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For those interested in this topic: The Winston Rhea Scholarship is an amazing organization. For some context on how serious of an issue this is, here are some stats from their site:
400,000+ children are currently in the foster care system in the United States. Less than 3% of those will obtain a college degree, less than 1% will obtain an advanced degree. One in five will be homeless within 6 months of exiting care. One in five of the females will end up pregnant before age 21. One in four of the males will have been arrested at some point before age 25.
This group helps young adults coming out of foster care - which btw at 18 you’re basically kicked out and on your own - and helps them improve their odds.
I am not a part of the non-profit, but I know people working on it, and let me tell you what they’re doing is so fucking important. Consider donating or at the very least learning more about this issue: https://www.winstonrhea.org/
My parents wouldn’t even have the fucking space to let me stay.
And then we have people like musk, who grew up with a golden spoon and view those on social security as parasites.
Yep, anyone can be homeless.
If you sell your house and are between houses now, technically you are homeless but you’re privileged you can live in a hotel or rent a storage unit and couch surf or if you have a friend or family member to stay with. If you have a job, you can still afford shelter and not lose everything. This was my family when my brother was a baby and we just stay with a friend for 2 months until we moved into our new house. Both of my parents had jobs. We were privileged.
If you’re evicted because you lost your job or got sick so you were unable to afford to pay your rent. Not all landlords give you a grace period to get behind in rent when something out of your control happened. These people also lose everything if they had no friends or family to help out. If they live paycheck to paycheck, they couldn’t save money. Many Americans are one paycheck away from homelessness. It just means if they get sick or get into an accident or lose their job, they’re screwed.
Forced Homelessness is the policy of many Governments and the DOJ in the United States as a means of punishing those they are after without any due process. Your ability to work or even have ID can be taken from you if they choose to do it. Your money can be taken. Your bank accounts can be frozen.
City, State and Federal Governments have been creating these zones where large numbers of homeless and poor people are forced into with a kind of virtual redlining. Usually, these are downtown areas in major cities, and then the system creates the ability to target them with systemic drug usage, even to the point of the government supplying pipes and needles for people to use. They are given just enough food to stay alive while forced into this position. No employers are going to hire anyone and it isn’t like it used to be where someone can just walk into a factory and make enough money in cash to live for a week.
In many ways it is a public execution system that just operates very slowly and you’ll only occasionally notice the dead body— which even are often not recorded as a death correctly, and it’s nothing you will see in the obituary sections of your newspapers. Imagine a system that lets tons of your former neighbors die slowly on the street while everyone walks by inside their little tech bubbles of safety, confident in the belief that it could never be them.
At some point, it’s really about your view of a human life versus your value of money. At some point along the way, it was decided that the amount of money someone has at that point in time determines their value as a person to even keep existing, or to have basic rights…
If Governments wanted to solve the problem, they could find a building to put people in, they could force drug rehab on some, others probably should be in jail. The ones willing and able to work should be given the opportunity, with a path out of the state imposed public execution systems, and back to a life where they are capable of taking care of themselves.
“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.”
Well said!
Liberals are also to blame for gaslighting and selling workers out to the capital class for 50+ years. The last Democrat President that actually fought for the proletariat was FDR with his New Deal programs.
Yes, liberals were less evil than Republicans, but when Obama tried to give us universal healthcare they stabbed him in the back and when Bernie set multiple grassroot funding records, they conspired against him and stabbed the entire nation in the back. So if we factor in the opportunities for real leftist leadership that liberals stole from us than that opportunity cost is nearly as damaging as what Republicans are doing.
nearly as damaging
really? More BS false equivalence. The liberals where never in control enough to make any of that happen. They may not be perfect by any means but to say they’re “nearly as damaging” as the right is just ridiculous.
Convenient that when the GOP has a razor thin edge they get everything they want with almost no issue, but when DNC has a super majority they can barely get watered down health insurance reform.
That’s the difference between ethical governing and the unethical abuse of power.
If you want liberals to “get everything they want”, and ignore democracy, they’d have to do it unethically.
Wouldn’t it be better if everyone played by the rules, and governed like they are actually working in the best interests of voters?
Then let’s apply the same reasoning we did in November. Some unethical abuse of power is going to happen. Wouldn’t you rather it be less?
The real problem is most of the DNC don’t want the things they say they do to get elected. They get the same conservative money the GOP does to be sure those things don’t happen.
It’s a lot easier to get things done when you get to cheat while the other side has to play by the rules.
In the past the Democrats did good things for regular people.
Today’s Democrat party is incapable of doing good things for regular people. Literally no better than Republicans these days tho.
There’s no false equivalence in comparing two arms of the same Duopoly.
Literally no better than Republicans?
You’re either a troll or completely brainrotted
Yea… dems aren’t great and I’d love to see a new party. But, I do not understand people saying “the party that is bad at governing is basically as bad as the party taking over the nation through brute force.” Insane logic.
So when do the Dems step up and do something to fight back instead of shrugging while voting for fascism?
All Dems are voting for fascism?
The votes wouldn’t be passing if they didn’t vote for it.
So if I looked up how Republicans and Democrats vote, they’d be the same? The Democratic voting history would be literally no better?
Two time boomeranging failson here.
I tried Lord how I tried. I fell flat on my face trying to make it on my own. Actually did wind up homeless for a stint. If I didn’t have the option to crawl back home to lick my wounds, I’m not sure I would have made it.
When I see things like this it makes me so proud of my parents. They are the few people I know who do foster care because they care. They have actual love for every kid that ever walked through their doors. They have had so far 3 kids that moved back home at one point or another and for all 3 of them the only question They ever asked was “how soon do you want to move in?”
At the same time stuff like this hurts me because I always thought unconditional love was the standard growing up. The knowledge that most people didn’t / don’t have that is so sad.
Anyway on a side note I am going to call my folks and tell them how great they are.
I’m grateful for my parents as well.
FYi readers, I don’t know the actual statistics on foster children who grow out of the system and how prevalent that is in the homeless population, but from what I know at least, particularly in my own time homeless, is that most homeless people are actually small families who live in their car or in someone’s garage.
I think we need to do a lot better to show what poverty really looks like in the USA, because we picture the media-spun image of America that we have a huge middle-class in nice suburban homes, and then there’s the “the poors” who are like, generic homeless dudes who are grizzled old bums warming their fingerless-gloved hands over a burning metal drum down in skid-row.
The reality of the distribution is the “middle class” in America is much, much smaller and more poor than most people realize. Most people who seem to “have it all” are in immense debt, and the larger percentage of families in the US are working poor, people who live in shared homes and apartments with too many other people, people who live in their car and go to work and school every day, people who live in motels and abandoned homes or who “Stay after work” to take advantage of the company showers before sleeping under the desk. These are not jokes or tropes or memes, this is really how many, many Americans live… in the wealthiest country in the world.
There are an incredible number of people with gym memberships for access to the showers.
Besides every van lifer on YouTube.
I’m pretty sure the whole “van life” trend started with homeless people documenting their humble lives in their vehicles, and the weird romance of having no responsibilities that attracts every child who had dreams of running away and riding boxcars across the country.
Now every “van lifer” is some white college kid with perfect teeth living on their parents’ dime while saying all you need for a happier life is this $90,000 RV that you can just drive up and down the coast getting high by beach bonfires every night.
Never looked down on any homeless people in my entire life & would like to keep it that way.
My sister though, holy crap
The reality if you’re working class in America; we’re all one really bad day and a few less people caring about us from being homeless.
Recently found a pretty interesting video about China and how they combat homelessness (sorry on reddit). You can buy a 1 room apartment for $15.000 and the monthly costs are minimal. Of course I don’t truly know if there really isn’t any homelessness in China, but we absolutely have the technology to solve this problem lol
It’s probably mostly accurate, most other developed nations DO prioritize housing and caring for their homeless because it just makes sense that if you don’t want decay in your population, you do SOMETHING to take care of them.
Now that said, I am far more concerned/curious how China is handling one of the leading causes of homelessness which is mental and physical health problems, and how much access the average person starting to slip through the cracks can get to proper healthcare.
I am not well versed on China’s healthcare situation though, and it’s been almost 17 years since I’ve been there last, when I was there people seemed kind of… miserable. Overworked, unable to afford more than the most basic amenities and living conditions. At least the working-class drivers and clerks. Honestly, China 17 years ago feels a lot like many places in the US right now.
Well, for 2022 I found that the average wage is 2600¥ or 330€ per month (with enormous differencs between the regions). That means a flat is 4 annual salaries on average, assuming ithe 15000$ or 14000€. That’s not that much off a difference to Germany, where I am from.
So one could argue that this is just the advise “get a job and buy a house!!!” To a homeless person.
4x the annual median salary for a house sounds amazing to me. In the US, low cost of living areas can have a median income of $40k and houses will still cost $320k (8x your annual salary). In areas like San Francisco, median income is around $140k while median house prices are $1.2M (8x the annual income).
So it seems that housing is twice as affordable in China and Germany.
But keep in mind that here you compare a house (!) in the US, to a single bedroom apartment in china. That is quite a difference.
In the state that I grew up in it was less expensive for my parents to buy a house than to continue to rent one.
I think there are more factors at play than you’re giving credit. For example, Germany has an average cost of 3000-5000 euro per m^3 which translates to ~$320-540/sqft. In the US the average cost of a house is ~$146/sqft in the south, ~$156/sqft in the midwest, ~$220/sqft in the north, and ~$195/sqft in the west. So while the 8x vs 4x comparison is accurate, you’re probably also getting 50% less house in Germany.
The problem is there really are not many small homes in the US. Me and my wife are not planning to have children so a small house is really all that we will ever need. But there are just not any available for us or the ones that do exist are in historical areas so they are even more expensive than a larger house in the suburbs.
What do you mean by small and I think context of where you live matters.
Around me there are an abundance of 0.75k-1.5k sqft homes, typically they are older (1940-1980), and they are between $180-250k. They aren’t in high demand because they are older, they may need some TLC, they have old styles, they are 45 min - 1 hour drive from the big city, and they may not be as big as people want.
I have coworkers who lament not being able to buy a house, but when you talk to them they are looking at 2500+ sqft, less than 10 years old, 20 min from downtown, but $425k.
EDIT: After typing this I opened Zillow and within 30 seconds found a house across town that’s 980 sqft, $115k, 1950’s, but you’re gonna have a 45 minute (minimum) commute every day unless you leave for work at 5 am.
EDIT 2: Oh and 0.34 acres with no HOA
But absolute scale makes a difference, especially if you compare having a job or not, and how expensive it is to give a home to a homeless person. My impression was that they just give you an apartment for free.
The proper comparison would be complicated, when building and maintaining an apartment block, how much money is siphoned off as profit to the capitalists?
Also e.g. Germany has a lot of regulations which is sometimes nice, but also lead to higher costs. Like converting your car to electric isn’t done in Germany, because regulations demand you make an EMF test which costs something 5-10 thousand euro. So there are practically none. That held back private innovation for EVs. There are countless regulations for building too which might sound good on paper but have been tweaked to only benefit the capitalists and make costs go up and projects take forever.
Then in Germany you wouldn’t give an apartment as a homeless person for free, you’d have to show that you’re jobless and that has to be verified then they give you money then you can pay rent to someone. Although I’m not quite sure how the situation in Germany is overall.
In China if you are homeless the cops pick you up and say if you work as a street cleaner you will get a home in excange.
If you don’t like that arrangement you dissappear.
Removed by mod
Yes because they kill the ones who don’t agree to work for housing
Thanks for helping explain how homelessness works in china you dumb bot
You have no actual evidence for this assertion besides your brain on McCarthyism. I think you start from your preconceptions and then work backwards, solely within your mind palace.
Yeah no, there’s decades of China’s documented oppression of its people.
Sorry you are too stupid or proud or whatever to engage with the real world like a big boy.
It sure sucks when you can’t just ban all dissent!
Removed for “misinformation,” from Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, and Wikipedia 🙄
In case your source for that is serpentza, then you should check this reply with more links debunking this guy and his racist views.
Obviously China is not a utopia and with a billion people things will be bad at some place or another. But cherry picked examples and wild accusations like “they will dissappear” is just anti-China propaganda.
I got a weird vibe with serpentza.
One one hand, yes he does tell the truth about China sometimes. But he also have this weird vibe like putting “My Chinese Wife” in youtube titles (like imagine a white guy in America putting “My Black Wife” in the youtube title) or even a video title designed to clickbait people like “Are Chinese Men Cowards” which its just like WTF is that title, he did answer “No” in the video, but this guy clearly doesn’t care about Political Correctness (aka: Politeness).
But he literally made a video recently proclaiming the USA is “the best” country in the world. Not “one of the best”, he said “the best”. The Video was made after trump won the election for the second time.
You can’t take this guy seriously.
The homeless thing is real tho. They exist. But my point is: serpenza is a joke.
Edit: This is the video where serpentza said the “America is Best” thing: https://youtu.be/1hePvgiYyhU?t=1029 (Starts at 17:09)
“America is the best country I’ve ever lived in” Which is because he have lived in 3 countries, South Africa, PRC, USA, of course the US seems the best, because he haven’t lived (as in long-tern) in EU countries, but then he doubled down in the next sentence:
“America is the best country in the world” LOL nope. Dude forgot the EU Exists. 🤣
Video was published in December 30, 2024, like… bruh… forgot the LGBT people? Minorities? Immigrants? 🤔 This is white privilage in action. Maybe he isn’t malicious, but this is peak ignorance and being totally out of touch, even if he has good intents.
Serpentza is compelling and interesting on a cursory glance. And I don’t know if he is consciously racist or how far his biases go. The bigger problem is that there are “algorithmic forces” shaping content and content creators.
The content creators wants to make money, needs to make money. They will experiment with various things. They make compelling content, don’t have time to deeply study history or sociology or economics, only enough to project an image. Psychological needs from narcissism might make them unable to resist rationalizations in exchanges for clicks.
There have been quite a few cases with supposedly liberal or leftist icons suddenly turning to reactionary rhetoric. It’s hard to understand and somewhat traumatizing. Recently TYT. I think the moral of the story is that much of it is subconsciously performative and not well thought out beliefs. And economic reality makes ideology a lie.
I think Serpentza fits in there somewhere, if he’s not outright paid indirectly by the state department to spread propaganda.
outright paid indirectly by the state
I think he realized the US’s turn towards fascism and amp up the right-wing rhetoic to secure his adjustment of status. AFIAK, he is still a citizen of South Africa, and I’m not even sure if he has permanent residency in the US, or just some visa. I think he’s bootlicking to make sure he doesn’t get deported to South Africa.
And he’s a cishet white man, so this spiral into fascism doesn’t affect him, which is why he’s too blind to see the shit that’s been happening.
And its also the fact that he criticized South Africa and China too much, he just has to keep his mouth shut about the US to stay out of trouble, kinda similar to how Snowden went against the US, and now he is in a situation where he can’t criticize the Russian government.
I went to Shanghai last year and there were, in fact, homeless people around. Not many at all, but I was surprised to see any.
I don’t know who that is.
I read news articles.
The news articles I read said they offer homeless people housing for work, if they refuse they are “reeducated” which is one of the many ways people dissapear in the China meat grinder.
Never had a bad view of homeless people, even as a child, you gotta lack empathy to be in the position where you are adult and realise that they’re not bad.
It’s the people who pretend to be homeless and collect money that are the real scum and ruin it for the actual homeless
fuck.
One in four foster kids will end up homeless.
https://nfyi.org/issues/homelessness/
up to 3 out of 10 homeless people are foster kids who aged out.
what the fuck.
I thought it was bad enough knowing about the veteran rights.
some of the studies show higher rates.
The studies. on the homeless children.
Also black families are over-policed, and their kids more likely to be put into foster care “National estimates suggest that 53% of Black children will experience CPS contact by age 18, as compared to 28% of White children” “We consider that, at their root, these inequities are the consequence of systemic racism: there is no inherent relationship between race and child maltreatment. Rather, race is a proxy for the societal and institutional privileges and oppressions people experience because of their membership in a racialized group” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9325927/
Movement for Family Power is a great advocacy organization if you want to get involved https://www.movementforfamilypower.org/
Also impacts Native Americans. ICWA was put in place to basically stop DHS from kidnapping native kids. (The Right has been waging a war against ICWA for a while too - they tend to be against any form of oversight in child welfare/adoption. They want kids to go to “quiverful” white families)
“National estimates suggest that 53% of Black children will experience CPS contact by age 18, as compared to 28% of White children”
Holy shit both of those are so high, and the the difference is also crazy
To be fair the word contact is kinda sus. I had CPS “contact” when I broke my arm in kindergarten.
I was pushed off the play ground by another kid while at school. My parents were both at work. I had a lot of bruises they also didn’t like. I remember getting questioned about it at the hospital for what felt like forever. They kept pointing out scrapes and bruises and asking how that happened. I had no clue and kept saying from playing.
That sounds like the bare minimum to qualify as contact.
Those contacts can be compared to a broken taillight or stop and frisk—it’s an opportunity to probe deeper and find anything at all to justify further surveillance and actions taken against families who are often impoverished and the hard life that creates.
there is no inherent relationship between race and child maltreatment
The pipeline is systemic racism -> poverty -> child maltreatment.
If you want more statistical horror, look up foster care to prison pipeline
So when conservatives want to ban abortions they are basically trying to increase the flow in this pipeline to get more prison slave labor
Multiple angles really.
Biggest one is that a child is both a financial and mental stress on a parent, and our society overwhelming believes that children are primarily the responsibility of the mother. By attacking abortion, they basically saying that every woman is just one sexual assault away from a lifetime of financial, emotional, mental and social duress.
The second reason is class stratification. The financial stresses impact less wealthy families or individuals disproportionately, and less wealthy people cannot afford to travel to areas where reproductive care is legal, nor can they afford the lawyers required to fight the potential criminal cases or just pay their fines. The rich conservatives bankrolling these anti-abortion groups aren’t threatened or beholden to the policy they create.
The third reason is racism. Black women are more likely to seek abortions, partly because they suffer a higher incidence of sexual assault, but also because they have less access to reproductive resources and education. Republicans have dog whistled this in the past by trying to say that abortions are racist because black women have a disporportionate number of abortions, even going so far as to call it a Democrat genocide on African-Americans. This dog whistle shows their true intentions; force financial, mental, and social stress in ways that are “equal” along racial lines, but not “equitable”.
You could say that religion is a 4th reason, but I don’t consider it a real reason, and they cherry-pick their religious convictions anyway. You see those motherfuckers eating shellfish and wearing blended fibers all the time.
Yep, people are only a commodity to be manipulated by the capitalist systems
10000% yes. The easiest people to manipulate are the desperate and manipulators love dangling carrots.
What’s worse is that this is easily recognizable but nothing will ever be done about the nutjobs who enjoy watching others suffer at their hand.
There is no reason to believe we don’t live in hell
But “poors” “ruin” “great American cities”
Make me a billionaire. Say now I’m a super selfish billionaire. I’m OK with having to ride my limo through SF, routing around the Tenderloin, to rub shoulders with those Silicon Valley MAGAs at their fundraisers? Why don’t my buddies and I stop the madness, call it Euthanize The Poors if we have to, but with crime down security costs go down too and any reproductively-derived assets (children) must be safer…
Gated communities are cool but sightseeing is part of life. I’m a selfish billionaire but I can’t visit Honduras safely b/c I haven’t fixed global poverty, now I never get to see it. My yacht is good enough for me I guess fine
Well yeah, obviously.
It can’t possibly be because of religion, because all of them would be damned to hell five times a day for several other reasons.
People can easily justify their own sin because they know exactly what motivates them, which is usually some other bullshit they justified to themselves already.
I have witnessed some serious mental gymnastics in my life regarding such things.
I knew a man so religious that he wouldn’t dream of letting a woman live with him if he wasn’t married to her, but he wasn’t really cheating on their two decade long relationship, because they weren’t married.
And boy oh boy, a personal relationship with god affords you all sorts of leeway. Throughout the history of Christianity, what the church had to say was very important. Not anymore. The religion has evolved so that every man is a priest, and Jesus is just wearing shades and riding shotgun wherever they go.
“I’ve never actually read the bi-buhl, but I have a personal relationship with Christ so… and when I have trouble, I just open a random page and read until I find something I relate to. That’s how he guides me, that and the feelings I have in my heart.”
Amazes me.
Not trying to defend their position but young kids given up for adoption at or near birth are overwhelmingly adopted. There are lines and a whole grey market.
It’s kids with shitty parents that get removed after the toddler phase that tend to end up in the system long term.
While this is accurate, most people have a better chance of actually understanding it when you use the full quote.
We live in a world where people have to be convinced to care for and sympathize with those around them.
Empathy is a skill.
That’s a great point. Wish more people would practice it.
💯
In addition to the appalling foster care kid stats for homeless, around 13% of homeless are veterans (obviously some qualify as both). Funny how support for the military dries up once they get discharged.
Then we have the complete lack of any kind of assistance for the mentally ill.
We shouldn’t even pretend that we are civilized. We treat our fellow humans so barbarically.
