Doctor Drew investigates homeless crisis

grasping the after wind

That's grasping after the wind
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Not living in a huge metropolitan area run by a single political party I have not experienced what it is like. For some reason there are a number of people that would like me to and transform the whole country into something similar to what we see in LA and San Francisco. I don't understand the thinking. IMO it is lunacy to expect that doing something that has proven to lead to unpleasant results in the places it has been tried will lead to good results if we just do it everywhere. That is akin to thinking that if I cut off one toe and it hurts if I cut them all off it will make things better. I guess that the idea might be that if everything is squalor and a mess then there will be nothing good to compare it to and no one will be any the wiser. If misery is the norm then it won't be seen as a problem
 
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Mountainmanbob

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I guess that the idea might be that if everything is squalor and a mess then there will be nothing good to compare it to and no one will be any the wiser. If misery is the norm then it won't be seen as a problem

Reminds me of a third world country.
M-Bob
 
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Mountainmanbob

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That’s unreal. I’ve never seen such.

Looks like we will be a 3rd world country before long?

Kind of makes me wonder why we are inviting so many in when we can't take care of ourselves?

M-Bob

 
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bèlla

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Looks like we will be a 3rd world country before long?

Kind of makes me wonder why we are inviting so many in when we can't take care of ourselves?

This is meant to weaken us. If they can’t manage the cleanup how would they handle an outbreak?
 
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JCFantasy23

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Is it going to get better? My county in Florida is one of the only ones, it seems, that provides shelter. The shelter is restricted, limited, and somewhat dishonest/perhaps fraudulent. Other cities were busted in Florida buying one way bus tickets to get the homeless out of their city and sent here because they don't want to put up the city funds to build a shelter or any assistance in their own locations. This problem has been getting worse for years and since our country still stands on a lot of greed and high costs of living, limited mental health assistance that's actually reasonable, consistent, timely and helpful is hard to come by. I haven't seen any solutions started on this for veterans or the mentally ill, the drug problem here worsens, high cost of living slowly trickles up.

If we are ever to improve the homelessness situation and start a reversal of it, instead of it getting worse, then it's going to take a lot of years, a lot of money, a lot of hard work, and a lot of political agreement. The chances of all that though?
 
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miamited

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Hi MM,

Well, in reading and understanding the Scriptures, I rather imagine that homelessness will get worse and may not ever get better. According to Jesus, we aren't ever going to resolve the problem of poverty among a society or in the world at large. Many of our larger cities are pricing thousands upon thousands of people out of the ability to provide a roof over their heads. Why anyone might expect this to get better is quite beyond me. Most societies, and ours may be even worse than others, have very little compassion for those who can't make it. Those who, for whatever reason, can't seem to come up with a tidy little sum each month to pay a mortgage or rent.

I don't believe that there is one single cause. Lack of education, mental health problems, addiction to expensive drugs, inability to get to a job day after day. The problem also builds upon itself. Someone loses their job. They have a hard time finding another and they despair. Then they are evicted from their home. Now they can't get up and shower each morning and eat breakfast and get to work. Job opportunities become more and more out of reach and they despair even further. Finally they resign and at that point their ability to set their ship right becomes nearly impossible.

But, as home prices grow beyond the reach of those with the lowest incomes, the problem just becomes worse. Yes, there are some who assume some responsibility to help those who are less fortunate, but it is not many and certainly not enough.

My granddaughter, who is 8, went to the store the other day to get gum. I was a couple of stores down getting shoes for my grandson and she asked if she could walk down to get the gum and I told her she could. She came back and she said, "Granddad, I don't know why but there was a homeless man outside of the store and my body made me give him all the money I had left after purchasing the gum." I told her that I was very proud of her and that it was a good thing that she had done. I think that's a lesson we should teach ourselves and our children. Have compassion for those who are less fortunate. Jesus did. He had compassion for me when I had no possible way to help myself.

God bless,
In Christ, ted
 
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GOD Shines Forth!

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Mercy... Why aren’t they cleaning it?

Because "they" are using it as a tool for power and control, themselves being used by "the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience".
 
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miamited

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Looks like we will be a 3rd world country before long?

Kind of makes me wonder why we are inviting so many in when we can't take care of ourselves?

M-Bob



Hi MM,

Sometimes I wonder, when I hear people who seem to see the world's problems as such simple things to be fixed, whether they understood, when reading Thoreau's work, that it was an imaginary society that he presents to us.

I watched Atlas Shrugged the other evening. That's Ayn Rand's fictional work showing how the very rich can easily create their own Utopian society by merely withdrawing from the reality of what a real society is like. Admittedly, Ms. Rand portrays the 'real' society as being some kind of monster beast society that is going to take away all capitalistic and free will efforts. It will expend its control by crippling its people with some socialistic idea that we're all going to have to work for some 'big brother' government that will control all resources, but the society that she establishes for the rich is much the same as Thoreau's. A perfect society where all are in agreement and everyone goes on to live happily ever after, by throwing off the fetters of some unrighteous government.

I always wonder how the fairy tale Utopian society works out when it's several million people strong? Real life isn't like one can conjure images to write a book about some perfect society. A society of total agreement where everyone works for the good of the group. Even the society established by Ms. Rand, wants to glorify personal achievement and everyone being able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps to become working and valuable members of their make believe societies.

The last society where God was the king was Israel some 4,000 years ago. That didn't work out well and God was their king! I imagine it's fairly easy to take 50 or 100 people who are all in agreement and go off and start a society. Jim Jones tried it as did Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Antelope Oregon. They both conceived of these Utopian societies where everyone would work in agreement for the common good. However, everyone seems to forget God's word: Man's heart is wicked. Who can know it?

While such an exercise may work for a small band of like minded folk as Ayn Rand and Henry Thoreau project in their fantasy works. It never works out as these societies grow. Then they begin to experience the real world problems that people have and they begin to find that the larger group isn't necessarily in agreement as they were when the society was begun.

Sure it works in Ms. Rand's work where everyone is a college degreed professional of some field, but full blown societies are never like that. There are poor and there are under educated. There are greedy and there are slovenly. There are gluttons and there are the entitled. All real life societies upon the earth are made up of such people.

Those who believe in some Utopian society will sit and blame all of these ills on some part of the whole that isn't in alignment with their personal understanding of how things should work. But that's what real life is like. Every nation on the earth has its poor and its dissidents. Every nation on the earth has some who believe life should work one way and some who believe it would work better another. Even Israel couldn't maintain solidarity in their governance and so God withdrew Himself from being their direct king. He picked Saul and then David. Then a whole line of kings followed of which the majority were not faithful to God. THESE ARE GOD'S PEOPLE!!!!!!! If God couldn't get His own people in Israel to live as He wanted them to live, how in the world do we think we're going to be able to do it?

Man's heart is wicked!!! Who can know it?

God bless,
In Christ, ted
 
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Mountainmanbob

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HannahT

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My granddaughter, who is 8, went to the store the other day to get gum. I was a couple of stores down getting shoes for my grandson and she asked if she could walk down to get the gum and I told her she could. She came back and she said, "Granddad, I don't know why but there was a homeless man outside of the store and my body made me give him all the money I had left after purchasing the gum." I told her that I was very proud of her and that it was a good thing that she had done. I think that's a lesson we should teach ourselves and our children. Have compassion for those who are less fortunate. Jesus did. He had compassion for me when I had no possible way to help myself.

I don't have a problem with that all. She has a good heart. Huggers TO HER!!

My grandfather used to own a construction business. He would take the homeless to lunch when they asked for money, and then offer them work. Then show them places to go for help. He said the ones that were honestly trying to help themselves took the work and the services - and he was there to support them. It wasn't just lunch date he was there for. Then sadly you had those that wanted to stay where they were. In those days they really didn't know what to do with that part of the population. We have so much more to offer today.

It seems certain locations have better ways of dealing with this than others. I think some locations have good intentions, but tend to enable instead of actually helping. It happens to the best of us. It's not a slam. It's reality. Word gets around, and you attract more homeless from other areas that don't enable so much. That also is a human condition - some like to be enabled.

I remember reading an article recently in which the government was blaming the state of Texas for their issues in certain pockets of their state. Come to find out they have a bussing program in which they will send people - free of charge - to friends of family that has agreed to let them in and help them. I guess lol people that took advantage of this program have loads of friends and family in Texas (Yes, of course other areas as well. Texas was popular though). Yet, this bussing program doesn't mean they came from Texas. It also doesn't explain WHY they would find resources while in Texas to get to CA in first place if it was so. Texas isn't bussing them there!

What it does show me is that government - not party IMO - has a tendency to allow their ego and their self righteousness cloud their judgement on how completely NOT helpful they might be to this vulnerable population. Arrogance today seems to be something you just aren't allowed to point out. This politicized environment that has been going on for a couple of administrations now doesn't help matters.

The rational approach would be take the parts that work, and keep them - then work on the ones that don't. Today acknowledging programs that DON'T work is political suicide, and that shouldn't be so. Whomever decided to crucify politicians that want to revise things needs to be targeted! They didn't do this to fail! Anyway, because they can't fix it, and most won't fall on the sword in order to admit it? Then you start harming your own location's citizens and those that the program was intended to help.

Government does this alot. Heck CA isn't the only one. We are hearing about it now due to the crisis they are dealing with. This charm defense - and blame game isn't going to help the homeless. It certainly is starting to harm the citizens that are paying for it. Someone needs to make it COOL once again to admit things aren't going as planned, and start another direction. Good intentions are still there. Pointing out the poopheads that use it as ammo, and putting them in their place would be a great place to start. Sadly, we are to addicted to the melodramatics of juicy headlines instead. I have to wonder if this can't be fixed in part due to our own ignorance of that fact.
 
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miamited

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Hi hannah,

There are certainly a lot of us who resent helping those who we deem as not being willing to help themselves. I also agree that there are those, among the poverty stricken and hopeless, who do seem to take advantage, as we see it, of programs that are designed with good intentions to help. As Jesus said, the poor we will always have with us.

I know that I used to believe that it was a Scriptural truth that God helps those who help themselves, but I've long since found that such an idea isn't really expressed in the Scriptures. God does have some words of condemnation against the sluggard, but those words are there, just like the law, because there are going to be sluggards just as there are going to be sinners.

I have, in my years of working with the homeless and hopeless, come across all kinds. Those who seem to want to climb out of the pit that they are in and do take advantage of help and after a time do seem to get back to where they are able to take care of themselves, although even those often do it by taking advantage of government subsidized affordable housing and other such programs. But I've also met those who have pretty much resigned themselves to the place that they are in and will take what you will give them and then find someone else who will give them a handout and keep moving through that progression.

For me, I've come to understand that a lot of it has to do with our brains. Whether we are still at a point where we hold out that there is yet some hope that life won't always be like this. Others are at that point where there thoughts have already condemned them to poverty and they have adopted the understanding that no, they won't ever come up out of the pit that they are in. There seems to be a point, with most people in dire poverty, that they hold out hope that things will yet change for the better and those who have resigned themselves that this is how it's going to be.

But, while I do find that God has some words of condemnation for the sluggard, I don't see that His word condemns those who offer hope or help. The question that most people finally come to when dealing with this issue is: What happens to those that we don't help? Ok, fine! Let's pull out all of the social safety nets and let's not give of any of our resources to help those in the most dire poverty. Does any born again believer think that's what God wants us to do? Were Jesus' words that we should treat others as we would like to be treated only meant for the comfortable and those who could stand on their own two feet?

So I give $5 to someone holding up a sign that they're hungry. So I give a couple of dollars to an unshaven man or unkempt woman pushing a grocery cart of their worldly belongings. Am I not asked of my God to be merciful and have compassion on those without hope in this world? Whether or not that small bit of change is going to make them stand up and puff out their chest and declare,""Ok! Now I can get up on my own two feet and take on the world!"

Yes, we do have a problem with such people as these congregating in groups and creating various eyesores and social problems in our streets, but what is the answer to help these people. Do we line them up and send them in to take showers similar to the ones in Nazi Germany to rid ourselves of this human detritus that makes us uneasy in their poverty? Unfortunately, the American dream just isn't real for a lot of people anymore than the Great Britain or French or Canadian dream is real for all of their citizens either.

The poor we will always have with us. Maybe God is watching how we, individually deal with them. Just maybe that gives God an idea of our hearts if we offer whatever help we can give or we work to take away any help they might receive. That we see them as somehow unworthy citizens of our fine working society or we see them as human beings created in the same image that I am created in who just haven't been able to deal with life the way we'd hope that they would.

I absolutely agree that it's a tough decision for each of us to make.

God bless,
In Christ, ted
 
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Mountainmanbob

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After working close by and with the homeless for over 40 years my guess would be that 50% of them would like to work but, if given a job probably only around 25% of those would actually be able to hold that job.

I once met a homeless man at my job working for the Parks Dept. where we saw many, many homeless each day. As I would work in that park each week we would talk and got pretty close. I learned that he had not only welding skills but, had supervised 50 welders at one time. Turns out my best friend was a supervisor at a bellows weld fab shop. He offered my homeless friend employment. Turns out at the same time this man was offered a job off shore working on a platform in our coastal waters with (very good pay) he worked that job for two weeks -- took his check and spent it on booze and quit that job.

The other prox. 50% truly don't wish to work. I hear them say all the time that they have chosen this lifestyle and many think that they are really living the life. A little free money. A little free food. And love to be lazy.

Way more than half here have serious drug and alcohol problems.

M-Bob


Rather that invite in half of the world so as to share in the American Dream we need first to tackle our homeless problem -- WHICH IS A BIG ONE.
 
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