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0 pointstbagman3y ago0 comments

Homelessness in the US is a complex problem. I found the Soft White Underbelly interview series by Mark Laita insightful when learning more about it: https://www.softwhiteunderbelly.com

Mark spent considerable time earning the trust of LA's skid row population – a large roadside tent community – and has a series of 1:1 interviews with a slice of the population, exploring their histories, challenges, preferences, and culture.

Mark doesn't believe that many (most?) of the skid row population would benefit from being provided with housing, and that issues of trauma, mental health, and childhood family environment are what he believes would have the highest leverage on the problem.

This is of course just one perspective on the problem, but Mark's perspective taught me quite a bit.

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tayo423y ago

I have a feeling that the issue isn't homelessness really, but the kinds of people that end up homeless cause problems anyway. Someone won't stop being violent or committing crime because they got moved from a tent to a studio.

I don't think the temporally homeless, like someone down on their luck. makes up the issues people have with homeless. You see some crazy person, then you see that person is homeless, your answer to that is "oh give them a studio apartment!" and not lets help them with their issue. Police should be policing violent people, for some reason instead of that we want to build homes in the middle of nowhere and drop them off their. They're still going to cause issues.

MichaelCollins3y ago

I think people would be a lot more compassionate towards homeless people generally if the violent and destructive subset of homeless people were put in prison where they belong. With the awful ones out of the way, the peaceful sympathetic homeless people would become the public face of homelessness and the general public would be much more willing to to address their problems constructively (e.g. provide housing to them.)

But instead the justice system is set up to give effective impunity to the worst sort of homeless people; they're back on the street days after being arrested (if they are even arrested in the first place.) They cause incredible damage and commotion, so they hog all the public attention and give all homeless people a very bad name through association.

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tayo423y ago

MichaelCollins3y ago

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