Talk:Homelessness
From Academic Kids
Template:Limitedgeographicscope Can someone provide a link to the unicef statistics for industrialised countries? I think the figure for Australia is grossly short, by about a factor of 5. http://www.homeless.org.au/statistics/houselessness.htm reports the 2001 census finding 99,000 [again here at the ABS http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/DDC8DC3787E2D9FCCA256E9E0028F91E?Open ]. Could the issue be confused by the sleeping rough compared to temporary accomodation?
Surely the only certain thing that can be said about homelessness is that is about not having homes? Should women escaping violent relationships by becoming homeless be condemned? -Adrian
- Nonsense. Every society and nation has specific ways of *reacting* to homelessness, regardless of causes of it. Those can be commented on here. Also there are UN agreements on rights of children, to shelter, etc., that can be used as a basis for an NPOV analysis. We are not looking only for what is "certain".
- Are you being inadvertently ethnocentric? How about nomadic societies and nations? It might be fair to say that every state reacts to homelessness as a problem. My ignorance of non-western cultures in this respect is encyclopedic. Western states tend to have laws against "vagrancy" because non-sedentary people are considered a public safety problem, but non-sedentary ways of life were not considered a public safety issue not so long ago (on the scale of a few centuries). Also, to this day there are large problems accomodating gypsies in many European countries, and this can partly be traced to nomadic/sedentary lifestyle issues.
- Am I totally off the wall, or could some of the resident anthropologists/sociologists link this article to the relevant content? -- Miguel
Another ultra-liberal threatened to censor this page by protecting it, a tactic that was used against my fact-seeking before. This is a perfect example of the relation between liberalism and totalitarianism. -- JoeM
- Your 'fact-seeking' is POV rhetoric - Vaughan 18:25, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- Hi, I'm a conservative Republican. There is a proper way to put your facts into this article while maintaining a neutral point of view. The way you've done it ain't it.Ark30inf 18:29, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Tell me one thing in this article that isn't common sense and FACT. You liberals just want to censor me because you know that you can't argue against my additions with fact and common sense arguments. That's why you want to censor it rather than rebut it. My comments to the conservative Republican on this page: let me see you do a better job. You know I'm right. -- JoeM
- Thats your problem. Whether you and I know you are right is meaningless in an encyclopedia article. It is up to the reader to form his or her own opinions on, for instance, homeless advocacy being a fraud, based on the facts in the article. Neutral facts on which you base your opinion are valid for an encyclopedia article. Your opinion itself is not.
JoeM I think you do not understand NPOV. You can not go into an article and shout about 1 POV being right and all others wrong. - Fonzy
Hmmm, a condition in which a person does not have a permanent place of residence. Is nomadism homelessness? Can homelessness be a conscious choice of way of life? Has the answer to this question changed historically, or across cultures? -- Miguel
JoeM, do you want to know what's wrong with this introduction?
- Caused by moral failure encouraged by social liberalism and laziness encouraged by liberal socialistic welfare statism, paradoxically liberal propagandists have used this issue to targets those with the solutions: conservative republicans.
Well, it's clearly written for internal condumption by a faction in the USA political debate. It is irrelevant and close to unintelligible to anyone outside North America. -- Miguel
All of JoeM's edits have a political content. It's time for him to be banned. RickK 23:47, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
If that's a fair sample, they are severely lacking in gramatical content. Subject - object, anyone? Tannin
Hey, why are you people censoring me? You are joing to have to go through line by line and tell me what is specifically wrong with the facts and interpretations. If you don't do that, I want you to do what the people did with me on the Islamofascism article. They rewrote all the points I made, just in a more subtle way. JoeM
--- I DID. And it tells me that you shouldn't be censoring all views that are not left-wing liberal. THe conservative position belongs in every article. You people seem to afraid to rebut the conservative position (perhaps because it's impossible to argue against common sense and facts?), so you just censor it. To all you people NPOV means SPOV-- Socialistic POV. You people are just like the liberal media and academia-- convinced that your are all adhering to "standards" that are honestly "neutral and objective" even though you might as well be writing for the Bolsheviks. If you people really believed in NPOV, you'd take my additions and at least rewrite them and incorporate them into the article. JoeM
You are not taking a position, you are writing a diatribe. Let me give you another example...
- The truth is that America is the land of the free. It is the land of the free enterprise system. America's prosperity is built on individual responsibility. Individual responsibility and hard work, with the incentives of the market, made America great and powerful. In the market everyone who has the skills and the energy can succeed. But poor people, like poor countries, failed due to their own laziness, stupidity, bad choices, and immoral conduct.
I don't know if you realize that this paragraph is meaningless to pretty much everyone in the world except Americans. It is also a non-sequitur -- Miguel
Well if you're so smart, rewrite it so that it is. Don't censor the views that are actually held by most hard-working Americans. JoeM
- I'm not so smart, thank you. And, IMHO, there is very little in what you're writing that can be salvaged. -- Miguel
If you want to put your views into articles, you should not use loaded language, and should make some appempt to explain them. We should not be expected to rewrite your rants. Vancouverguy 00:13, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Why should I be expected to rewrite your rants. THIS ARTICLE IS A COMMUNIST RANT RIGHT NOW! Most Americans believe that moral failure is the number one cause of homelessness, but this isn't mentioned in your propaganda piece. Second, homelessness is a result of big governmenent messing with the housing market with rent control and big government making people lazy and dependent with welfare. Wikipedia is out of step with the views of the majority of Americans. There is a worse leftwing bias around here than on CNN, PBS, NPR, ABC, the New York Times, the LA Times, CBS, and NBC. JoeM
- Interesting that the only mainstream media you don't mention is FOX... -- Miguel
- Also, the majority of Americans are at most 2.5% of the world population. Welcome to the internet. -- Miguel
We do not expect you to "rewrite" our articles.Vancouverguy 00:23, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
(THe conservative position belongs in every article.) Yes, it does, presented in a neutral manner with the opposing views included so that the reader can decide for THEMSELVES. Its supposed to be an encyclopedia article, NOT a position paper. I know you are smart enough to know the difference. Do you want to? If you think its a communist rant now then you should have attempted to edit it to be neutral with opposing facts included. Not replace it with a rant from the other side.Ark30inf 00:27, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
First, this article focuses on homelessness in America, so the views of most Americans, the people who defeated Kaiserism, Nazism, fascism, Communism, socialism, and now Saddam Hussein and Islamic terror, count.
- Then change the title to homelessness in America. According to the current version there are 4 times as many homeless in the EU as in the USA, so there should be 4 times as much content on the European political debate as on the American. Or not? -- Miguel
And please don't call me hurtful names. You are censoring the conservative point of view and you know it. You are censoring the views held by most Americans on homelessness. Liberals control adademia, the media, Hollywood, and the federal bureaucracy. Add Wikipedia to that list. JoeM
And that's right. I don't mention FOX. And don't go through that liberal candard about FOX being biased to the right. It's the most neutral media around. You're just so used to liberal bias that when you hear something is fair and balanced you assume that it's biased to the right. Remember, every time they have a conservative commentator on, there's a liberal one on too. JoeM
- It can't be the most neutral when there is nothing to the right of it (in the mainstream, that is). I'm amazed that you call the NYT, NBC, CNN and CBS left-wing. -- Miguel
- I don't think we need to veer off the subject (since I basically agree with him on this one :-) ). The subject that needs addressing is a position paper masquerading as an encyclopedia article.Ark30inf 00:36, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- I agree, but I couldn' resist. Let me put it this way: you cannot list 8 different media outlets and claim that the one that is unarguably to the right of all others is the "moderate" one. It may get things right more or less often (I won't get into that), but in terms of tendency, and within the spectrum of American media, it is not neutral. -- Miguel
- I don't think we need to veer off the subject (since I basically agree with him on this one :-) ). The subject that needs addressing is a position paper masquerading as an encyclopedia article.Ark30inf 00:36, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I bet there are some conservative Americans on Wikipedia that do not object to the way the articles are written, and some probably write them.Vancouverguy 00:32, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- You are betting correctly.Ark30inf 00:39, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Yes, we should have seperate articles on homelessness in Europe and America. And BTW, do you want to know why homelessness is more of a problem in Europe? One thing: "social democracy." The truth is that homelessness is caused by the left, not the right, even though the left gets away with blaming the right for homelessness because they control the media (and Wikipedia). JoeM
- Yeah, there are conservatives on Wikipedia. And Bob Novaks's on CNN. Novak or no Novak, CNN is still the "Clinton News Network" or the "Communist News Network." I have a feeling that those two Arab women, Rula Amin and Jane Arraf on CNN actually wanted Saddam Hussein to win the war. We're outnumbered on CNN and Wikipedia. JoeM
- in The United States of America, 13% of all people is living below the poverty line, in The Peoples Republic of China, 10% is, in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 0% is. --62.251.90.73 00:39, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- I find this quite interesting, it is fascinating that the dividing of power into 3 branches of government has completely failed in the US (all branches are now controlled by one party, with enough power to hold it that way for quite some time with the high congress and judicial incumbency rate) while a partial monarchy has worked so well in the Nethernands. I would love to see a table of "form of government" versus "average poverty rate" --Dj245 08:16, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Homlessness around the world has been caused by both right and left-wing goverments. For example the Soviet government did not build enough housing, leaving people homeless. Even so, the US government does not encourage the construction enough low-cost housing, perticularily in places like New York. As well, in the US, even minimal housing can be out of the spending range of a lot of Americans, because of wages that are simply too low. Vancouverguy 00:39, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- Not institutionalizing the mentally ill is also a contributing factor in the US. There are a variety of reasons for that on all sides of the political spectrum.
- Hey, wasn't Ronald Reagan responsible for this as governor of California? Hmmm... -- Miguel
- The left is seeking to destroy the concept of individual resposbility, the very ethic that made America free, great, and prosperous. They think that every crime and every failure is caused due to "environmental factors" and "psychological illness." It's time to can the pseudo-science and preach individual responsibility. JoeM
- Another contributing factor is the large number of war veterans who are hung out to dry by the very same people who send them to war. -- Miguel
- We'd be better off not turning this into flame war and sticking to JoeM's article instead. It could easily become one if we start blaming for wars that led to homeless veterans.Ark30inf 01:09, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- I mention veterans not to start a flame war, but because a large fraction of the homeless I see are veterans. I would assume that JoeM is not going to call them names like he does all other homeless in his version of the article. -- Miguel
- That's because your kind of people (Communist-supporting traitors) were spitting on our heroes when they were returning from fighting for freedom in Vietnam. We support our troops. I have an MIA flag in my room even and give to veterans charities. JoeM
- You plainly don't when you bring them back home to homelessness. -- Miguel
- I was confident you would jump on this. My differences with Miguel on FOX or homeless veterans has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not you wrote an appropriate encyclopedia article. And thats the real subject here.Ark30inf 01:14, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- I would bet that we are not so much in disagreement about veterans but about the governments that created said veterans. And I'll leave it at that. -- Miguel
- We'd be better off not turning this into flame war and sticking to JoeM's article instead. It could easily become one if we start blaming for wars that led to homeless veterans.Ark30inf 01:09, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- Another contributing factor is the large number of war veterans who are hung out to dry by the very same people who send them to war. -- Miguel
BS. The freer the market the lower the rates of homelessness and unemployment. THe left is supposed to be the defender of "full employment" and poor people but Europe's unemployment rates are 4 times higher and so are their rates of homelessness. When the market is not contrained by big government, there is no shortage of housing and every able body person can get a job and earn enough money to have shelter. Minimum wages, liberal welfare laws, trade unions, employment regulations, and all the other regulations on the market place drive up the prices of everything and cause homelessness and unemployment. JoeM
- Read Nickeled and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America, Joe. -- Miguel
- Read Slander by Ann Coulter, Treason by Ann Coulter, and Bias by Bernard Goldberg. JoeM
- Ann Coulter, voice of reason (http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1188&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0)
Over and out. -- Miguel
I'm new to the Wikipedia community, and I really must tell you this discussion is about the funniest thing I've read in a long, long time. My sides ache.
Here's my 2 cents: The article does, indeed, need to tip its hat to Joe M's view because, like it or not, it is held by a significant portion of the working class, be it in America or abroad. I'd suggest something like this: "Complicating attempts to address the issue is the not uncommon belief that the homeless are responsible for their own plight, as a result of laziness or other moral failings... [yadda yadda yadda]."
But the hat need only be tipped. If Wikipedia were to dwell on Joe M's views, we might as well start including articles that suggest the terminally ill or diseased are being punished by God. So let's just tip that hat and keep moving.... --quark219.
There is nothing wrong with including the conservative view, in fact it should be included. Just not in the ham-handed, one sided, non-encyclopedic, insulting manner that JoeM keeps trying to do it. Come on people, the other view NEEDS to be included.Ark30inf 22:58, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Could anyone give the link to the specific source of those strange numbers about homelessness in Europe? I've always heard that there are more poor people (which, I know is not the same as homeless people) in US than in Europe, and I've read numbers confirming that in some sources (I can't recall them now) and these numbers seem to contradict those numbers. Maybe there may be more poor people, but at least they have a house? User:Marco Neves
- There is a lot of sub-standard housing in the US of a kind (trailer parks and mobile homes) that is almost unheard-of in Europe. Maybe that has something to do with it, and it correlates with the argument that rent control reduces the availability of housing. Statutorily raising the lowest standard of housing, while intended to improve living conditions, may have the unintended effect of leaving more people unable to find housing. — Miguel 22:05, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Not sure if it has what you need, but its a startUNHABITAT doc (http://www.unhabitat.org/en/uploadcontent/publication/hs-599-03.pdf) Thanks, I'll read it and see what I may do with it! By the way, I remembered that probably poverty indicators are relative to the general wealth of the country, so saying there are more poors in US than in EU may be inappropriate. I'll check these things! Cheers! User:Marco Neves
healthafairs link http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.w5.212/DC1 this link says it requires a subscription :/---Skuld 11:59, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
