Seattle is Dying

[Emergent]

Seattle is Dying is a good, neutral analysis of the mental and physical repercussions of a lax and liberal governmental oversight of the homeless and sociologically impaired population of Seattle Washington.

I can personally verify that this account is accurate.

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Philadelphia had similar issues with Seattle, San Francisco and west coast areas. Programs developed to help with homelessness and downtown cleanliness/vagrency include:

1. Creation of Center City District

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In 1991 the business leadership organization CPDC created the CCD business improvement district to deliver daily services with the goal of making Center City clean and safe. This helped transform Center City into a vibrant 24-hour downtown, attractive to businesses, residents, students, shoppers and tourists.

We provide security, cleaning and promotional services that supplement, but do not replace, basic services provided by the City of Philadelphia and the fundamental responsibilities of property owners.

CCD also makes physical improvements to the downtown, installing and maintaining lighting, signs, banners, trees and landscape elements. The district encompasses 233 blocks and more than 1,500 properties.

2. Street Outreach – Office of Homeless Services

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Our work begins with Street Outreach. Project HOME’s Outreach Coordination Center (OCC), in partnership with the City of Philadelphia, the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services (DBHIDs), and other service providers, coordinates outreach to people living on the streets of Philadelphia. Last year, the OCC made 6,890 unique contacts and placed 2,869 individuals. Homeless Outreach can be contacted day or night.

Outreach response workers build trusting relationships that enable individuals who are experiencing homelessness to accept placement in appropriate settings where they can begin to stabilize their lives. The outreach teams attempt to establish a rapport that gradually leads to acceptance and an agreement to accept help. Outreach teams conduct street outreach around the clock seven days per week, with additional teams out during summer and winter weather emergencies.

Our Aim Is To Make Homelessness Rare, Brief and Non-Recurring Throughout the City of Philadelphia.

3. Sr. Mary Scullion RSM created Project Home in 1989.

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Project HOME has been a leader in providing comprehensive and effective services to persons who experience chronic homelessness. With innovation, leadership, and an unyielding commitment to the dignity of each person, we have developed nationally recognized programs that have proven that homelessness can be solved. We have also been a leader in Philadelphia in responding to the root causes of homelessness by helping to rebuild low-income neighborhoods and by engaging in political advocacy to bring about positive public policies for low-income and homeless persons....

Services include: Housing, Adult Learning and Workforce Development, Social Enterprises, Healthcare and Recovery Services, Advocacy and Public Policy.

Last year, HOME opened outreach center in one of the subway concourses to give info, provide place to shower, wash clothes, and get brief healthcare screening and encourage housing placement. All of these programs are replicable around the country.

[Duranie]

17 hours ago, TriciaJ said:

Labels are a good thing to be careful of. A lot of damage has been done under the guise of "compassion". Just like the deinstitutionalization we talked about earlier, that was supposed to be motivated by compassion. The fact is, providing proper mental health services costs money.

Affordable housing is a nice idea, but someone has to provide it. And no matter who's providing your housing, usually there are some rules to follow to live there. And if your state is known for big welfare cheques, then you attract low-functioning individuals from other states. And if you tax the **** out of your middle class to support all that, they move away. By the way, any time anyone is taxed for any reason, the people running things get their cut first. So the poor-with-a-capital-p provide a handy excuse for tax-and-skim. And if you speak out, then you're just not compassionate enough.

Follow the money. Someone is profiting from the poor and homeless or else there would be fewer of them.

The bolded statement above is especially relevant in Seattle. The homeless population is going up & up... and the main cause isn’t Amazon, believe it or not— it’s that vagrant persons are coming to Seattle from other places! Imagine moving somewhere else to be homeless there.... it boggles the mind, yet it’s happening. And I’ve gone past many of the “tent cities” (although honestly, they’ll pitch their tents anywhere, including the median, under a stoplight, in a crosswalk, in a handicapped-designated curb parking area, blocking the curb-cut...) but let me tell you, many of the tents are nicer than anything my “upper-middle class” family could afford, many expensive, REI and similar tents... and larger than we ever used for our family of six. I can’t say how many people are living in those huge tents, but I *can* say— they aren’t the type of tent you roll up and move with on a whim. They aren’t strapping these to their backpacks and hitching a ride someplace else when the mood hits them....

Furthermore, Seattle has tried several times to provide “transitional housing” — for example, building hundreds of “tiny houses” as part of a pilot program— so people could have a secure living space, with an address, which they need to apply for jobs and access social services like vocational rehab, etc. But there were rules for living in them— shocking, I know— and last I heard, they had to discontinue them, because they were used for prostitution and drug dealing, and the few people not engaging in illegal activity were targeted and robbed or worse.

So if you have a population of people, who refuse to live within basic societal rules, and won’t rise above their circumstance of living on the street and eating garbage— what do you do? You can’t help people who don’t want help....

[Forest2]

Sometimes complex problems have simple causes. Mainly I believe it is due to the deterioration of the traditional family unit and morals. It got worse with the "ME GENERATION" idea. Those license plates that say kids first, it should say family first I think.

[Forest2]

3 hours ago, Duranie said:

The bolded statement above is especially relevant in Seattle. The homeless population is going up & up... and the main cause isn’t Amazon, believe it or not— it’s that vagrant persons are coming to Seattle from other places! Imagine moving somewhere else to be homeless there.... it boggles the mind, yet it’s happening. And I’ve gone past many of the “tent cities” (although honestly, they’ll pitch their tents anywhere, including the median, under a stoplight, in a crosswalk, in a handicapped-designated curb parking area, blocking the curb-cut...) but let me tell you, many of the tents are nicer than anything my “upper-middle class” family could afford, many expensive, REI and similar tents... and larger than we ever used for our family of six. I can’t say how many people are living in those huge tents, but I *can* say— they aren’t the type of tent you roll up and move with on a whim. They aren’t strapping these to their backpacks and hitching a ride someplace else when the mood hits them....

Furthermore, Seattle has tried several times to provide “transitional housing” — for example, building hundreds of “tiny houses” as part of a pilot program— so people could have a secure living space, with an address, which they need to apply for jobs and access social services like vocational rehab, etc. But there were rules for living in them— shocking, I know— and last I heard, they had to discontinue them, because they were used for prostitution and drug dealing, and the few people not engaging in illegal activity were targeted and robbed or worse.

So if you have a population of people, who refuse to live within basic societal rules, and won’t rise above their circumstance of living on the street and eating garbage— what do you do? You can’t help people who don’t want help....

Maybe the problem will solve itself. Survival of the fittest?

[OldDude]

13 minutes ago, Forest2 said:

Maybe the problem will solve itself. Survival of the fittest?

Each year over 3.5 million people visit Yellowstone National Park. The park is loaded with signs that read, “Don’t feed the bears,” but visitors are constantly doing just that. As a result, bears become too lazy to look for food. So, sadly, some of them starve to death in the woods—which are full of nourishment—when the tourists aren’t there to give them handouts.

This is an excerpt of one of the thousands of articles about feeding animals that are capable of providing for themselves...see any similarities?

[Daisy4RN]

3 hours ago, Duranie said:

So if you have a population of people, who refuse to live within basic societal rules, and won’t rise above their circumstance of living on the street and eating garbage— what do you do? You can’t help people who don’t want help....

Exactly! I have seen this over and over. I had pts in the hospital being dc'd, the hospital is mandated to not dc to the street (even when the pt wants to). Social worker, case manager etc spend resources to find a place, place is found (board and care, shelter etc) but pt refuses to go, hospital cannot dc pt without an address, now we get psych invoved to document pt psych status, more resources used, pt continues to stay in hospital, someone talks pt into leaving to said "address" (even though pt states he is not going to stay there bc of rules etc), and off he goes. We also had a program in my city for homeless, the vast majority would not make it through because they continued to have pos drug screen, would not show up for req classes etc. So we tax payers just keep throwing good money after bad. I dont know the answer but what we are doing is obviously not working.

[LilPeanut, MSN, RN, NP]

Again, you can't just address it at one place. I'm a bit disappointed with the level of disdain people seem to have.

It's a complex issue and solution and unless we are prepared to just line people up and kill them (because essentially that's what you are doing when you don't help them)

The sheer numbers in SF and Seattle make comprehensive services like that difficult. People literally get given one way tickets to the west coast for safer living.

[TriciaJ, RN]

2 hours ago, OldDude said:

Each year over 3.5 million people visit Yellowstone National Park. The park is loaded with signs that read, “Don’t feed the bears,” but visitors are constantly doing just that. As a result, bears become too lazy to look for food. So, sadly, some of them starve to death in the woods—which are full of nourishment—when the tourists aren’t there to give them handouts.

This is an excerpt of one of the thousands of articles about feeding animals that are capable of providing for themselves...see any similarities?

And what happens after you feed a bear and then run out of food? Letting the situation get to the point it's gotten in cities like Seattle and San Francisco is downright dangerous. Look what happened recently in Greece when it ran out of other people's money for its myriad social programs. Young people (who should have been working) began rioting in the streets.

Giveaways might be motivated by compassion, but usually they're short term feel-good measures. Not looking at the big picture is anything but compassionate.

[guest974915]

28 minutes ago, LilPeanut said:

Again, you can't just address it at one place. I'm a bit disappointed with the level of disdain people seem to have.

It's a complex issue and solution and unless we are prepared to just line people up and kill them (because essentially that's what you are doing when you don't help them)

The sheer numbers in SF and Seattle make comprehensive services like that difficult. People literally get given one way tickets to the west coast for safer living.

LilPeanut, I agree with you and while I consider myself a compassionate person and don't subscribe to 'hardline' approaches, what about the rights of the taxpaying citizens? My opinion is that our elected officials have failed us miserably by not addressing this burgeoning problem head-on in a proactive manner such as with extensive drug & alcohol rehab programs, life skills, jobs creation... With that said, I also feel that residents and visitors to these cities are being denied their rights-we should have the 'right' to feel protected and able to enjoy the 'fruits' of a civilized society; parks, libraries, public forums...., while walking about in the city, not being verbally assaulted by panhandlers or having to step over passed out addicts on the sidewalks who have soiled themselves.

[OldDude]

42 minutes ago, LilPeanut said:

... I'm a bit disappointed with the level of disdain people seem to have...

I think it's less disdain and more despair people have. As long as people are given something with no expectation of them giving something in return the cycle will never be broken and only expand. Helping someone plays a fine line between being the genesis of recovery and independence versus enabling and dependence. The people we're talking about have been led into this sad chasm by those with good intentions but without the understanding of human/animal nature. It's not going to get better until those receiving the assistance are required to perform some positive contributory function in exchange...and expand that out to being independent individuals again. Easier to write about than do but the conceptual framework is necessary for success.

[Susie2310]

1 hour ago, OldDude said:

I think it's less disdain and more despair people have. As long as people are given something with no expectation of them giving something in return the cycle will never be broken and only expand. Helping someone plays a fine line between being the genesis of recovery and independence versus enabling and dependence. The people we're talking about have been led into this sad chasm by those with good intentions but without the understanding of human/animal nature. It's not going to get better until those receiving the assistance are required to perform some positive contributory function in exchange...and expand that out to being independent individuals again. Easier to write about than do but the conceptual framework is necessary for success.

In her post above, NRSKarenRN described a solution that has been implemented in Philadelphia.

[LilPeanut, MSN, RN, NP]

And what about the people who are not able to provide a contribution? It could be physical, emotional or mental.

That's part of why it is complex. Ideally, if you improve all the other aspects, eventually people will have less of a cycle of poverty than they do now. It's something you have to accept, that there are people who are going to receive things they "don't deserve" in order to better society.

As for what the tax payers deserve - honestly, I think they're getting what they deserve in many ways. We have allowed the wage gap to get so large through complacency, by allowing corruption to continue, by our apathy. We have not demanded that the richest among us pay their fair share and that the philosophy that it's ok to give executives raises and bonuses, while the lower level workers don't get paid enough to survive is abhorrent, and actually counter to capitalism. In ideal capitalism, we wouldn't have to have a minimum wage or any of this because corps would pay their executives less (and then use that money to pay their "little people" more). But it's been shown time and time again that it does not happen that way unless there are regulations.

The US has been brainwashed with this fear of "socialism", without understanding what it is, and more importantly, what capitalistic socialism (or democratic socialism if you will) really is and why it is nothing like communism. We're a society that decided that "hey, yeah, this guy lies a lot, assaults women, bribes people, is corrupt, is kinda racist, but he is promising more money and false promises about jobs, plus he's funny and don't worry about "political correctness". Yeah, he can be president." So, we pretty much deserve everything that's happening.

People deserve to be cared for because they are human beings. No strings attached.

Otherwise, again, you're basically just advocating lining people up who can't contribute and killing them. There is also a very natural and normal reaction for people to think rich people deserve their money and poor people deserve to be poor. It's not a conscious thought necessarily, but subconsciously we think it because we want to be financially comfortable, and we are scared of being poverty-stricken, and we know we are "good people", and so they will some day be "rich".

But crap happens and there are generations of poverty and addiction and other ways it all gets messy and things people can't control. And so there are people who are homeless because they lost a job, or because they got sick, or had an accident.

You can't expect people to get out of poverty and the hole they are in without stable home/food/etc. Think of Maslow's hierarchy of need. You're going to have to support people for a while, while they work their way up that hierarchy.

So, it's very difficult to fix the problem because we don't like to give people money they don't "deserve" and our current politics mean the people with the most money pay the least to care for our society. We all live and work within the framework of our society, so we all owe back to that society. The greater the "reward" you are getting, the greater the debt to society you have to pay.