this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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You're more than welcome to look up statistics. ~60% of the chronicly homeless have life long mental health issues, and ~80% have substance abuse issues.
Pretty much every city/state has resources to help the homeless, but the homeless have to be willing to accept the help. Most shelters are drug free, so addicts don't want to stay there and they won't accept people whose mental illness makes them violent.
You can't force a person to take their medicine or stop doing drugs unless you want to start building more prisons.
Again, I was never saying that all homelessness is a choice, but a lot of people choose not to accept the help that's available.
Source: My wife has her masters in the field and used to work with these populations as an addiction counselor, in Texas, so I know that resources exist at a state level even in a state that clearly hates it's citizens.
Neoliberals never seem to get around to actually address what's being said. They just hem and haw about why they can't do anything about it, as they pull their SUVs into the third stall in their garage.
I think you're spot on.
I've certainly noticed the change. There are some posts lately that are indistinguishable from those on alt-right breeding grounds like 4chan and reddit. That's why I wasn't too gung-ho about persuading people to join Lemmy -- there were a lot of people on reddit I was hoping wouldn't come.
I've started using raddle more, which comes with its own problems, but at least I don't have to start by convincing people not to hate marginalized groups every time I open my inbox.
What’s raddle?
Raddle is a site similar to reddit, but it's run by anarchists (anarcho-primitivists to be specific, but I've never felt unwelcome as an anarcho-communist)
https://raddle.me/
I go by ObiWanHelloThere_wav on raddle