>The homeless are a minority by numerical standards, and they are not
>responsible for most social problems that working class faces. First, a
>significant proportion of the homeless are people in need of psychiatric
>treatment or even some form of institutionalization that had been denied to
>them on the grounds of "patient rights." True, that well-intended but
>misguided liberal campaign was cynically used by the right wingers to cut
>health care costs - but that is yet another example how liberal concern
>over symbols and ideas works in tandem with conservative cost "saving"
>measures to screw up people who need real help.
No one *needs* to be in an "institution". No one *should* be in an institution. There are plenty of better and appropriate community options no matter what the cognitive or psychiatric problem. These housing options are more expensive and labor intensive than the institutional ones. The problem is not so simple as liberal (shelter deviant from society) or conservative (protect society from deviant). Both end in isolation, economization, dehumanization, segregation, exploitation, and nonrehabilitation for people in human warehouses (I use the long list to emphasize that wide array of reasons why I oppose any institutional living arrangement).
The problem is we live in a world where everyone has to sing for their supper but we don't like the way some people sing (it's ugly sometimes). So there is little money for providing basic living arrangements for people with psychiatric disabilities. Also, there are geographic constraints; the same forces of gentrification bring "Not-in-my-neighborhood" restrictions on where these people can be housed.
The typically American way to deal with the problem is not too. The problem is exacerbated by capitalism and mercantilist politics but goes much deeper to basic prejudices against being different. It matters not if you regard those different people as a menace, an object of pity, a burden of charity, a holy innocent, or malleable being--we have created a world without a place for the people the world creates.
BTW, homelessness causes "normal" people some psychiatric problems. To me the whole issue is approriate housing for everyone.
Peace,
Jim
"The well-fed, well-cared for idiot is a happy creature. An idiot awakened to his condition is a miserable one."
--Benjamin Franklin Butler, Governor of Massachusetts 1883-1884 (unsuccessfully ran for President in 1884).