As someone who works in public housing, one of the issues I see is that it’s a place for people we want to forget about. There’s a lot of mental health/social issues with our tenants because we’re basically the last step before homelessness. We get their welfare/disability penion/social support direct deposited in our account to cover rent, stick them in an apartment, and forget about them.
Its hard for your average joe to want to live in subsidized housing, even with the cheaper rent, when he has to worry about an untreated schizophrenic running down the halls at 3 am banging on doors, or horders causing cockroach, bed bug, anf rodent issues, or finding needles and crack pipes in the stairwell.
In most living situations, this would result in eviction, but since our mandate is to keep people housed, we tend to accept that it comes with the territory.
What we really REALLY need is a robust social services network to not only house people, but treat them so that they can self actualize and actively participate in society.
But we’re not too interested in doing that, because if we dont have these dregs of society, what else to we have to threaten the middle class to keep them in line?
Meanwhile ODSP has not seen a meaningful increase since I don’t know how many years ago but more than five. Your untreated schizophrenic was probably traumatized by previous hospitalizations and stigmatization from medical professionals and is now trying to get by on about 13k a year.
They don’t want to forget about us. They want to punish us. They’re like Mother Teresa but without the self delusion. They hate the poor and they cannot even conceal it, do not even know to conceal it. It so pervasive in society that I don’t even think there is a word for hatred of the poor, but we all know it exists and warps public policy.
I agree with these issues but I think a lot of this comes from our current conception of what public housing can be. In Vienna, something like 60+% of all housing stock is public in nature. It’s not a place to stick the least fortunate among us, but the primary means of housing people. If we can make that sort of conceptual leap, it would go a long way towards solving our housing woes, I think.
As someone who works in public housing, one of the issues I see is that it’s a place for people we want to forget about. There’s a lot of mental health/social issues with our tenants because we’re basically the last step before homelessness. We get their welfare/disability penion/social support direct deposited in our account to cover rent, stick them in an apartment, and forget about them.
Its hard for your average joe to want to live in subsidized housing, even with the cheaper rent, when he has to worry about an untreated schizophrenic running down the halls at 3 am banging on doors, or horders causing cockroach, bed bug, anf rodent issues, or finding needles and crack pipes in the stairwell.
In most living situations, this would result in eviction, but since our mandate is to keep people housed, we tend to accept that it comes with the territory.
What we really REALLY need is a robust social services network to not only house people, but treat them so that they can self actualize and actively participate in society.
But we’re not too interested in doing that, because if we dont have these dregs of society, what else to we have to threaten the middle class to keep them in line?
Meanwhile ODSP has not seen a meaningful increase since I don’t know how many years ago but more than five. Your untreated schizophrenic was probably traumatized by previous hospitalizations and stigmatization from medical professionals and is now trying to get by on about 13k a year.
They don’t want to forget about us. They want to punish us. They’re like Mother Teresa but without the self delusion. They hate the poor and they cannot even conceal it, do not even know to conceal it. It so pervasive in society that I don’t even think there is a word for hatred of the poor, but we all know it exists and warps public policy.
I agree with these issues but I think a lot of this comes from our current conception of what public housing can be. In Vienna, something like 60+% of all housing stock is public in nature. It’s not a place to stick the least fortunate among us, but the primary means of housing people. If we can make that sort of conceptual leap, it would go a long way towards solving our housing woes, I think.
This country could be so much better. Fingers crossed that social services and housing are improved like that by the time I retire.
Check out M. Moneybags over here, with retirement plans. Social services for retirement, hah! We get MAID and consider ourselves lucky to have it.
I’m quite the opposite of a moneybags, I just like to dream. :(