Why the demonization of the poor and homless?

[Trey Strain]

Homelessness in Anaheim, the city that Disney built.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF7hWzqdPDk

[Emperor-of-Dragons]

So there's this other thing that bugs me about the criticizing of poor people. And that's all the gas lighting, such as; condescending preaching on the internet from people claiming to have been working minimum wage jobs, and after 3 years they now own a house......riiiight (◔_◔) lol Usually statements like that are in response to people saying you can't budget your way out of poverty.

[Crazy Diamond]

So there's this other thing that bugs me about the criticizing of poor people. And that's all the gas lighting, such as; condescending preaching on the internet from people claiming to have been working minimum wage jobs, and after 3 years they now own a house......riiiight (◔_◔) lol Usually statements like that are in response to people saying you can't budget your way out of poverty.

Reminds me of the just world hypothesis. They made it so therefore if someone else doesn't make it it's because of bad choices/genetic inferiority/ignorance/etc. Are you familiar with Calvinism?

[DrNewGod]

Homelessness in Anaheim, the city that Disney built.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF7hWzqdPDk

Orlando has a related, but not quite identical problem. Lack of affordable housing for Disney's Legion of Cast Members.

[Madam-Shogun-Assassin]

To be honest, i don't think you can budget yourself out of poverty either. And when people have anecdotal opinions to the contrary i take it with a grain of salt. You can work hard as you want, but you're not owning a house in three years by starting out on minimum wage and "living within your means". Most of those people probably won't admit they had some type of outside help.

[DrNewGod]

To be honest, i don't think you can budget yourself out of poverty either. And when people have anecdotal opinions to the contrary i take it with a grain of salt. You can work hard as you want, but you're not owning a house in three years by starting out on minimum wage and "living within your means". Most of those people probably won't admit they had some type of outside help.

You raise a very interesting point. It's like entrepreneurs who don't wish to believe that anything other than their vision and will contributed to their success. Were they remarkable? Sure. Was that all that got them there? Absolutely not.

And the sad part is, too many of us want to believe their myth too. The same way we want to believe the Up-By-Their-Bootstraps story, and its Underserving Inferior corrolary.

[Mister Mets]

There were some earlier posts about homelessness, and one of the problems is the ways the United States handles mental health. There are a few policy decisions on mental health that contribute to homelessness. Much of the funding goes to alleviating the problems of people able to function in society, rather than the seriously mentally ill. Patient protection laws also make it pretty much impossible to institutionalize someone against their will, unless they are threatening to actively harm others, which limits the options of family members of people who are unable to take care of themselves.

D.J. Jaffe had written about mental illness for the Huffington Post, and National Review, and notes the benefits of Assisted Outpatient Treatment.

Not everyone can accept voluntary treatment. Some people will always have hallucinations, delusions and/or anosognosia. For them, lack of voluntary treatment means no treatment. John Hinckley ‘knew’ the best way to get a date with Jodie Foster was to shoot Ronald Reagan. Some seriously ill people need involuntary interventions to prevent the worst from happening. Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) is an involuntary intervention that is very humane and less restrictive than anything else now being offered. AOT is limited to the small group of those with serious mental illness who have already accumulated multiple prior arrests, incarcerations or hospitalizations caused by going off treatment. In those limited cases- after full due process- a judge can order the ill individual to stay in mandated and monitored treatment as a condition for living in the community and order he mental health system to provide the necessary treatment.

AOT has been proven to reduce arrest, suicide, hospitalization and violence over 70% each. By replacing more expensive and liberty-depriving inpatient commitment and incarceration with less expensive outpatient treatment, AOT cut taxpayers’ costs in half. One parent described AOT as putting a fence by the edge of the cliff, rather than an ambulance at the bottom. Eighty-one percent of those enrolled in AOT retrospectively said it helped them “get well and stay well.” As civil libertarian Herschel Hardin wrote, “The opposition to involuntary committal and treatment betrays a profound misunderstanding of the principle of civil liberties. Medication can free victims from their illness – free them from the Bastille of their psychoses – and restore their dignity, their free will and the meaningful exercise of their liberties.”

Many people who would benefit from this level of help, but don't get it, end up becoming homeless. There are clear civil rights questions that will have to be wrestled with.

On another aspect of why the poor are demonized, there have been some articles about economic segregation in schools, and while it has problems, I doubt upper middle class parents read these articles thinking it would be a good thing to have more poor kids in their schools.

The Atlantic compared urban and suburban kids in a piece on the poor reputations of urban schools.

(Suburban students) are also more likely than their urban counterparts to have parents with college degrees. Given this confluence of variables, suburban students tend to enter school with the early literacy and numeracy skills necessary to learn the prescribed curriculum. Equally important, it means that suburban students are likely to have absorbed school-ready behaviors and attitudes from role models at home and in the community. Children in these environments, in short, don’t need to be explicitly taught the value of school. They hear positive school messages all the time and quickly develop the sense that doing well in school matters. When it comes time to take tests, such students tend to score quite well, and their schools tend to get the credit.

City schools, by contrast, serve a very different mix of young people. Roughly two-thirds of urban students are nonwhite, and in the 20 largest school districts, that figure is 80 percent on average. As research indicates, these students are more likely to absorb negative stereotypes about their own abilities—something that is particularly true when they are in segregated schools. Urban schools also serve an increasing majority of young people from persistently disadvantaged households. Such students are likely to be surrounded by adults with low levels of educational attainment and limited professional prospects—a social context that can have a powerful impact on how students approach school and envision their futures. Additionally, research reveals that compared to their more-affluent peers, poor children are read to less frequently and exposed to less complex language at home, inhibiting the early development of their cognitive skills. Not surprisingly, their scores tend to be lower.

A problem with economic segregation is that the neediest students are all lumped in one place. I wish I could find the exact article, but there was an argument that decades ago things were different since neighborhoods were more economically diverse (part of it was that transportation options limited the boss's ability to live in a different school district than his employees) so schools had the resources to help poorer students who were more likely to suffer various problems. Now, the poorer students are concentrated in one location.

[Emperor-of-Dragons]

You raise a very interesting point. It's like entrepreneurs who don't wish to believe that anything other than their vision and will contributed to their success. Were they remarkable? Sure. Was that all that got them there? Absolutely not.

And the sad part is, too many of us want to believe their myth too. The same way we want to believe the Up-By-Their-Bootstraps story, and its Underserving Inferior corrolary.

Exactly!!...But ultimately i just think those types of peeps are full of **** though.

[Madam-Shogun-Assassin]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...da48c#comments Old but still a great relevant article.

[Scott Taylor]

Homelessness in Anaheim, the city that Disney built.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF7hWzqdPDk

All of those homeless were cleared out in February.

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/02/2...ated-thursday/

To some protests and a lawsuit:

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/01/2...-ana-riverbed/

People are living in tents all over downtown Los Angeles right now, too, and have been for years now. Wonder how long until all their stuff is taken and tossed and they are told to go "elsewhere"?

[Ragdoll]

Family: Man stabbed 17 times after telling homeless man not to camp in neighborhood
http://www.kmbc.com/article/family-m...rhood/20949789

[Duskman]

Family: Man stabbed 17 times after telling homeless man not to camp in neighborhood
http://www.kmbc.com/article/family-m...rhood/20949789

And this is why no one wants them in their back yard.

[Trey Strain]

And this is why no one wants them in their back yard.

Everybody wants them moved to someone else's back yard, instead of addressing the problem.

The next time the Republicans propose a tax cut for the rich -- and pretty soon they will -- the Democrats should counter-propose a tax increase for the rich, to build housing for the homeless.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Everybody wants them moved to someone else's back yard, instead of addressing the problem.

The next time the Republicans propose a tax cut for the rich -- and pretty soon they will -- the Democrats should counter-propose a tax increase for the rich, to build housing for the homeless.

Agreed. It's probably already been said in this thread how we're ALL a few missed paychecks away from the street in this shitty economy. It's isn't the addicts, the crooks and the crazies that get the headlines, there's also lots of decent, law abiding people struggling daily to make ends meet who, through no fault of their own, encounter bad luck and wind up homeless. Those are the sort of people who desperately need help Republicans would heartlessly deny.

[Kees_L]

Why the demonization of the poor and homeless?
It's strange, you have people giving the third degree to poor people claiming they aren't' poor enough if they have things like cellphones, decent food, cars, REFRIGERATORS (Especially so if they're PoC). Then there's the assumption that they're all lazy despite most actually having jobs. Even then, the people that have the arbitrary skepticism of poor people tend to be other poor people who don't have a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of themselves, which is terribly ironic. Why is poverty, and homelessness so divisive?

Because it (i.e. homelessness / poverty) could happen to anyone?

I think that where I live there is a common belief that life is about succeeding at keeping ones' head above water. Not so much "success", or "wealth", but enough to be keeping feet dry.

I hope it's not purely demonization, but then again, I do guess people would be most afraid of somehow not being able to manage. I think I myself fear such too quite a bit.

I think it's a good thing there's government and taxes and law to make everybody pay for stuff like infrastructure and healthcare, even the rich or "successful".
And I also think it likely that besides warfare what costs the most money is living and keeping up one's health and maintenance itself.

Which might be why people often seem to warn others to not take existence lightly, nor stuff like the bills, regular sleep or modesty, education and even taxes.
Which doesn't excuse pointing the finger at the homeless or the poor as the lazy bane of evil, but then again: the thought of going bust or inept will be scary of itself, likely demonically so.
I don't think the poor or homeless are to blame, if only since blame doesn't solve much at all. Plus I shudder at places or societies where the poor or homeless seem excluded from any type of recovery. Also because such exclusion appears a failing of government to me whereas it will be that same society's inhabitants ending up paying for all that. People excluded from maintaining themselves will cost more than included ones. So I do not blame the poor but I do blame any failing government (whom I'd have elected myself pretty much?!).