Ask HN: Raising animals a good drug addiction cure the homeless have? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Raising animals a good drug addiction cure the homeless have?

I hired a homeless person to help at my farm and he was off drugs in 6 months. He's recruited another homeless who has been now testing negative since last month and we're celebrating today.

They really appreciate being able to spend time with each other and with the animals on the farm and have spoken with me, telling me that it's the animals to take care of and be responsible for that have given them meaning to life again.

Have any of you stumbled across this yourself?

Does this make sense to you (incase I am in a local minima that won't generalize)?

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There are many programs for troubled people (troubled teens, convicts, etc.) that revolve around working with horses and other animals. There's also something to say for just getting somebody physically away from bad influences.

My wife teaches people to ride horses and a very thin slice of her business is serving sick children, developmentally disabled people, veterans with PTSD -- most people find a meaningful connections with animals but for some people with challenges it is one of few things they can connect to.

This is very interesting!

Why isn't this a popular method to "rehome" the homeless?

Instead of paying hundreds of $$ min a day for a hotel in SF/NYC, why not create farms in rural areas for the homeless to work and rehab at?

It's a good idea but it takes some discipline.

For instance if you have multiple people with drug problems one of them will go to town and bring back a supply and now you have people using, overdosing and making trouble.

You might give some people a task like moving rocks from here to there and think it is straightforward but some people need an astonishing amount of supervision to stay on task.

Also dealing with severe mental illness is hard. We had a woman (E) living at our house who I think had schizoaffective disorder who had nowhere else to go; she reminded me of my aunt who suffered from bipolar and some of my desire to help this person came from wanting to "pay forward" the kindness my aunt showed me.

My son was an only and badly needed the sibling experience and being an adult who didn't behave like an adult, E was a pretty good "sister" to my son. Being embedded in our family routine was good for E and she lasted 18 months at our farm which was longer than she stayed anywhere.

One night though she lost it; my son and I barricaded ourselves in the bedroom and called the sheriff but E threatened my wife with a knife and then disappeared into the night.

She came back to the farm to visit a few years later and then passed away two weeks after that.

This place

https://www.wgaforchildren.org/

is well-regarded but it is a running gag that they are always hiring people because it a high stress place to work at.

Interestingly, this is basically what asylums were originally (back in the 1800s) before they expanded too much and became essentially just prisons for the mentally ill. There's a really great 99% invisible episode about this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-kirkbride-plan/

In particular, this episode goes into a lot of detail about why asylums got so big (price efficiency and scalability, basically) and why that essentially ruined the "recovery" side of treatment for the mentally ill, because things weren't personal any more.

I have had this exact thought, but zoning laws would prohibit this in most places. I own a 100 acre hobby farm, and I am not permitted to house anyone else on my property. I would gladly trade farm work for housing, but I would be breaking the law. Not coincidentally this would be the only way for me to bootstrap to profitability, because there is zero labor available in my very rural area.

> I own a 100 acre hobby farm, and I am not permitted to house anyone else on my property. I would gladly trade farm work for housing, but I would be breaking the law

I have the same exact problem here in California.

It's almost as if the cities want the homeless to remain homeless even if a section of the homeless are willing not to be

Of course, the real irony in all of this is that it’s an open secret that many bigger farms hire illegals for their labor, pay them less than minimal wage, house them in leaky shanties, and basically hold them hostage by thinly veiled threats about calling INS. Profitable farms cannot afford to follow every law, because they are competing in a marketplace where almost all of the winners cheat.

> real irony in all of this is that it’s an open secret that many bigger farms hire illegals for their labor, pay them less than minimal wage, house them in leaky shanties, and basically hold them hostage by thinly veiled threats about calling INS

IDK how upto date you are on this but in California this arbitrage opportunity is gone.

"thinly veiled threats about calling INS" is no longer a point of leverage, actually a quick way to lose any farm hands in California.

The current arbitrage opportunity in California are to use these people for EDD and WIC fraud but this is offtopic for this post and likely too political for HN.

We are lucky to be in a town in Upstate NY that has no zoning.

It keeps property prices low because the main thing that makes a house a $400,000 house is being surrounded by $400,000 houses. In our town you could always have a trailer across the street owned by a someone from a family that has a street named after them.

Having zoning in the town is a controversy, something that some people want to do because they want to keep Dollar General out, but it seems absurd to thing Dollar General would harm other businesses in the area or somehow turn the area into a food desert if it isn't already.

Yes.

More generally, any low-difficulty, low-stressful task or source of enjoyment is probably a cure for most homeless people. Especially if you give them a shelter and food and access to shower and safety other stuff you don’t get being homeless.

Homelessness and drug-addiction are a vicious cycle. Imagine yourself, but homeless on the streets, dirty and with a headache. Would you be able to sober up, re-learn software engineering or some other trade on your own, and re-aquire a living space and job? Maybe, but it would be incredibly tough and would take at least a few months. Meanwhile you have to find food, avoid the elements, avoid thieves and police. find spaces to clean, spaces to sleep. And also whatever job you take, you have to compete with people who aren’t homeless and don’t have to do those things. And this is ignoring the temptation and withdrawals from drugs.

But let’s say someone gives you a basic job and basic necessities. Now it’s a lot easier to get back on your feet, because you only have to deal with the drug withdrawals. The work also helps serve as a distraction and alternate source of happiness, which is extremely important.

You gave these people a clear and reasonable way to succeed and enjoy life without drugs, effectively breaking the cycle.

> You gave these people a clear and reasonable way to succeed and enjoy life without drugs, effectively breaking the cycle.

Makes a lot of sense to me!

My hypothesis is that drug use is a proxy for the hormones released with productive activities.

I will recommend the book The truth about addiction and recovery if you want to better understand what happened. It suggests that giving people meaningful work and a means to succeed is a viable means of treatment for addiction.

I will note that I know a fair amount about homelessness and I think the angle that "homeless people are all junkies and crazies" is way over hyped.

But thank you for doing this for them. You did a good thing.

> I will recommend the book The truth about addiction and recovery if you want to better understand what happened. It suggests that giving people meaningful work and a means to succeed is a viable means of treatment for addiction.

I really appreciate you sharing this. As you can guess, I stumbled into this.

> I will note that I know a fair amount about homelessness and I think the angle that "homeless people are all junkies and crazies" is way over hyped.

Would you be able to share the geographic location for the homeless you studied?

What was the segment and proportion of actual junkies to crazies to on-bad-luck-but-can-be-helped you noticed?

What I have noticed in SF and NYC is a certain number of them are indeed mentally unstable. The reason why I am yet to expand beyond a second person is because I was stabbed by a schizophrenic who was convinced I was the Jonah who had been tormenting him in his sleep for years. The police have asked me to work thorough certain agencies and NGOs since then. Unfortunately it's impossible to make any progress through them as far as having them work on my farm is concerned. They only want donations and cannot work with my farm idea.

a lot of people end up going down that road because they are lonely, feel unloved or unimportant to anyone. Having someone or something to care for can change that for sure.

Sounds like the guy you hired had a talent. Maybe you, too. More of that.

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