ratboy

That is so bizarre, I don't think I've ever heard anything like that. So I understand, are they advertisements for schools to buy the entire system? Or just advertisements for cards to get into the schools?

Absolutely! And they will absolutely go mask off about it all on the internet, too. I've seen the most vile, horrible things said about houseless people on local subreddits. It has nothing to do with rationality, economics, ethics, accountability; they just want people disappeared.

I agree. I do case management, and some of the things I do can make a big difference for folks, but just getting them an ID isn't going to cut it if they don't have a safe place to put it and it gets stolen or lost a week later. Getting them benefits is awesome but won't get them off of the street if there isn't housing that's readily available, affordable if not free, and not highly competitive to get into. Getting them set up with a PCP is great but without an advocate and without housing they'll still get discriminated against and passed over, or miss their appointments and get fired from the clinic, etc.

Here we seem to just half bake our ideas to appease the "city liberals" and the "rural conservatives", because Oregon is extremely conservative outside of Portland and Eugene. There are supposedly a lot of people who were in Portland city/county government that were staunch housing first advocates, but there was so much pushback and supposed bureaucracy that their efforts at housing first were considered a failure.

Then we decriminalize drugs, but don't build up the harm reduction centers, drop in sites, recovery houses, etc. before we implement it and so now tons of people say it's a failed measure and want to recall it.. And don't even MENTION the idea of safe injection sites either, that just would make too much fucking sense. It always feels as if any of these supposed efforts at fixing homelessness are intended to fail so everyone, libs and conservatives alike can say "SEE? Nothing works for these VERMIN, they need to just be locked up and shipped off to another state!".

Not surprising to be honest. I guess the idea of tuning in to those networks never sounded thrilling enough for me lol

That's awesome, I'm definitely gonna look into the programs there. I just live in Oregon and supposedly we have some of the best homeless services in the US....yet we maybe only have like 2 housing first properties in my town that only fit like 2 percent of our houseless population.. I just don't understand. It's a solidly blue state (or has been) for decades, too. Realtors own everyone I guess.

Conservative media is a wild ride. I watched Fox News at a motel I was at for funsies and I tried to count how many times they said "socialism" or "bolshevik bernie" with no other context. It had to have been like 10-15 times in 5 minutes. Like they weren't even really talking about anything that they could have called socialism? It was pure nonsense.

Also weird how most commercials on conservative radio are for home security systems...really driving the xenophobia into the ol' noggin

I really wonder why housing first has been successful there and not on the west coast? There are tons of advocates for it but it always get stripped down and fought against so hard that a robust program never gets put into place.

Nimby's will complain about needles and feces on sidewalks, but when you suggest giving someone a studio where they could use drugs and shit outside of the public eye. They say "Not on my dime!"

My brother in Christ, your dime is paying to move what you are complaining about to the other side of the block!! Nothing is going away, nothing is getting solved! It makes me want to pull my hair out so much.

Obviously homelessness is much more complex than how I described it above but sometimes I try to think of ways to explain shit that will appeal to libs/assholes (as I did above) but even then they just....don't care.

Recently, a houseless woman's belongings were trashed during sweeps. With them were her daughters' ashes.

One snippet of my radicalization came from a partner of mine who worked at Peet's Coffee years ago. He told me that every night when the pastries were thrown away, the manager instructed the workers to pour bleach all over them so houseless folks couldn't eat them. At the time I couldn't believe it

I would like to be a sentient cloud of energy that's just chillin on earth to be able to witness the drama and hear all of the tea

As someone who works with houseless folks this is absolutely without a doubt a thing. There are for profit companies springing up that do similar social services that I do, too, so the privatization part even applies. It's fucked

If they had a slightly wider toe box they would be perfect. I wonder why most shoes are so narrow? Anesthetics I guess