Tuesday, January 26, 2010
City Lights / Woods Tossing Spare Change at the Homeless
Posted by Jeff Woods on Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 5:39 PM
Comments (9)
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I think you can park without paying all day if you have a handicap sticker/placard. Working in the middle of town for several years I observed the "handicapped" do that on a daily basis. The disabled ones were almost invariably women and fat. I mean pretty seriously fat. No wheelchairs, walkers etc just parking free when actually they needed a good long walk.
Perhaps someone has better or more up to date information on this.
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I really hate that phrase "liberal guilt." As a liberal I have zero guilt because I have spent years actually learning about the issue of homelessness and trying to do something about it. If anyone should have guilt it's the conservatives, who basically tell the homeless to quit whining and "get a job."
Yea let's tax the rich and give it to the poor, especially the alcoholic and drug addicted homeless. They'll spend it wisely. Yea that's exactly how to run a city.
If I had to sleep in a tent on the riverbank every night during the winter, I would probably be drinking too.
Every homeless person has their own, unique story and not all of them involve alcohol and drugs. Believe it or not, but some of the tent city dwellers get up, clean up the best they can, and go to work. Same with the participants in the Room in the Inn program. They have to get back downtown by 6:30 am to get to their jobs.
This city can use both private and public funds to get transitional housing in place for the hundreds of homeles women and their children. I do not care why they are homeless, especially the children. I only care what we can offer them now and in the immediate future.
God bless you Maggie. But, it's just not the way it works.
There are not hundreds of homeless women and children on Nashville streets. I would guess you know that but choose to be less than candid for whatever your motive. Maybe not.
Help and rehab for the homeless is notoriously unsuccessful. Offering a warm place to sleep and feeding them is about the best we can do and those doing it deserve our thanks.
At the last counts I could find about 300 women with children seemed a good estimate. Perhaps 100 were children but it was not claimed they were living outside.
In asking a Metro General ER doctor, he stated chronic hunger was not an issue assuming the homeless could get up and walk.
He noted malnutrition and hunger are entirely separate issues.
You yourself just estimated around 400 women and children were homeless. That is in the realm of "hundreds". While you may not see them sitting on the streets, they are moving from friend to relative and back to friends without a home. They sleep in their cars if they are lucky enough to have them. Children are going without services and education because they do not have a permanent address. Their security and emotional health that comes with permanance is gone. There are women who are sleeping in cars, moving from Walmart, to Krogers, and back to Walmart to spend the night in the parking lots. Where you aware that last night was the official "census" count of the homeless community? Where you out there freezing your ears off, looking under cardboard, checking behind dumpsters or under abandoned building? I do happen know how it works. I will let you know how the count comes out.
Mag,
I did not say that. I may not have been precise but many of the women have a male/another woman in the mix so the numbers are probably good enough.
From the tone of your post you are a bit of a zealot and seem more concerned about poverty. Which is, I would add, a more legitimate issue not requiring your exaggerations.
As for the "homeless count" I would take that with a grain of salt and consider the source.
I said God Bless you, and did not mean it any other way.
Maggie is absolutely right. The homeless, believe it or not, are real people with real stories and the same pain and love and dreams as the rest of us. John is wrong in dismissing them, disrespecting their basic humanity, with a casual drug-addict and alcoholic epithet. Even if some of the homeless have substance abuse problems, should no one care if an alcoholic freezes to death on a cold night? I too have been out with them and gotten to know a few and they may be cantankerous or sweet or energetic or lonely, depending on the person, but they are actual real live human beings. We should all remember that, John.
Oh, and the homeless count is an undercount. It only counts the ones that can be found on a cold January night. Many are so tucked away they aren't found and counted.
John, only your condescending attitude is outdone by your ignorance of homelessness.
What is unsuccessful is the 50 year old attempt at converting homeless people to Christianity as the sole means of ending their homelessness. Talk about FAIL.
But, new programs are being developed and implemented that have a good success rate, such the Metro Homeless Commission's Housing First program. The money raised by these meters will pay for more outreach workers who will be placing more homeless into housing.
