Hotel Stays, Especially in Inclement Weather
whathelpsthehomeless.blogspot.com
whathelpsthehomeless.blogspot.com
I told her she could stay with me for a bit and she said no, I offered to put her up in a hotel and she said no, I offered money and she said no. She did let me buy her lunch. I saw her at different corners around town and she would never take money. But I would sometimes swing by some place and pick up a breakfast biscuit for her.
I haven't seen her in a while now. I hope she got help.
For example, I have friends and family who would have helped me out if I had asked but that's the last thing I would ever do, still wouldn't even though I know it's a sure fire road to ruin.
I got lucky and took help from a stranger at the first opportunity.
Not sure that explains anything other than saying human beings don't always act rationally?
A) It is problematic to accept help of that sort from someone in your social circle. It makes you "a charity case" and that term is quite insulting. Once you are marked as "a charity case," good luck getting any actual respect ever again. So, many people resist that because they don't want to be your bitch and would rather go hungry.
B) Women face special safety challenges above and beyond that. The vast majority of men offering a woman a few bucks in charity will, sooner or later, conclude she "owes" them and want her to pay them back on her back, so to speak. So perhaps she had already been badly burned by that once, learned her lesson and was unwilling to risk it again.
I wonder if she panhandled as a job. (Apparently very proficient ones can make $200 a day. The less homeless you look, the more people tend to believe your stories and are willing to give.) If she did it as a job on the side, maybe she didn’t want to swindle jhwhite.
A more positive outlook: She was in need and to proud to take money from (former) friends. Today, she doesn’t live on the streets anymore.
She told me about her mental health problems (I won't go into them here), we went out a few more times and we stopped seeing each other.
There's no easy way to do this. It's hardly ever convenient. It isn't a foolproof means of turning situations around. It is, however, extremely powerful and desperately needed.
Do I practice what I'm saying? Sadly, not enough.
While I was filming a number of my subjects did talk about what they called the "homeless industrial complex", and how it doesn't really care about getting people off the streets because that would put it out of business. I never found out how much truth there was to that, but if I were ever to take this subject back up again that is were I would probably start.
But your film makes a critical and surprising point that I strongly agree with: These are, first and foremost, people. We aren't some separate population. We come from the rest of the population, but our lives have fallen apart and one of the most problematic things is the way social ties get cut.
People with more normal lives tend to be oblivious to the social fabric that defines so much of their life and which buffers them against simply going off the rails when something negative happens. They don't see this difference between themselves and homeless individuals, yet the reinforce the isolation by the way they interact with the homeless (or don't interact at all -- effectively shunning them).
I was pleasantly surprised by the film. I think more people should see it.
Shouldn't society and/or the government do more to increase awareness of these mental Heath issues and make information and treatments more widely available?
On the other hand, I would claim one can see a strong correlation between declining incomes and increased psychological distress in this society - the suicide rate approximately doubling in the last twenty years - not this is a direct casual effect.
Which is to say that easily available, acceptable housing - hotel rooms rather than shelters as suggested in the article - is better solution for people, psychologically distressed or not, than more psychological services or better psychological services. And also, if someone's on the streets, no amount of counseling (or drugs or whatever) is going to solve much if they stay on the streets.
Nobody cares much about mental health problems when the primary issue most people face every day is finding something to eat. As a corollary, I'd bet there are really significant causal forces at work in many mental health issues coming from exactly this – the lack of simple problems like food and shelter at the front in center of life combined with having the basic skills and environment to tackle those problems daily – drives many mental health problems.
Lots of people are depressed but almost nobody is starving, almost nobody is getting murdered or fighting in a war or dying of the common cold. Just about every baby survives, very few have to defend their home or their families from attack.... on and on and on. Human life used to be very rough and was not very long ago. We live in the most peaceful prosperous time in human history (and almost nobody seems to realize we're living in a paradise compared to a few hundred years ago).
"The author of this site has about six years of college, including an incomplete Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Resource Management...After the class was over, she continued to volunteer at the shelter for several more months. Years later, while homeless herself, she started the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide and also this site."
It's a shame the idea of helping the homeless via a night in a hotel is such a manually intensive effort. The article mentions paying in cash, I assume to avoid liability. Would be nice if there was a way to buy vouchers online that you could hand out.
Edit: cash friendly hotels that are already in rough shape, and dont worry about this sort of thing do exist...
Let me possibly shatter an illusion though. Staying at a "nicer" more expensive hotel in not-the-ghetto doesn't make it safe or secure or have any less problems than the cheap ghetto ones. It just means the room might be cleaner and you might be compensated something for bitching instead of told to fuck off. I worked both.
I saw a lot of shit and basically if you go in and they look like they're cutting corners on things like, and I shit you not and am quoting an Indian manager fresh off the boat "We're not required to have coffee creamer", run the fuck away fast. I saw similar places not wash sheets to save soap money (different hotel, same mind set). I saw meth labs in "nice" hotels. It goes on.
But you're right they wouldn't do it just for the "reputation of being a homeless shelter" alone.
didn't help me understand the point of your story, but did cast doubt on your credibility.
I've stayed in many hotels over the years at all different price points and in general there has been an almost perfect correlation between price and the quality of cleaning/rooms/service.
You would be far better off pooling money to buy a foreclosed hotel, and offering it at cost to the homeless via donated rooms. Hotels with solid occupancy metrics are very profitable absent constant capex for room improvements, designer toiletries, etc. Giving a hotel room would be effectively splitting the cost of the room, and just giving the homeless person 50% of the cash and the hotel 50%, at best.
As others have noted, advocating for improvements to the mental healthcare system would do far more good to domestic homeless populations. As would reforming drug laws (penal and rehabilitory), donating gently used work clothes for interviews, personally hiring them, or a million other things.
This blog is thoroughly emblematic of an "edgy idea" that is inexplicably engaging otherwise intelligent and well meaning people. There are people who have devoted their lives and run foundations to aid the homeless who are much better sources than the linked site.
ps - if you would like to actually help people, look at Haiti, South Sudan/west Africa, or Syria where poverty, war, and drought are causing far worse suffering. Consider donating to help orphans in areas of poverty. Consider donating to help preventable death from disease (dysentery/cholera, malaria, AIDS, chagas). Consider donating to help preventable suffering (dental/split palate, fistula, cataracts)... time is the only thing that prevents me from continuing.
The world is certainly not suffering from an overabundance of human kindness lately, and anything that increases that amount is laudable.
One of the problems with the shelter system is that it is a horrifying concentration of poor, sick people. I am advocating that we treat homeless people like human beings and stop trying to simply warehouse them, as if having a physical roof over your head is the single most important thing, and never mind the horrifying social and health aspects that merely compound your existing problems, creating a downward spiral you cannot escape. So I strongly disagree with your idea and I hope no one acts on it.
This blog is thoroughly emblematic of an "edgy idea" that is inexplicably engaging otherwise intelligent and well meaning people.
I strongly suspect that my writing on the subject of homelessness engages many of the members of HN precisely because I have been a member here for a number of years, they knew me when I had a corporate job, and some people respect the fact that I am also the top ranked openly female member of this overwhelmingly male forum.
But that's, you know, just my opinion, man.
It doesn't take systemic or policy level changes to make someone's day/week better.
Everything I've read says that while shelters are available, they typically have very strict schedules and policies, and staying there opens you up to theft and assault.
As for assaults, no shelter is going to allow an assult to happen and if an assault does happen, the police would be called. If you believe assaults are common at shelters, which they are not, call a shelter or the related police station and ask how many assaults they have had reported in the past year.
Everywhere has rules and polices, including hotels. Shelters are free and they have reasons for the rules.
In all seriousness though, I talk to the cleaning staff at hotels, hotel management, and law enforcement - and theft is the number one problem at hotels; next is prostitution, third is public disturbance.
My understanding is the average hotel has one theft a day; not including towels.
There's a USA TODAY report on hotel theft if you look for it.
Most homeless people don't have anything worth stealing; ask them.
Really, Mickey, I'm ashamed of you.
Hotels are at least partially liable for theft. If the theft occurs due to an employee's negligence (e.g. cleaning staff forget to close the door properly), then the hotel is fully liable.
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/hotel-liabilit...
I routinely leave all manner of expensive electronics, cash, passports, etc in 1st world hotels and have never once had anything stolen.
• If assaults happened in shelters, why would the shelters ever tell you?
• Why would anyone ever tell the police? I can't imagine the homeless victims would want the police MORE involved in their lives.
• Even if someone told the police about an assault at a shelter, would they bother to investigate, or keep records? Police have incentives to reduce crime stats, which isn't the same as reducing crime.
They absolutely would[1] here (central/east Europe). Is it different in the US?
[1] I run a local news site and we get these kind of stories all the time. Not just press releases from state or municipal police, but messages from the people themselves.
I wouldn't trust any police stat relating to homeless people - the notion that police even care about these people when they more often than not see them as the problem is.. odd at best. I'm really not sure where you're getting this idea that shelters are such wonderful, warm, safe places.
What I realized is a lot of these people don't want any responsibilities. They're not willing, or able to accept that life sucks for everyone. The governments need to start offering better mental health care that doesn't involve locking people up in hospitals (something an old friend of mine had happen to him, and it caused him to lose trust in everyone).
I don't think giving people hotel rooms is going to solve any problems - if anything it's just enabling it. A better solution is to expand affordable housing and job programs so people start to get back on their feet while ultimately leaving the decisions up to them. Ultimately if they want to live under a bridge that a choice they've made and there's nothing we can really do about it.
It's mental illness. The reason they won't "follow any rules" is because they're mentally ill. There's no easy answer, and saying "there's an easy answer, but it won't work for them" isn't actually an easy answer.
Many of them are very mentally ill, and living under a bridge is not a choice they've made willingly.
If someone's too mentally incapable of holding a job, or reading, or clothing themselves, then is it right that we force them under a bridge?
Note: I am responding to your comment, not to the practicality of the article's proposed solution.
I would wager that there is another set of people, that doesn't intersect with that first set very much, that are just down on their luck, for whom a place to shower and receive mail and handle phone interviews for some stable amount of time would help quite a bit.
The issue of homelessness is a particularly nutrient-rich substrate for germinations of the Just World Fallacy, particularly among nerds like us, with our affinity for pat narratives.
I'm curious how homeless shelters compare to (paid) hostels, which are far more economical than hotels. They're (I assume) both in a dormitory setting.
Hotels are obviously not economically feasible as a long-term solution. I think the risk of this proposal is that they are not a reasonable on-ramp to society, as even if you can get a stable job you almost certainly cannot afford to live in a hotel full-time. On the other hand, some sort of hostel-style accommodation would be reasonable.
Speculation roundup:
There are two economic values of a homeless person, actually any person, but I digress. P is the cost, to the state, of keeping that person alive and medically stable, which includes police and health services, as well as shelter costs, soup kitchens, etc. V is the value generated by the homeless person through their labor, which varies much more than some people expect. Many homeless people have jobs. But for many homeless people it's zero.
Ways of decreasing P include a number of creative policies designed recently as well as "short-term" tolerance of outdoor living. Ways of increasing V by contrast are generally limited to:
* standard inpatient mental health "treatment", has a slim chance of success and a large chance of backfiring and setting V to zero for a long time, also sends P through the roof
* outpatient medication, has a similarly tiny chance of success but a smaller chance of backfiring and is much cheaper
* prison labor, effective but brings to mind immediately The Road to Serfdom and other dystopian fictions (heh)
* ???
Creative ways of increasing V ought to depend on economic fundamentals, i.e. finding out what a homeless person is good for and exploiting that, to wit: homeless people tend to beat normal people at dealing with homeless people. They might also be able to help out with e.g. trash pickup or road maintenance. The typical road-map people envision for increasing V looks like this:
homeless -> [treatment] -> normal
but in reality looks more like this:
very low V -> [treatment] -> low V -> [more treatment] -> slightly low V -> [more treatment] -> mediocre V -> [more treatment] -> with luck normal V
The typical way of dealing with the intermediate stages currently consists of either locking them in a small compound with shitty beds and twelve other crazy people or giving them a bottle of pills and hoping Jesus can handle the rest. This, really, is the problem. Halfway housing for homeless people might look like a situation where housing is provided in return for part-time labor.
I'd also like to point out that while in "treatment" for homelessness it might not be reasonable to demand complete sobriety when you consider that you're preparing them for eventual release into a world where they'll be allowed to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes and probably marijuana and their drug use will not be so heavily monitored. Supporting the development of self-control means that people have to be able to have a little control in the first place, and the ability to make small mistakes before making big ones
Net value (delta, etc) being the summation of all Costs (you call this P for some reason) and all Benefits (You call this V, which is why I'm calling the result 'net').
We will presume humane solutions only. We are unwilling to leave people to die of sickness, mal-nutrition, exposure to the elements or lack of social safety mechanisms. To allow any of those preventable deaths is to admit that our society is morally and/or financially bankrupt.
In short, letting them die or killing them isn't a solution.
So, as a society, we must make them human again.
Survival: We must ensure that they are able to fulfill their daily physical needs. They also require shelter, and medical care; just as everyone else does.
Belonging: It is in society's best interest to identify what types and how much work needs, or is desirable to be, fulfilled. It is also in society's best interests to identify potential workers that can meet these needs and offer them training in that type of work. This can't really help with relationships, but forming a stable life and a community that can include the worker is a good foundation for that to happen within.
Empowerment: Belonging, and being 'useful' and desirable to have around are likely the underpinnings of esteem and a sense of having worth. Without these building blocks there is little hope of becoming more than a slave animal or worse.
Fixing these issues would help everyone, not just the most disadvantaged.