<story><title>Sarah Connor, in hiding before the war</title><url>https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/02/sarah-connor-in-hiding-before-war.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>csours</author><text>&amp;quot;Homeless&amp;quot; is one of those catch all words like &amp;quot;plastic&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;cancer&amp;quot;, where the things being described only look relatively similar from the outside.&lt;p&gt;As the blogpost notes: &amp;quot;There are already lots of hidden homeless passing for normal, couch surfing, etc. People tend to not realize it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately right now, I&amp;#x27;m at very low risk of homelessness, but I can imagine scenarios where it could happen. Some people don&amp;#x27;t have family to fall back on. Some people&amp;#x27;s family are terrible people and it&amp;#x27;s questionable whether they are better off with them or living rough.&lt;p&gt;A lot of people live in their cars or vans for a while.&lt;p&gt;Here in Austin, urban camping was decriminalized (I am not an expert, this may not be entirely correct) and now there are quite a lot of tents popping up all over the place.&lt;p&gt;As a civilian, it&amp;#x27;s impossible for me to tell what situation a person is in; are they potentially violent, do they live in the same world as me, are they mentally and physically capable but undergoing hard times? They are all people, and they should all be helped, but help for one person isn&amp;#x27;t like help for another; and just lumping people together and parking them doesn&amp;#x27;t help anyone.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sarah Connor, in hiding before the war</title><url>https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/02/sarah-connor-in-hiding-before-war.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>chaostheory</author><text>According to established research, there are two types of homeless. 80% of the homeless recover within several months with the help of existing private and public social programs. They work. Unfortunately, they only work for normal people “down on their luck”&lt;p&gt;The other 20% is what is referred to as the chronic homeless. These are the ones we see on the streets. Very few of them recover if ever. This group is mostly made of the mentally ill, drug addicts, or most likely an individual suffering from both problems. Only federal medical institutions can help them. The problem is that they were expensive and extremely mismanaged (stacks of abuse) in the 20th century. Consequently, the Kennedy family waged a successful crusade in eliminating them. Sadly, given what we know now, instead of ending those programs; we should have reformed them instead.&lt;p&gt;What we have now is a bunch of cities playing a never ending game of “hot potato” with the mentally ill, using free bus and airline tickets that send them to another metro to deal with and vice versa.&lt;p&gt;Most proposed solutions like the ones outlined in the blog post only deal with the symptoms and not the root of the problem. It’s a mental health issue</text></comment>