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Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

First thing I thought: holy shit, if we did this kind of stuff for those living below the poverty line, they would have enough resources to pick themselves up and get new jobs (after showers, job interview supplies, counseling, etc etc). At the very least the 22% of American children living in poverty would have a meal and clean clothes.

Second thought: if this was Orlando most of the donators would be arrested.

Third thought: This is the perfect time to backpack up to New York and have a week-long vacation for super cheap. Swing a protest sign for long enough to get a free meal, then move on to sightseeing.

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Actually, in New York you pretty much have to try to be homeless. I'm not going to say that being hard-on-your-luck is a breeze in New York, but with things like City Harvest (a truly brilliant concept -- http://www.cityharvest.org/), the anual coat drive, and the city's homeless outreach programs, it's certainly a lot better than many places. There was a good story a while back on "This American Life" that talked about this subject (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/358/s...). Additionally, you have Geoffrey Canada doing his thing up in Harlem...one of the true innovators in social reform. If you haven't heard of him, go read everything about him that you can now!

Honestly, the biggest gap in the city is caring for the mentally disabled. A large portion of the city's homeless population are schizophrenics, and they will effectively never be able to be productive members of society. For them, the only solution is long term care, but the city's mental facilities are really horrible. Unfortunately, the public's views on mental illness are still stuck in the 1890s...

The major cities of the Pacific Northwest actually have at least one serious problem that stems from making the homeless lifestyle too easy: too many runaway teens. One of my sisters lives in Portland, and for several years she worked as a social worker for teenage girls. The network of shelters, kitchens, and other services for the homeless is so extensive there that a lot of teens choose to leave home and just live on the streets. It is (or was, at least) so pervasive that there was actually some name for the phenomenon (can't remember what it was, off the top of my head), and it was a major concern to the organizations my sister worked with. Part of the problem is that there are policies in place that made it extremely difficult for parents to find their kids and bring them home. These policies exist for good reasons (e.g. abused children who shouldn't be found and brought home), but they are so one-sided that kids can just choose to run away because they feel like it, and their parents have no recourse if the kids are in the city's shelter system.

My comment was directed at people living below the poverty line, not homeless specifically. There are people who have a kind of sort of home (or live with relatives, or have the luxury of choosing between eating and having a roof over their heads) but giving them support can help them get through their situation without resorting to moving into a shelter or waiting in line at a soup kitchen.

Maybe it is nice to be homeless in NYC. It ain't in the rest of the country, and people need help everywhere.

It is a nice idea, but I don't believe that it would help. There are certainly people whom it would help, but I most of them are propperly unemployable because of other reasons and not just because they need a little hekp getting ba ck on their feet.

Actually I mentioned "people living below the poverty line", not homeless. People living below the poverty line are certainly employable, they just make the worst money possible. Give them food or clothes and maybe they can make their rent payment this month.

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