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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 30th, 2023

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  • Also shelters don’t count and you cannot interpret refusal to stay at a shelter as “wanting to be homeless.”

    I help out with a street outreach mutual aid group. I’ve not met a single person that wanted to be homeless but I’ve met tons of people that don’t want to fuck with shelters cause:

    • they have to get rid of their dog
    • they can’t bunk with their partner or children
    • they are trans and most of the shelters are religiously affiliated
    • there are tight curfews and early kick out times
    • no guarantee of consecutive night stays or even a bed, no consistency
    • you can’t have friends over
    • you can’t have more than one bag
    • you must walk outside to a separate communal bathroom–even in a blizzard–if a pee cup is discovered you’ll be kicked out
    • you must attend religious services prior to receiving aid
    • some shelters are day only

    The streets are harsh, but in most cases the shelters are worse. Their only consistent benefit is that they are warm when it’s -20F out and if you keep your head down the police will probably not fuck with you.


  • This has been tried multiple times across numerous jurisdictions. Consistently it’s been found that giving poor people money makes them less poor in the long run. This seems to be an unsavory result, however, so politicians let the experiment retire never to actually learn from the results and draft policy.

    This experiment is going to work and then nothing will come of it only for another jurisdiction to try exactly the same thing again and find exactly the same results.

    The myth of meritocracy is still too prevalent a belief.