🚀 go-pugleaf

darrow@oneillaw.com (O'Neill) writes:

> On 16 Oct 1998 04:32:58 +0200, Axel Boldt <axel@uni-paderborn.de>
> wrote:

> >If you are poor in the US, you live in a little self-built card board
> >home in the streets of Los Angeles. The police will come by regularly
> >and destroy the card board home. You are not allowed to beg for money
> >(recent city ordinance). As a single unemployed male you don't receive
> >any welfare payments. You don't starve because there are private soup
> >kitchens.
> 
> Hmm, I wonder where you get this information.

New York Times, Public radio, some of it I've seen myself.

> It strikes me as something you might see on TV.  

I don't know, I don't watch TV.

> 95 percent of the homeless are not homeless because they're poor, but
> because they're insane.  Under our constitution, we cannot
> institutionalize them against their will, because that's a deprivation
> of their liberty.

And so, honoring their liberties, you proceed to treat them in the
most degrading way possible. Does it also violate their constitutional
rights to offer them a place in a sheltered group home or sanatorium
for the mentally ill and to give them the medical drugs they need?

The fact is that society does not offer the poor mentally ill any
place attractive enough so that they would stay there out of their
free will. That is a problem of the society, not of the mentally ill.
And poverty is the root of the problem: if you developped severe
schizophrenia tomorrow, you would be treated properly and housed in
some institution till the end of your life, because your health
insurance or your family would pay for it. A poor guy with exactly the
same condition would end up in the streets, looking forward to daily
abuse by the police.

And as we are talking about constitutional liberties, what about the
right to free speech? Why are they not even allowed to beg for money?
Face it, the public generally hates the homeless. It sees them as
people too lazy to work.

> For the most part, your scenario is not true.  To the extent anybody
> lives in cardboard boxes, it is for reasons other than the absence of
> governmental assistance.  Shelter is always available to families, and
> in most cities even to a single unemployed male.

Shelter of a quality which makes people prefer cardboard boxes. Go figure.

> Singe unemployed males can and do receive welfare payments as well.

This is false. They can get Social Security if they are disabled, but
welfare is for families only.

> The rules on this vary from state to state, and most states now have
> some limitations.  But food and shelter are always available, no
> questions asked.

Provided by private charities, not by the state.

-- 
 Axel Boldt  **  axel@uni-paderborn.de  **  math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/