What to Do with the Homeless?

by Jack

If you have ever found yourself in a situation where you have just lost everything except the clothes you had on your back, you will have a lot of sympathy for the homeless.  You will naturally want to give them your spare change, donate clothing and allocate whatever resources our tax money can buy.

Imagine the sense of hopelessness, shame and uncertainty that comes with losing your job, your home, your family and your dignity.  Having no money or means to earn it, is a frightening place to be. A dwindling spiral with a one way street that goes only in one direction – downwards.  This motivates a lot of giving, but this scenario is not factually correct.  It  represents less than 10% of the homeless.

This the picture is the one the bleeding hearts use to extort tax money for tiny homes and all sorts of projects to cure the homeless problem.  But, in truth it’s a fools errand.  The people noted above are not helpless!  With a slight amount of personal effort these people can easily turn around their temporary poverty situation around.

It’s the rest of the homeless that are the big problem.  Unfortunately, we’re still not taking a census of the people classified as homeless… so we’re left to guess who is mentally ill, who are the addicts, alcoholics, the roaming predators and just bums?

Based on educated guesses, the vast number of homeless can be tied to their personal lifestyle choices, that include drugs, alcohol, laziness.  They have a strong desire not to be obligated to a schedule.  They want no responsibility whatsoever. They are takers and they have ample places that provide them with free food, clothing and temporary shelter.  What isn’t given to them can be stolen by them with little or no consequences.   This class of homeless becomes entrenched in a lifestyle that at some point becomes virtually irreversible.

The balance of the homeless population suffer from varying degrees of mental illness, according to a Harvard study in 2016.  They estimate about 25% of the homeless are severely mentally.   Included here are those victimized by their own lifestyle choices, addiction issues, dysfunctional childhoods, autism, an array of various forms of destructive schizophrenic and psychotic behaviors.  Without the mentally ill being forced into sanitariums they will remain on the street until death.   Outpatient efforts have failed miserably because their is no consistency of treatment.  Their is no way to effectively manage their medication or restrain their destructive behaviors and this led to virtually no mental health treatment for the homeless.

However, when sanitariums were closing across the nation (1970’s) in favor of clinics we thought this was the best way to treat the mentally ill.  The ACLU  argued successfully that it was unconstitutional to warehouse mental patients in state institutions.  Psychiatric association agreed that patients were not getting proper treatment in lockdown hospitals and it was generally thought to be better to let back into society and then receive help from the clinics.  Outpatient clinics would replace the sanitarium approach and we spent hundreds of millions on clinics across the USA, that were soon closed for a lack of business!

It was NOT Gov. Ronald Reagan who closed down mental hospitals.  That is a long standing liberal lie.  Reagan was only the figurehead who signed the bi-partisan legislation into law in CA.   It was legislation presented to him that was demanded by the psychiatric professionals and bolstered by progressives in the ACLU.   And lets remember, this was not just in California, this was a national movement.  So enough with the Reagan bashing.

So what is the answer now, clinics don’t work and sanitariums were just expensive warehouses for the mentally ill.

It’s a choice between bad and terrible and I vote for bad.  It’s time to reopen the mental hospitals with the hope that we’ve learned some improved methods for treatment since the 1970’s.   But, we’ll have to deal with the ACLU lawsuits.  I think the evidence is compelling that severely mentally ill are victimized and die young if left on the street.  Warehousing them is significantly better and justifiable.

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