5 ms·

Change your perspective if you want to help. Those aren't tents. Those are sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers with nowhere else to go, wit

Change your perspective if you want to help. Those aren't tents. Those are sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers with nowhere else to go, with drug and /or emotional problems. Those are soldiers who fought our oil wars and came home broken and abandoned. Those aren't "tents", they're you if you made the wrong choice or had the wrong thing happen to you.

nine_k 7y ago
Brothers? Sisters? Mothers? Sons? Do their siblings, children not want to help them out so much that they end up homeless? I bet most of the homeless have their normal social ties severed, and shame, guilt, hate and other such things keep them away from their former friends and relatives. Also, I bet the great majority of them don't have a job, or another occupation, and lives on handouts and petty crime. Overcoming this first is required to make these people feel like fathers, sisters, sons, etc again, and agree to come back into the society.
- plumednom 7y ago
  > Brothers? Sisters? Mothers? Sons? Do their siblings, children not want to help them out so much that they end up homeless? Americans have this "rugged individualism" to our culture. I left my own home when I was still 15, most people at 17 or 18. I live in Istanbul, and the first thing I noticed was the lack of homeless people in this city of 15-20million (depending on with whom you are talking). This is because Turks have a much stronger family structure, and most people live with their parents until they're married at the very least. I'm from San Francisco and have known many of my friends to become homeless over the past 20 years through combinations of, as I stated before, substance abuse, trauma, and a lack of a strong family / social support structure. My closest friend is a homeless violinist hippy in San Francisco (who just returned after 4 years in Istanbul). He keeps tents in 6 or 7 spots around the bay, most of them with breathtaking views. He just likes being homeless. (Brilliant guy. Oliver. He plays mostly in Bart, the Mission, and North Beach. Say hi in any language, he knows it) I also know a lot of kids from my various music scenes who are homeless on purpose. The street punks, for example, find a stronger family structure drinking 40s on telegraph or the haight all day than they ever did in their own middle-class homes. (PS: Fuck the kids on haight. They're basically an aging street gang, I used to be in a band with one of them.)
  - mlyle 7y ago
    > I live in Istanbul, and the first thing I noticed was the lack of homeless people in this city of 15-20million (depending on with whom you are talking). This is because Turks have a much stronger family structure, and most people live with their parents until they're married at the very least. There's about 15,000 living in the streets of Istanbul, and about 150,000 living in the streets of Turkey according to NGOs. 150k per 80M compares to about 200k living unsheltered in the US (per 320M) or 550k homeless overall.
    - plumednom 7y ago
      I haven't been able to locate these numbers, can you point me to them? Anecdotally, living here, there are very few homeless people in the street, not like my home in SF. The people you do see on the street are Refugees (for whom there is available housing, whether they choose to take it or not, many of them are either on their way to Europe, or have been waylaid) and Romani. The Roma are an unbelievably complicated problem globally which transcends the word "homeless". What I don't see are people with heroin / meth / alcohol problems sleeping on the sidewalks / in the parks, or pooping on the street (at least I haven't the past 5 years). There was one old homeless guy in Izmir last year who asked me to buy him a durum, though.

nine_k 7y ago

Brothers? Sisters? Mothers? Sons? Do their siblings, children not want to help them out so much that they end up homeless? I bet most of the homeless have their normal social ties severed, and shame, guilt, hate and other such things keep them away from their former friends and relatives. Also, I bet the great majority of them don't have a job, or another occupation, and lives on handouts and petty crime. Overcoming this first is required to make these people feel like fathers, sisters, sons, etc again, and agree to come back into the society.

plumednom 7y ago
> Brothers? Sisters? Mothers? Sons? Do their siblings, children not want to help them out so much that they end up homeless? Americans have this "rugged individualism" to our culture. I left my own home when I was still 15, most people at 17 or 18. I live in Istanbul, and the first thing I noticed was the lack of homeless people in this city of 15-20million (depending on with whom you are talking). This is because Turks have a much stronger family structure, and most people live with their parents until they're married at the very least. I'm from San Francisco and have known many of my friends to become homeless over the past 20 years through combinations of, as I stated before, substance abuse, trauma, and a lack of a strong family / social support structure. My closest friend is a homeless violinist hippy in San Francisco (who just returned after 4 years in Istanbul). He keeps tents in 6 or 7 spots around the bay, most of them with breathtaking views. He just likes being homeless. (Brilliant guy. Oliver. He plays mostly in Bart, the Mission, and North Beach. Say hi in any language, he knows it) I also know a lot of kids from my various music scenes who are homeless on purpose. The street punks, for example, find a stronger family structure drinking 40s on telegraph or the haight all day than they ever did in their own middle-class homes. (PS: Fuck the kids on haight. They're basically an aging street gang, I used to be in a band with one of them.)
- mlyle 7y ago
  > I live in Istanbul, and the first thing I noticed was the lack of homeless people in this city of 15-20million (depending on with whom you are talking). This is because Turks have a much stronger family structure, and most people live with their parents until they're married at the very least. There's about 15,000 living in the streets of Istanbul, and about 150,000 living in the streets of Turkey according to NGOs. 150k per 80M compares to about 200k living unsheltered in the US (per 320M) or 550k homeless overall.
  - plumednom 7y ago
    I haven't been able to locate these numbers, can you point me to them? Anecdotally, living here, there are very few homeless people in the street, not like my home in SF. The people you do see on the street are Refugees (for whom there is available housing, whether they choose to take it or not, many of them are either on their way to Europe, or have been waylaid) and Romani. The Roma are an unbelievably complicated problem globally which transcends the word "homeless". What I don't see are people with heroin / meth / alcohol problems sleeping on the sidewalks / in the parks, or pooping on the street (at least I haven't the past 5 years). There was one old homeless guy in Izmir last year who asked me to buy him a durum, though.