A homeless man was lying on the ground, at a busy intersection.

[Fridays Child]

Yesterday, my daughter, my husband, and I saw a homeless man lying on his side, against the base of a McDonald's sign, at the corner of Grant Road and First Avenue, here in Tucson. It was about 4:30 in the afternoon. He was clearly destitute and, although, I can't say for sure, he was probably very ill. He kept rubbing his hands together and talking to himself.

I didn't know what to tell my daughter except that it was so sad for him to be in that situation and how grossly unfair it was that anyone in this country is left to, essentially, die in the street. A Hummer roared past us, when the light turned green.

Is it like this across the Atlantic? Do citizens of European countries hold up cardboard signs and beg for money? Do they sleep beneath cardoard and die in the streets, over there, too?

[Fountain79]

1. perhaps...

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2003/0210/homeless/story.html

[EFerrari]

9. That's an interesting article. I notice that in Europe, as in the States,

no one seems to think of asking homeless people what would work for them. "Solutions" are imposed from on high.

[haele]

12. We live in an area with several canyons -

There are many homeless in the area (I've seen close to 200). Some are working homeless, temporarily destitute living on assistance, or seniors that can't afford housing and/or don't manage to get to the shelters on time to get a bed (they seem to be around 30% or so). Some are homeless there that have substance abuse or mental problems (the slim majority).
And then there's about 3 or 4 seemingly healthy, intelligent, friendly people that do apparently choose to be; who claim to enjoy "the freedom" living without structure or possessions and work when they choose.
Unfortunately, it seems as if the latter two categories are the ones that drive the way people in general view the homeless - either substance abusers or "bums" that should otherwise be able to work and participate in society in the accepted manner.

There's lots of complex factors in homelessness, both external and internal to the homeless person or family. Even if there are safety nets (plenty of safe, low income housing, education/job training, national health care, etc), there are people who are not willing or capable of living in society.

In the old days, many of the modern homeless would be "general handymen", cowboys, farm hands, tinkers - or the explorers; mountain men, trappers - what have you - roaming from place to place as they choose. Unfortunately, there's not many places left where these people can take care of themselves by themselves without running into the attitude of a "community standard of living". With the lack of free spaces and general jobs that pay enough for subsistence, areas where they can roam and care for themselves on their own terms, these people are now stuck in cities to be able to survive.

And the aggravating thing is that even as various factors in the psyche of the homeless can be recognized, no one seems to know how to fix the overall problems in the terms that would mesh with the psyche of modern society.

My two cents.

Haele

[DS1]

2. There are homeless everywhere

On the large scale, it won't be long before we have homeless people on Mars.

[Warpy]

3. Marginal workers and the mentally ill are cared for in more

socialist countries, so there is a lot less of it there. Marginal workers live in subsidized housing. The mentally ill have access to national health insurance. They care about their citizens. Nobody cares about us.

It was like this in the US prior to 1980. There was some homelessness, skid row alcoholics who hadn't panhandled enough for a bottle and a flophouse bed, but there were few homeless families. The homeless families one saw were only temporarily homeless after a fire or an eviction and generally one paycheck away from another roof over their heads.

Lots of things have contributed to the homelessness in this country, but GOP and DLC callousness have got to be at the top of the list. Other contributors are the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill in the late 70s and early 80s with no community services funded to care for them; gentrification in the cities that turned rooming houses for the working poor back into robber baron mansions for a single family; inflation in housing prices and just about everything else while wages were falling; defunding of government programs to house the poorest; lack of access to health care, forcing many people into debt they'd never have a chance of paying off; and general class warfare by the rich against the rest of us.

We have to ask ourselves what kind of country we want to live in. Personally, I don't want to live in one where a child sees a man dying on the street because nobody cares.

[Fountain79]

4. ummm...

Did you read the article that I linked to?

[Warpy]

7. You mean the one you posted while I was still typing?

Yeah, it's a growing problem in Europe. Their social services are slowly being defunded, too, and for the same reason ours were.

The people in the article are skid row types, the ones I referenced as existing in the US prior to 1980. However, there are still services in Europe and people trying to get the European homeless to use them. Here, they are being neglected completely at the official level and only volunteer outreach programs exist to offer food, clothing, and minimal medical care.

This country was a very different place prior to 1980. Those of us who were adults when Ronnie took office remember it well.

[Fountain79]

8. not really....

That Europe's homelessness problem is roughly the same as America's — and that one of the fastest-growing segments of Europe's homeless population is families

It says in the article that it is exactly not "Skid Row" types that are among the fastest segment of that population, even with all of their social services.

[Fridays Child]

10. I don't, either.

More and more, I think about taking my family and leaving this country. I'm getting closer to the tipping, every day.

[AlamoDemoc]

5. check this out....thanks to DU member who posted earlier

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x523372

[liberal N proud]

6. The numbers of homeless in this nation blossomed during the Reagan regime

and many of them are Veterans. Men who fought for the wars engaged by rich white men.

[Danmel]

11. There are lots of homeless people in Canada

Which I found surprising. Toronto has lots, Vancouver has hordes of homeless people, very aggressive panhandlers all over the city, but especially on the downtown Eastside, which is way worse than NY was even in the Reagan 80s. I think this problem exists in many places- certainly there are more people living in desperate poverty- in shacks with no electricity and potable water in Asia Africa and South America than here.

Which is not to make excuses for the problems we have here- unfortunately I don't see the problem getting better anytime soon- there is no political will to do it and no sufficient call from the rich and comfortable to do it.

[DamnYank]

13. Most sobering memory of London

In Spring of 1999 a legless man was sitting against a wall outside the Marble Arch tube station holding a sign and asking for help.

In the Spring of 2001 the same man was still sitting in the same place, still holding a sign, still asking for help.

It immediately registered with me on the second occasion that this was the same person I'd seen before. I think about him sometimes and wonder if he's there still.

[Thor_MN]

14. Why do I see that image in Black and White?

[teryang]

15. I see dozens of homeless on the way to work every day

At lunch time there are about 30 or 40 of them clustered around just one of the soup kitchens near the small government complex downtown.

I've never seen it this intense before in my lifetime.

[Cleita]

16. You can thank Reagan for institutional homelessness here in the USA.

There have always been hobos, drifters and others who choose to live outside of society, but back before Reagan they could choose to rejoin society if they wanted to. There were always jobs and cheap rentals available to settle into.

Now most of us are one paycheck, earthquake or hurricane away from homelessness and it's difficult to get back into society if you want to these days. Also, thanks to the Jarvis ammendment in California and many other states, who initiated the same kind of programs the mentally ill, handicapped and marginally functional people were thrown out into the streets to fend for themselves.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that homelessness in Europe is more by choice than circumstance and that is a big difference.