Sacramento homeless issues - what is the latest?

[mixxalot]

yes I know they are hard to deal with.

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by tstieber

I agree with almost everything you said, except suggesting that it's just the cost of living via capitalism driving people onto the streets. There's way more than that going on, much of it being untreated mental illness and drug use. We drive by homeless people all the time, and not one of them seems to be in their right mind. So we have to get to those root causes as well. And I agree, SRO hotels were a very big safety net. Here in San diego, we used to have something like 11,000 rooms, now I think there are maybe 1,500. They should build more of those again

Well, the homeless people we all “drive by” - and recognize as surely homeless - are the chronic homeless. They figure in at about 25% of the total picture … which is horrible any way you look at it, but not the whole picture. We see them as the face of homelessness, because they are so glaringly obvious and shocking.

But the numbers reported on, the huge figures in media and reports and conversations everywhere, are not at all like the 25%.

It’s also well known in the related social sciences fields that quite a lot of the drinking, drug abuse and mental illness is either triggered by, or least grossly exacerbated by, being homeless. Chicken and egg story.

The root causes? Overpopulation and the highly competitive, materialistic culture humanity has evolved into.
How you gonna solve that?
There’s the big question.
Talk about a 100 ton elephant in the room.

[mixxalot]

High cost of housing and lack of good paying jobs also factor into homeless issue. Average rent in Sacramento is sky high over 1200 easy for a crappy tiny place to rent and so many jobs sent overseas factor into the equation. Yes, many homeless suffer from mental illness and drug addiction and there needs to be avenues to treat them. But expensive housing costs and lack of good jobs are the elephant in the room as well.