So in the end we have spent billions of not only tax dollars but private money and the problems will never get any better?
I guess if people do not want to change they won't, and if so why do we still throw so much money at them? At some point people either need to sink or swim.
I see there are people in cases that may not have the physical or mental capability to help them self but what about the rest?
Why as a society do we tolerate supporting other peoples bad life choices?
I don't know what the answer is if there even is one.
When I was a senior High School"1984" I had a class called Co-Op. It was a class that taught life skills. Every thing from applying for a job,the job interview,balancing a check book,creating a budget,investing for retirement and so on. It was not a required class it was an elective. This class was the best course I ever had in High School. It should have been mandatory to graduate for everyone. I do not know if they even still teach it but I think this could be the first step to preparing people for the real world and prevent homelessness.

quote:

Originally posted by BuckRogers2000:

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
When I was a poverty kid, taking care of myself....the one parent that lived there with me, sometimes (she worked nights and the nights she didn’t work she went out) was too ashamed to sign the federal lunch program form for me to get school lunches. I did not give 2 fucks about what the kids would say at school or anything. So I forged her damn signature. My lunch ladies knew my predicament and hooked me up, breakfast, and lunch. Dinner I would starve as there was rarely food in the house.

My point, it happens. Many children are born to dirt bags who don’t care about the kid, or have no business raising a child. It happens and it’s an ugly thing. I’m proud to volunteer during the holidays at the homeless shelter downtown and serve dinner to these men on the streets. I’m in the back washing dishes, busting my ass. It could have been me in that serving line.

Kudos to you , sir!

Thanks for sharing Prefontaine, stories like yours of sheer will to overcome, strength of character, whatever it is, give me hope.
Thank you sir!!
This board is a better place because you are on it and the perspective you can bring.

HK Ag

quote:

Originally posted by 71 TRUCK:
When I was a senior High School"1984" I had a class called Co-Op. It was a class that taught life skills. Every thing from applying for a job,the job interview,balancing a check book,creating a budget,investing for retirement and so on. It was not a required class it was an elective. This class was the best course I ever had in High School. It should have been mandatory to graduate for everyone. I do not know if they even still teach it but I think this could be the first step to preparing people for the real world and prevent homelessness.

There's been a push to bring back classes like these in public school. In fact, my wife just started teaching a high school class along those lines last year, called "Human Relations". (Funnily enough, most folks automatically assume it means "Sex Ed" when my wife says she teaches "Human Relations". )

Her specific class doesn't include banking, saving money, or creating a budget, which are covered in another class. But it does cover stuff like basic (not so) common courtesy, going on job interviews, how to disagree with someone without getting butthurt and assuming the other person is "literally Hitler", the importance of body language in communication, etc.


However, no matter how many "life skills" classes are offered in school, the sad truth is that the kind of folks I talked about in my earlier post are unlikely to benefit much from simply going to school classes about making good life choices. It's much more important for parents to teach/instill these important concepts in their children, because parents have a much bigger impact on their kids than teachers do. If parents are modeling poor life choices, a percentage of their kids may see that and say "I'm not going to be like that" and do better, but many of their kids will simply "monkey see/monkey do" and turn out just the same.

The fancy term is "generational poverty" (see also "generational crime"), but it basically boils down to just "shitty parents who make poor choices raising their kids to be similar adults who make poor choices".

I'll apologize in advance.

You're expecting brood-parasitism to disappear?

quote:

Originally posted by 71 TRUCK:
So in the end we have spent billions of not only tax dollars but private money and the problems will never get any better?
....

Every year the Qaud Cities area high schools hold a hunger drive whey they collect cans and boxes of food. At the end there's a big gathering where they announce the winning school and usually boast about beating last year's quantity.

Maybe when these HS graduates reach the working world they'll stop and think "Hey, why does the number of hungry people keep growing? Could it be we're enabling them?"

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
I've got what I believe to be a better question: Unemployment is at historical lows, job growth steady, and many employers are screaming for people to fill positions. Yet there was a piece on the local "news" a couple evenings ago about how demand for food assistance is higher than ever. What's up with that?

"Living wage" meme notwithstanding, having a job doesn't necessarily mean you can afford to live. While unemployment has gone down, wage growth has remained stagnant. As an example, engineer starting salaries are the same as they were a decade ago, but expenses (especially the education required to become an engineer) have climbed.

As a recently minted engineer, with the amount of student loan debt I have on top of normal expenses, money would be tight if I weren't married to another engineer. And engineering as a field still has one of the highest starting salaries... Had I chosen something like accounting, business, etc. and accrued the same amount of student debt with a starting salary 30% lower, I might be in a bind.

A certain percentage of people for various reasons just can't get their shit together enough to be productive or to help themselves. The ones who are in that condition due to no fault of their own (children, mental illness, mental trauma, brain injury, physical disability, etc) need our assistance. The rest, if they are unwilling to feed themselves, well that's Darwin at work.

What really pisses me off is the amount of food that ends up in dumpsters every day that would feed every child of school age in America. The problem is not one of lack of food-it is lack of a distribution system.

How much is it mental illness versus long term drug use inducing mental illness?

I will tell you that I have had contact bunches of homeless soliciting for money at various intersections. I and our Mental Health Liaison have offered help to get off the streets. Less than 5% have accepted. What I have learned is that they can make $150 to $200 in about 2 to 3 hours begging for cash. Cash that they immediately give to the dope man (99% heroin) to get high. the Dope Man then uses that cash to pay the gang, buy more dope and guns (almost all the violence in St. Louis City, and North St. Louis County, to include Pinelawn, Wellston, etc, is due to dope gang on dope gang violence).

One issue I have observed over the years, and it may be more correlation than causation, but here it is.

Growing up in the South Florida area, in the 60's on and through the 1990's you had a ton of trailer parks in this area. Some nice ones, some...not so nice. But, fact is there was a large supply of very inexpensive housing.

Since the late 90's the majority of those parks have been sold and closed up and the land used for other uses. No more "cheap" housing. At the same time this area's homelessness has grown. South Florida is a tough town to live on minimum wage.

I spend a fair amount of time in the poorer neighborhoods around where I live. I don't see "hungry" children. I see by and large over weight fat kids. I really question how many kids are going to bed hungry in America.

A guy today told me about seeing a guy with a sign begging for food less than a block away from a McDonalds with a help wanted sign. This guy told the beggar he might consider working.

"mental illness plays a huge part,
p.t.s.d. especially .
and
America is driven by the dollar,
when it becomes very profitable to care about the homeless,
things will turn around"


from the replys to the above post ,
I surmise that I could have said it better .


If we paid educated, employable Steve $3,400.00 per month to educate, transport, help , and mentor five homeless people , for forty hours a week.

perhaps two out of five homless people could see the light of day and get back on the right track to being off of the streets and in too a better living condition.

thats what I meant by making it profitable,
not just giving away free money to those on the street

I'm surrounded by them here in rural MT. The amount of white trash out here compared to where I grew up in NJ is astounding.

Poor life choices seem to be the issue. Throw in substance abuse, minimal education, and pure laziness. But the term that always seems to come up is "personal responsibility". They have none. Or very little.

I tried to "save" dozens over the years when I was on the cop job. Out of dozens I have one single success story.

One has to wonder when will it end? We already have more on the welfare/subsistence programs than ever. They never go without food or shelter. There is always some program as a life preserver for them.

They can't afford kids but have several and keep having them. Then the kids do the same. Its a vicious circle.

People will give you free food. Why spend resources on food that would better be spent on entertainment? And people be lazy and irresponsible. Camping out in California, getting stoned all day with like minded individuals. City shows up with free medical, food, clothing, and maybe housing. Maybe the suckers are the ones working 50 hours a week and are a paycheck away from losing it all

quote:

Originally posted by 71 TRUCK:
Thank you to all the information.
Thank you for some of your personal stories and experiences.
To me the worst part of all of this is the children who are the innocent victims.

That's what gets me every time about "free" bitching this and that. The children are innocent. Yes blame the adults, if you want to call them that, breeding, 100% justified. But the children are innocent. They are not old enough to fend for themselves. Unless the kid has a high iq, as I did (not bragging), and learned to be an adult as a small child, and jump hoops, and navigate life, well the kid is fucked, and needs help. Clothes, food, what have you. Hopefully, and God willing, the child can escape this bullshit and grow, and excel. I get a hair up my ass when people dismiss all this, and include children. It's not their fault, and they need help from wherever they can.

quote:

Originally posted by Fredward:
In short, shitty parents.

My SIL works for the schools here in the food service. She worked in an elementary school where there were kids entitled to free lunches but their parents were too damn lazy to come in and sign the papers.