I agree with you both.
It is heartbreaking and a terrible situation…at least here in the US..I cannot speak for homelessness around the world.
There is a high percentage who do have a mental illness…and in case you haven’t noticed, access to mental health services in the US is severely lacking.
Not only are mental health services underfunded, but there is a taboo in the US against seeking help for one’s self. There is a lot of wasted money being thrown at programs like these, and a lot of them have some good successes, while many do not….why? Because you cannot partially fund a program and expect it to work like it is supposed to. It’s much easier to throw a little money to test it out and then withdrawal the rest after the numbers don’t add up. This has been the downfall of many mental health programs.
There are some really great ideas to fix some of the basic issues that are causing people to be homeless. Another aspect of why there are so many homeless people, is the amount of money that people earn at work - or, the lack of a living wage, both in the working person’s life and the lives of those who are retired on pension plans that were supposed to do things like earn a cost of living difference, but have been changed to save the company money making it the sole responsibility of those who are too elderly to work to come up with the difference. (which is just fucking wrong, but happens every day here in the US).
There is a group up in Portland that bought a huge empty lot to build a whole bunch of tiny 200 square foot houses on it…and charge a rent of somewhere around $300-400 a month…specifically for folks like these, who have a fixed income, are too elderly or disabled to work, and cannot come up with and average rent amount of around $1000 a month. Part of the money earned through the rent, will go toward funding more such houses for more people.
There are those who would say that there will always be homelessness…and for those people who think they are so down to earth and have it all figured out I have to say that it is that attitude of giving up before you try because you think it cannot be done…either because of your own pessimism or cynical nature.
It will not be easy…and perhaps it WILL never be accomplished…but I think it should be a little higher on our societal list of priorities.
Did you know that 70% of corporations in the US pay no taxes either through subsides or other tax breaks/loopholes? Isn’t that insane?
These are the tax dollars that we (the working and poor class) pay to fund roads, teachers, food-stamps, bridges, police, etc. etc. etc….
So basically they have told us, through their unwillingness to also fund our society, that they don’t give a flying fuck about people and society in general…this is 70%!
The only way to make sure that the programs that we people find worthwhile is to make sure that we do our best to set up a fair system. Fair taxes, fair laws, fair pay, fair benefits, fair voting.
We are all just a hop, skip and a jump away from being homeless ourselves…some more than others.
We need some social security (not the program) in the US….we need to know, that if we get laid off tomorrow…or that if we or someone we love is ill or in an accident…or any other sets of circumstances out there - that we have systems and programs available to us to keep us from becoming homeless ourselves.
We have to demand these rights. We need to support the unions, because collectively we can effect great change. We need a living minimum wage. We need universal healthcare including mental health services. We need the money taken out of politics - specifically “Citizen’s United”, go here to sign the petition to repeal it -
http://www.democracyisforpeople.org
While the giant corporations have such a powerful position within our congress and government, we will never see our tax dollars spent on programs, such as funding mental health, because it isn’t a priority to them, regardless of what the majority of of actual taxpaying human beings wants.
This is why our social safety net programs are continuously gutted and cut and trimmed. The programs like SNAP (food stamps) and welfare, don’t benefit the rich…they benefit the poor…and so why should they give a flying fuck? They don’t.
And so we must eventually stand up and fight for what 'we the people’ actually want to fund and support with our taxes…because right now, those deciding where are taxes are spent and made by those groups who don’t pay them at all.
This is an injustice.