Engineer Converts Used Van into Mobile Laundromat, Offers Free Loads to Homeless (opens in new tab)

Because Americans don't have a culture of taking care of each other. They rely on the government to do it, government doesn't always want to, and the citizens don't demand that government does it.

Source: am American & formerly homeless

In terms of GDP per capita, the U.S. is not the richest country in the world.

If one deducts the fraction of GDP spent on propping up terrible regimes, it has even less to spend on citizens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

For the same reason there is little to no universal health care, welfare, retirement, workers rights, or higher education system — the US values short-term profit over basic humanity.

  > But how come there are so many homeless people in the richest country in the world? 

I think the replies to this thread and others offer a pretty interesting answer. I'm guessing, though can't confirm, that many of the replies are from people who live in America or a similar rich western country. However, the responses are all written as though the reply was written by someone observing the problem from the outside, "Americans don't... Americans value x over y".

Unfortunately, it feels a lot like "it's someone else's problem to solve" ... unless the solution is complaining about others not solving the problem. Or that supporting "public policy", higher taxes and things "The Government Should Be Doing" is enough (or even a good idea)[0].

But it's so hard to do something ... it's not. Find a good church. Don't like religion? Find a good service organization. The church I attend, every single Sunday, directly pushes us to "go out into the community". This place does it differently, in some ways, than others. Rather than a top-down "here's the organizations we support" with leadership running them, they encourage members to "go out and do" and if what you're doing is working, they -- for lack of a better word, provide the marketing[1]. They'll provide financial support, too, but it's rarely needed. Out of that, we have hundreds of small service groups, many of which were founded a few hours after a Sunday service by a "someone who showed up that day".

There was a woman at my church who decided to load up on supplies and hop in her minivan driving around the worst parts of Detroit to hand underwear, toothbrushes, and food to drug-addicted sex workers a few years ago. I don't know the latest count, but they were running 8 vans of them within a few months and several volunteers came from the streets the vans were visiting. We have several volunteer run groups that operate like Habitat for Humanity, and we have a rotating shelter staffed with volunteers. There's plenty of ways to reach out to a fellow human being who's life you could be a part of and plenty of fellow human beings who need volunteers to help.

They're doing something right, for sure. Best I can tell is that they encourage us to "take ownership of the problem" and "lead by doing" -- so these groups are all run by people who "go to church on Sunday" rather than "Professional Christians(tm)". They don't worry as much about people going out and "doing something that'll make the church look bad". AFAIK, it's not happened in the 20 years I've been there despite the approach[2], and many of our volunteers don't look like your typical "Sunday Best Church Folks".

My apologies if this sounds like I'm scolding -- I'm am, but I'm no better than those complaining about "Americans Not Doing Anything(tm)" -- it's been a year since I've done any volunteer work and as I've gotten older, the amount of volunteering I've done has been less and less. In my 20s, I was much more involved, and as is typical -- kids/job -- I've made a series of excuses that have kept me from being more involved. I'm tired. I worked hard. I don't have the energy to volunteer. It's stupid thinking, really. I've never left a volunteer activity feeling anything other than awesome and filled with energy.

[0] If the extent of your support for the homeless begins and ends here, it's worth doing a bit of research to determine if your support is counterproductive, or -- worst case -- if the program in question exists to employ a bureaucrat rather than solve a problem.

[1] That sounds really wrong the way it's stated, but my church is a multi-campus large organization. The hard part of any volunteer activity is volunteers. Though external funding is sometimes needed, money is very rarely the problem -- getting people's time is. A huge number of people want to volunteer but want to help doing something that they're comfortable doing. When a church has as many service groups as ours does, there's something that fits -- the tricky part is getting that information out widely enough that you connect the volunteer with the job (and make it one-click to sign-up).

[2] There's no organizations dedicated to anything political/picketing/culture wars -- they don't operate that way. It makes them a little unpopular with the "Big Churches" but if the established folks (most of whom lead dead congregations) are upset and can't articulate the reasons, that's a pretty good indicator that we're doing something right.

Looks like he has an onboard generator, two tanks for fresh and discarded water.

The video also talks about external connections for power and water if it's available.

Here is a video explaining his setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE8rgFAOXgY

In the video below, he mentions they are gas powered driers.

I was interested in that aspect of the story when I clicked into it, but I'm not really disappointed that it wasn't covered. Turns out it wasn't really the point anyway.

That said, he could easily have a generator rigged up to supply power. A lot of RVs have on-board washers and dryers, so the technology is widely available. If I were going to do something like this, I'd try to find dryers that heated with propane both for efficiency and to limit the electrical draw on the generator.

It's hard to tell, but it seems like it has spread. A search shows that there are a number of charities/ministries with the same name offering similar services nationwide.

Still around - Last FB post was March 14 looks like...

https://www.lolo-sc.com/

Most problems seem pretty simple until one actively tries to solve them.

One thing that _is_ actually simple is simply criticizing.

I would argue that a lot more good has been done by individuals that decided to "do something about it" that big government initiatives.

Other states do not simply bus their homeless to California. Their social workers will ask if they have a place to go. And if they respond they have a "cousin" in California the social worker sends them on their way.

My family member is a NYC social worker and there is a bit of nudging and winking when it comes to working with the homeless. His job is to get them off the street and out the shelter and into a home. Some of that can mean purchasing bus tickets to warmer climates. Since he can't actually fly out there and verify they have a "cousin in California" he has to rely on the client being truthful.

California has the unfortunate gift of being a coastal state with temperate, dry climate. Even if it was able to house all the homeless, more would show up because who wants to be homeless, wet, and cold when you can knock out the later 2 by moving to a warmer state.

This seems to be a common theme, that these problems are easily solved with just a few extra dollars. I used to subscribe to this conclusion thinking government/people just didn't care. Then I found out NYC spends $3billion on the homeless problem every year! Yes you read that right, billion with a B [1]. Granted our numbers are a bit bigger, around 80k [2]. But if you think 10k could easily be solved in SF, then 80k with a 10 figure budget should do the trick no? Yet walk the streets and you'd have no idea. I still can't figure it out. You could build a massive sky scraper every year for $1B and house several thousand of them.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-citys-spending-on-home... [2] https://www.bowery.org/homelessness/#:~:text=people%20are%20....

It's not so much "unable" as "deeply invested in exacerbating the problem".

> [...] is unable to house, feed, clothe and provide drug/alcohol/mental health treatment to a mere 10,000 homeless people.

This shouldn't be surprising at all considering that the city is already spending money on anti-homeless programs, and the 10,000 people are the people who are homeless despite those programs. Housing those 10,000 is hard because the "easy" homeless people have already been housed, and the 10,000 left are the "hard" ones. In the same way, ensuring that your SaaS is up for 1 hour isn't really hard, but ensuring that your SaaS has less than 1 hour of downtime a year (99.99% uptime) is significantly harder.

Creating a rocket seems pretty simple to me when I look at the wiki page but I’m wise enough to know it’s because I’ve never tried.

> Though obviously mobile laundromats are a complete waste of finite resources and absolutely not the way to solve homelessness.

So he should just throw up his hands and let the perfect be the enemy of the good?

Homelessness is part of the structure of our society. If there wasn't a "hell" to avoid falling into then people would stop working.

I volunteer you for the challenge.