Yeah sorry guys. I just can't keep myself from wanting to sleep in a cold ass tent on concrete when it's freezing outside. I've tried stopping, but there's something about waking up with that amazing feeling of despair and lower back pain that I just can't quite replicate in my warm cozy bed indoors.
Ha, I lived like that for a whole week. Then it drove me to be a successful billionaire. It's these sacrifices that drive greatness in humans. Its clear to me, Alexander and Napoleon suffered the same suffering I endured, in order to rise to the heights they did.
I've come to the conclusion that lots of things can be described as a "choice". Working in a sweatshop is a choice. Who you fuck is a choice. Being poor is a choice. But choices are, to one degree or another, informed by your environment. Sometimes just a little, sometimes to the point where the word "choice" implies more freedom of action than a person actually has.
Being an asshole, for example, would be much closer to the un-coerced end of that spectrum than being homeless.
Good idea Suella! And after that, so they don't all freeze to death, we could build huge great 'houses' for the 'poor' (we can think of a catchy name later). And then obviously, as we can't just give these lucky people something for free, we can put them to work 18 hour days for the privilege of living there.
That's the beauty of the scheme! The kids will be so grateful, they'll work for free!!! And their fingers are so small and nimble, they'll only be about 75% likely to get hideously mutilated.
I figured out what it meant from context but when I first read the headline my immediate thought was something along the lines of “what the hell does that mean? Sleeping on a bed without sheets? lumpy pillows? The fuck?” lol
The problem is no human can simply give up a fentanyl addiction in a day or two. It takes MONTHS of hard work and support. One does not simply stop doing hard drugs and get into housing immediately. Solutions should be created and implemented by people that understand the underlying problems. We should be emulating countries like Portugal that have working systems. Instead we get braindead politicians creating the rules who have no idea what these people are going through or they want to create a system that will fail so we can go back to the failed war on drugs.
Oh, agreed, but the problem in Oregon is that UNLIKE Portugal, it's all carrot and no stick. We decriminalized all drugs, which created a human interest disaster, with absolutely zero incentive for then to get treatment.
The way it "works" now is if you get caught with drugs it's a $100 ticket. That ticket is waived if you call a toll free number and seek treatment. You don't have to actually ENTER treatment, all you have to do is call the number.
16,000 people ticketed, 136 called the number. Genius. I guess those $100 tickets make great toilet paper.
Portugal can actually force people into treatment. That can't happen here.
There's a lot more to it than that. Many shelters have check in times and doors closed times. If your local shelter has a check-in time of 5 and queuing starts at noon, then when your work shift doesn't let out until 3, you have to decide between temporary shelter and upward mobility on a regular basis.
They do, but the number of people attempting to juggle shelter life and employment is shockingly low. It's not zero, because it's never zero, but that's not the primary reason people are living on the streets.