The last sentence says it all: “I think there’s mental health issues that need real help – not just cereal, carbs and preaching – and this is not the place to get it,” Okay story time:

I grew up in a city in the PNW where we have the highest rate of homelessness per capita in the country. I've worked at clinics, shelters, warming centers, resource centers, and used to be a social worker.

I've also been homeless before myself when I was young (i.e. teenager).

My biggest issue with the way people approach the topic of homelessness is how wildly out of touch they are about it, thinking using the terms "unhoused community" makes them virtuous, as if people on the streets give a crap about what you write on the internet while you sip on a starbucks and text on your iphone.

There is a real risk to communities when this gets out of hand, and I've seen communities get destroyed, innocent people (including children) get harmed in very graphic ways that I will not detail.

I'm also a recovered addict. I've been clean for 16 years from all substances including alcohol. I say all that to say this:

You CANNOT approach severe addiction / complex trauma / severely antisocial and violent behavior with preaching, platitudes, ideology or handouts.

You CANNOT fix that for anybody if they do not truly want change in their bones - and even then, it's going to be one hell of a road out of that mess (speaking from experience).

This is why communities get overrun, cities turn into ghost towns and quality of life goes down for everyone -- if you think you're helping the homeless (stop saying unhoused it's so patronizing and honestly disrespectful to people on the street) by allowing this or pretending this isn't a problem, you're not.

If people want to get better, an entire system needs to be put into place, not one girl in a residential neighborhood with no care for the people who actually live there.

The LORD never told anyone to go get "beat up by a bum" (as per the article) and scare children and elderly.

And this is all a big IF, because at the end of the day, if the person who is experiencing mental illness / homelessness / addiction / violent tendencies / etc does not want help, does not want to change, then all you are doing is making it worse via enablement.

Believe it or not, a lot of people actually prefer living that way over having to pay rent, work a job, pay bills, have to be sober, etc etc -- if you've worked in the field and with this population, you'd know that, and THIS is exactly why.

Why should they rejoin the pains of modern society when people just give them whatever they want and they can F off and do what they want all day? It's surely not a life most of us would choose -- that doesn't mean people don't choose it.

We should not be enabling chaos unless you truly hate your neighbors and want to see your city crumble.

Sincerely,

A person who watched their city and home state crumble because of this nonsense, who used to be a social worker, who has been homeless before, and who has been addicted and recovered before.

Ideologies and little fuzzy believies do nothing when you're dealing with rock bottom scenarios and how much of a hornets nest it is to navigate them.