Sorry, I'm looking for something and just happened to trip across this and am seeing it for the first time.
I am an environmental studies major who wanted a career in urban planning and I spent years homeless and most stuff aimed at "helping the homeless" does little or nothing to solve the problem. A lot of it is just crisis management -- helping them eat one more day.
I have done a lot of analysis of the problem space and the single strongest factor in increasing rates of homelessness is rising rents (presumably relative to wages) and lack of adequate amounts of "affordable" (small space) housing appropriate to the actual needs of our current demographic and it's really, really, really hard to even try to talk about that in a nutshell because people have trouble readily understanding what I'm saying at all. Phrases like "affordable housing" seem to just trigger a lot of people and not convey at all what I am trying to describe.
So I increasingly just blog about housing solutions and feel like it's mostly pointless to try to talk about "helping the homeless." I want our housing issues solved and that means largely disengaging from discussions about homeless people.
I want to see fewer people on the street and that means we need to solve our housing crisis and most people don't see it that way at all.
I feel like I already said that above but maybe not or maybe that helps clarify something for you.
I am an environmental studies major who wanted a career in urban planning and I spent years homeless and most stuff aimed at "helping the homeless" does little or nothing to solve the problem. A lot of it is just crisis management -- helping them eat one more day.
I have done a lot of analysis of the problem space and the single strongest factor in increasing rates of homelessness is rising rents (presumably relative to wages) and lack of adequate amounts of "affordable" (small space) housing appropriate to the actual needs of our current demographic and it's really, really, really hard to even try to talk about that in a nutshell because people have trouble readily understanding what I'm saying at all. Phrases like "affordable housing" seem to just trigger a lot of people and not convey at all what I am trying to describe.
So I increasingly just blog about housing solutions and feel like it's mostly pointless to try to talk about "helping the homeless." I want our housing issues solved and that means largely disengaging from discussions about homeless people.
I want to see fewer people on the street and that means we need to solve our housing crisis and most people don't see it that way at all.
I feel like I already said that above but maybe not or maybe that helps clarify something for you.