Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, September 28, 2024
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20 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Move over 1962 New York Mets, you are no longer the losingest team in baseball history. Did Marvelous Marv roll over in his grave or let out a cheer?
Ask me to name one 2024 Chicago White Sox and I will fail you. As I grew up a Met fan, I’m familiar with the lore of the 1962 squad even though I* never saw them play.
I am also familiar with the 62 Mets because I’m currently replaying that year with the help of Strat-O-Matic baseball. I’m currently up to September 2/Labor Day Weekend/126 games from the end of the National League schedule. While the 62 Mets are horrible with me, Roger Craig is 1-24 as a pitcher, they will likely surpass their real-life counterparts as in my replay they have a record of 39-98.
The 1963 Mets, another year I’m replaying, are doing worse than 62 with me. They are on a pace** to lose 120 games. They have won 7 of their last 17 games. If they hadn’t the team would be on a pace to win closer to 30 than 40 games.
As Casey Stengel asked- “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
*- I was one year old in 1962.
**- I’m up to July 21 in the replay
I volunteer at a homeless shelter. I see the gamut of humanity.
Some folks are between addresses and desperately want social services assistance to help them with housing, employment, navigating the system effectively to get out of homelessness. Aka The “good” homeless.
Some are scary sociopaths that exude bad vibes like thorns and would kill you for a pack of smokes. The “bad” homeless.
They do exist, but in fairly small numbers.
Most are in between. Lost. Bereft. No place to go. In between hopeless and possibly hopeful.
Many are addicts. Seeing the ass end of, or the middle of meth addiction is a very disheartening thing. That drug is ruthless. Or alcholism. Many addicts are really good folks. Many addicts are assholes and were assholes before the addiction stuck.
So many are just broken.
We have pretty great social workers on site. Specialists in employment, housing, health care, mental health. Everybody gets an intake.
Inside info – they triage during intake. Some folks are just going to be more amenable to access assistance meaningfully and take advantage of the services offered than others and they are aware of that and adjust their focus towards those who actively engage with provided services.
My job is fricking easy. I hand out towels and toiletries. If we have toothpaste, soap, shampoo I will give it to you in a tiny paper cup. If you ask, I will give. I do observe, though.
Everyone there has fucked up pretty profoundly for one reason or another.
This is not even acknowledging that some prefer living rough either on a bench in the city or in a makeshift tent down by the river. I don’t understand that mindset, but it definitely exists for a lot of homeless people.
Sleeping on a bench or in a tent was criminalized in my city a few weeks ago. I don’t get how criminalizing homelessness helps in any way.
@Bill Jempty:
The Mets were at least fun and an expansion team, the White Sox are just a miserable, dysfunctional organization.
I have worked enough shifts to state this with fairly high confidence.
If you walk in you’re going to to get a thorough pat-down. You will need to empty any bag. Think TSA x 10. No food. No unsealed water. No knives. Contraband gets tossed in the nearby garbage can ruthlessly.
You can back out at that point or before and reclaim your stuff.
If you want entry you must comply with the rules for admission.
You can come and go as you please, but you have to check in and out. A so-called wet shelter where you are not banned for drinking or drugging but are put in a time-out type room until staff decides your sober enough to mingle with the other residents.
If you are fucked up bigly you gotta sober up outside the shelter.
If female, there is about a 80-90% possibility you’ll get a bed that night. Probably will. If male, there is a 0% probability that you will get a bed that night. Male dorms are 100% full every day.
If male you will sleep in the common area on the floor for three to six nights before getting a bed in the dorms depending on outflow. You get a blanket and sleep on the floor. In the dorms, you get a bunkbed and a 3 inch mattress.
The dorms are 50 folks per in bunkbeds jenga’ed in tight. You must obey the rules to maintain access to a bed.
Lights out at 10 pm. 5am is everybody up in the overflow common area and 6am for the dorms. Everyone up and entirely out of the dorms by 7:15. No access til 4 pm. Your storage is a 1 foot by 2 foot drawer.
You get three meals a day. Very often a charity or a church provides dinner. I’m not religious, personally, but I have huge regard for churches that actually follow through on charity to the homeless. Truly good folks.
The common room is a huge area with industrial picnic tables with attached individual stools. That’s it.
There are TV lounges available 4 – 9 pm. People love them because the chairs are padded/cushioned and have a back. Bad movies on DVD. If you’ve been sitting on a hard stool for eight hours a padded chair is a heaven-sent luxury.
The kitchen runs off donations mostly. Not in dollars mostly, but in foodstuffs that is about to go bad and is unsellable for general retail. Local groceries, restaurants. The kitchen staff figure out what to serve by what they have generally. 3/4 of the staff are residents. Kitchen knowledge is mostly second-hand so take it with a grain of salt. It’s what I’ve heard.
Sometimes the food is shockingly bad.
Homeless people get a roof, running water, electricity, heating or A/C, three meals. A bed if you stick it out.
90 days in, 90 days out. Then 60. Then 30.
It is not permanent residence. If your first go round you are bounced after 90 days and cannot sleep there for 90 days after.
It is intended that you get your shit together within those 90 days and secure housing and employment during. That is an absolute pipe dream for at least 60% of the residents. Many don’t even have ID. Many are flat-out unemployable. They will never get an apartment.
Many try hard, do every right step they can and just fail because of lack of ID or FICO score or past felonies. There is a class of people who are essentially perma-fucked.
The intent is to motivate homeless people to get housed within 90 days. That intent works pretty rarely. Evictions are a death knell to future renting.
It succeeds at its mission maybe 25% of the time for first timers.
@de stijl:
My wife founded and runs the sandwich ministry at our church. They give a sandwich plus a bottled water to anyone who shows up on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The food and water are donated by parishoners.
The sandwich ministry has been in existence for 15 years or so. I wonder how much longer it will exist after Dear wife stops working at the church the end of this year. Our current pastor, not the one who gave his blessing to DW starting the ministry, has never particularly been a fan of it.
@de stijl: Until my daughter volunteered at a shelter working to get IDs, I never realized how integral IDs are to remaining connected, even tenuously, to society. Especially for the newly homeless.
One question though. How does your shelter handled pets? For some of the chronically homeless, a pet is the only source of love they get.
Watching the Weather Channel to see how bad Helene has hit they interviewed Rick Scott in Cedar Key. (When we lived in Fl Cedar Key was a favorite place to visit.) Anyway, Scott said it was a mystery why the three storms with the worst storm surge were in the last 8 years and why storm surges were increasing. According to him it’s a mystery. Couldn’t bring himself to say the words climate change. I guess when you think science is a hoax much of the world is a mystery.
Steve
@de stijl:
I really enjoy when you write about this.
@steve:
In the since-memed words of Bill O’Reilly, the formerly most-watched cable news program host, “Tide goes in, tide goes out…you can’t explain that.”
Creepy AND weird.
Anti-Abortion GOP Candidate Borrows Friend’s Wife and Daughters for Campaign Photo Op
@Scott: I would really like to know who TF approved that. One of the things I would counsel candidates early on was “you’ll have enough to respond to. Do not create a crisis.”
Very dumb move.
@de stijl:
“I want government housing for the homeless, but only if it’s as expensive and inefficient as possible!”
@Michael Reynolds:
One great thing happened on Thursday.
A young woman who took advantage of the services provided got an apartment.
She walked out into the parking lot where staff gather to smoke and decompress, did a power X pose and screamed to the world “I HAVE AN APARTMENT!!!” I witnessed that moment of pure joy. She was so happy.
I clapped and woo-hoo’ed and nearly immediately started good crying. She was so pumped! A very positive outcome and so well earned. She worked hard.
You are provided access to services that can help you get started on the path, but the hard work, the diligence, the follow-through is on you. She managed to navigate the system.
One kinda fucked up thing I witnessed was a pretty decent guy, a lost one though, decided to go get shit-faced drunk rather than go get his new prosthetic leg. J is a pretty cool cat all things considered, well kinda an asshole, but not mean spirited. He missed the free ride to Broadlawns where he was going to get for free an extremely expensive custom fitted knee down leg prosthetic, which would improve his life profoundly. He got extraordinarily drunk instead.
Just decided that vodka was more important, more compelling that day.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them show up for an appointment that would improve their life immesurably. They’d rather drink instead.
Btw, a shockingly high number of residents are limbless. Way, way higher than the general pop. Untreated diabetes is my best guess. I haven’t asked about that.
@Stormy Dragon: Don’t forget shoddy workmanship! You can blame the homeless for ‘not taking care of the property’ when it becomes run down in a few years.
@Scott:
Yeah, lack of current state-issued ID is a big roadblock. You are basically unemployable outside of under the table cash day work.
Access to government services. Lack of current ID is a big deal. You’re kinda fucked without it.
Give your awesome daughter a big-ass hug next time you see her. She is doing good work for folks who need help.
Pets are not allowed in the shelter at all. Nor are assistance animals, as far as I know. I will ask as to what accommodation is possible next time. I assume it’s ad hoc leave your pet in the nearest animal shelter until you leave, hopefully.
I asked to the shelter manager about partnering with an animal shelter to maybe have a few cats and dogs wander about the place.
The number is fairly low, but there are straight-up sociopaths in there probably daily.
Another item likely to go live in the news on Monday
@Stormy Dragon:
Dealing with homelessness long-term is really thorny. All neighborhoods do not want a shelter nearby. Our shelter is cleverly tucked into a post-industrial neighborhood down by the train tracks next to the biggest fire station in town. 14th and Mulberry. Not many folks live nearby.
There are no easy solutions. The homeless are not one entity. Many types and sorts and kinds. Upstream services. Government owned housing. Not one thing will solve all of it.
I live downtown now, so I’m just used to it. I walk when bored so everyday I’m basically an outreach worker. I recognize by sight many street people, and a lot by name.
I stop, say “hi”, offer a fist bump. Maybe a cig. I always say that you can go to CISS for a meal or a shower or roof for the night.
I’m actually acting as an outreach guy, I should get professionally trained in doing that rather than my current seat of the pants approach.
I know, for certain, that there are folks who will not be, never will be, helped by outreach or goodwill. That’s a straight up fact.
One genius thing the FD did was station an EMT in the shelter 24/7. They’re directly next door. I could throw a rock and git their building. They asked permission from the city after they did it. No study. Just straight A/B test. It reduced ambulance call-outs by like $2 million a year.
The PD should just post a cop there 24/7 too. That would help a lot, actually.
Criminalizing homelessness in your city is not going to make it end. Pushing it down the road is just bad governance.
Frankly, a lot of folks need a night sleeping inside. Jail is better than hypothermia death.
@de stijl: This summer, my daughter interned at a homeless shelter that had a foot clinic. She worked in the foot clinic on some days, washing and tending to the clients’ feet. She told me that when you don’t have a place to safely take off your shoes, and you spend a lot of time walking, your feet get pretty messed up. Couple that with diabetic neuropathy, so you can’t feel the foot problems you have, and I can totally understand why infections spread and lost limbs are common.
Doesn’t Kurtz live in Asheville, NC area? Hope he’s all right!
@Jax:
If memory serves, he’s in southwest FL.
The sentiment stands regardless.