I am conflicted about homelessness solutions; i live in the greater Orlando area - an area that reportedly (Orland Sentinel) over 1200 homeless.
Recently, plans for a Shelter were abandoned due to NIMBY protests. NIMBY = Not In My Backyard

Definition of shelter:

Being a low-barrier shelter means we accept people as they are and provide a safe, warm place of shelter for those who may have no other option. While some shelters may require a homeless neighbor to be sober or pass a drug test, we don’t. A neighbor experiencing homelessness can show up at our doors without an I.D., with a pet in tow and alcohol on their breath and they will find shelter with us.Not only for them but also their pet.

While I support providing shelter, food and other things for those less fortunate than I am, having such a shelter in my own neighborhood is another matter entirely. I have no interest in importing possible miscreants close to where I live.

I welcome ideas and thoughts with possible solutions from the Forum!

They have no reason to be in any residential or developed area.

The shelter/food system is a good idea for those homeless due to economic misadventure, and terrible for the chronically homeless.

Frankly, the best thing for them is probably something like the old work camp/work house setting.

The chronically homeless have mental issues/attitude issues which a shelter is not appropriate for.

Homeless should be confined to wastelands, of one kind or another. It would especially help with those homeless due to attitude rather than misfortune or mental health issues.

Many times it's contractors bidding on projects and getting government money to build these things, they don't care one bit about what it does to the housing and people in the area, as long as they can get the ok and payout.

Same thing for lower income apartment housing, and much of that was brought on by Obamas housing directives that Trump is removing.

Never had one in my neighborhood, but have had one near a building I officed out of for 4 years. The building occupied a full city block and had a small landscaped area near one entrance that included benches where employees would smoke and eat. Panhandling and loitering were problems security dealt with every day. Unfortunately, security didn't run one off and an employee was stabbed after saying no to a panhandler.

In the shitty part of town there has to be empty buildings for sale or rent

My small town located 30+ minutes drive from communities with significant shopping resources is high up in the mountains with long winters. As far as I know we don’t have any permanent homeless people, and why is that? Probably because we don’t have any shelters for them. Periodically there are proposals to establish a shelter for the ones we don’t have, but if one were established and paid for by those of us who live here, how would that change? Yeah, three guesses and the first two don’t count.

I clearly remember reading about people migrating to Washington, DC, years ago from places where they were somehow surviving but because DC had better facilities for the “homeless.” There’s no question that some people could legitimately use help, but the odd thing is that when help is provided to anyone who asks for it, then the number of those asking increases dramatically.

Our local shelter won't take drunks or active drug users. Honestly, I don't blame them. It's dangerous for staff, and the other people legitimately seeking shelter don't deserve to have to put up with that crap, either. There are families with kids in there and they don't need to be exposed to that.

Our local place is pretty well run, and provides a lot of programs to help people get back on their feet if they're willing to take advantage of them. Most locals don't end up staying there super long, and this success is almost certainly related to the fact that they won't accept drunks or druggies.

The biggest problem we have with the shelter is that they're part of a nationwide network of homeless shelters, and part of that involves accepting transfers from other shelters. So every once in a while, if they have room, they end up getting people bussed in here from somewhere else in the country. It could be thousands of miles away. Those people have no local connections and zero support structure outside of the services offered by the shelter. I also have a suspicion that other shelters use this method to offload undesirable problem clients that they don't want to deal with. More than once I've had to take calls on some homeless nutjob from Arizona or Delaware loitering around our little town in rural Indiana because the shelter brought them here, they got drunk or high or threatened somebody and got kicked out, and now they have nowhere to go. And then we have to deal with their bullshit for weeks or months until they finally move on. Thankfully God blessed us with terrible winters, so they typically don't stick around much past December.

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. I also feel like giving someone a free roof over their head while they continue to get drunk and/or high might prevent them from “hitting rock bottom” so to speak and coming to the realization that they need help with their addiction, and that’s a necessary component to get and stay clean. I think this shelter would not be a good idea anywhere, and I think it would be particularly bad in a nicer area.

Here is the article that prompted my original post. I hope it is not a paywall:

https://www.orlandosentinel.co...nl&utm_content=alert

Here is a quotation from above:

“Nobody who spoke in the 90-minute meeting was supportive of the shelter, fearful that the facility a mile west of the neighborhood would lead to an uptick in drugs and crime, and hurt property values.”

Note that the distance mentions was a mile away!

A friend of mine suggested something also mentioned in the thread, ie. locating in the crappy part of town. That seemed a good idea, but my friend, a Realtor, pointed out that the residents did not want it to get worse and had previously objected to a similar proposal.

Somewhat related, I was friends with a ranking member of ‘Habitat for Humanity’ in South Carolina. That is the organization that helps less fortunate people contribute ‘sweat equity’ and own a house.

He made the point that, almost invariably, the new owners had to be educated/trained in how to care for the house! Initially, there had to be weekly inspections to make certain the house was properly maintained, reducing to monthly etc.

Such simple things as taking out the garbage, washing dishes and clothes, sweeping and mopping floors - had never been taught to the new owners!

That thought had never occurred to me before!

quote:

Originally posted by tleddy:

Such simple things as taking out the garbage, washing dishes and clothes, sweeping and mopping floors - had never been taught to the new owners!

That thought had never occurred to me before!

Yeah, for those who are just on hard times, it can work.

But most homeless are like 4 year olds. Every sentence starts with, "I need...."

they never got to the point of doing anything themselves. In fact, a local group who deals with the homeless has to have an average of 6 contacts with a homeless person just to get them to take a shower.

Bottom line: Many/Most are mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs. They belong in institutions that deal with the mentally ill and drug addicts. To pretend that anything else can be done is just silly.

quote:

Originally posted by tleddy:
He made the point that, almost invariably, the new owners had to be educated/trained in how to care for the house! Initially, there had to be weekly inspections to make certain the house was properly maintained, reducing to monthly etc

Before I retired, I was still traveling to CA for my work and in 2021, I was staying at the Intercontinental Hotel in SF for a conference and a friend of mine in the banquets dept still worked there. I grilled him about the city's policy on forcing hotels to house homeless and he admitted they did in the prior year. He also confided to me that the hotel gave up two floors of rooms and they were recently closed to the public for cleaning and renovation. The bums trashed the rooms, and I heard similar happened to other hotels as well.

The Orlando Slantinal is a pay wall newspaper...

You can get the 41 from WFTV

https://www.wftv.com/news/loca...EG5FXTPUPQDEHYR3L3U/

The nicer the shelter you have, the more homeless you have.
We don't have an official shelter in the semi-rural area I live in. The sheriff in the next county said they didn't have a homeless problem until someone decided to build a homeless shelter.
Build it, and they will come.

One of the homeless shelters in our town just had a massive fire next door. Any guesses as to how it started?

We have another shelter close to our offices and the number of people wandering around looking for trouble or another place to hole up nearby is high. Neighbors next to us let them sleep under their porch.. stupid and dangerous. Constant struggle.

Nobody in their right mind would want a shelter in their neighborhood. Shelters should be where the homeless are and near other services that are set up for them. That means in the urban center. I used to sling soup at a shelter. The folks eating were a mix of the human condition from those who were actually down on their luck and looking for a hand so they could get back on their feet to those who were incapable of doing so and needed more support than was available to those who liked the lifestyle and took the free meal but not the bed because taking the bed meant following rules and they were unwilling to not smoke or drink or do drugs in exchange for the bed. A no rules shelter allows those with no interest in any rules to run wild. It’s insane to put them in neighborhoods. They usually end up in neighborhoods the wealthy folks with leftist ideals never go to so they aren’t faced with the direct results of their policy preferences naked and high on meth and shrieking at 3am.

My tough love answer:

Reopen a previously closed down military base. Give them a bunk in the barracks.

During the day, classes for GED or vocational training

Evening they do whatever duty they are assigned on the duty roster - cleaning toilets cooking dinner cutting the grass etc.

In addition reopen the old military medical facilities and provide health care, mental health care. ( give people in medical school / residency the opportunity to work there in exchange for partial student loan repayment)

All the above is mandatory no opt out of anything.

Sign a contract upon enrollment - complete the program ( finish GED/ vocational training, abide by duty roster, all other rules don’t get in trouble) graduate and move on with a productive life.
Violate contract- ineligible for any government assistance of any kind for life.

Here in MQT, the shelter is right downtown. With the tourists. Certain to leave a good impression on visitors!

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
In the shitty part of town there has to be empty buildings for sale or rent

That’s where I found homeless when I was a cop. And we had one dude that lived under an overpass. Situated in I95, US301(north to south) and US 64(east to west) we got a few from up north traveling south. Raleigh was the nearest shelter at 45 miles west, and our sgt said we could give them a ride to Zebulon w/o causing too much trouble for the rest of the shift if the guy wanted that. Zebulon adjoins Raleigh.

This was a town of 50k. There was woman priest who counted the homeless every year trying to raise awareness. One Dec, we counted them all and found five homeless guys, because of the city’s policy about home in the homeless-NIMBY

quote:

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.

Imagine helping a three-pack-a-day smoker quit when he doesn't really want to quit. That's what you're dealing with when it comes to the "chronically homeless." When I was a kid, vagrancy was against the law. Somehow I suspect we have Liberals to thank for vagrancy no longer being a jailable offense.

Arrest them, then put them on a work farm many, many miles from society.