Unhoused people refuse help because past “help” failed them or people they know, or “help” comes with conditions that are unacceptable to them, or “help” will not solve the actual problems they have. The solution is not to force people into institutions that abuse them, neglect them, and then kick them out for failing to follow arbitrary rules.
I mean, if you have a dog, and the shelters don’t allow dogs, what do you do? What sane person would risk their dog being put down at the pound in exchange for a few weeks of housing - housing, moreover, that is demonstratively less safe than living on the street?
The solution is to improve the services available without conditions so that unhoused people feel safe in asking for those services.
There are a small number of people who genuinely cannot make decisions because they cannot comprehend reality. And those people need help, possibly involuntary help. But even then, that doesn’t mean taking them away from the people and places they know and locking them up. People blame Reagan’s deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people in the '80s for the current homeless crisis - people forget Reagan’s deinstitutionalization policy was popular because insane asylums were horrifically incompetent and abusive.
And if you see a homeless person experiencing a mental health crisis or acting irrational in public, please remember, they have no private place to go - how would you come off to the public if your worst moments had to be displayed in public? - and then ask yourself whether their actions are making you feel unsafe, or merely uncomfortable.
I wish more people went to the Glore Psychiatric Museum in St Joseph, MO. Here’s a famous display from that museum, for “pica”:
That museum really really shows how little difference there was in the way we treated patients of asylums, versus inmates, versus prisoners of war. There are so many torture devices in there, disguised as medical devices. As someone formerly in the bioengineering field, it was a sober warning to the harm that can be created through “medical” devices and our own hubris and cruelty.
People have no idea what those were like. And how unethical forced imprisonment is. That should make everyone recoil. I thought we all hated slavery, right? It would be more compassionate to let them set up squats than to force institutionalization on them.
Ps the above picture results in the patient dying. It was one of the first surgeries to remove stomach contents and anesthesia wasn’t refined back then. So they performed an experimental procedure on a patient who couldn’t consent to it and who DIDN’T consent to it, and she died from it. That’s what asylums were like.
Unhoused people refuse help because past “help” failed them or people they know, or “help” comes with conditions that are unacceptable to them, or “help” will not solve the actual problems they have. The solution is not to force people into institutions that abuse them, neglect them, and then kick them out for failing to follow arbitrary rules.
I mean, if you have a dog, and the shelters don’t allow dogs, what do you do? What sane person would risk their dog being put down at the pound in exchange for a few weeks of housing - housing, moreover, that is demonstratively less safe than living on the street?
The solution is to improve the services available without conditions so that unhoused people feel safe in asking for those services.
There are a small number of people who genuinely cannot make decisions because they cannot comprehend reality. And those people need help, possibly involuntary help. But even then, that doesn’t mean taking them away from the people and places they know and locking them up. People blame Reagan’s deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people in the '80s for the current homeless crisis - people forget Reagan’s deinstitutionalization policy was popular because insane asylums were horrifically incompetent and abusive.
And if you see a homeless person experiencing a mental health crisis or acting irrational in public, please remember, they have no private place to go - how would you come off to the public if your worst moments had to be displayed in public? - and then ask yourself whether their actions are making you feel unsafe, or merely uncomfortable.
I wish more people went to the Glore Psychiatric Museum in St Joseph, MO. Here’s a famous display from that museum, for “pica”:
That museum really really shows how little difference there was in the way we treated patients of asylums, versus inmates, versus prisoners of war. There are so many torture devices in there, disguised as medical devices. As someone formerly in the bioengineering field, it was a sober warning to the harm that can be created through “medical” devices and our own hubris and cruelty.
People have no idea what those were like. And how unethical forced imprisonment is. That should make everyone recoil. I thought we all hated slavery, right? It would be more compassionate to let them set up squats than to force institutionalization on them.
Ps the above picture results in the patient dying. It was one of the first surgeries to remove stomach contents and anesthesia wasn’t refined back then. So they performed an experimental procedure on a patient who couldn’t consent to it and who DIDN’T consent to it, and she died from it. That’s what asylums were like.