IF YOU BUILD IT...THEY WILL COME

In addition to our homeless shelter, our little town of 15k has a homeless "camp" where all the chronically homeless folks who don't want to play by the shelter's rules live. They have tents and live in a swamp behind some railroad tracks. It's not a great situation but the city doesn't try to hard to evict them because if they do they end up moving into vacant buildings or other places where they cause more problems.

We're on a first name basis with most of them, because we get calls on them all the time. Some are nuts, some have fried their brains on drugs, and others are just habitually drunk all the time.

There's one chick who goes around lifting her shirt and flashing her nasty tits at people all the time. She once wiped her own shit on a squad car, and then I watched her eat a whole handful of it right before the fight started in the back of the ambulance while we were trying to get her to the hospital on an EDO.

Another one rode his bike drunk into the side of a moving train and smashed his head in, and fought with LE and EMS when they responded to help him. He ended up dying later from the swelling and bleeding on the brain.

Then there was Randy. He was a local legend. You didn't want to put him in your car because he smelled like death, but he was usually decent to deal with provided you weren't an asshole. He'd let a rookie have it if they got cocky with him, though, which was useful for training. Randy lived at a constant BAC of .2 or above. We'd find him passed out drunk in all weather, and eventually he got sepsis in his foot and they had to cut most of it off. Before they did that he was just walking around with it wrapped in a plastic bag, and when they took it off in the jail there were live maggots eating on it. He was trespassed from just about every business in town, and when it got cold he'd just wander in somewhere to get arrested so he could warm up in the jail. Dude had the system worked out. He finally died about a year ago...I kinda miss him.

Believe it or not we have a huge homeless problem in Anchorage. The city council's solution is to keep buying motels and turning them into shelters. For about 2 years we had the largest homeless shelter in the country, they turned the city's hockey arena in a mass shelter.

We have our regulars in the ER. One last year checked in 395 times in one year. We have a lot of homeless camps around town as well. For a long time the city could not abate them due to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that camps could not be abated unless there was a ready bed in a shelter for every single person abated. That has since been overturned and the city has abated some of the worst camps, but they just move to other areas of town.

Our former mayor has a plan for a, "Navigation Center", a homeless shelter that had job search, addiction counseling and social services embedded within the shelter. If one wanted shelter they has to take part in one of the programs. The, "Barrier of Entry" was judged to be too high by the liberal members of the city council, the plan was cancelled halfway through construction and they're back to buying old run down motels.

Then we had the homeless campground administered by the city. The biggest problem was the, "Residents" refused to use the lockboxes for their food and kept it in their tents. Bears would wander in and rip apart the tents looking for food. Fish and Game shot 5 black bears in the camp. A buddy of mine wanted to make t-shirts, "Save the Bears, Shoot the Homeless". Now we have a public campground that's been absolutely trashed.

The big fear now is urban wildfires this summer. There's a lot of greenbelts and parks within the city. It has been unbelievably dry this winter with no snowfall. It's happened before with homeless camps catching on fire in the woods and this summer that could be especially dangerous.

My feeling is if shelter is offered it shouldn't be free. I don't necessarily mean to be paid for but if one is to be a resident they have to be involved in a job search, substance abuse counseling or even doing work in the city like picking up trash along the side of the road. We've just made it too easy to be homeless and removed the shame from it.

And yes, if there's a homeless shelter in the area, the neighborhood around it will be trashed.

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Originally posted by radioman:

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Originally posted by captain127:


Violate contract- ineligible for any government assistance of any kind for life.

That reminds me, most of the homeless around here are on SSDI. In fact there are 2 city employees in my suburb sized city who, FULL TIME, help the homeless apply for SSDI and other government benefits by filling out the paperwork and giving them a mailing address etc.

So that guy begging for change at the stoplight, he's likely on SSDI, gets the food stamp card, etc. So keep that in mind before you give him that dollar.

If they are on SS, SS disability, Medicaid or Medicare, or IHS medical, or etc., etc., then the hospitals, urgent care, and all the Homeless Industrial Complex (grifters), get paid for care and ‘services’ provided.

Plus they register them to vote, and gee what address do they use for vote by mail ballots? Somewhere that someone or something related to them will still be at. Like a shelter. Even if the ‘voter’ isn’t there next election cycle, the ballot will show up. Hmmm.

Homelessness may be ‘nonprofit’, but you can bet that a shitload of someone’s are getting paid. People in charge are getting paid well, and never have to ‘solve’ homelessness or show positive results.

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People in charge are getting paid well, and never have to ‘solve’ homelessness or show positive results.

Payplans have consequences. That's why they work so well.

No. Absolutely not.

The thing about most social engineering is it becomes solely about money. Yes, most won’t accept people without an ID, or under the influence. So, where do these people go? Out into the surrounding communities.

Another favorite of mine is “can’t confirm or deny” a person is there because of HIPPA. Even though HIPPA doesn’t apply. Ultimately, they will import clients if it means more money. And if you speak out against them, you hate children, the less fortunate, blah, blah blah.

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Originally posted by Lt CHEG:
It might sound pretty heartless, but I’m in favor of the tough love philosophy and would not want a shelter near me or my family either. As has been mentioned, it’s a legitimate safety issue for employees of the shelter to deal with drunk or high individuals with potential mental health issues compounding their problems.

Most homeless people are either mentally ill or drug users, often both.

What we need (and closed down beginning in the 1960's) are insane asylums for treatment, and/or long term confinement. Other than that, pull the rug and force them to work.

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Originally posted by chellim1:
What we need (and closed down beginning in the 1960's) are insane asylums for treatment, and/or long term confinement. Other than that, pull the rug and force them to work.

I agree. I think we could best help society and the homeless by rounding them up like stray cats. Letting addicts and people with brain damage roam around freely is a danger to society, and letting sick people sleep in the gutter until they die of untreated physical malady or an overdose is inhumane and frankly disgusting.

And to take that a step further, I believe that if you are a “not for profit” and you accept one taxpayer dollar from a state, local, or federal source, that you need to be subject to FOIA and your complete books should be posted online in a read only format.

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Originally posted by jljones:
And to take that a step further, I believe that if you are a “not for profit” and you accept one taxpayer dollar from a state, local, or federal source, that you need to be subject to FOIA and your complete books should be posted online in a read only format.

And subject to audit, annually at a minimum and signed off by a CPA.

There are few really good options for the homeless. I had a number of parolees on my caseload and they definitely presented a challenge. Another officer and I ended up working pretty closely with our PD’s homeless team after we had an incident where someone flying a drone down by the river had it shot out of the sky as it passed over an encampment. We just had the managing director of our largest shelter rolled up on embezzlement charges and they’re still working on reopening the facility.

We had our one community corrections group get shot down on a land purchase for a larger facility. They had cried foul after the fact when it was pointed out that the land borders on the city’s largest kids soccer park and also a small lake which has jogging trails around it. They couldn’t understand why people transitioning from incarceration, to include run-of-the mill Registered Sex Offenders and the occasional Sexually Violent Predator would not be a good mix with kids and lone women jogging the lake path in the early morning and evening. They brought up the NIMBY terminology attributing it to “Conservatives and others with unreasonable bias.”

Local just a few days ago:

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Kirkland homeless hotel plans prompts employer to exit, raising community concerns

https://komonews.com/news/loca...chronic-homelessness

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Originally posted by jljones:
And to take that a step further, I believe that if you are a “not for profit” and you accept one taxpayer dollar from a state, local, or federal source, that you need to be subject to FOIA and your complete books should be posted online in a read only format.

Absolutely. People that grift off the homeless deserve a special place in hell. They need to be held to close accounting.

Here in San Diego, 20% of wildfires in 2004 were in homeless encampments. A local conservative activist, Amy Reichert, one day went out to investigate the issue; found a fire that had been started by the hoboes (actually that's an insult to hoboes) and called the SDFD to put it out. Firefighters said this was an everyday occurrence for them.

The stupidest thing is that we have decided that people who are mentally incompetent are somehow able to make decisions for themselves. If we chose to do something about that, we don’t have places to put them. I have a brilliantly smart schizophrenic cousin. She has been in lots of legal trouble -when there were refugees from a hurricane at the city convention center she was there impersonating a doctor and writing prescriptions. They commit her for a long period and get her stable and as soon as she gets out she stops taking the meds. Her mom moved cross country to get away because she was so afraid of her.

They're never in the mayor's neighborhood, are they? We had a problem with a halfway type house inn our neighborhood (prohibited, but done anyway.) The best of them were noisy, threw trash around, tossed cigarette butts in people's yards, etc. The HOA finally go rid of it.

Update - Link

Orlando considers ‘Dignity Buses’ for homeless after dropping plans for SODO shelter

The City of Orlando said it is not actively looking for potential brick-and-mortar locations for a homeless shelter.

The news comes on the heels of Mayor Buddy Dyer confirming on Monday that the city has dropped plans for a proposed homeless shelter in SODO.

SODO is an Orlando neighborhood whose name was derived from its location “South of Downtown.”

City leaders were looking to partner with Orange County to convert a former work release center on Kaley Street into a 300-bed homeless shelter.

Dyer said the location was ultimately “not feasible.”

The proposal also came with overwhelming opposition from many living in the SODO neighborhood.

“For those communities that don’t want shelters in their backyard, they need to start preparing for tents in their front yard,” said Eric Gray, executive director of the Christian Service Center.

City officials will now consider implementing a shelter on wheels concept, also known as a “Dignity Bus.”

The city is considering the purchase of two 45-foot buses that would house roughly 20 beds each and also include bathrooms.

First step to a successful shelter, those who want in need to pass a clean drug test for methamphetamine, heroin and opioids of every sort that don't have a prescription. If they are on hard drugs it's hopeless homeless.