Mindsets Are Ensnaring Tens of Thousands to The Streets
Shelters Have Malfunctioned
Introduction
Greetings and welcome back, this is our fifth blog in our series. In this blog, we are going to look at how the system plays with the numbers and shows us its true colors and lack of compassion.
We have already looked at the problems, and the peril of gentrification and NIMBY has caused and are continuing to cause nationally. This is presently generating a housing shortage across the board for all Americans.
Then we briefly look at mental illness and addiction, the overused paint brush used to blame the homeless for the problems of homelessness. It is a deep quagmire that will not be solved any time soon because we still go into the discussions backwards and with wrong assumptions. And that means humans will still die on the streets instead of getting timely help. Part of that problem is the acute lack of shelters, which we are looking at today.
An Opening Word
Proverbs 16: 11
A just balance and scales are the Lord’s, all the weights in the bag are His work (established on eternal principles)
Micah 6: 8
He has showed you, O man what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love kindness and mercy, to humble yourself and walk humbly with your Go?
Data for this Discussion
It is not an overabundance of empty beds, but a poorly managed logistical communication system that keeps beds empty
An example of a jugger knot that needs work, 3,800 beds in FL are labeled for domestic violence, veterans, or youth and cannot be used for anyone else, how to find balance
A bed is assigned, not free, single, addicted, teenager, male, female, structs how they are used nightly
The average age of a homeless person is now around 50; shelters not designed for seniors
Because of Think Tanks, funding from the Government money is being diverted, reduced
On Average, 50% of people lack access to a shelter
Inaccurate PIT counts are making it hard to add or increase needed shelter beds
A Bed is Not a Bed
All shelters function on a first-come come first first-served basis, but they also serve in a restrictive manner as well. Meaning this, a bed is reserved for a female in need, or a teenager, or a disabled person. They cannot change that bed’s status. So, they may have many beds empty but have a full sign lit outside when a female is referred to that given shelter.
Or another way that is restrictive is if it is for a given and specific population group, and again, that status cannot be changed. Meaning, it can be for males who are entering sober living and no one else. So that shelter is ineffective in lowering the homeless, unsheltered count for that given area. The way it is reported may or may not report the restrictions, but it still is a shelter and that means there will not be another built or opened anywhere in the area to help other people.
This was the jumping-off point of the infamous Supreme Court case, Grants Pass Versus Johnson. The case boiled down to this: it is cruel and unusual punishment to fine, ticket, or jail a homeless person if there are no shelter beds available. Meaning, there are no tickets for sleeping or camping outside if no shelters were open and available. The Supreme Court said no, it was not cruel nor unusual; however, the 9th Circuit Court has put an injunction in place. It is still not resolved. What say you, cruel to ticket it no beds? Who would have thought the homeless would have become political hot potatoes for people to debate and vote about!
Dozens Locked into a Single at Night
The homeless are human beings, let’s remember that, lest we forget and think that they are just problems that need to be solved or removed. They struggle with emotions and fears and terrors just as we do, and shelters do not help those fears at all. Local shelters literally put all that are allowed to be in that given shelter for the night and lock them in a single room for the night! Male, female, offender, young, old, whatever, all together in one room, with the doors locked. Fears on high alert.
Can you imagine that whatever you have been through that has caused you to now be homeless, that you believe that a shelter will help you, but you find out that you have no privacy, no quiet, no safe space, no personal space, would you go to a shelter? This is the line in the sand of fact and fiction. We are told that they are shelter resistant, they will not comply, they are difficult to get into a shelter, it is always their fault, but we are told fictional stories.
Let me close with this true story that I have been told repeatedly by several I have fed on the streets of South Broward County. For those brave enough to go into the local shelters, this is what they do ahead of time. They take their food stamp card, their bus pass, a debit card, identification card, and put them inside their sock and put a second sock on them, their shoes, and double knot the lace and then sleep with one eye open. Don’t get twisted when you read that they have debit cards and food stamps; it is not enough to live on, just enough to barely keep them alive for a few days. Shelters are scary places
Badly Managed, Poorly Handled
Tens of billions spent and homelessness is growing exponentially, how is this possible? Government, federal, state, local, non-profit and churches are involved, and it is still growing, how is this possible? I think we went from dealing with it and a mindset on ending it to managing it and accepting it as part of normal life in America. Ending is a final, decisive conclusion that resolves the problem or situation. Whereas managing is working with an ongoing situation to handle and control it. Having no shelter is a situation of managing that has totally failed. This is why we are over 187,000 beds short presently.
The next system that feeds into the mismanaged homeless Industrial Complex is the Criminal Justice System, needed but totally ineffective presently. This is another engine that costs the taxpayers billions every year, and they have no return on that money that is spent on arresting, jailing, and bringing to court the homeless person. It traps the homeless in a cycle of poverty that hinders them further from getting off the streets and stiffens the bias the housed population has against them.
Let me throw a small curve ball into this thinking right here. If you or I handled our money in this manner, we would be labeled are wasteful, and bad handlers of money and no one would trust or allow us to touch their money. But the government votes for themselves an increase every year and the problem is never dealt with or fixed.
Why Kicked Out at 6 AM
Most shelters kick all residents out at 6.00 am or so, why? The exceptions are rare, but they do exist. They are not going to school, work, court, medical appointments, library, or some other productive endeavor; what are they supposed to do all day? It is like the carrot and stick, we will give you the carrot, a bed for the night, but the stick is this, we kick you out in the morning!
The highest level of complaints and calls to 9-1-1 about the activities of the homeless averages to be around the nighttime hours and overnight. The businesses are closed, and the streets are quieter. So, then logic states that normal humans, for lack of better term, start their lives around 6.00 am for work or school or whatever, so why would the shelters choose that time to force the homeless to leave the shelters? Do they have no sense or is there a hidden agenda involved?
It is like the shelters are simply doing a business, finishing a job, completing a task, and failing, on purpose, to remember that they have been entrusted with human lives when they are making their policies, and we have allowed this to continue, why? Would it not be better to take those multiple millions and rebuild a better, higher-functioning shelter that helps, empowers, solves homelessness, or are we not trying to do that?
Instead of having them leave, use some of those millions of dollars for a greater good, keep them there and use the time productively. If they cannot be integrated into the community productively for the day, keep them at the shelter and work with them. Medical care, mental health care, job training, limited internet use for paperwork that needs to be completed for income and the like. There are options, but no one currently is willing to burst the bubble and think outside the darn box that is killing the homeless on the streets every year.
No Benefit to Local Communities, Why?
Here is a scary word for better, higher, greater, impactful shelter function: Symbiotic! Involving interactions between two different living organisms, living in close physical associations, meditate on that. Instead of dumping the shelter folk out onto the streets at 6.00 am every day, why not find purposeful jobs, activities, places for them to be. Why not engage areas of the local community and businesses to help train, employ, educate them so that they can move into a meaningful area of life instead of sub-existing in shelter and homelessness? It is radical, outside the lines, beyond the pale, but could it work? Could it also change hearts and minds?
More and more shelters are facing orders, requests, and demands to shut down, and their funding is being removed. Why, they are of no benefit to the community, and they are in fact a threat to the communities they no longer wants around. And I cannot blame the communities; the shelter spits out anywhere from 15 to 50 humans every morning at around 6.00 am with no productive plans for the day. That is not food for community relations.
We have sat around long enough and allowed the government to run to the show, to be the expert, to be the know-it-all all and to say that it was not our problem to be concerned about, and all they have done is made it worse and turned the blame on us and the homeless. It is time to say, enough, You are Fired to the government and start over again, with the family, the church and the community, as it used to be. Then we can end managing and transitioning back to ending homelessness.
Conclusion
Shelters are designed to be steppingstones to a better tomorrow, but that is no longer the truth. They were designed to be a safe spot in a storm that people could go to to receive needed help to get through a tough spot, but no longer. Communities no longer operate shelters, they fear them.
Treatment for addictions, mental health, more normal homeless issues, all have caused a break in the relationship between shelters and their local communities. Instead of focusing on a symbiotic style of relationship it is a hostile warfare zone, where one is demanding the total removal of the other.
If the addicted, the mentally, the homeless teen, the struggling grandparent, the disabled adult no longer have a shelter to go to, where do they go? Think tanks, civil commitment, jail, dead on the streets, with shelters malfunctioning and being forced to closed, not many options remain.
CTA…
Please Answer This:
If you had shelter in your area, why would your more frequent reaction be: to be afraid of those residing there, or to seek to be helpful?
Please Answer This:
Shelters malfunctioning, not enough of them, beds not being available beds, the population of the homeless is changing, are you truly okay in your heart with them suffering and dying on the streets?
Please Answer This:
We are told this or that regarding the homeless, remember we are speaking of mindsets, but in your own heart, do you believe what you are told?
MINDSETS
Manipulated Impartations
Negative Determinations
Seeking Entanglements
Targeting Souls
Why, to control outcomes, decisions, money and lives
For what, to make it easier for the homeless to disappear
How, overwhelm with numbers, anger, frustration, helplessness
Whom, those who are to govern without medaling, but have failed the American people, they created mindsets