You observe this and the conclusion you make is that, 'many of the 'homeless' people are absolutely not homeless and simply know they can make much easier money off of people coming/going from bars and restaurants.'
or maybe they are homeless and know that their best bet of survival is going to the places with the most people willing to help them out.
or maybe harsh weather means that they aren't capable of being out in the open exposed to the elements, and are instead hunkered down somewhere where they can at least get minimal shelter.
I think the point of the article is that your surface conclusions from simple observations are probably not entirely accurate, and more likely a false assumption made by someone who has never experience homelessness and can't possibly know the motives or circumstances of that population.
The homeless population in Indianapolis congregates around the homeless shelters, not around businesses where police will tell them to keep it moving. As such most people here never witness the real homeless, where San Francisco you have tents alongside billion dollar businesses and police walking around people asleep on the sidewalk.
My point is, this article is shaming people for 'judging homeless' and that in some cities, the visible 'homeless' are often not homeless and are in fact con artists.
"Hey how dare you judge someone" well, when the ones many people are exposed to are scammers and not legit you get conditioned to be extremely wary of any person presenting as homeless.
Again, we passed a LAW here to discourage these scammers from making money by making it a crime to panhandle at intersections https://www.wthr.com/article/panhandling-law-loophole-lets-r...
And they are working on legislation to go after the panhandling downtown as well https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/14/indy...
The common ploy downtown, since the smoking ban took effect, was to find groups of smokers "hey can I bum a cigarette" or "hey can I get a light". If you engage them, with a yes or a no, they then starting asking if you have any money or try to sell you cheap plush toys.
I am all for solving the homeless problem, I was profoundly impacted after going to San Francisco and seeing people literally sleeping on sidewalks. It's a huge problem and unfortunate HOWEVER people absolutely abuse the charity of others this is why cities like Indianapolis have passed laws about panhandling.
My whole damn point in this thread is the author is accusing people of 'judging homeless', my point is MANY people have never experienced proper homelessness, they've experienced con artists and addicts that BELLIGERENTLY attempt to extract money out of people. When your experience is primarily with those types, you get jaded reeeeeeallllll quick.
This article reads like
'I was homeless once and that makes me better than you, listen up while I judge you because some people judge homeless people'.
June 24th 2018, at 33 years of age, is the first time I have ever seen someone sleeping on a sidewalk or the street. In San Francisco. The first time I've ever seen someone living in a tent or improvised tarp and cardboard tent, was on June 24th 2018 at 33 years of age in San Francisco.
While I have seen actual homeless people here in Indy, it was never in a tent/tarp/lean to on a sidewalk or street, never someone's camp in an alley, it was seeing people milling about outside of a homeless shelter when they are made to leave until night and never once while in that area was I ever hit up for money. I have however been hit up, and driven by people with signs, countless times in other areas by people that looked absolutely nothing like the men outside of the Wheeler mission or the individuals I saw in San Francisco. Unless they pan handlers just abruptly became homeless, the simple state of their shoes and the cleanliness of their clothes and person screamed they were running a con unlike the legitimate homeless people I have encountered.
It's been enlightening to see the surveys of the homeless in my area: who they are, how they got that way, how long they've been homeless.
There are now even prediction models for how unlikely an individual is to be alive in a year if they check 8 of 10 boxes in part of the survey.
The programs I've most been impressed with are the ones creating a stronger resistance layer to falling from having a home to homeless. They save society so much money.
Forming and maintaining relationships, in addition to $, are also important factor. Consider where in your network, homeless people could join and connect with you.
I live in Colorado as well. Out of interest, which programs are you referring to?
I think the faker argument is simply a story richer folks tell to themselves and their kids to prevent major cognitive dissonance since otherwise how can you justify the INSANE amount of homeless/panhandlers there? Branding these folks as the out-group makes it easy to turn a blind eye. No-one chooses to live 10x worse than the general population, beg and be looked down upon.
>You can start by not judging the homeless.
It's not a complex topic, but the judgement is based on information and the existing information speaks volumes.
Because I think the author is unfairly JUDGING people claiming they're 'judging' homeless people? I imagine most of the population of the United States has never had an interaction with someone they would describe as homeless.
Not everyone is judging people for being homeless, most just don't have context for actual homelesness. The bulk of their encounters are people hanging outside of gas stations "hey man, ran out of gas, laid off, kids and wife back in car, dog died, trying to get to dying grandma, could you spare 20$" or the people with a cardboard sign "homeless need money" working traffic lights day after day after day after day.
People judge what they see, most people don't see the kind of homelessness that downtown San Francisco has, or NYC has. Most of the country is suburban or rural.
What I'm saying in this thread is, the author seems to be incredibly myopic using his own limited experience as a way to judge others for judging.
This is quite a judgemental statement to make about someone who says he's been homeless for almost 20 years from someone who (I assume) has not been homeless before. Do you have less limited experience to make you less myopic? Also except we're reading different articles I don't know what you're talking about when you say the author is 'judging'. The article says homeless people don't always live on the street, have no education, do drugs or have no jobs, and you say "don't be judgemental, that's myopic". Does that really make any sense to you?
Instead of flying out the gate accusing people of judging homeless, consider this:
Not everywhere is like San Francisco where you have actual homeless people living in tent/tarp hovels on sidewalks in busy neighborhoods, come to downtown Indy and many of the 'homeless' people you find randomly around are absolutely not homeless and simply know they can make much easier money off of people coming/going from bars and restaurants. The bulk of the properly homeless people congregate around the Wheeler Mission shelter downtown, or are in suburban neighborhoods spread out over 368 (three hundred and sixty eight) square miles.
If there isn't a big event downtown, or it's a slow bar/restaurant night, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them. If the weather is harsh, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them.
A few years back we passed a law (here's an article how it was only partially effective https://www.wthr.com/article/panhandling-law-loophole-lets-r... ) here preventing people from pan handling within so many feet of intersections, guess what happened? Within a month they were completely gone, they quickly discovered they couldn't make worthwhile money that far away from the stoplights and stopped. I used to say multiple every day on my commute, now I only ever see the occasional people in suits 'collecting donations' coughbullshitcough for their 'ministry' and they will just pop up at a busy intersection with a long light for an hour or two because they know they have a very short window until they get run off by police.
What I'm getting at is, a lot of 'homeless' people get judged because there are a considerable amount that aren't actually homeless in many places. I honestly believe I've NEVER seen a homeless person on the street until I visited San Francisco in June and saw tent/tarp cities and people passed out on the middle of sidewalks in broad daylight.
Here in Indy the common homeless you'll see have relatively clean nice clothes, will usually have some sort of phone, look well fed, shoes in great condition, and sometimes are considerably overweight. In San Francisco I saw people in filthy clothes, a few people had shoes that were beyond shot and had clearly been worn well beyond their useful life, that were often pushing being underweight. From my window at the Proper I watched a man sleep on the sidewalk all night, when public transportation started running in the morning he got up and paced the sidewalk wrapped Assasin's Creed-style in his blanket with sneakers that looked nearly as old as I am, that guy was legitimately homeless, the feelings I have for the 'homeless' in Indy are nothing what like I felt for that man, watching him for an hour or so over the course of 12 hours left me in a funk for days, the 'homeless' here you walk by thinking "I bet he makes more in a few hours on the weekend than I will in a day of work". Truly homeless people here aren't a common site in public unlike what I saw in a day and a half in San Francisco. There's absolutely a homeless population here but the bulk of 'homeless' that we see are fakers, so we get conditioned to judge.
They're also attempting to pass more legislation to end panhandling downtown as it's still very much a problem https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/14/indy...