Food for Thought

[brynndragon]

What do car pollution and homelessness have in common? A hockey-stick-curve instead of a bell-curve and solutions rendered impossible (or at least extremely difficult) by the human psyche: Million-Dollar Murray

Comments

[glenmarshall.livejournal.com]

The key difference, though, is that pollution is self-limiting by eventually killing its cause.

Homelessness consists of two significant populations: single-parent families, and people with intractible psychopathologies. There are not resolvable by a single approach. Yet neither is self-limiting.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I'm curious where you got those two significant populations from? I've not heard "single-parent families" as being a primary source of homelessness before.

Also, I'm gonna argue that homelessness is self-limiting as long as there is pollution, since the cure for the later will also end the former ;P.

[glenmarshall.livejournal.com]

The single-parent families are typically lead by women. The triggering condition is that some single-parent families are one paycheck away of economic disaster. All it takes is one major illness, or a job loss, to push them over the brink. This particular componement of homeless is well-known to social service agencies, but it is not as noticeable or as publicized as the schizophrenics and alcholics visibly spleeping on doorsteps, sidewalks, and nooks & crannies.

Most homeless families go to public shelters and are provided public housing or other types of assistance. So there are fewer chronic homeless in this group, even though the population-size (and the causes of it) is fairly constant.

[ectropy.livejournal.com]

That's an amazing article. The part that struck me the most (because it directly impacts my life) is the anti-pollution vans. I hope and pray that we can get something like that here.

[catya.livejournal.com]

What a fascinating read.

[roamin-umpire.livejournal.com]

It's a common knock that many political "solutions" to problems are merely cosmetic changes designed to make the policitians look good and to make the electorate feel better about themselves. But I've never seen it put in such damning terms before - and the point about it violating our ideas of fairness and responsibility are 100% dead on. I found myself wondering about who decides who gets the apartments, and just why they should be the ones deciding. But on the flip side, mswae is constantly telling me about just how much emergency room visits end up costing hospitals (and thus everyone indirectly through taxes and health insurance premiums).

I've been tempted to subscribe to The New Yorker for a while now. The only catch is, I'm not sure I'd have time to read it.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I thought the "why people won't like it" bit was the best part of the entire essay - they rest was merely interesting, but that bit explains so much of what we do as a society. Oddly enough, the notion that it was unfair to the homeless folks for assuming that they couldn't be independant and functional came up for me as readily as the notion that it was unfair to people barely getting by but paying their own way.

The thing is, for it to work *someone* had to decide who does and does not get an apartment, which is a situation ripe for abuse (sayeth the person who learned about an innocent getting killed last night by business-as-usual in the political halls of her fair city). The problem, as metahacker is fond of saying, is people.

[horned1.livejournal.com]

I would agree, except the part about the solutions being rendered impossible or difficult by the human psyche. Pollution and homelessness are strictly "civilized" inventions, so really only one culture out of thousands throughout human history have had these problems. It would be therefore inaccurate to say that it is because of the human psyche since it has been a problem for such a short amount of time. :)

[fourgates.livejournal.com]

You may also find interesting the work of Roseanne Haggerty (http://www.thinkers.sa.gov.au/rhaggerty.html), who
advocates (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/66/socialcapital.html)
revival of flophouses (http://www.commonground.org/?p=137)
in NYC (http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_0402/ob/ob03_0402.html).