How much of a prevalence is homelessness in your local area, and how much has it grown recently?
I live in a small city in Northern California. Homelessness is increasing. Housing prices have exploded in the Central Valley, the cheapest 1 bedroom apartment is around $650 a month.
There is a homeless camp behind some bushes in a parking lot where I know one homeless guy lives. There are at least 3 people living in a parking lot inside vans and cars, you see their vehicles in the parking lot every single day. And there is this one lady with her dog who also sleeps in a tent in that parking lot and spends her day wandering around the parking lot and sleeping on the sidewalk behind a closed business.
I overheard some homeless veteran that he has served in several tours, and is waiting 3 weeks for a slot in the Salvation Army. Seeing homelessness is now a daily occurrence for me. Even during the Great Recession, I don't remember seeing this many homeless i my city.
I'm in Portland, OR. Our previous mayor Charlie Hales was a real piece of shit in regards to dealing with homelessness. Police were instructed to ignore the homeless and it even went as far as a plywood-walled homeless fortress being built RIGHT IN THE CENTER OF DOWNTOWN. The city council overturned a measure to use an abandoned jail with ovefr 400 beds to be used as a long-term shelter. However, our new mayor already seems to be cleaning things up, setting aside new shelter spaces and community funding.
Leo Gonzalez
As far as homeless growth in the US; I agree with Trump, unemployment numbers are higher than are being reported. Even in smaller towns like Richmond, VA I saw more homeless than ever before in the last 10 years.
Brandon Lopez
I'm homeless AMA
It started out because I liked going to work so much, I never wanted to leave. I had an xbox One at the office and just slept in my car. I started feeling like a spaceman sleeping in my car. I realized the power of this and started thinking about how to stay clean, safe, and happy. Before I knew it I was traveling across America, not paying for a Motel.
Winter is a good time - at least there isn't any bugs.
Logan Reed
Do you have any means to support your income or are you just living off savings right now?
If so, what are you planning when you run out?
How many states have you been to? Have any pictures?
Any major plans in the future?
Christopher Gomez
doesn't matter, we'll bring in some (((refugees))) and everything will fix itself. Refugees are always the answer, more refugees
Anthony Hill
>I started feeling like a spaceman sleeping in my car
How long have you been doing meth, be honest
Tyler Nelson
Have any pictures?
Here is Pepe on the dash getting me through it all.
I'll post a few basecamps
Elijah Bell
I'm in Denver and it's atrocious. Why the fuck would you want to be here in January?
Daniel Lee
...
Ian Davis
>Why the fuck would you want to be here in January?
I can think of 5280 reasons. Dat elevation.
Noah Wright
...
Tyler Watson
Iive about 25min outside atlanta and homelessness isnt bad were im at but as soon as you get anywhere near downtown they are EVERYWHERE. Asking for change bumping into you being creepy as fuk. Their is also a small homeless city on the on ramp to 75 with all their tents and shit. They even have a fucking clothes line out with towels on it. Kinda makes me laugh and cry at the same time. Sad really.
Ayden Hill
This is how I do Sunday at the truck stop.
Isaac Ross
There's a straight up favela growing about a half mile from where I live.
Charles Russell
Early this morning some crack nigger went into a local shelter and shot 2 other niggers. Just nigger things I guess.
Ian James
There was one homeless guy around here for awhile but I haven't seen him for ages. Pretty sure he was a drug addict so he's likely dead.
Houses are dirt cheap around here because I live on border of a ghetto. There is no excuse to homeless.
Elijah Powell
I live near a city of 600k or so. All the undeveloped areas, greenways, places you might like to go for a walk etc are full of little shanty camps. I felt bad at first, but they're filthy and they're drunk and they're insane and I want to kill them now
Michael Richardson
I live in Seattle. I don't notice much homeless here.
Isaac Hill
My church used to have a homeless guy who slept on the loading dock but then he died. His dying was unrelated to being homeless, I think, he got hit by a car.
Lucas Long
>So consumed with passion that you forget to add a period to your last sentence Truly, truly outrageous.
Blake Price
>so calm that you put a period at the end of a statement which isn't even a sentence
Parker Richardson
Edinburgh Scotland there are two types of 'homeless' people.
First are the people I can feel for, they are heroin or alocohol degenerates always Scottish and never obnoxious. They sleep on the street.
The second are the piece of shit scum of the earth Romani Gypsy types. They don't speak a word of english other than a couple of bullshit catchphrases from Google Translate. "FREE CHANGE", "MONEY", "AYAA".
JESUS FUCK THEY PISS ME OFF. I've been at Edinburgh uni for 2.5 years so I know all these guys like they are fucking Pokémon. The fat guy, the "AYA" guy, the guy on his knees with laminated paper.
The WORST part is that the Gypsy scum all have flats in the city. I went to the gym one morning and this degenerate is leaving his flat with a thermos of coffee wearing faux snakeskin boots.
AMA about these fuckers because I see them multiple times every day.
Ryan Jackson
Every administration has cooked the books one way or another - under Clinton, they cooked the books on the deficit, to sell that narrative. Obama's people seriously cooked the unemployment numbers, they redefined what :unemployed" means to do it. If you've been out of work over a certain amount of time, then you're considered "not looking" and aren't counted. I would like to think Trump won't cook the books, but he's a business guy, and they all do it, too. Plus, I think he if he were to direct all of his people to get the real numbers on everything, and read them off in his first State Of The Union, the entire house of cards would go up in flames. I don't think the country could take the truth, and how fucked up everything really is. The truth is, we've been in a depression, for a while.
Joseph Martin
You're absolutely right.
Great insight user
Alexander Reed
Cali, Oregon, Washington state. Lots of tent cities. Guys pushing shopping carts down the sides of roads late at night in the middle of nowhere and then all over every stream in down town Portland.
Xavier Jenkins
Its not merely unemployment numbers that contribute to homelessness. Even during the Great Recession, I haven't seen this many homeless. A large part of the reason is because of housing prices. Gentrification and foreign Asian investors are the ones driving up housing costs. America really does have to prevent foreign Asians from coming to the US and buying up our property.
America technically has a low unemployment rate. yet there are so many homeless because the jobs don't pay enough and housing prices are too high. This is different from during the Great Recession when we saw a housing crash- which meant low housing prices.
Nathan Robinson
There hasn't been a homeless problem in the MSM for about 8 years now. Geee I wonder why? Oh yeah, the MSM has been covering for this guy!
Pic related
Josiah Cooper
>live in Florida >every winter (((homeless))) people come down because of the cold >Ever since one "veteran" started pan handling at this one busy intersection now they all do it. >and all of the sudden all homeless men are vets and homeless women are moms
Luis Cox
>Any major plans in the future?
I got a STEM degree, so I'm just building my experience right now. Body, Mind and Soul is what it's about, it's what makes me human. When it comes to dreams, I would get a lot of satisfaction from helping create a video game. You only really lose if you quit and I'm not ready to quit.
I have been partying since election day. No hard drugs, just high spirits.
I have never asked for a penny by the way. I have never had a penny of welfare or food stamps. So many people are a waste more than me, I always try to have a positive impact.
William Adams
So much this. Now that's a real red pill.. Not too spicy.
James Nguyen
Small town in NH. Homelessness has grown exponentially lately. As has minorities, and drug use. NH is one of the hardest hit areas with the heroin epidemic. I would say once every few weeks I hear about someone I went to HS dying from an overdose. It is sad, my family raised me here because it was a small and quiet area with a non existent crime rate. When I was growing up I didn't know a single person who locked their cars or homes. Now it is a shithole.
Colton Ross
Okay, lets open that can of worms. Too much of our economy right now is in housing - too much personal wealth is tied up in it, and based on it. The banks and the mortgage companies and the Federal Reserve have all been kicking this can down the rod to the point where doing anything will implode the entire system - touching housing right now would gut the stock market, cause bank runs, and destroy millions of people's economic lives.
You wanna pull that trigger?
It SHOULD have happened, instead of the bailouts, now? WAY too late. They've kicked the can so far down the road, the ONLY buyers are Chinese and other foreigners. The prices HAVE to stay up, or we lose everything. The only way to make housing affordable is to either raise wages, or lower prices - and lower housing prices means economic doom.
Go on, pull the trigger. See what happens.
I don't know what we should do, it's all so fucked up, and strung along for so long, the pain of fixing it would destroy the nation, utterly. Again, if we'd done it before the bailouts (along with regulations for mortgage based investments), we'd be past the pain, and well along recovery, if not booming.
Now? We're fucked. If you have solutions, I'd love to hear them, because I can't see any way out of this, short of a miracle and wages going up.
Nathan Price
what have you/do you work in? specifically i guess.
what was your major and how do you learn more stuff? you dont have a house so no internet plan, how's that work?
>random fiscally conservative(never spending) autist with comp engineering degree and no sex life
Grayson Rodriguez
I'd pull that trigger.
Americans keep forgetting that the economy is supposed to serve the people. Instead, the people serve the economy. The people view "the economy" as some sort of deity that has to constantly be fed and appeased through offerings and tribute. The American people think that they constantly have to sell out their future by importing millions of foreigners and watching their own people become homeless and poor just to appease "economic growth."
So yes, I'd pull that trigger. I see economic collapses as perfectly normal and healthy. Its what allows new players to enter the game. I want to invest in the stock market, but I can't do that until there is a collapse. I want to buy a house, but I can't when housing prices are this high.
Oliver Anderson
Where there are good white jobs homelessness isn't a big prob
Go north and be white
Grayson King
>wut was your major I got a CS degree. It took a while to find a job, I worked as a manager/cashier and love it.
>wut PC? 4G for standard browsing and such. When it's time to develop I carry this beast to the library. I feel like Joanna Dark when I carry it in through the entrance like a briefcase.
If people can tell you're homeless by looking at you, you're doing it wrong. I'll just keep working hard and eventually the resources will match it, until then I feel very independent and strong.
Gonna play l4d2 and practice banjo to get ready for homeless apocalypse. Shit is gonna be intense.
Parker Collins
Yep. Economy and ecology aren't any different. Can you think of anything in nature that will grow indefinitely?
Christopher Garcia
thank u user. I'll remember this if i ever turn into something close to your type of lifestyle, seems intriguing as fuck
side question that doesn't matter but fuck it we're here already... i meant what field do you work in? just cause being in CS means fucking anything nowadays. Web dev, software dev shit? it's all technically foreign to me cause i'm inexperienced as shit but everything is cool to me yet i don't have an idea on what to put more focus into. It's essentially all videogames that i know about yet am not sure if i want to put the time in to play
Andrew Jones
oh and videogames was an analogy. I dont know shit about shit
Jason Hughes
Maybe it's just warmer than average where you are, and the homeless migrate there because it's a particularly severe winter.
Noah Ross
It actually is. The coldest it will get at night is like -2 degrees C.
And the Bay Area is shipping its homeless in mass to the Central Valley and Nevada.
Connor Barnes
Unemployment has meant the same thing it always did. Obama's PR just took advantage of the fact that everyone was ignorant about it.
Dylan Gomez
Nope. Do the work. Obama's people redefined what "unemployed" means. Fact.
Austin Reed
Living in Huntington Beach, CA and I've noticed a heavy increase in homeless people and also a decrease in the quality of said homeless people. We have plenty of recognizable functioning homeless people that bathe, groom, and wash their clothes and take good care of themselves here, but ive noticed more and more drug addicts and cart-pushers as of late and I don't know what has caused it.
Brandon Turner
liar/sheep otherwise this,
Lucas Nguyen
Other cities are probably shipping them in to Huntington Beach. Its cheaper for society just to give homeless people housing than to face the social costs of homelessness, like crime, ER visits, and incarcerating them.