.
But the city says homeless people are drug addicts and criminals and can't be trusted to use money responsibly.
So they funnel millions of dollars to corrupt non-profits and government agencies who promise to use the money responsibly for the benefit of the homeless and they fucking don't. There was a $350K program run by the Salvation Army in partnership with the local public transit agency. One homeless person used their services.. One.
At least government agencies are, at some remove, responsible to the taxpayers and the voters. Non-profits dedicated to "helping" the homeless have a very strong incentive to make the problem worse. Because the worse the homelessness crisis becomes, the more money goes to the nonprofits. So they take government money, give it to their employees, make some sort of pathetic token effort to help unhoused people, and as the crisis worsens they go back to the government and say "the crisis is worse, we need more money".
And civilians look at the amount of money being poured into assistance to unhoused people, and look at the crisis getting worse, and say "more money and services won't help these people, we need to criminalize them". And fucking Newsom is all over that because he's angling for the Presidency and military style crackdowns impress the fascists in red states.
There's a homelessness crisis because of government corruption and incompetence. And the majority of Americans think the solution is to give the government more military power, more police power, and let those same corrupt agencies brutalize the homeless more. It's sickening.
The nonprofit industrial complex is a leech. At least government agencies have some level of accountability, because if they fail to solve a problem, the voters blame the politicians, and the politicians shit downhill on the agencies. Nonprofits don't even have that minimal level of accountability. They just spend all the government money they get, write grants saying "we spent all the money you gave us doing stuff, please give us more", and get more money.
But this is what you get when both the left and right have bought into libertarian free market ideology and agree that privatizing government services is more efficient than letting the government do its goddamn job.
and honestly, I would like to sit on a bench at night without worrying im keeping somebody out of their bed. that would be cool. I would like to stop the streets smelling like piss. I would like too walk on the sidewalk without having to detour and step into the street to avoid people's homes at least twice a block.
clearly, armed neo nazi thugs, even if you LIKE armed neo nazi thugs (we should, um, have a chat separately. what the fuck is wrong with hypothetical you?) don't make that happen. and for the libs: you wouldn't even have to look at human tragedy beyond their full comprehension every time you go outside!
yes, you would have to give resources and basic human dignity to the 'undeserving', and supply side jesus WOULD damn you to eternal hell (being homeless in san francisco but during extreme weather events), but the few years before you die would be substantially nicer.
Yeah? Well if someone decided to build affordable housing near my McMansion, then my precious house's market value will decrease. Also something about crime because of the poors
Crime is a legitimate concern, especially for people raising a family. I get where you're coming from, but you shouldn't trivialize legitimate issues. I'm someone who grew up in a violent, crime infested area, and it fucking sucked.
It is a concern, but crime is a symptom of a larger issue, that being poverty and desparation (for the most part). We need to put out the fire from the base, otherwise it will continue to grow.
The vast majority of theft is done through the wealthy via time card fraud / theft from employees, and then police through asset forfeiture. Crime and morality have nothing to do with poverty, and associating them with poor people (when the rich do the most of it) is classist propaganda.
Eh ... There are literally millions of people who work and don't get to choose any of those things, and are forced into a small apartment and/or a roommate scenario.
Oh I know that all too well lol I currently rent an "apartment" that is the upstairs of a dilapidated garage and I work full time as a psudo-supervisor in a factory (whatever im considered idk lol we don't use titles so we can't determine our value properly)
For us, that "free housing" would probably be equivalent to what we have now lol
I mean, there’s no reason we can’t go the way of Japanese micro home in construction. Everything you need packed into an efficient little area you can still call home.
Hell… if I wasn’t married with kids and pets, I’d almost prefer that.
I wouldn't call the masses all living in tiny boxes so that the wealthy can add a few more zeroes to their bank accounts progress. Japan has a lack of available land that most places don't have. If people need to live in micro-homes to get by in places with plenty of space, then there's still a very serious unresolved issue.
You definitely don't need to (and shouldn't!) go as far as Japan, but even in places with abundant space like America or Australia, there are huge advantages to keeping homes relatively smaller in terms of land-area per-person. (Floor space can stay higher by: building multi-storey row houses, building apartments, reducing private lawn areas, etc.)
Keeping things less spread out is much, much more affordable. Fewer roads to maintain, fewer ks of electricity, sewerage, and Internet infrastructure, etc. It makes public transport run much more efficiently, which reduces the cost of operating it, which means you get more of it. This makes it a better service, which means people use it, which takes cars off the road, which makes congestion less of a problem, which makes getting around faster. Ditto the cost and usability of bike paths and nice pedestrian footpaths, which become more usable as a result of things being literally closer together, resulting in a store you might once have had to drive to get to being possible to walk to now. This in turn makes things more affordable for individuals, because they might not need to pay the huge prices associated with cars (buying the thing, maintenance, insurance, petrol) if they can get around by bike and public transport. Or at the very least, a family can drop down from 2 or 3 cars to just 1 being enough.
It makes housing more affordable, since instead of paying for 300 sq m of land per 100 sq m of floor space, you might now be paying 50 sq m or less of land per 100 sq m floor space. And because things a denser, your commute can drop from potentially over an hour to something reasonable like less than 30 minutes.
Oh, no argument here at all. I’m simply saying that a perfectly livable micro home could be the answer for those who would bitch about “I’m paying for my home and theirs is nicer” or similar.
Make a home that is adequate, but most would want to improve their lives and move out of.
Of course I’m more a supporter of UBI, which would likely solve this issue among many others if properly implemented. But that’s a different topic completely.
That sounds like a good proposition. Of course it doesn't matter what we think if we don't get loud about it in places that matter, like city hall meetings, letters to the city council members, shouting while standing on top of a milk crate with a bullhorn, and stuff like that.
And what's the problem? So what if a whole bunch of single people moved into tiny government houses? Housing is a human right. And it sure would bring rents down.
Maybe your opinion is that housing is a human right but I’m not sure where you are drawing that definitive conclusion from. Are you saying it’s a legal right somewhere or that it’s your emotional stance? In my experience, housing, or even just shelter, is a human responsibility not a right.
Don’t get me wrong, it’d sure be nice if it was a legal right for folks to have a safe shelter of sorts. Men are commonly turned away from the limited shelters that exist due to comfort and safety concerns for women and children. I don’t see how that happens if it’s a human right.
Maybe your opinion is that housing is a human right but I’m not sure where you are drawing that definitive conclusion from. Are you saying it’s a legal right somewhere or that it’s your emotional stance?
The right to housing is a fundamental human right, according to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many international treaties and agreements since. As the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights puts it:
Adequate housing was recognized as part of the right to an adequate standard of living in article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in article 11.1 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Other international human rights treaties have since recognized or referred to the right to adequate housing or some elements of it, such as the protection of one’s home and privacy.
Your personal experience has given you an incorrect belief regarding the human right to housing. I'm sorry to call you out so directly, but sometimes people need to hear hard truths. Facts don't care about your feelings.
I don’t feel like you called me out at all but that doesn’t seem to establish any kind of legal human right to any specific area of interest that I have seen discussed here. Are you able to clarify how I’m missing that part of it?
Perhaps we're talking past each other. Human rights are not defined by laws. Human rights come before laws. Laws, in decent nations, are written in such a way as to protect human rights.
The text of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, enacted by the UN in the hope that never again would the world see such widespread and horrific violations of human rights as it did during World War II, is an excellent starting point to understand how the modern world sees human rights. It is linked in the post I linked above.
And, just to circle back around to the topic, the laws of the United States are clearly failing to protect the fundamental human right to adequate housing for all persons resident in the United States.
There is a substantial argument for housing being a right, and also let's get real - it's bad for a government to be so unstable they can't give adequate housing to everyone. It'd bad at a societal level even if it theoretically didn't violate individual rights.
51 Historical analysis reveals that American policymakers have consistently used happiness discourse and a specific notion of virtue to promote an ownership model of wellbeing. The eighteenth-century use of the term “happiness”—namely, a stable feeling of fulfillment and wellbeing that results from a virtuous way of life—was pivotal in forging a lasting rhetorical link between the pursuit of happiness and the lifestyle induced by property ownership. As if they were reading from James Truslow Adams’ playbook, subsequent generations of Americans appear to have unwaveringly stood up to save the American Dream of homeownership from any opposing forces (Adams 2017 [1931]). As the frontier reached the Pacific and small farmland became scarce, suburban crabgrass (Jackson 1985) became the next frontier to conquer for Americans in search of homeownership. As suburbanization fueled an urban crisis for many poor minorities, the Civil Rights Movement sparked political change in the 1960s that would attempt to give equal homeownership opportunities to all Americans regardless of skin color, sex, or origin. Then as unfavorable economic conditions made housing credit scarce, financial deregulation was used to keep the American Dream of homeownership alive. Even the subprime mortgage crisis, in which deregulation played a strong role, has barely put a dent in Americans’ attachment to the homeownership way of life.
From a theoretical standpoint, the long-term resistance and flexibility of this model, both in discourse and in practice, must be traced back to the fundamental contradiction between the universality of the principles enshrined in the nation’s founding documents, in which the link between the pursuit of happiness and ownership is institutionalized, and the reality of the racial, gender and class inequalities in the United States regarding property ownership. This is what makes the homeownership society a permanent horizon, a utopian dream for all Americans to strive for by overcoming whatever political, social, or economic obstacles they come across; and it’s the pursuit of this dream, not necessarily the achievement of it, that is presented as the gateway to happiness and virtue. As such, politicians can constantly reactivate this discourse to bolster support for either conservative or progressive policies that alternate between saving an ownership model in danger and expanding it toward new frontiers. By channeling political resistance toward the improvement or greater accessibility of a homeownership model, the validity of the model itself remains unquestioned. Happiness politics based on this model thus constructs and reconstructs loyalty to the American capitalist regime of private property by presenting obstacles to homeownership as an opportunity to defend the American way of life, while alternatives to the dream of homeownership are considered an un-American road to vice and unhappiness.
Of course, what is claimed in political discourse about homeownership and happiness should not be taken at face value, even if polls and the concrete living situation of the majority of Americans attest to a strong relationship between the two. While there is still more comparative research to be conducted on the strengths and weaknesses of renting and homeownership on various dimensions of wellbeing, this brief historical analysis may open up a new dimension somewhat specific to the United States. When homeownership has been culturally presented as the only virtuous and truly American gateway to happiness, can this lead to a feeling of being un-American, or a failed American, if one is either unable or unwilling to conform? To what extent is it important to have the same housing lifestyle as one’s fellow citizens to feel part of the national community? In other words, the effect of associating patriotic attitudes with specific ways of life—such as owning a house in the suburbs—on subjective wellbeing could be a new avenue to explore in happiness research.
Income limit would lead to people 'gaming' the system. Either just misreporting what they actually make or purposefully not making enough to qualify.
Or it will go just like current systems do - you make one cent over their arbitrarily decided number and you don't qualify even if you cant actually afford to live.
It would also screw over people who might have a 'good' income, but made honest mistakes and are upside down in debt or similar situations.
Income limit fosters a 'you deserve this, you don't' attitude which is what we are trying to get away from.
I just see a time limit system (with exceptions for those who are sick/unable to fully care for themselves) doing a better job of providing a basic human right to anyone who needs it while avoiding a bunch of bullshit an income limit would bring to the table.
I just see a time limit system (with exceptions for those who are sick/unable to fully care for themselves)
Are we putting a time limit on processing who gets that designation? Because federal disability claims are a shitshow that take roughly six months just to get your first denial. And then can take years to go through appeals.
It's all just different takes on who "deserves" to live and for how long.
Its not like its just one small system that is broken - we have multiple broken systems that need to be torn down and rebuilt because the rot is in the bones.
There are major problems with income based limits. In theory they work, but they often break down over time locking people into the poverty they are trying to escape. It creates a grey area where they lose more than they gain by improving their income. Sometimes as much as an hour of extra work can lose them their benefits.
Small world! That's pretty cool! I wish I could get out, but for the last like 3 years everyone is singing the song of "omg a recession is coming" so I keep waiting lol
Yeah if it's a tea and usually lots of sugar that is kept cold then we'd call it iced tea. I think if it's like actually "served" at a restaurant or whatever it should be in a glass with ice too so that's probably really where the name came from. Now if it's just cold tea we'd call it iced tea lol
Then there's the "long Island iced tea" which is a cocktail lol
I distrust toots that assert something without providing a link
I was lucky and found a link to the 31K figure; sounds partially like it does NOT apply to all homeless people, just some small percentage, so probably a bullshit number
The article, I think, is very clear on how those dollar amounts were measured, and I don't think they're bullshit at all, but everybody here can read the article and decide for themselves.
Also, they quote $10k for "supportive housing" and show a picture of San Francisco. I guarantee that's not accurate. The state needs to pay to house these people, but we need to be realistic about the cost.
Housing in places like SF is expensive because of private landlords jacking up proces to the moon. If the government owns the property and gets to control the cost then it’s really not any more expensive than housing them anywhere else. Better still it puts those people within the range of public services like transit so they can actually work on getting themselves into a better situation.
Government identifies optimal residential location for facility. Invites largest residential land owner in that location over. Place land lenders head in guillotine. Presents document to sign over land to the government assuring them they can maintain possession of their head in turn. Validate signature. Remove head so they can’t claim they signed under duress.
If they refuse to sign then remove head and forge signature.
Needs strict compartmentalization.
Group A identifies optimal location and knows nothing about anyone else.
Group B finds land owner but knows nothing about why or who it’s for.
Group C secures ownership transfer documents and sends to a drop box
Group D delivers landowners to intake facility but knows only who they are getting and to where.
Group E transports landowner to meeting facility/room.
Group F picks up transfer documents and holds meeting with land owner. Sends documents to city hall.
Nobody knows or talks to anyone outside of their group or is provided any information on why they are performing their portion of the process. Group F needs to be strictly limited to a very small number of people. Vetting for group F is done by kidnapping a potential candidates young children and spouse while leaving a note where they are to report for work. Perform their duties for six months to have their family safely returned. During the exit interview remind the group F individual and kidnapped party that all group F members that have ever been involved in the history of the program, their family along with any subsequent family members will be executed should they ever speak to anyone regarding the existence of the program.
Single small bedroom with shared kitchen and bathrooms is pretty cheap. You probably want to spend a bit more though to help the homeless into a position, where they can take care of themself.
My first residence after the military was a common kitchen and living room with an exterior door and four bedrooms with a bedroom door at each corner with its own keyed entry. Each bedroom had its own closet and bathroom. So you needed an exterior door key and your bedroom door key to get to your room from the quad. It was one of my favorite places to live and I didn’t get along well with one of the other guys but we just left each other alone.
The building had eight of these quads per floor per building and it was two stories. Two buildings were connected on the second floor by an attached breezeway and paths to the stairs. The first floor had a rec room and facility office in leu of two of the center first floor quads.
@an_onanist@li10 housing prices are set by LANDLORDS, not some kind of objective metric that's tied to material facts.
Housing costs what it takes to build & maintain it, & that's not the same as what landlords charge for it in order to turn a profit off gatekeeping access to necessary resources. Housing could be far cheaper than it is for most people but that's a choice we make as a society as well. So i don't accept "where is housing that cheap" as a valid argument against these findings.
At least in countries with shanty towns, the poor are allowed to live in squats. We don't even give people that tiny grace. We don't even give them free cheap cars to live in parking lots, or vouchers for mechanic repairs for the cars they live in. We'd have shanty towns if we allowed it. We just hide it rather than see how bad things really are.
Well sure, but if you spend the ten thousand, will you get sixty thousand of free labor production in return like you will with the incarcerated option? We've got to look at net profit, people!
The savings/costs drastically change based on state/city. But the overwhelming majority of the time it is cheaper to do the morally correct thing of providing permanent housing assistance.
$10,000 a year to provide a single person housing? To put that in perspective. I'd assume that means a studio type apartment of some kind. Not high end, but a roof and place to live for $10,000 a year. I have a 1500sqft home in Washington state on 3 acres of land, and I pay $27,000 a year for my mortgage. So to me, $10,000 seems reasonable for a government funded studio for a year.
And I know it’s probably unheard of in America now, but $840 a month in rent is not that wildly low. I assume there’s more to it than just that though.
I live in the middle of Hamburg, second biggest city of Germany, in a recently renovated apartment of roughly 40 sqm and pay round about 700 EUR (~ 770 USD) for that with all facilities including electric power, home insurance and internet. The housing market in this city is considered to be tough for this country.
If you "dare" to live in a "small" flat the price really should manageable. Social assistance is another cost factor but that's an investment in your country and its people.
That sounds so nice! I’m from America, am 32, make $35,000 a year and still live in my parents basement. I know I can “afford” an apartment, but I really don’t want to see ~50% of my pay go to rent. If you don’t mind me asking, how much do you make a month in Hamburg?
By the way, I’ve been to Germany a few times! Only ever around Frankfurt but it’s such a lovely country. ☺️
Not to invalidate your lovely experiences, mind you. Germany has its lovely sides. But keep in mind that we have more people than California and Texas combined in an area smaller than either. There is a vastly diverse array of cultures and personalities. If you want an accurate image, you'll have to spend enough time here to observe the discourse around significant events, including the ugly sides, and judge from that.
I don't know what that person makes, nor what industry you're in, but minimum wage (12.41 EUR ~ 13.67 USD) with a full 40h job comes out to a gross income of about 31.4k USD per year. Your net income varies depending on where you are, whether you're married etc. but including public (legally mandated) health / long term care insurance, unemployment insurance and pension insurance, your net income would be about 22.5k USD per year / 1.85k USD per month. It's not exactly a way to get rich, but at least that's the bottom of the range.
Also, which Frankfurt? We have two and it's fun to see confused foreignerd 😄
I just need to say that 31k/22k with health as a bottom line would be a dream for so many Americans. They're running on 25k without medical, and having to fit rent in there too.
Don't forget a minimum of 20 days paid time off and unlimited sick leave (the employer pays full for the first six weeks, after that the government pays a reduced amount, but you're not suddenly unemployed or without income), as well as limited (paid) leave if you need to take care of sick children (30 days per parent per year for single children, 65 if you have multiple, single parents get double).
These are things we occasionally take for granted, but I've learned that they seem utterly fantastical to others.
I have a Bachelor's Degree, I'm working IT full time on a permanent contract with a Union, I get about 46k gross / 34k net per year and 30 days paid time off, while paying about 12k in rent. Food prices have gone nuts lately and various other private bills gobble up most of the rest, but I'm doing alright.
It was more the fact that, while I stayed in Frankfurt (expo hall Frankfurt) for work, I got to go outside of the city and see a handful of different ‘villages’ and castles and stuff. It was really cool.
But I do understand where you’re coming from. Blows my mind that people would come to the US from another country and not come here:
Full time equivalent of about 2.500 EUR net per month (it's more pre taxes, of course; I don't mind paying taxes as that affords me living in a safe and functional country). As I work part-time I take home less than that number but still get by easily (time is much more valuable than money if you cross a certain relatively low threshold of income and don't live a flashy lifestyle).
Thanks for the praise ;) Germany has its troubles and problems but continues to be a nice place to live.
It depends on where you are. $840 a month anywhere near Chicago is either stupidly cheap for what you're getting, or stupidly bad for what you're paying.
It's honestly stunning how much they value cruelty. This is why we shouldn't spank our kids. All it teaches them is to add a pointless step for violence before actually problem solving.
We cannot allow these men a little wooden house with windows and an open door. Their housing must be a little part of a concrete and iron world attended by sadists, their neigbors and roommates should be mean, violent people.
And you have to let us enslave them a little bit and ensure they have no freedom to roam and no worldly pleasures, no intimacy or sex except that which the strong can take homosexually nonconsensually from their fellow man.
The overhead goes to a bunch of stuff. The costs of housing inmates include the cost of hours of judges, lawyers, COs, etc. However the way it it profitable, beyond just collecting fines, and deciding your money is suspect, and taking it, is because of the corpratization of the legal system. Huge, but, often, not well known, corporations that run aspects of jails, and prisons. They make the food, run the inmate phone systems, control the inmate commissary, staff the medical departments, and more. These are just the ones that work with jails. There are third part corporations that provide bulk legal assistance work, editing services, services for a lot of the moving factors of the legal system.
These companies, in turn, give huge amounts of "donations" to politician's needs. Campaign funds being the most well known. This money, while paying for these costs, is also used to keep them living an exceptionally comfortable life. Many, after pushing through legislation favorable to a company, will be compensated in a number of ways. From them being able to take advantage of stock investment knowing how the law is about to change, and how that will affect their holdings, to exiting politics and being given a cushy, high paying, fluff job in the industry they helped out.
There isn't so much of the straight bribes, graft, and other forms of corruption people assume with politics. It is more abstracted than that, and technically legal. Obviously there are conflicts of interest that can easily be seen in this, however, since a company isn't just handing the official a bag of money, that they will keep as their own income, it is deemed legal.
Housing is kept artificially scarce to keep prices up. Criminalizing homelessness raises the demand for housing. I wonder how many people making these policies have rental properties or invest in housing.
There’s frequently a lot more to homelessness than just giving someone a place to live. Many of these people are mentally ill or addicted to something and cannot function or take care of themselves. There’s additional costs above just providing a place to live - like food and clothing and healthcare.
Inmates are supposed to be provided with services like meals, showers, uniforms, and healthcare so that’s part of the reason for the discrepancy in costs. I doubt there’s much addiction care or mental health care in prison though.
These people really need a better place to get help than jail. But we don’t have socialized medicine in the US, and that’s probably a huge contributor to homelessness. Just think if you couldn’t drown in medical debt, or could walk in to any clinic and sign up for addiction care or mental health assistance how many homeless people might not have ended up homeless.
Also I’m not aware of any major US city where rent or mortgage is $10k per year. A lot of cities are buying up old motels and providing support services and temporary housing. That seems to be a good start, but it probably costs more than $10k per year per person. And without free continuing healthcare a lot of people are going to end up back on the street.
Some of them it was for sure a preexisting condidtion. But how many homeless people developed addictions and assorted health problems because of homelessness?
A HELL of a lot more.
If they had had a home that they wouldn't lose to bullshit to begin with...
I am all for helping the homeless but these numbers seem misleading. Now I want to see how much if they also get all of the amenities that come with prison. 3 meals a day and (shitty) healthcare.
Housing - 10,050
Medicare average cost per beneficiary (2022) - 15,730
31065-10050-15730 = 5285 remaining for meals, three meals everyday for a year would be $4.83 per meal, low but doable. This assumes the government will be providing everything with no contribution from the individual. Lack of housing is probably the largest impediment to employment, no address or id for job apps, nowhere to shower and be clean, have clean clothes, etc. Addiction is another issue but safe stable housing would be a major help in getting clean as well. So some number of these people will be able to get back on track and start contributing to themselves and society at large.
I realized after typing I found Medicare instead of Medicaid, it varies by state but average cost per enrollee is 8651, so another 1400 is available in the equation.
And that is probably on the low end. So even if we round up to $30,000, it's still less. And the people are better off. I have been a homeless drug addict. It's a rough life. The only reason I broke free from heroin/fentanyl addiction is because I went to prison. But I also wanted to quit. If someone does not want to quit, they won't quit.
Thank you for taking the time to research and do the math. You are a good person.
And what do you do with the mentally ill homeless who refuse services and help? Cause I'm my city those are the homeless that remain. And until people accept that some will have to be taken off the streets and forced into help, against their will, then we're always gonna have this issue.
My city provides great homeless services, but only if you ask or want them. If you're the guy who doesn't know or want help and running around the subway threatening and harassing people, you get to stay on the street and do as you want.
Unhoused people refuse help because past "help" failed them or people they know, or "help" comes with conditions that are unacceptable to them, or "help" will not solve the actual problems they have. The solution is not to force people into institutions that abuse them, neglect them, and then kick them out for failing to follow arbitrary rules.
I mean, if you have a dog, and the shelters don't allow dogs, what do you do? What sane person would risk their dog being put down at the pound in exchange for a few weeks of housing - housing, moreover, that is demonstratively less safe than living on the street?
The solution is to improve the services available without conditions so that unhoused people feel safe in asking for those services.
There are a small number of people who genuinely cannot make decisions because they cannot comprehend reality. And those people need help, possibly involuntary help. But even then, that doesn't mean taking them away from the people and places they know and locking them up. People blame Reagan's deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people in the '80s for the current homeless crisis - people forget Reagan's deinstitutionalization policy was popular because insane asylums were horrifically incompetent and abusive.
And if you see a homeless person experiencing a mental health crisis or acting irrational in public, please remember, they have no private place to go - how would you come off to the public if your worst moments had to be displayed in public? - and then ask yourself whether their actions are making you feel unsafe, or merely uncomfortable.
I wish more people went to the Glore Psychiatric Museum in St Joseph, MO. Here's a famous display from that museum, for "pica":
That museum really really shows how little difference there was in the way we treated patients of asylums, versus inmates, versus prisoners of war. There are so many torture devices in there, disguised as medical devices. As someone formerly in the bioengineering field, it was a sober warning to the harm that can be created through "medical" devices and our own hubris and cruelty.
People have no idea what those were like. And how unethical forced imprisonment is. That should make everyone recoil. I thought we all hated slavery, right? It would be more compassionate to let them set up squats and car camps than to force institutionalization on them.
Ps the above picture results in the patient dying. It was one of the first surgeries to remove stomach contents and anesthesia wasn't refined/good back then. So they performed an experimental procedure on a patient who couldn't consent to it and who DIDN'T consent to it, and she died from it. That's what asylums were like.
Well, having a home will help their mental illness because they'll be able to develop a circadian rhythm, sleep, not be constantly stressed. They are more likely to be able to take their meds on time. They can spend time on their phones to relax because they will have access to chargers/electricity. Very very few people are so mentally disabled they need assisted living, and those people don't usually stay alive on the streets.
And this time of year gets extra crazy homeless/street people because of sunstroke, heatstroke, and dehydration which they also would be able to avoid in a home. It's probably your same local homeless people, just some are allowed in libraries and places with AC, and the ones that aren't are getting extra agitated.
Like literally, cosplay homelessness in your city at peak heat times and no money. How would you cool off if you can't go in a store? Where is the nearest shade you can sit and rest in? How cool are you, really? Many city have designed infrastructure specifically so homeless can't cool off. That makes everything worse. Including with climate change for housed people.
Well, I speak to a lot of homeless people. Maybe your cousin is trans or has some other identity issue or a disability that makes it hard for him to stay with people. What started him living on the street? Why did he initially move out of your aunt and uncle's house and at what age? Are they religious? Does he have trauma with caregivers such as sexual assault? How do you know he doesn't?
And fine, let him live on the streets and camp if he doesn't want free and clear housing. People camp all the time. He shouldn't be harassed for it. We are animals, we belong outside anyway if we so choose. I know people who have hiked for months across America. There are people who live in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. Why should people be prevented from living freely? Think throughout history - the idea is preposterous. The only reason we force institutionalization is to get slave labor.
He's just mentally ill, refuses help and just can't handle the responsibility of just living. It's sad, but yeah it's like he craves the homelessness and lack of any expectations maybe? His parents are well off so he has everything he needs at home, but he doesn't want it. He's been taken to mental health professionals and programs but he doesn't want to take part. He would honestly just rather live under a bridge, I don't know what it is.
Why should mental illness be a crime someone is locked up for? And what level of crazy is permitted so you can maintain your freedom? Depression? Anxiety? PTSD? What if someone is mentally fine but might appear otherwise, like if they have cerebral palsy? Should we lock them up too?
Obviously that's why they were shut down. There were serious ethical issues..
But why did we throw out the baby with the bathwater? Why throw them on the streets instead of fixing the system?
Of course I don't want people with anxiety locked up. What about we give very mentally ill a place to go? And those who are hurting themselves or others are sent there against their will.
Well, anyone could say somrone was crazy and they'd maybe get locked up. Women were getting diagnosed with hysteria and lobotomized. You can't really fix a system that takes away people's autonomy as the main feature of that system. Like people who get PTSD and are disempowered are the ones being diagnosed and locked up - even though it actually seems pretty rational to develop PTSD from the stuff they went through. So are they actually crazy, or are they victims?
It's really not that simple, and this is forced imprisonment we're talking about here. Not even in the fields of ethics and bioethics do we have concrete answers.
The article discusses an approach to solving bioethics problems through consensus and the establishment of conditional demarcation boundaries within the legal field. The author notes the lack of general criteria for assessing positions, which leads to an “eternal discussion” and makes some problems, such as abortion, euthanasia and biomedical experiment, fundamentally insoluble. Existing bioethical theories consider problems from an axiological position, remaining divorced from ontological foundations. The issue of abortion has historically depended on the dominant type of worldview - pantheistic, theistic, deistic and atheistic. The resolution of such issues is determined by external factors, which creates the ground for conflicts in society. The author calls for a deeper understanding of human nature and ideological dialogues to resolve bioethical contradictions.
If I could create the system it would be the level at which you cannot sustain yourself outside the system. But I would not be treating them in with the level at which you're a danger to others. Two different systems with two different goals. It would be far more residential, an apartment building with a clinic on the ground floor type thing. Everyone jumps straight to lockdown wards but it doesn't have to be that.
Well, if the residents are free to leave, then what you're proposing is assisted living or a permeable institution, not a traditional institution. Institution by the traditional colloquial definition, means they cannot leave and they have their personal liberties taken. Everyone thinks you mean "lockdown" because that's what an institution is to pretty much everyone. If you specify "permeable institution," or "assisted living," it would better convey your meaning
Restriction of freedom is still often associated with psychiatric institutionalization and hospital treatment although modern psychiatric wards and hospitals have been found to be ‘permeable’ [20]. Similar to Goffman’s interpretation of psychiatric hospitals, McNown Johnson & Rhodes characterized psychiatric institutions as establishments where their residents have little or no choice about their participation in activities, and have little say about how they are being treated [38]. Admitted residents are not allowed to leave the psychiatric institution without being officially released or discharged. From this perspective, patients’ freedom of movement is restricted and the functions of psychiatric institutions are similar to a security guard.
The results of this review can be related to critiques of Goffman’s notion of the mental institution [20,37,83,84] namely that the earlier conceptualizations of institutionalization are limiting and can no longer be applicable in today’s context. The traditional conceptualization of institutionalization reinforces mainly a restrictive understanding of institutionalization as taking place in institutions, where patients are only the sufferers of the treatment process and have limited autonomy and are completely isolated from the outside world. Townsend [82] concluded in his review that studies from 1959 to 1975 support the idea that institutionalization involves patients accepting institutional life and developing a lack of desire to leave after a long stay in mental institutions. More recently, Quirk and his associates [20,56] found that ‘permeable institutions’ provide a better representation of the reality of everyday life in modern 'bricks and mortar' psychiatric institutions.
There are literally people itt advocating for it. I have seen people advocate for putting homeless in prisons and even concentration/work camps. People 100000% advocate for that type of psychiatric institution. In fact, per the link in my previous comment, the vast majority of psychiatric institutions are this type of "lockdown" institution and it is actually an exception to the norm and a new style of institution to do the permeable institution. So if you mean a permeable institution, you should specify that if you want to be understood, because that's what common use means.
Words mean things. People are cruel. Can't assume you aren't cruel. Use right word if you want to be understood.
Oh I know there are people advocating to abuse homeless people. But when you assume all mental health facilities are lockdown facilities for dangerous people you're hurting the entire mental health community. When pressed, people do not want lockdown facilities.
Well why don't all the blue states band together and make it happen? In fact why haven't they done it in the last 40 years or so? What's going on? What are they waiting for? They have power and money to make it happen. They supposedly even have political will? It's almost like it's all talk and nobody wants to do it
Sounds like a lame excuse for not doing the work. Why nobody requests it from their elected reps and city councils? Why nobody demands housing for homeless to be build in their neighborhood? Did you @SSJMarx petition your mayor to build something in your town?
So you reap the benefit of living in town that's presumably not overrun with visible homeless, but you seem fit to give advice to blue towns where I can't take my son to the park because of naked hobos running after us. That's not random example. This shit happens all the time.
This is my question as well for a lot of issues and I think part of the answer must be that the democratic party as a whole just isn't that "left" when the rubber meets the road.
Another thing is that the places where democrats have overwhelming political majority is major cities more often than states. So you might get BLUE cities existing in just kinda blue states which exist in a country that is only half blue on a good day. The city, where the most political will to implement very left policies exists, is constrained in its actions by state and federal law and state and federal budgeting constraints which the city can't effect directly.
Because society as a whole has to tackle this. What do you think the red fuckers would do? They'd start shipping bussess of homeless people into blue states.
There needs to be a federal incentive structure. Don't want to take care of your homeless? No problem, no tax dollars for you, we're sending it to the blue states that are doing something.
Of course this would have to pass Congress and the red fuckers will never allow that to happen.
What? Why? Who gives a shit if you have 2x homeless instead of 1x homeless? Are you afraid to spend too much money? By calculations in this post we'd still be in the plus. Sounds like a bs excuse. Find another one.
It doesn’t compute if half the country is sending the other half their homeless.
He’s right it takes everyone working together not half the country refusing to do anything but send people away and the other half having to find the funding.
Lol. Let me break it down for you since you apparently missed your math and logic classes. This article says that it costs 10k to house a hobo vs 30k to criminalize one. Blue and red states are about evenly split, so on average let's assume they have equal number of hobos. So even if all the hobos move to blue states, it will take 10k x 2 x OriginalNumberOfHobos which is still less that 30k x OriginalNumberOfHobos. So why are you denying this solution? Why are you cruel to poor homeless people? Not to mention that if it's successfully implemented, then red states will undoubtedly join in to save money
Yeah the article says 10k... I'm not sure where anyone could do it for that cheap.
And yeah your math sounds nice saying it's cheaper then the 30k but here's the reality. First you won't do it for 10k, that number is bs. Second think of all the homeless people in the US. Now multiple that by even just 10k. Exactly where is that money coming from, and remember it isn't a one time cost. It's every single year. The number would be staggering. It isn't feasible.
You really think red states would join? Yeah no they wouldn't. They'd send more, and laugh while doing it. While watching blue states economy crumble. Then when blue states economy is in shambles they're say "see this is why it doesn't work, vote red ".
I've personally seen what happens when an area builds a ton of low income and homeless shelters, while neighboring areas don't. The other areas literally send the low income and homeless people into the area that built the shelters. You can't build them fast enough. It fucks up the economy. Tons of resources being used and very little taxes being collected. The math doesn't add up.
The same would happen if blue states tried this. The red states would send the homeless and low income.
Chicago sent people to us on busses. No joke.
It takes all states taking the needed steps together.
So. Are you saying that the original article is bs and wishful thinking? Preaching to the choir buddy. I guess then the other solution of incarceration sounds more reasonable huh? Alternative of course is to do nothing and let everybody in the city suffer. That I'm sure is acceptable to you, but not to people who live here like me.
So in your brain you somehow went from me saying this is a financially a bad idea and somehow translates that into "that I'm sure is acceptable to you " that the current system is ok?
That is some serious delusion that you have going.
You're the child who doesn't have to deal with homeless every day. You make your make-believe world where this decades long conversation somehow solves the problem. Meanwhile we're overrun with then and just want peace. My family is not rich we can't afford to move, we can't afford private back yard. But we had to afford car because riding the Max after the second shift is too dangerous for my wife. What is your solution? Pay for everyone housing? Well then implement it. I beg you to do it. Why don't you?
Personal attack much? We have our reasons for living where we live. None of them is your business, but you really shouldn't be attacking me. I'm the victim here. I lived here long before hobo overrun. Why should I move? Why can't they move? Surely it's easier without any possessions. Am I less human then they are?
I think you're missing the point. It's not broken. It's working completely as intended. The system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The broken part is in the juxtaposition of what you think it should do.
187 Comments
conditional_soup@lemm.ee · 169 pts · 2y
There's a number of other studies that show that, overall, letting people go unhoused is far, far more costly than just fucking housing them. It's not just paying for the cops and demo teams to chase them around, you're also paying for excess use of medical services that wouldn't be taking place otherwise, lost revenue because of people wanting to avoid the homeless, and a bunch of other things that all just pile up. It doesn't help that some startups have entered this space and you've got cities like San Francisco paying them something like 40 or 80 thousand a year to keep the homeless in a fenced off area in a tent grid. It doesn't really fix anything, it's just another shitty, expensive band-aid whose funding could have gone to fixing the problem but didn't.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee · 54 pts · 2y
Yes. They should do it like NYC, where it's basically illegal to live on the street. The city is required by law to offer free housing at a certain quality level for anyone who needs it. It's not amazing but you get a door that locks and a security team, plus a bathroom.
If you don't want to sleep inside, you literally have to leave the city. It's not cheap but it works much better than letting people live in tents.
Soup@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 2y
Why the illegal part, though? People don’t really need an incentive to have shelter. It just punishes people who are struggling with even deeper issues.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee · 31 pts · 2y
Technically it's not illegal to sleep on the street, but there are sanitation rules regarding it. NYC has 8 million people. Any problem you can think of is magnified. It's literally a sanitary issue if you allow thousands of people to camp outside.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/nyregion/nyc-homeless-camp-bill-of-rights.html
Note that these rules also restrict people who have homes too. No one can have a party in the park after hours or take up a ton of space on the subway. Note also that you can sleep outside if you don't get in the way.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
KevonLooney@lemm.ee · 0 pts · 2y
This doesn't apply because the law doesn't forbid anyone from sleeping under bridges. Also, you can get housing for free. That's my point. It's the opposite of that quote. Unless you're pro-theft or something.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
I am not sure what the housing situation is actually like for homeless in NYC because I've never spoken to anyone there who experienced it. I don't take your word for it that it's good or ethical.
I am not protheft. I'm not wealthy like that. https://www.edelson-law.com/blog/2022/10/wage-theft-outpaces-all-other-theft-in-america/
KevonLooney@lemm.ee · 0 pts · 2y
There are a ton of articles on it. The system is huge and has been around for decades. Look it up if you like. If you don't care, don't.
No one said it was good at all. It's a necessary service in a big city. Obviously some shelters are very different from others. None of them are at nice hotels, but you can get your own room and a place for some of your stuff.
The major complaints are usually "it's too small" or "they don't let me have pets". Guess what? There are actual apartments people pay for that are too small and don't allow pets. It's NYC.
I'm talking about reality in this century. You're quoting an 1800s writer from another country. The system is a complicated solution to a complicated problem. So there's not going to be any simple answer, and definitely not from online quotes.
Maggoty@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
It's a glowed up version of "The law binds both rich and poor equally". A transparently untrue statement that's meant to draw attention to laws that are a mere inconvenience for the rich but seriously hurt the poor.
Soup@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Obviously they restrict people who have homes but that isn’t really relevant here, is it? Those people have choices, they get to choose to stay late in a park and the alternative for them is go home.
It’s not even close to the same thing.
Zorque@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
They didn't say it was the same thing, they just mentioned that it's not just to target the homeless.
As you said in another comment, things are often more complex than one thing or another.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee · -1 pts · 2y
Exactly. These are necessary rules for a large city. No one can camp without a permit because then parks would be unusable. The same permit is for weddings, parties, whatever. It's pretty easy to get one for a few hours, but they will reject it if you ask to use the park every day and night.
People living outside in public parks and on streets is a really bad use of urban space. It takes public space and makes it private. That's why the city gives out free room in old hotels and shelters. It's a good thing people can't sleep wherever.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y
That's not to mention that it gets very cold in NYC in the winter, unlike San Francisco. If you're stuck outside in the winter in NYC, you will die.
14th_cylon@lemm.ee · 10 pts · 2y
Not necessarily true. For example if the place has "no alcohol and no being drunk" policy, some of them will rather stay out.
Soup@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
Right but that’s a choice the shelter can make and not a point against the idea that people, ultimately, won’t really refuse a place to sleep. It’s a more complex issue that takes more time than an evening so rules like “no being drunk” which sound fine don’t really help anyone.
Zorque@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
I'd imagine it'd help make the unhoused who don't want to have to deal with drunk people feel a lot safer about using them.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
So what are the people who depend on alcohol supposed to do? They aren't allowed to have seizures and go through withdrawal there either.
14th_cylon@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 2y
and if you want to use public money on it, then the goal has to be to help them get back to society, to which dealing with problematic behavioral patterns, like substance abuse, is a necessity...
Maggoty@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Have you seen alcohol withdrawal?
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Unfortunately some people do.
primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
no. shut the fuck up with this authoritarian garbage. when the "shelter" offered comes with a slew of dehumanizing draconian traditions, forces them to abandon other resources (including pets, which are also functional when you're homeless) and wildly precarious, you would have to be fucking stupid to take the deal. cut this shit out, or let me impose those conditions on YOUR shelter.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Hey, just to get it off my chest since you attacked me for no reason other than some preconception you brought with you, fuck you too!
Now that I've dealt with that, back to the topic. Some people don't want structure, or shelter, or society, or any of it. It doesn't matter if there's no conditions applied, they just don't want it.
I remember years ago reading about this guy who was the director of a huge hospital. He was worth millions of dollars. He could do anything he wanted to do. Guess what he wanted to do? He wanted to live on the streets and drink alcohol until he died. He left his mansion, and his family, and went and drank himself to death on the streets. Was he mentally ill? Probably, man! But if anyone had access to every available option for help that existed, it was him. He didn't want it. He wanted to be a drunk homeless person.
So my point stands. You can offer whatever catch-all, condition-free solution you want, and some people are still going to reject it. That's just reality, regardless of what we wish.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Are you talking about Todd Waters? Otherwise link source. It's pretty rare for someone to want that lifestyle unless they've already involuntarily experienced it previously. Todd had started trainhopping when he was in high school.
I know of one other individual who is a millionaire and has a mansion he sleeps in, but during the day appears to be homeless and pushes a cart around cleaning up cans and trash. He's beloved by his local community (very nice man and generous tipper). He also experienced living on the street involuntarily previously and got an inheritance.
https://newscut.mprnews.org/2017/07/todd-waters-mission-was-to-make-people-homesick-for-their-freedom/index.html
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
No, not him. I can't find a source. I read about it in a newspaper, or magazine like 15-20 years ago. If I remember correctly, he was the director of St. Agnes hospital in Fresno, CA.
primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 2y
WHY do these people not want structure, or shelter, or society?
have you considered that? have you fucking asked that? why someone might want to see the world burn? or do you just accept when you're told they do, and assume they're a magical evil monster?
I used to do a lot of work with unhoused populations. I tended to get those people, because nobody else could deal with them. I could, because the structure I offered wasn't coercive, the shelter I offered was clearly defined (when I could offer any) and no-strings-attached, and the society I was working for was one that would include them and give them a voice and treat them like fucking human beings.
okay. so someone wanted to drink on the streets. there's a reason. maybe a dumb reason, maybe a crazy reason, but a reason. I've been pretty close to taking this option before, once after seeing some shit that an emergency room kicked out, once after dealing with police victims. if I had been complicit and tied into existing systems, if I hadn't read all the theory and committed myself to working against oppression, I would have done something an awful lot like that.
seems like you just really enjoy throwing people away, and don't want to put any effort into understanding awful shit that they've experienced and how it motivates them to do the things they do, which you sometimes find odd.
primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
why do the sociopaths who declare noncompliant unhoused people ontologically evil want us to understand them, when they won't even try to understand the people who make THEM uncomfortable?
stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net · 42 pts · 2y
San Francisco infuriates me. There are activist groups that are made of actual literal unhoused people telling the city what they need and what they want. And the city could just give people the money they need for a fraction of the administrative costs it spins on its non-profits and its government agencies.
But the city says homeless people are drug addicts and criminals and can't be trusted to use money responsibly.
So they funnel millions of dollars to corrupt non-profits and government agencies who promise to use the money responsibly for the benefit of the homeless and they fucking don't. There was a $350K program run by the Salvation Army in partnership with the local public transit agency. One homeless person used their services.. One.
At least government agencies are, at some remove, responsible to the taxpayers and the voters. Non-profits dedicated to "helping" the homeless have a very strong incentive to make the problem worse. Because the worse the homelessness crisis becomes, the more money goes to the nonprofits. So they take government money, give it to their employees, make some sort of pathetic token effort to help unhoused people, and as the crisis worsens they go back to the government and say "the crisis is worse, we need more money".
And civilians look at the amount of money being poured into assistance to unhoused people, and look at the crisis getting worse, and say "more money and services won't help these people, we need to criminalize them". And fucking Newsom is all over that because he's angling for the Presidency and military style crackdowns impress the fascists in red states.
There's a homelessness crisis because of government corruption and incompetence. And the majority of Americans think the solution is to give the government more military power, more police power, and let those same corrupt agencies brutalize the homeless more. It's sickening.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 2y
The nonprofit industrial complex is a leech. At least government agencies have some level of accountability, because if they fail to solve a problem, the voters blame the politicians, and the politicians shit downhill on the agencies. Nonprofits don't even have that minimal level of accountability. They just spend all the government money they get, write grants saying "we spent all the money you gave us doing stuff, please give us more", and get more money.
But this is what you get when both the left and right have bought into libertarian free market ideology and agree that privatizing government services is more efficient than letting the government do its goddamn job.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Yes, charitable organizations are unfortunately corrupt.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 2y
Star Trek DS9 predicting the future yet again
teft@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 2y
We're less than 3 weeks away from the Bell Riots if we're in the Prime Universe.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 2y
Unless I slept through the Eugenics Wars in the 90s I'm sad to report we are not in the Prime Universe.
Though in that case there is a distinctive lack of lens flare.
teft@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2y
Who are you going to believe your lying eyes or your buddy teft? The eugenics wars totally happened. Dolly the sheep was one of the first soldiers.
Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
The Eugenics wars were moved to 2022 through 2056 due to time travel bullshit.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Eugenics_Wars
So we still got time to fuck it up.
primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
nah, they're about to happen, just late. check india and silicon valley.
primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 2y
and honestly, I would like to sit on a bench at night without worrying im keeping somebody out of their bed. that would be cool. I would like to stop the streets smelling like piss. I would like too walk on the sidewalk without having to detour and step into the street to avoid people's homes at least twice a block.
clearly, armed neo nazi thugs, even if you LIKE armed neo nazi thugs (we should, um, have a chat separately. what the fuck is wrong with hypothetical you?) don't make that happen. and for the libs: you wouldn't even have to look at human tragedy beyond their full comprehension every time you go outside! yes, you would have to give resources and basic human dignity to the 'undeserving', and supply side jesus WOULD damn you to eternal hell (being homeless in san francisco but during extreme weather events), but the few years before you die would be substantially nicer.
JohnnyH842@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Not asking as a challenge to your comment, but what studies are you referring to? I'd be interested to learn more.
conditional_soup@lemm.ee · 3 pts · 2y
I would be very proud to say I had them on hand, but I don't. I'll look around, and share if I find them.
JohnnyH842@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
That would be very cool of you!
Asafum@feddit.nl · 64 pts · 2y
BuT I HaVe To WoRk FoR mY HoUsE!!
...yeah? And you get to choose how nice that house is and where it is. You aren't "forced" to only have a small apartment...
America: land of the greedy, cold, asshole.
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org · 23 pts · 2y
Yeah? Well if someone decided to build affordable housing near my McMansion, then my precious house's market value will decrease. Also something about crime because of the poors
Anticorp@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 2y
Crime is a legitimate concern, especially for people raising a family. I get where you're coming from, but you shouldn't trivialize legitimate issues. I'm someone who grew up in a violent, crime infested area, and it fucking sucked.
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org · 7 pts · 2y
It is a concern, but crime is a symptom of a larger issue, that being poverty and desparation (for the most part). We need to put out the fire from the base, otherwise it will continue to grow.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
The vast majority of theft is done through the wealthy via time card fraud / theft from employees, and then police through asset forfeiture. Crime and morality have nothing to do with poverty, and associating them with poor people (when the rich do the most of it) is classist propaganda.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 2y
Eh ... There are literally millions of people who work and don't get to choose any of those things, and are forced into a small apartment and/or a roommate scenario.
Asafum@feddit.nl · 4 pts · 2y
Oh I know that all too well lol I currently rent an "apartment" that is the upstairs of a dilapidated garage and I work full time as a psudo-supervisor in a factory (whatever im considered idk lol we don't use titles so we can't determine our value properly)
For us, that "free housing" would probably be equivalent to what we have now lol
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 2y
I mean, there’s no reason we can’t go the way of Japanese micro home in construction. Everything you need packed into an efficient little area you can still call home.
Hell… if I wasn’t married with kids and pets, I’d almost prefer that.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
I wouldn't call the masses all living in tiny boxes so that the wealthy can add a few more zeroes to their bank accounts progress. Japan has a lack of available land that most places don't have. If people need to live in micro-homes to get by in places with plenty of space, then there's still a very serious unresolved issue.
Zagorath@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 2y
You definitely don't need to (and shouldn't!) go as far as Japan, but even in places with abundant space like America or Australia, there are huge advantages to keeping homes relatively smaller in terms of land-area per-person. (Floor space can stay higher by: building multi-storey row houses, building apartments, reducing private lawn areas, etc.)
Keeping things less spread out is much, much more affordable. Fewer roads to maintain, fewer ks of electricity, sewerage, and Internet infrastructure, etc. It makes public transport run much more efficiently, which reduces the cost of operating it, which means you get more of it. This makes it a better service, which means people use it, which takes cars off the road, which makes congestion less of a problem, which makes getting around faster. Ditto the cost and usability of bike paths and nice pedestrian footpaths, which become more usable as a result of things being literally closer together, resulting in a store you might once have had to drive to get to being possible to walk to now. This in turn makes things more affordable for individuals, because they might not need to pay the huge prices associated with cars (buying the thing, maintenance, insurance, petrol) if they can get around by bike and public transport. Or at the very least, a family can drop down from 2 or 3 cars to just 1 being enough.
It makes housing more affordable, since instead of paying for 300 sq m of land per 100 sq m of floor space, you might now be paying 50 sq m or less of land per 100 sq m floor space. And because things a denser, your commute can drop from potentially over an hour to something reasonable like less than 30 minutes.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 2y
Oh, no argument here at all. I’m simply saying that a perfectly livable micro home could be the answer for those who would bitch about “I’m paying for my home and theirs is nicer” or similar.
Make a home that is adequate, but most would want to improve their lives and move out of.
Of course I’m more a supporter of UBI, which would likely solve this issue among many others if properly implemented. But that’s a different topic completely.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
That sounds like a good proposition. Of course it doesn't matter what we think if we don't get loud about it in places that matter, like city hall meetings, letters to the city council members, shouting while standing on top of a milk crate with a bullhorn, and stuff like that.
I was just kidding about the milk crate.
bstix@feddit.dk · 6 pts · 2y
I think the issue is that if the government offered tiny houses or apartments for anyone that everyone would want one.
The value of "free shit" is somehow larger than the value of owning a large mansion or something.
stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net · 18 pts · 2y
And what's the problem? So what if a whole bunch of single people moved into tiny government houses? Housing is a human right. And it sure would bring rents down.
Ohmmy@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 2y
There is no problem, they create the problem to justify their lack of empathy.
Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -6 pts · 2y
Maybe your opinion is that housing is a human right but I’m not sure where you are drawing that definitive conclusion from. Are you saying it’s a legal right somewhere or that it’s your emotional stance? In my experience, housing, or even just shelter, is a human responsibility not a right.
Don’t get me wrong, it’d sure be nice if it was a legal right for folks to have a safe shelter of sorts. Men are commonly turned away from the limited shelters that exist due to comfort and safety concerns for women and children. I don’t see how that happens if it’s a human right.
stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net · 9 pts · 2y
The right to housing is a fundamental human right, according to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many international treaties and agreements since. As the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights puts it:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-housing/human-right-adequate-housing
Your personal experience has given you an incorrect belief regarding the human right to housing. I'm sorry to call you out so directly, but sometimes people need to hear hard truths. Facts don't care about your feelings.
Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -4 pts · 2y
I don’t feel like you called me out at all but that doesn’t seem to establish any kind of legal human right to any specific area of interest that I have seen discussed here. Are you able to clarify how I’m missing that part of it?
stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net · 8 pts · 2y
Perhaps we're talking past each other. Human rights are not defined by laws. Human rights come before laws. Laws, in decent nations, are written in such a way as to protect human rights.
The text of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, enacted by the UN in the hope that never again would the world see such widespread and horrific violations of human rights as it did during World War II, is an excellent starting point to understand how the modern world sees human rights. It is linked in the post I linked above.
And, just to circle back around to the topic, the laws of the United States are clearly failing to protect the fundamental human right to adequate housing for all persons resident in the United States.
Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 2y
That makes sense, thank you for clarifying.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
There is a substantial argument for housing being a right, and also let's get real - it's bad for a government to be so unstable they can't give adequate housing to everyone. It'd bad at a societal level even if it theoretically didn't violate individual rights.
https://journals.openedition.org/interventionseconomiques/6499
thejoker954@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y
'Simple' solution to that would be to put a time limit on how long you can stay.
Say maybe 2 years unless you have a medical condition or something. That should be plenty of time for people experiencing hardship to get past it.
bstix@feddit.dk · 2 pts · 2y
I think it'd be better with an income limit if that's possible to check.
Where I live, the only involuntarily homeless people are generally those who experience longer than 2 year medical or psychological issues.
thejoker954@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2y
Income limit would lead to people 'gaming' the system. Either just misreporting what they actually make or purposefully not making enough to qualify.
Or it will go just like current systems do - you make one cent over their arbitrarily decided number and you don't qualify even if you cant actually afford to live.
It would also screw over people who might have a 'good' income, but made honest mistakes and are upside down in debt or similar situations.
Income limit fosters a 'you deserve this, you don't' attitude which is what we are trying to get away from.
I just see a time limit system (with exceptions for those who are sick/unable to fully care for themselves) doing a better job of providing a basic human right to anyone who needs it while avoiding a bunch of bullshit an income limit would bring to the table.
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 2y
Are we putting a time limit on processing who gets that designation? Because federal disability claims are a shitshow that take roughly six months just to get your first denial. And then can take years to go through appeals.
It's all just different takes on who "deserves" to live and for how long.
thejoker954@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Right - but thats a whole other can of worms.
There is no quick fix or Simple solution.
Its not like its just one small system that is broken - we have multiple broken systems that need to be torn down and rebuilt because the rot is in the bones.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 2y
There are major problems with income based limits. In theory they work, but they often break down over time locking people into the poverty they are trying to escape. It creates a grey area where they lose more than they gain by improving their income. Sometimes as much as an hour of extra work can lose them their benefits.
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
I wish I was "cold", I'm friggin' hot all the time. I need a personal AC suit.
Asafum@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 2y
I really wish I was cold too. I have to work in an open air factory and long island summers succcccckkkkkkk lol
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Ahhh, Lonnng Island... I was born at Bayshore. Flew the coop while still in diapers.
Asafum@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 2y
Small world! That's pretty cool! I wish I could get out, but for the last like 3 years everyone is singing the song of "omg a recession is coming" so I keep waiting lol
ayyy@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2y
Do they really call it “iced tea” there? Also that might explain why you feel hot all the time…
Asafum@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 2y
Yeah if it's a tea and usually lots of sugar that is kept cold then we'd call it iced tea. I think if it's like actually "served" at a restaurant or whatever it should be in a glass with ice too so that's probably really where the name came from. Now if it's just cold tea we'd call it iced tea lol
Then there's the "long Island iced tea" which is a cocktail lol
failedLyndonLaRouchite@mas.to · 26 pts · 2y
@stabby_cicada
I distrust toots that assert something without providing a link
I was lucky and found a link to the 31K figure; sounds partially like it does NOT apply to all homeless people, just some small percentage, so probably a bullshit number
https://homelessvoice.org/the-cost-to-criminalize-homelessness/
stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net · 24 pts · 2y
I appreciate the link!
The article, I think, is very clear on how those dollar amounts were measured, and I don't think they're bullshit at all, but everybody here can read the article and decide for themselves.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee · 10 pts · 2y
Also, they quote $10k for "supportive housing" and show a picture of San Francisco. I guarantee that's not accurate. The state needs to pay to house these people, but we need to be realistic about the cost.
Soup@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 2y
Housing in places like SF is expensive because of private landlords jacking up proces to the moon. If the government owns the property and gets to control the cost then it’s really not any more expensive than housing them anywhere else. Better still it puts those people within the range of public services like transit so they can actually work on getting themselves into a better situation.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 2y
And where does the government get this land from?
Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2y
Government identifies optimal residential location for facility. Invites largest residential land owner in that location over. Place land lenders head in guillotine. Presents document to sign over land to the government assuring them they can maintain possession of their head in turn. Validate signature. Remove head so they can’t claim they signed under duress.
If they refuse to sign then remove head and forge signature.
Needs strict compartmentalization. Group A identifies optimal location and knows nothing about anyone else.
Group B finds land owner but knows nothing about why or who it’s for.
Group C secures ownership transfer documents and sends to a drop box
Group D delivers landowners to intake facility but knows only who they are getting and to where.
Group E transports landowner to meeting facility/room.
Group F picks up transfer documents and holds meeting with land owner. Sends documents to city hall.
Nobody knows or talks to anyone outside of their group or is provided any information on why they are performing their portion of the process. Group F needs to be strictly limited to a very small number of people. Vetting for group F is done by kidnapping a potential candidates young children and spouse while leaving a note where they are to report for work. Perform their duties for six months to have their family safely returned. During the exit interview remind the group F individual and kidnapped party that all group F members that have ever been involved in the history of the program, their family along with any subsequent family members will be executed should they ever speak to anyone regarding the existence of the program.
Soup@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y
Cities have more property than you’d think. They homd a lot of it so they don’t get locked out of being able to do things like this.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 2y
Sure, but are you accounting for the profit gained from slave labor in the private prisons?
li10@feddit.uk · 21 pts · 2y
The $10k for supportive housing seems insanely low…
I can’t imagine a government doing anything over the course of a year and it only costing $10k.
MrMakabar@slrpnk.net · 10 pts · 2y
Single small bedroom with shared kitchen and bathrooms is pretty cheap. You probably want to spend a bit more though to help the homeless into a position, where they can take care of themself.
Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 2y
My first residence after the military was a common kitchen and living room with an exterior door and four bedrooms with a bedroom door at each corner with its own keyed entry. Each bedroom had its own closet and bathroom. So you needed an exterior door key and your bedroom door key to get to your room from the quad. It was one of my favorite places to live and I didn’t get along well with one of the other guys but we just left each other alone.
The building had eight of these quads per floor per building and it was two stories. Two buildings were connected on the second floor by an attached breezeway and paths to the stairs. The first floor had a rec room and facility office in leu of two of the center first floor quads.
an_onanist@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
I agree. Where is this $800/MO housing? Especially when you recognize that most homeless live in cities where housing is more expensive than average.
itsmeholland@mastodon.social · 6 pts · 2y
@an_onanist @li10 housing prices are set by LANDLORDS, not some kind of objective metric that's tied to material facts.
Housing costs what it takes to build & maintain it, & that's not the same as what landlords charge for it in order to turn a profit off gatekeeping access to necessary resources. Housing could be far cheaper than it is for most people but that's a choice we make as a society as well. So i don't accept "where is housing that cheap" as a valid argument against these findings.
an_onanist@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
OP did not produce any findings. They made a claim without evidence.
WldFyre@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 2y
In what city are property taxes, utilities, and insurance all together under 800$ a month?
NENathaniel@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 2y
Yea this isn't really believable to me for most cities.
In my Canadian city: "While each of the locations would have different operating budgets, the average annual cost is almost $111,759 per bed."
I don't get it
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 2y
People love paying extra for the cruelty.
At least in countries with shanty towns, the poor are allowed to live in squats. We don't even give people that tiny grace. We don't even give them free cheap cars to live in parking lots, or vouchers for mechanic repairs for the cars they live in. We'd have shanty towns if we allowed it. We just hide it rather than see how bad things really are.
alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 2y
And those shanty towns often get mass transit services so the people can get to work.
In America (and Britain), towns specifically avoid serving very poor areas for fear that they might actually use it.
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee · 5 pts · 2y
Can't allow competition for corporate landlords, could cut into their profits.
Got_Bent@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 2y
Well sure, but if you spend the ten thousand, will you get sixty thousand of free labor production in return like you will with the incarcerated option? We've got to look at net profit, people!
/s
4lan@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2y
We need to end slavery
Got_Bent@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2y
The shareholders will not like this concept
4lan@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y
We should enslave them
Thespiralsong@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 2y
Does anyone have the actual research on this? Both of those numbers seem really low.
Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 2y
https://www.npscoalition.org/post/fact-sheet-cost-of-homelessness
The savings/costs drastically change based on state/city. But the overwhelming majority of the time it is cheaper to do the morally correct thing of providing permanent housing assistance.
dirtbiker509@lemm.ee · 17 pts · 2y
$10,000 a year to provide a single person housing? To put that in perspective. I'd assume that means a studio type apartment of some kind. Not high end, but a roof and place to live for $10,000 a year. I have a 1500sqft home in Washington state on 3 acres of land, and I pay $27,000 a year for my mortgage. So to me, $10,000 seems reasonable for a government funded studio for a year.
Crikeste@lemm.ee · 12 pts · 2y
And I know it’s probably unheard of in America now, but $840 a month in rent is not that wildly low. I assume there’s more to it than just that though.
ladicius@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 2y
I live in the middle of Hamburg, second biggest city of Germany, in a recently renovated apartment of roughly 40 sqm and pay round about 700 EUR (~ 770 USD) for that with all facilities including electric power, home insurance and internet. The housing market in this city is considered to be tough for this country.
If you "dare" to live in a "small" flat the price really should manageable. Social assistance is another cost factor but that's an investment in your country and its people.
Crikeste@lemm.ee · 6 pts · 2y
That sounds so nice! I’m from America, am 32, make $35,000 a year and still live in my parents basement. I know I can “afford” an apartment, but I really don’t want to see ~50% of my pay go to rent. If you don’t mind me asking, how much do you make a month in Hamburg?
By the way, I’ve been to Germany a few times! Only ever around Frankfurt but it’s such a lovely country. ☺️
luciferofastora@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 2y
You're judging a country by one city?
Not to invalidate your lovely experiences, mind you. Germany has its lovely sides. But keep in mind that we have more people than California and Texas combined in an area smaller than either. There is a vastly diverse array of cultures and personalities. If you want an accurate image, you'll have to spend enough time here to observe the discourse around significant events, including the ugly sides, and judge from that.
I don't know what that person makes, nor what industry you're in, but minimum wage (12.41 EUR ~ 13.67 USD) with a full 40h job comes out to a gross income of about 31.4k USD per year. Your net income varies depending on where you are, whether you're married etc. but including public (legally mandated) health / long term care insurance, unemployment insurance and pension insurance, your net income would be about 22.5k USD per year / 1.85k USD per month. It's not exactly a way to get rich, but at least that's the bottom of the range.
Also, which Frankfurt? We have two and it's fun to see confused foreignerd 😄
Maggoty@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
I just need to say that 31k/22k with health as a bottom line would be a dream for so many Americans. They're running on 25k without medical, and having to fit rent in there too.
luciferofastora@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 2y
Don't forget a minimum of 20 days paid time off and unlimited sick leave (the employer pays full for the first six weeks, after that the government pays a reduced amount, but you're not suddenly unemployed or without income), as well as limited (paid) leave if you need to take care of sick children (30 days per parent per year for single children, 65 if you have multiple, single parents get double).
These are things we occasionally take for granted, but I've learned that they seem utterly fantastical to others.
I have a Bachelor's Degree, I'm working IT full time on a permanent contract with a Union, I get about 46k gross / 34k net per year and 30 days paid time off, while paying about 12k in rent. Food prices have gone nuts lately and various other private bills gobble up most of the rest, but I'm doing alright.
Crikeste@lemm.ee · 3 pts · 2y
It was more the fact that, while I stayed in Frankfurt (expo hall Frankfurt) for work, I got to go outside of the city and see a handful of different ‘villages’ and castles and stuff. It was really cool.
But I do understand where you’re coming from. Blows my mind that people would come to the US from another country and not come here:
ladicius@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Full time equivalent of about 2.500 EUR net per month (it's more pre taxes, of course; I don't mind paying taxes as that affords me living in a safe and functional country). As I work part-time I take home less than that number but still get by easily (time is much more valuable than money if you cross a certain relatively low threshold of income and don't live a flashy lifestyle).
Thanks for the praise ;) Germany has its troubles and problems but continues to be a nice place to live.
Etterra@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
It depends on where you are. $840 a month anywhere near Chicago is either stupidly cheap for what you're getting, or stupidly bad for what you're paying.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca · 17 pts · 2y
But you see this easy they would be getting an ...undeserved benefit (gasp!!) and we can't have those.
I kid you not, this is what the conservative brain thinks.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social · 9 pts · 2y
Yep, punishment must be part of the deal, even if it costs us 3 times as much. This is how we know that, for conservatives, the cruelty is the point.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
It's honestly stunning how much they value cruelty. This is why we shouldn't spank our kids. All it teaches them is to add a pointless step for violence before actually problem solving.
Comment105@lemm.ee · 9 pts · 2y
We're fine providing housing for these losers.
In prison.
We cannot allow these men a little wooden house with windows and an open door. Their housing must be a little part of a concrete and iron world attended by sadists, their neigbors and roommates should be mean, violent people.
And you have to let us enslave them a little bit and ensure they have no freedom to roam and no worldly pleasures, no intimacy or sex except that which the strong can take homosexually nonconsensually from their fellow man.
It's what Jesus would want us to do.
Wes4Humanity@lemm.ee · 14 pts · 2y
Begs the question: who's getting paid the difference right now? And how much are they paying which elected officials?
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2y
The overhead goes to a bunch of stuff. The costs of housing inmates include the cost of hours of judges, lawyers, COs, etc. However the way it it profitable, beyond just collecting fines, and deciding your money is suspect, and taking it, is because of the corpratization of the legal system. Huge, but, often, not well known, corporations that run aspects of jails, and prisons. They make the food, run the inmate phone systems, control the inmate commissary, staff the medical departments, and more. These are just the ones that work with jails. There are third part corporations that provide bulk legal assistance work, editing services, services for a lot of the moving factors of the legal system.
These companies, in turn, give huge amounts of "donations" to politician's needs. Campaign funds being the most well known. This money, while paying for these costs, is also used to keep them living an exceptionally comfortable life. Many, after pushing through legislation favorable to a company, will be compensated in a number of ways. From them being able to take advantage of stock investment knowing how the law is about to change, and how that will affect their holdings, to exiting politics and being given a cushy, high paying, fluff job in the industry they helped out.
There isn't so much of the straight bribes, graft, and other forms of corruption people assume with politics. It is more abstracted than that, and technically legal. Obviously there are conflicts of interest that can easily be seen in this, however, since a company isn't just handing the official a bag of money, that they will keep as their own income, it is deemed legal.
militaryintelligence@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 2y
Housing is kept artificially scarce to keep prices up. Criminalizing homelessness raises the demand for housing. I wonder how many people making these policies have rental properties or invest in housing.
reddig33@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2y
There’s frequently a lot more to homelessness than just giving someone a place to live. Many of these people are mentally ill or addicted to something and cannot function or take care of themselves. There’s additional costs above just providing a place to live - like food and clothing and healthcare.
Inmates are supposed to be provided with services like meals, showers, uniforms, and healthcare so that’s part of the reason for the discrepancy in costs. I doubt there’s much addiction care or mental health care in prison though.
These people really need a better place to get help than jail. But we don’t have socialized medicine in the US, and that’s probably a huge contributor to homelessness. Just think if you couldn’t drown in medical debt, or could walk in to any clinic and sign up for addiction care or mental health assistance how many homeless people might not have ended up homeless.
Also I’m not aware of any major US city where rent or mortgage is $10k per year. A lot of cities are buying up old motels and providing support services and temporary housing. That seems to be a good start, but it probably costs more than $10k per year per person. And without free continuing healthcare a lot of people are going to end up back on the street.
thejoker954@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 2y
Some of them it was for sure a preexisting condidtion. But how many homeless people developed addictions and assorted health problems because of homelessness?
A HELL of a lot more.
If they had had a home that they wouldn't lose to bullshit to begin with...
qevlarr@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2y
Yesterday, Human Rights Watch published a report on criminalization of unhoused people in Los Angeles. It's worth a read.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/08/14/you-have-move/cruel-and-ineffective-criminalization-unhoused-people-los-angeles
micl@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
Any particular points you could summarise for us?
Maggoty@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
Hilariously Los Angeles and a bunch of California cities just told Newsom to fuck off with his orders to clear homeless encampments.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2y
And water is wet. Next
Avatar_of_Self@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 2y
It's for a church honey. NEXT!
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2y
Holy. Shit. That's what... 4 years old? 6 years? What year was it...?
Classy@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 2y
At least seven years
https://www.reddit.com/r/insanepeoplefacebook/comments/7kqzb9/church_lady_asks_the_community_facebook_group_to/
Crashumbc@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
Wow that was an interesting side trip.
x00z@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2y
"So for 20 000 extra we can keep a cop on the payroll that will protect us when the people rise against us?"
MrMakabar@slrpnk.net · 5 pts · 2y
It is even worse, when you put them into prison. The cost of that is double them living on the street in the US.
NENathaniel@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 2y
In my city the annual cost of a bed and support was about $80,000/year, not sure what's different 😅
Maggoty@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
Your city obviously decided to employ psychologists in a 1 to 1 ratio.
Apytele@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 2y
hate2bme@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
I am all for helping the homeless but these numbers seem misleading. Now I want to see how much if they also get all of the amenities that come with prison. 3 meals a day and (shitty) healthcare.
One_Honest_Dude@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2y
Housing - 10,050 Medicare average cost per beneficiary (2022) - 15,730
31065-10050-15730 = 5285 remaining for meals, three meals everyday for a year would be $4.83 per meal, low but doable. This assumes the government will be providing everything with no contribution from the individual. Lack of housing is probably the largest impediment to employment, no address or id for job apps, nowhere to shower and be clean, have clean clothes, etc. Addiction is another issue but safe stable housing would be a major help in getting clean as well. So some number of these people will be able to get back on track and start contributing to themselves and society at large.
I realized after typing I found Medicare instead of Medicaid, it varies by state but average cost per enrollee is 8651, so another 1400 is available in the equation.
hate2bme@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
And that is probably on the low end. So even if we round up to $30,000, it's still less. And the people are better off. I have been a homeless drug addict. It's a rough life. The only reason I broke free from heroin/fentanyl addiction is because I went to prison. But I also wanted to quit. If someone does not want to quit, they won't quit.
Thank you for taking the time to research and do the math. You are a good person.
10_0@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 2y
Sparky@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 2y
If only they did what was cheaper for them....
Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 2y
And what do you do with the mentally ill homeless who refuse services and help? Cause I'm my city those are the homeless that remain. And until people accept that some will have to be taken off the streets and forced into help, against their will, then we're always gonna have this issue.
My city provides great homeless services, but only if you ask or want them. If you're the guy who doesn't know or want help and running around the subway threatening and harassing people, you get to stay on the street and do as you want.
stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net · 11 pts · 2y
Unhoused people refuse help because past "help" failed them or people they know, or "help" comes with conditions that are unacceptable to them, or "help" will not solve the actual problems they have. The solution is not to force people into institutions that abuse them, neglect them, and then kick them out for failing to follow arbitrary rules.
I mean, if you have a dog, and the shelters don't allow dogs, what do you do? What sane person would risk their dog being put down at the pound in exchange for a few weeks of housing - housing, moreover, that is demonstratively less safe than living on the street?
The solution is to improve the services available without conditions so that unhoused people feel safe in asking for those services.
There are a small number of people who genuinely cannot make decisions because they cannot comprehend reality. And those people need help, possibly involuntary help. But even then, that doesn't mean taking them away from the people and places they know and locking them up. People blame Reagan's deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people in the '80s for the current homeless crisis - people forget Reagan's deinstitutionalization policy was popular because insane asylums were horrifically incompetent and abusive.
And if you see a homeless person experiencing a mental health crisis or acting irrational in public, please remember, they have no private place to go - how would you come off to the public if your worst moments had to be displayed in public? - and then ask yourself whether their actions are making you feel unsafe, or merely uncomfortable.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
I wish more people went to the Glore Psychiatric Museum in St Joseph, MO. Here's a famous display from that museum, for "pica":
That museum really really shows how little difference there was in the way we treated patients of asylums, versus inmates, versus prisoners of war. There are so many torture devices in there, disguised as medical devices. As someone formerly in the bioengineering field, it was a sober warning to the harm that can be created through "medical" devices and our own hubris and cruelty.
People have no idea what those were like. And how unethical forced imprisonment is. That should make everyone recoil. I thought we all hated slavery, right? It would be more compassionate to let them set up squats and car camps than to force institutionalization on them.
Ps the above picture results in the patient dying. It was one of the first surgeries to remove stomach contents and anesthesia wasn't refined/good back then. So they performed an experimental procedure on a patient who couldn't consent to it and who DIDN'T consent to it, and she died from it. That's what asylums were like.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2y
Well, having a home will help their mental illness because they'll be able to develop a circadian rhythm, sleep, not be constantly stressed. They are more likely to be able to take their meds on time. They can spend time on their phones to relax because they will have access to chargers/electricity. Very very few people are so mentally disabled they need assisted living, and those people don't usually stay alive on the streets.
And this time of year gets extra crazy homeless/street people because of sunstroke, heatstroke, and dehydration which they also would be able to avoid in a home. It's probably your same local homeless people, just some are allowed in libraries and places with AC, and the ones that aren't are getting extra agitated.
Like literally, cosplay homelessness in your city at peak heat times and no money. How would you cool off if you can't go in a store? Where is the nearest shade you can sit and rest in? How cool are you, really? Many city have designed infrastructure specifically so homeless can't cool off. That makes everything worse. Including with climate change for housed people.
Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 2y
You sound very idealistic. I have a cousin who is willingly homeless. He has places he can stay, jobs he's been offered. He doesn't want it.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
Well, I speak to a lot of homeless people. Maybe your cousin is trans or has some other identity issue or a disability that makes it hard for him to stay with people. What started him living on the street? Why did he initially move out of your aunt and uncle's house and at what age? Are they religious? Does he have trauma with caregivers such as sexual assault? How do you know he doesn't?
And fine, let him live on the streets and camp if he doesn't want free and clear housing. People camp all the time. He shouldn't be harassed for it. We are animals, we belong outside anyway if we so choose. I know people who have hiked for months across America. There are people who live in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. Why should people be prevented from living freely? Think throughout history - the idea is preposterous. The only reason we force institutionalization is to get slave labor.
Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y
He's just mentally ill, refuses help and just can't handle the responsibility of just living. It's sad, but yeah it's like he craves the homelessness and lack of any expectations maybe? His parents are well off so he has everything he needs at home, but he doesn't want it. He's been taken to mental health professionals and programs but he doesn't want to take part. He would honestly just rather live under a bridge, I don't know what it is.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
So you don't know why and are just speculating.
Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1y
I know more than you
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
So much arrogance and yet you have no firsthand accounts from your cousin, from his pov, why he doesn't want to live at home
4lan@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2y
You can thank Reagan for shutting down the mental institutions instead of fixing them.
We just let our mentally ill roam the streets now, even the veterans
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
Why should mental illness be a crime someone is locked up for? And what level of crazy is permitted so you can maintain your freedom? Depression? Anxiety? PTSD? What if someone is mentally fine but might appear otherwise, like if they have cerebral palsy? Should we lock them up too?
4lan@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Obviously that's why they were shut down. There were serious ethical issues..
But why did we throw out the baby with the bathwater? Why throw them on the streets instead of fixing the system?
Of course I don't want people with anxiety locked up. What about we give very mentally ill a place to go? And those who are hurting themselves or others are sent there against their will.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
Well, anyone could say somrone was crazy and they'd maybe get locked up. Women were getting diagnosed with hysteria and lobotomized. You can't really fix a system that takes away people's autonomy as the main feature of that system. Like people who get PTSD and are disempowered are the ones being diagnosed and locked up - even though it actually seems pretty rational to develop PTSD from the stuff they went through. So are they actually crazy, or are they victims?
It's really not that simple, and this is forced imprisonment we're talking about here. Not even in the fields of ethics and bioethics do we have concrete answers.
https://journals.academiczone.net/index.php/ijfe/article/view/2261
Maggoty@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
If I could create the system it would be the level at which you cannot sustain yourself outside the system. But I would not be treating them in with the level at which you're a danger to others. Two different systems with two different goals. It would be far more residential, an apartment building with a clinic on the ground floor type thing. Everyone jumps straight to lockdown wards but it doesn't have to be that.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
Well, if the residents are free to leave, then what you're proposing is assisted living or a permeable institution, not a traditional institution. Institution by the traditional colloquial definition, means they cannot leave and they have their personal liberties taken. Everyone thinks you mean "lockdown" because that's what an institution is to pretty much everyone. If you specify "permeable institution," or "assisted living," it would better convey your meaning
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3702490/
Maggoty@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
I think someone benefits from creating that expectation, but nobody I've talked to wants to bring back cold war era mental institutions.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
There are literally people itt advocating for it. I have seen people advocate for putting homeless in prisons and even concentration/work camps. People 100000% advocate for that type of psychiatric institution. In fact, per the link in my previous comment, the vast majority of psychiatric institutions are this type of "lockdown" institution and it is actually an exception to the norm and a new style of institution to do the permeable institution. So if you mean a permeable institution, you should specify that if you want to be understood, because that's what common use means.
Words mean things. People are cruel. Can't assume you aren't cruel. Use right word if you want to be understood.
Maggoty@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
Oh I know there are people advocating to abuse homeless people. But when you assume all mental health facilities are lockdown facilities for dangerous people you're hurting the entire mental health community. When pressed, people do not want lockdown facilities.
Peck@lemmy.world · -11 pts · 2y
Well why don't all the blue states band together and make it happen? In fact why haven't they done it in the last 40 years or so? What's going on? What are they waiting for? They have power and money to make it happen. They supposedly even have political will? It's almost like it's all talk and nobody wants to do it
SSJMarx@lemm.ee · 8 pts · 2y
Peck@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 2y
Sounds like a lame excuse for not doing the work. Why nobody requests it from their elected reps and city councils? Why nobody demands housing for homeless to be build in their neighborhood? Did you @SSJMarx petition your mayor to build something in your town?
SSJMarx@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 2y
Peck@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 2y
So you reap the benefit of living in town that's presumably not overrun with visible homeless, but you seem fit to give advice to blue towns where I can't take my son to the park because of naked hobos running after us. That's not random example. This shit happens all the time.
SSJMarx@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 2y
Peck@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y
You must be one of those people that climb mountains with no ropes. Good for you- doesn't work for everyone else. Especially women and children.
SSJMarx@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 2y
Unbecredible@lemm.ee · 4 pts · 2y
This is my question as well for a lot of issues and I think part of the answer must be that the democratic party as a whole just isn't that "left" when the rubber meets the road.
Another thing is that the places where democrats have overwhelming political majority is major cities more often than states. So you might get BLUE cities existing in just kinda blue states which exist in a country that is only half blue on a good day. The city, where the most political will to implement very left policies exists, is constrained in its actions by state and federal law and state and federal budgeting constraints which the city can't effect directly.
madcaesar@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
Because society as a whole has to tackle this. What do you think the red fuckers would do? They'd start shipping bussess of homeless people into blue states.
There needs to be a federal incentive structure. Don't want to take care of your homeless? No problem, no tax dollars for you, we're sending it to the blue states that are doing something.
Of course this would have to pass Congress and the red fuckers will never allow that to happen.
Peck@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 2y
What? Why? Who gives a shit if you have 2x homeless instead of 1x homeless? Are you afraid to spend too much money? By calculations in this post we'd still be in the plus. Sounds like a bs excuse. Find another one.
andrewta@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
Who cares? The tax payers will.
It doesn’t compute if half the country is sending the other half their homeless.
He’s right it takes everyone working together not half the country refusing to do anything but send people away and the other half having to find the funding.
Peck@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 2y
Lol. Let me break it down for you since you apparently missed your math and logic classes. This article says that it costs 10k to house a hobo vs 30k to criminalize one. Blue and red states are about evenly split, so on average let's assume they have equal number of hobos. So even if all the hobos move to blue states, it will take 10k x 2 x OriginalNumberOfHobos which is still less that 30k x OriginalNumberOfHobos. So why are you denying this solution? Why are you cruel to poor homeless people? Not to mention that if it's successfully implemented, then red states will undoubtedly join in to save money
andrewta@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
Yeah the article says 10k... I'm not sure where anyone could do it for that cheap.
And yeah your math sounds nice saying it's cheaper then the 30k but here's the reality. First you won't do it for 10k, that number is bs. Second think of all the homeless people in the US. Now multiple that by even just 10k. Exactly where is that money coming from, and remember it isn't a one time cost. It's every single year. The number would be staggering. It isn't feasible.
You really think red states would join? Yeah no they wouldn't. They'd send more, and laugh while doing it. While watching blue states economy crumble. Then when blue states economy is in shambles they're say "see this is why it doesn't work, vote red ".
I've personally seen what happens when an area builds a ton of low income and homeless shelters, while neighboring areas don't. The other areas literally send the low income and homeless people into the area that built the shelters. You can't build them fast enough. It fucks up the economy. Tons of resources being used and very little taxes being collected. The math doesn't add up.
The same would happen if blue states tried this. The red states would send the homeless and low income.
Chicago sent people to us on busses. No joke.
It takes all states taking the needed steps together.
Peck@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y
So. Are you saying that the original article is bs and wishful thinking? Preaching to the choir buddy. I guess then the other solution of incarceration sounds more reasonable huh? Alternative of course is to do nothing and let everybody in the city suffer. That I'm sure is acceptable to you, but not to people who live here like me.
andrewta@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
So in your brain you somehow went from me saying this is a financially a bad idea and somehow translates that into "that I'm sure is acceptable to you " that the current system is ok?
That is some serious delusion that you have going.
madcaesar@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
Spoken like a true child. You have failed to grasp the problem and you are obviously too ignorant to understand the solution. Grow up.
Peck@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 2y
You're the child who doesn't have to deal with homeless every day. You make your make-believe world where this decades long conversation somehow solves the problem. Meanwhile we're overrun with then and just want peace. My family is not rich we can't afford to move, we can't afford private back yard. But we had to afford car because riding the Max after the second shift is too dangerous for my wife. What is your solution? Pay for everyone housing? Well then implement it. I beg you to do it. Why don't you?
VARXBLE@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2y
Peck@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y
Personal attack much? We have our reasons for living where we live. None of them is your business, but you really shouldn't be attacking me. I'm the victim here. I lived here long before hobo overrun. Why should I move? Why can't they move? Surely it's easier without any possessions. Am I less human then they are?
VARXBLE@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2y
Iceblade02@lemmy.world · -11 pts · 2y
Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 2y
I think you're missing the point. It's not broken. It's working completely as intended. The system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The broken part is in the juxtaposition of what you think it should do.
Iceblade02@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 2y
Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 2y
The purpose of a system is what it does - Wikipedia