Okay, my city has finally corralled all the homeless into a fenced-off ghetto. Just in time for the snow. I'm noticing a lot of younger 20-somethings there. (Maybe half of them look under the age of 28 ) Rowdy young "cool kid" types that look like weed smokers. A few young single mothers with babies. Maybe about 40% of the single mothers look like they are druggies (typical age range about 22-26 years old). Wheelchairs and walkers outside a few of the tents indicate that some of them are physically disabled. A few alcoholics (mostly middle aged, maybe mostly around 35-50)) and a few who obviously have something mentally wrong with them (mostly around the 26-32 year old age group). Most of them are white, but maybe 15% are mixed black and another 11-12% look Hispanic. About half the Hispanics look older and don't really speak English (so undocumented presumably?). The tent village is far too big to capture with a single picture. I'd estimate there could be over a hundred tents there.
No excuse for doing it all the time when you're homeless though. Unless you're okay with people blaming you for your own problems.
Oh, by the way, right after these pictures were taken there was a snow storm, 16-18 inches of snow on the ground. Unusual to have that much snowfall here. Many roads were blocked and impassable to cars. Lasted for about a week. 16 inches of snow is enough to cave-in and collapse those tents if it's not brushed off.
It sounds exactly what you are doing. Does it make you feel more important to blame the victims. That's Jefferson Davis Civil War strategy.
I don't know why. I'm with you and I have a wife who would not approve. But then she would be pissed when I lit a joint at any time.
Nice straw man. Do you think everyone against abject poverty is a Christian or is that your go to stance of defending the lefts failed policies that leads to tent cities like these and the starvation and death that comes from socialism?
Actually my commentary was directed at an individual who professes adherence to Christian Dogma while debasing the unfortunate and judging them as told not to do by the entity and books that represent his faith. Personally I believe many of the homeless have made their own decisions and choices as far as Drug use that have put them there and have very little pity left for them...but, I am not Christian.
I don't know that you can lay this on the left. Both right and left are responsible for this catastrophe. Trump is here for 2 years and it is only getting worse.
"Worse"? As is more poor illegals coming here and living in liberal cities? Worse in liberal cities where the income inequality is the worst? And "getting worse" is a straight lie anyways in the US as a whole.
This is not a simple problem, and like all the other problems involving the intersection of mental illness, addiction, both macro and micro economics and public policy, it cannot be solved with any single political 'platform'. Its going to require a set of solutions designed to target the different subsets of the homeless, and a serious community effort to ensure adequate low income housing options dispersed throughout. We keep making the same mistake of grouping low income housing and shelter in central locations and 'zoning' or gating the homeless population or at risk populations in one or two preferred locales/ neighborhoods in our cities when that only breeds a magnification of all the problems we associate with homelessness. It seems to me, If we are going to have low income options, and services, there should be a few in every apartment complex, in every neighborhood, not congregated and ghettoized in a five block radius near where a business district, the bus depot and the most dilapidated residential neighborhood intersect. While it allows for more efficient services for the homeless, it also magnifies the economic and social problems wherever they congregate. The 'not in my back yard' mentality inevitably leads to major trouble in whatever 'back yard' is left.
One of the main contributing problems, as I see it, is that a large number of people have been moving into the area over the past decade, resulting in a large population increase. This has created pressure on housing, especially on the more affordable end. They have been cutting down hundreds of acres of forest to build more housing, but when new housing has to be built typically that housing is substantially more expensive. Not really a good "value" in terms of what you get for the price. Most of that new housing is higher density and crammed together, not very nice to look at and it's changing the once semi-rural character of the area. Basically a semi-rural area with a small metropolitan city core is transforming into high-density sprawling suburbs, and there are affordable housing shortages that are coming along with that. Most of the people moving in seem to be younger adults (24-32) from California (North and South), middle-aged from Michigan (depressed economy there), and older people from the Northeast. There are also a few moving from Oregon (especially Portland since that area has gotten so expensive with so many people from other parts of the country moving there).
It's like this people that talk about how broke they are and have a two pack a day smoking habit. If you can buy weed why in the **** are you homeless?
No, ATL, Tampa, Miami, Mobile (AL), Jackson (MS), Macon (GA), and all the rest of the major cities in the south are fully entrenched with democrats looking for handouts from the rest of the state and their masters in the ivory towers.