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2007-01-22 Home Front Economy

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Posted by Anonymoose 2007-01-22 09:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Jumbo shrimp?

Posted by no mo uro 2007-01-22 09:18|| 2007-01-22 09:18|| Front Page Top

#2 This may not be a bad idea, as it could both solve a bunch of problems, and act as a laboratory for other cities to mitigate their problems.

Other cities have tried individual ideas that have worked, such as special schools just for homeless children, and a hotel for alcoholics just to keep them off the street. Pure pragmatism, in that reduces the homeless "profile" in the city, and especially because it saves a LOT of money.

It a homeless village, it should properly be subdivided into different distinct parts: one for homeless families; one for the young; one for the older; and one for addicts and psychiatric cases.

The reason for this is that homeless families are the most "recoverable", and often just need information on things like home management and credit and finances. Their children need a school that emphasizes them helping their family out of poverty.

Young, single homeless people often have psychological, not psychiatric, problems from having escaped abuse, to severe claustrophobia. They need counselors and mentors, but can provide much of the labor that the homeless village would need. Only a fraction of them remain homeless after years.

Older homeless are in need of basic medical care. They are generally set for life as being homeless, excepting catastrophic cases, which mostly happens to middle-class women who are suddenly widowed or divorced. They are often content with a modest institutional setting, to live out their remaining years.

Alcoholics and drug addicts are of two kinds: those who want out, and those that are stuck for life. Treatment for the former to help them out of their situation sometimes works; but likewise, if they are stuck, as determined by a doctor, then by providing them cheap alcohol, food, and a place to sleep, they cost only a fraction that they would out in public.

Pure ethanol is not expensive, and is becoming even less expensive, now that it is being made for fuel. No effort at reform whatsoever.

Put it all together and you have a homeless village, that takes the homeless out of the city and gives them some services if they want to improve themselves, and otherwise keeps them as much as possible out of harms way.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-01-22 09:28|| 2007-01-22 09:28|| Front Page Top

#3 Interesting idea. I wonder what percentage of San Francisco real estate would be required to make one of these villages.

Posted by Alaska Paul">Alaska Paul 2007-01-22 09:56|| 2007-01-22 09:56|| Front Page Top

#4 Already in progress. I think they call it "Oakland"...

Posted by tu3031 2007-01-22 10:12|| 2007-01-22 10:12|| Front Page Top

#5 With no houses?

Posted by mojo">mojo 2007-01-22 10:23|| 2007-01-22 10:23|| Front Page Top

#6 I think it is a great idea. I'd even volunteer on a Habitat crew. After a little practice, we could volunteer to build and move the Palestinians, to say, Jordan or the Golan.

Posted by Danielle 2007-01-22 11:31|| 2007-01-22 11:31|| Front Page Top

#7 Evil Florida developer plans Concentration Camp for Homeless. Thousands to be relocated to rural "treatment facility", critics worry.

There, that's more like it.

Posted by Steve">Steve 2007-01-22 12:03|| 2007-01-22 12:03|| Front Page Top

#8 "The answer is not to build a Hooverville of tents and trailers but to make these buildings attractive enough so that if you or I would went there, we would say, 'Wow, I'd live there.'"

So they're going to build a space for the homeless that's better than what some workers can afford?

Posted by DoDo 2007-01-22 12:07|| 2007-01-22 12:07|| Front Page Top

#9 There are two kinds of homeless. THose that need a helping hand and will get up off their feet soon after, and those that use drugs or won't take their meds. Nothing will help them.

This plan will help the first group and do nothing to help the second. I suspect the numbers of homeless do not split evenly and hope Daytona has taken that into account.

There was a city, I think Denver, that tallied up the costs of homeless folks using the local hospitals and the numbers were stagering. They chose a bold plan, to build condos and give them away to those homeless that could keep clean (that was cheaper than a years hospital bills in some cases). This was what it took to get a large segment of the druggies to go clean but not enough for others.

Of course that solution comes off as unjust to the other taxpayers that had to buy their own homes and condos or rent, even if it saves taxpayer money.

Posted by rjschwarz 2007-01-22 13:09|| 2007-01-22 13:09|| Front Page Top

#10 I thought Santa Monica was the Home of the Homeless.

Posted by eLarson 2007-01-22 16:46|| http://larsonian.blogspot.com]">[http://larsonian.blogspot.com] 2007-01-22 16:46|| Front Page Top

#11 rjschwarz: Housing and care can be bizarre. Because of the high price of nursing homes in the US, some ambulatory retirees figured that they can get a room, room service, travel, and live in luxury with reasonably good minor medical care on cruise liners, for about the same cost. Major medical is also cheaper in Mexico and the Caribbean, if they need it.

So they calculate that they can live their last years aboard ship instead of some brick repository of the dying.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-01-22 17:46|| 2007-01-22 17:46|| Front Page Top

#12 "Saves a LOT of money" > D *** ng it, This is Amerika, the future mighty USSA = weak anti-sovereign SSR/USR, not America, we can't have Amerikans saving any $$$, let alone having any $$$. PERM UNIVERSAL GOVT-CENTRIC/LED STAGRESSION + STAGFLATION, ETC. = UTOPIA. don't ya know.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2007-01-22 21:56|| 2007-01-22 21:56|| Front Page Top

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